The Lord is everything to me. He is the strength of my heart and the light of my intellect. He inclines my heart to everything good; He strengthens it; He also gives me good thoughts; He is my rest and my joy; He is my faith hope and love.
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The Great Tree of God
Saint John of Kronstadt in his diary “My Life in Christ” wrote:
“The human race is one great tree of God, spreading and growing over the whole earth, and covering the whole earth with its branches.”
This beautiful image contains a great truth that we are apt to forget. This simple truth is that there is an underlying unity already within and between all whom we meet or perhaps will never meet.
On another occasion he says: “Remember that every man is an image of God, and that all his glory is within him, in his heart. Man looks upon the face, whilst God looks upon the heart.”
So how are we to understand the words “The Image and Likeness of God”?
In essence, the Church understands that God the Holy Trinity is not a self-contained object consisting of three parts or components, but a triune unity, a triunity of three equal persons, each dwelling in the other two because of an unceasing movement of mutual love. We may understand here that we are called to become, as Metropolitan Kallistos says: “a part of this Trinitarian coinherence or perichoresis, being wholly taken up into the circle of love that exists within God” (From the “Orthodox Way”)
We see then, a picture of both Persons and Community. It becomes clear that self love and selfishness are not options. As Saint Gregory of Nazianzus said: “We are not made for ourselves but for our fellow creatures.”
By our Baptism, Chrismation and the continuing feeding of our whole being with the Holy Eucharist, the Most Holy and Pure Body and Blood of Christ, we are enabled to begin the work of God as children of God. What a great blessing this is. But there is much more.
Saint John the apostle in his Epistle (1John 1-3) wrote:
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so, we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
We are called to become like Our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ as the Apostle John indicates and see Him as He is. Can we do this by ourselves? Of course not!
The Lord Jesus in John14:15-21 said “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
We therefore are not called to be orphans, that is fatherless and motherless, but children of God. With this are many implications if we reflect, meditate and pray about this.
Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians 1:3-6 wrote: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
We have seen that we have been called friends of God, brothers even (this of course means sisters also) but also Co-Heirs with Christ Jesus.
From Genesis to the Book of Revelation, we can see, if we meditate and pray over the Scriptures, an extraordinary number of blessings from God. In the Epistle to the Ephesians Saint Paul enumerates dozens of them promised to humankind if we do as He commands us. The reason for this is not to exercise power over us for its own sake, but to engender holiness, health and wholeness which match our true nature in God.
There are blessings of gazing upon the beauty and holiness of Our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, our greatest treasure and blessing. There is the citizenship of heaven, deliverance, forgiveness, freedom, faith, hope and love, peace, strength and receiving a resurrection body and living on and in the new creation of heaven and earth. If this isn’t enough for us, there is more. However, just as when we are told we are to receive an inheritance, we listen and look carefully and avidly at what is promised.
Our adversary the father of lies, and the destroyer, will suggest to us that all this is a dream and a fantasy. But God is Truth. The Blessed and Holy Trinity cannot lie. His promises are sure. He is ever faithful in His promises. The saints both small and great, known and unknown to us, through, prayer and meditation, self sacrifice - sometimes even unto death-reveal both in their lives and beyond, a wonder working, loving, kind, gentle and humble but powerful Holy God who is always with us.
Our work as disciples is not for us only. Be it for ourselves, or for others. It is and will be a slow process of transformation. All of creation is involved. Our times are in God’s hands.
Saint Paul wrote: (Romans 8:23) “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
May the Lord bless each one of us, both personally and as a parish, in the Body of Christ, the unity that the Holy Trinity reveals to us. May we meditate, think over and prayerfully thank God for all the many blessings that we receive daily, both inwardly and outwardly. We are not fatherless or motherless orphans. We have our Heavenly Father and the Church as our mother as well as the Mother of God, our protectress who ever intercedes for us.
May He bless us in our families and workplaces, remembering Saint John of Kronstadt’s words “Remember that every man is an image of God, and that all his glory is within him, in his heart. Man looks upon the face, whilst God looks upon the heart.”
AMEN!
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