eBook: Alive from the Dead

The Orthodox faith is a revelation from above. The revelation of faith has three components: the Giver, the gift and the receiver. The Giver is God; the gift is the grace of the Holy Spirit; and the receivers are those who believe, the Saints and the disciples of the Saints.

Speaking of the Gospel of Christ, the Apostle Paul says ‘it is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’ Christianity is not an invention. Other religions boast that there is logic and consistency in their religious texts. In so doing, they limit their beliefs to the narrow human boundaries of reason. If religion is logical, then where is God’s intervention? But no human mind could invent that God is simultaneously One and Three, that the infinite, eternal God came into history to proclaim the mysteries of eternal life without parting from His eternal Kingdom. The Orthodox faith presupposes the taking up of the Cross and the crucifixion of reason and psychology, which attracts grace and illumination, thus sealing the truth of revelation.

According to Saint Sophrony, theology is not abstract intellectual knowledge, but is experienced as a state in the innermost parts of the heart when God is well-pleased to dwell therein. ‘Spiritual knowledge is understood as communion in being, as union in being.’

— Excerpt from: Alive From The Dead: Homilies On Great Lent (p. 51)

Today, on the second Sunday of Great Lent, we celebrate once again the triumph of the Church, honouring the memory of one of her great Saints, the holy Father and teacher Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, without whose theology we would not have any means to confront the challenges of our times.

His teaching sets forth the truth that man can become ‘a partaker of the divine nature’ in its energetical form by grace. In other words, while in this life, man can acquire God’s grace. Uncreated divine grace bridges the gap between the natural life and the supernatural life of God’s glory, which is the bliss of the communion of the Saints amongst whom the Lord reigns eternally.

Apophatic theology may reveal truths, but man needs the cataphatic theology of Saint Gregory Palamas to keep the right faith and tread the path that leads to the Lord. Saint Gregory’s teaching bears witness to a concrete and tangible experience of God, an inner sense of His presence, an assurance of His mystery felt even in man’s own body, which assurance for him is more real than the visible reality that surrounds him.

This Saint is an extraordinary phenomenon in our spiritual life. He handed down his writings to the Church, his theological synthesis, as a perfect expression of Tradition still vital and relevant today. Any Christian who lives with a spirit of repentance, and cultivates a sense of God’s presence in his heart, can easily relate to his teaching and clearly apprehend the delusion of his philosophical opponents.

— Excerpt from: Alive From The Dead: Homilies On Great Lent (p. 107-108)