Posts
 |
| Source: uncutmountainsupply.com |
Dear Parish Faithful,
O Light of Orthodoxy! Teacher of the Church. Its Confirmation! O Ideal of Monks and Champion of Theologians!
Yesterday, on the Second Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorated St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki (+1359). I focused on St. Gregory's understanding of the place and role of the human body in the realm of what we call the "spiritual life." The passage below is quite indicative of St. Gregory's deep insight into the relationship between "soul and body." St. Gregory also employs the term "mind" below. This is the Greek nous, probably better translated as "spiritual intellect." This is a marvelous passagethat deserves a careful and thoughtful reading:
_____
There are indeed blessed passions and common activities of body and soul, which ... serve to draw the flesh to a dignity close to that of the spirit, and persuade it too tend towards what is above. Such spiritual activities … do not enter the mind from the body, but descend into the body from the mind, in order to transform the body into something better and to deify it … In spiritual man, the grace of the Spirit, transmitted to the body through the soul, grants to the body also the experiences of things divine and allows it the same blessed experiences as the soul undergoes. … When the soul pursues this blessed activity, it deifies the body also; which, being no longer driven by corporeal and material passions … rejects all contact with evil things. Indeed it inspires its own sanctification and inalienable divinization.
_____
I also said yesterday that St. Gregory is not exactly a "household name," and that includes Orthodox households. Therefore, I am providing a link to a fairly detailed account of his life from the OCA webpage. St. Gregory Palamas was a great Church Father who deserves our attention:
