"No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven".( John 3)
Christ is speaking here about Himself, and the primary thrust of the passage as a whole has to do with "lifting up", metaphorically a reference to His coming Crucifixition, though also to His Ascension to sit at the right hand of the father. But I wish to draw your attention to His coming down, to the descent of Christ,
not to the ascent. Because this, too, is something central
to our faith, and something whose implication we do not always take on board. The Christian faith proclaims that the transcendent God, existing from all eternity, from before the creation of the world, has descended, has come down into this world of space and time to become one of us,
to become man, a human being: to become God with us, "Emmanuel". But He has also descended to reveal Himself as God for us, leaving heaven behind, so to speak, in order to give us the possibility of sharing His eternal life, of joining Him where He is.
It is the element of descent, which precedes any ascent.
This descent is required for the transmission of life,
and if we are to be Christ -like, if we are to be imitators of Christ, that descent must figure in our lives as well. Specifically, it is very easy to speak to those who live the same kind of spiritual life as we do: we understand one another, we speak the same language. What is difficult is to descend, to reach down to someone whose inner life is weak, or virtually non-existent.
Yet, it is this ability that characterizes the saints.
How many stories ther are of St Seraphim, of St Tikhon of Zadonsk, which show their ability to descend from the high rung on which they stand to find the person before them, standing on a much lower rung, and gently draw him upward. In doing this they repeat, in their own way, the descent and the ascent of Christ.[...]
Sermons
by Bishop Basil (Osborne) of Sergievo
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου