miercuri, 28 aprilie 2010

Fr. Ghelasie Gheorghe: "The mysticism of death" (transl. by Fr. John Downie)


The mystical passage into ETERNITY. The final journal entries.

It is not suffering and sickness which trouble me now, but the approach of “the great Borderland” between the world of birth and the world of ETERNITY. We, creation, are in-between two worlds, that of birth and that of eternity. And between them there is a mystery, the Borderland to Eternity, which each one of us in his due time must pass through. Even if there were no sin, its repercussions, or death, the Borderland would have still existed since it is the Door for passing between the two worlds: the lower world and the world Above. We are created Beings and we can never be confused with GOD, Who gave us being.

We are created, born as Creatures with Soul directly from GOD, with a Memorial of creation, of being begotten, from our birth parents. Through this we grow, to the extent that the Potential of birth, of being begotten, is for us the encounter with the Maker, GOD Himself. As long as we develop in the lower world of birth and growth, we have the rays of DIVINITY, but the moment comes when we must show our face before God, and this is done in the world of ETERNITY. Sin, along with death, added tares and destruction to our Being, and so the passage through the Borderland of ETERNITY is all the more difficult and even becomes terrifying. At a suitable time, willingly or unwillingly, you must pass through this Borderland, and it is then that you are put to the great test of Life.

When we are in the growth-birth stage of the earthly world we have states of confused and unstable Consciousness, so our personal conscience flails about between the reality of ETERNITY and the reality of temporality. Now however, we, through the image, the model, the likeness of ETERNITY, as Image of the DIVINE Likeness – now this image flails about to find its fulfillment, and so it drives us towards the Borderland of ETERNITY in order to pass through it. This drive that is within us is the germ of growth that must become the steadfastness of ETERNITY.

Death, due to sin, brings us fear, emptiness, powerlessness and fear of passing through the “Borderland of fire”. The Fire of ETERNITY’S Borderland is so consuming that it will burn everything that is corrupt in us. And woe, how bitter it is, that due to sin our Soul and body will be burned of all corruption. We will see ourselves empty and broken, and mutilated. We won’t be able to recognize ourselves. And we will either pass through into ETERNITY’S LIGHT or go in the opposite direction, of the Life of the darkness of death, of brokeness.

This is why diseases, sufferings, and trials are necessary in this world, in order for us to grow, to wash ourselves from corruption, so that we will not have the ability for sinning. The saints even asked for and desired these purifications before death. For some, death is like a gentle passage, for others it is very severe. Both passages however, have the role of cleansing. May the mercy of the LORD be, let it be over everyone.

LORD JESUS, I thrash about in the searchings of my heart! I was not how I should have been. I proved cowardly and unworthy. I am in-between my last hope in Your godly love and my shame. Look at me! I’m ashamed to raise my eyes and my sinful voice, and it is only in the gesture of Worship that I make an effort towards Your Mercifulness. I know that I am now at my last physical and even Spiritual strength, and it is only Your Image of ETERNITY within me that burns my Being with a consuming fire. ETERNITY in me burns me and tortures me, it can no longer stay enclosed, it must open up its uncontainableness and arrive at the encounter beyond the Borderland of this earthly world. This departure of ETERNITY from the Borderland of my being is associated with the death of sin. And behold, I am at the two terrifying trials. There are some that would like to think beautifully about the hour of death. Death’s fear and terror are a shadow of hell, so it is the most terrifying thing, and we long to cast it [death] away from us.

LORD JESUS, only through my gesture of worship can I fight any longer with the terrifying chill. I recognize that I’m afraid, and I banish this thought and imagination, and it is only with Worship above everything that I have any hope in Your Mercy.

Now I feel the great transformation in me, of personal Consciousness, that I am truly Creature and I have the task of passing, to grow the Image of ETERNITY. This consolidation of the ETERNAL Conscience of created Being-ish nature is precisely creation’s condition of entering and of living in ETERNITY.

The Fire of ETERNITY’S Borderland will leave you burnt, a true Witness that pertains to the ETERNITY of the Conscious differentiation of creatures from their Maker. Without this seal of ETERNITY’S Borderland it is impossible to enter into ETERNITY.
I must pass through a dreadful scorching and await in awe. ETERNITY flails in me, and wants to uncuff itself from my Borderlands, to enter into the unlimited path of ETERNITY. All the more frequently the chill of death, departures, penetrate me, and the fear of death compounds, and terrifying thrills that shake my whole Being are added to them. The association of death with ETERNITY becomes a double passage beyond the great Borderland of life, and a double terror that creates an altogether different kind of suffering. The sufferings of death aren’t so much organic or psychological, as much as a suffering from passage through the Borderland of ETERNITY. This has a different condition, and so nothing can ease the pain any longer, except for passing through the great Borderland. Here medicine can’t do anything, only faith remains. If many seem to die in indifference and spiritual unfeelingness, in the depths of each soul there will be, there will be an unsupportable moment that will produce a great explosion when the departure of ETERNITY will thrash you.

For a long time there has been discussion of a real death complex, in which in a few minutes and a few seconds your entire life is spread out before you, or you have extraordinary states that open up other dimensions of ETERNITY for you. The secret of the passage into ETERNITY is a Mystery which takes form* according to the Personality of each separate person. This moment is sealed for ETERNITY and becomes the nucleus of your ETERNAL Consciousness. The Seal of passing into ETERNITY is the Door of entrance into ETERNITY. It itself is your own ETERNITY, the Image of your own ETERNITY according to the Image of the Personality of your Being.

I feel a deep embarrassment before my acquaintances and before all of those for whom I, the unworthy one, was spiritual father. Brothers! Don’t be scandalized by my weaknesses and nothingness. If I had anything good it was from the Gift of GOD’S mercy. You must understand that I am just Man, a Creature like everyone else. Perhaps you thought I was special, and perhaps you used some of the Gifts that GOD worked through me. Grant me your forgiveness and keep only the good memories.
Some of my closer friends await something more concrete as a kind of testament.

Oh, LORD JESUS, what should I leave for others when I’ve now been proven naked before death and ETERNITY? Do not be disconcerted, you who believed me to be a support in your trials. Keep the advice that I gave you and remember me in your Prayers.

Priests and spiritual fathers, even if they aren’t saints, through the Gifts of the Spirit, even after death Work in those that are their Spiritual Children. So, have true trust that, as unworthy as I am, if you will follow my good advice you will be helped in continuation. And you help me more through this since Good works at the same time in this world and in ETERNITY.

If GOD wants my passage into the other world to be now, we must all submit with Worship to the Will of GOD, Who does everything with His great Mercy. Oh, you, my dearest ones, if you don’t wish to be separated from me as I also don’t want to be separated, then neither death nor ETERNITY will destroy this ETERNAL remaining together, even beyond the Borderlands of Mystery.

So they say that the souls from ETERNITY and even from the shadows of the darkness of death and hell, see their dearest ones clearly, even if they forget about them.
Our fathers and forefathers watch each of us and follow our Lives, and so there is another connection for help. The good virtues of some will also be a dowry of great use for those that follow. I feel, in a special way, HOW in their great love for all Creation, from ETERNITY they help us and Remember us permanently in their Prayers. Memories ETERNAL from the Christian Ritual is so telling in this way. It is, and remains, an ETERNAL Memory, an ETERNAL memory that will never be wiped out. Even if we, those of the earth forget it, those from ETERNITY will never forget, and because of this the Memories are a great Mystery.

Do not sorrow with disappointment. GOD put in each one the measure of his own Mystery. What is important is whether I have fulfilled the Growth of Life on Earth, if I am Born for ETERNITY, if I have escaped from bitter death that will now no longer work against me.

The saints passed, longed for the passage of ETERNITY in order to be United with CHRIST THE SAVIOR without end. The ETERNITY and temporality of this world aren’t contradictory, but reciprocally extend each other.

Today, I partook of the BODY and BLOOD OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR, with the ALLWHOLY EUCHARIST, with the BREAD OF ETERNITY. I partook of the MYSTICAL BODY of THE SON of GOD. Now I appreciate the full value of this capital truth of ours, creation. The Being Memories that GOD sealed me with at my creation awakens in me, the moribund. These Memories of my personal Being are my very self. I am the very Image that must now pass through the Borderlands of ETERNITY, and this is why PARTAKING with the Liturgical BODY of GOD, of CHRIST is for me ETERNITY itself. The ancients named it the Divine Light, awakening, Grace, transfiguration. We Christians call it clearly and concisely: THE EUCHARISTIC LITURGICAL BODY of THE LORD CHRIST. He is the COUNTENANCE* of Illumination, awakening, of spiritual vision, transfiguration and even more, of the direct and personal ENCOUNTER, and still more, of Eternity’s Life through which we must now pass.

The breath of our body stops. The breath of our Soul stops. The Soul, separated from the body, will loose its clothing, which covered the soul’s nakedness.
The Soul, in its turn, has its own clothing covering it, but as a sinner this will be without that Life of Being, without that Light.

Oh, my Soul, blind and without breath. My Soul has the Superlife of ETERNITY, the SEAL OF THE DIVINE IMAGE, of the Breath of DIVINE when I was created. All the ETERNAL Memories and the Memories of my creation will awaken in my Soul. If I have Partaken with THE BODY of CHRIST, my Soul will no longer be completely naked, but will have the GARMENT of CHRIST. Without the WEDDING GARMENT, the IMAGE-BODY of CHRIST, I can not pass through the Borderland of Eternity, and will be taken in the opposite direction, towards the darkness of death, of the kingdom of non-eternity. Here again is a terrifying truth, death is not annihilation, but is the opposite of eternity, which does not mean temporality, but a product of “contrary eternity.” It is something that decomposes forever, without ever terminating the decomposition. There will be continual dreadful death. If life will be a continual Assimilation of ETERNITY, death will be an eternal emptying of eternity.

LORD! What a terrifying truth! Some don’t want to think about this, and even refuse this information. This Passage into ETERNITY is not something to be lighthearted about. If we are lighthearted with our life, this is the moment when we will have a serious Conscience, which becomes the FIRMNESS of ETERNITY. In ETERNITY we will no longer be double-minded, and we will no longer make much of our liberty. In ETERNITY there will be nothing but UNION, a unique sense in all directions, without contrary-ness and so the issue of evil will no longer be. Now the evil of sin will be stopped. Those in the darkness of death will also stop evil, but in the manner of a continual burning that produces the torture of evil’s non-eternal, which self-destructs.

Sin no longer lives in hell, but its burning becomes the suffering of continual death. In eternity you no longer sin since Eternity is stronger than any evil and can not generate evil. In the darkness of death, the consumption of sin in an eternal consuming, it is a remembrance of sin, but in the opposite direction. This is a mystery that only GOD knows and resolves. This burning of death however, how will it be with me? All of us must pass the Borderland of ETERNITY with the burn-wounds from the death of sin, which will be the ETERNAL CONSCIENCE of ETERNAL UNSINNINGNESS.

The LORD Himself, CHRIST INCARNATE, the HEAVENLY SON of GOD the INCARNATE, was raised to Heaven into ETERNITY with the wounds of the Cross of sin even in His RESURRECTED BODY. These marks-wounds will be the CONSCIENCE OF ETERNITY that will keep us from every sin and make Eternity possible, which means a complete absence of sin. Death will be the conscience of the opposite of eternity. DIVINE ETERNITY will be ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS of good only.

Paradoxically, hell, death’s contrary, is also the contrary’s consumption, an affirmation of the truth. The mystery of hell has not been discussed very much by the mystical theologians. There are some allusions that have a part in reality, but the mystery properly speaking only remains the Mystery of GOD.

Life after death is in the silence of death and beyond the utterance of ETERNITY. The silence of death is not allowed to be exposed, and the utterance of ETERNITY is beyond our strength. He who uncovers the pit of death commits an inadmissible and terrifying impiety, and this is why it is avoided. The mind of whosoever rushes into ETERNITY is burned. It is only the hour of death and the hour of each one’s passage into ETERNITY that is the moment of these Mysteries’ revelations. Oh, terrifying time, but also GOD’S Appearance.

The battle between life and death is being waged all the more frequently inside of me. The chill of death penetrates me ‘til the marrow of my bones. I realize my nothingness all the more. I must accept everything with Worship. Now, only the acceptance of the CROSS and CRUCIFIXION is the true Path.

Oh, the CROSS is so heavy and CRUCIFIXION so dreadful. I must completely abandon myself. To let what must be, be; to not ask for changes or miracles. No miracle is possible now, though the complete paradox is that everything is a Miracle of great Mystery. I must receive with complete self-sacrifice the hour of CRUCIFIXION. I too, will call out, “MY LORD! MY LORD! Why have you forsaken me?”

LORD, LORD, forgive me, at the crossroad of my life. Don’t leave me, LORD! Oh, brothers, don’t grow weary by my weakness. Oh, how hard it is, the emptiness of abandonment. It is dreadful, the emptiness of abandonment. You Yourself, LORD JESUS CHRIST cried out while You passed it. It is the hour of ETERNITY’S BIRTH, which due to sin is interwoven with life’s opposite, with death. Behold the two moments of Mystery’s Borderland. I’m afraid of the final hour, which I’d like to escape, but at the same time hurry on. Waiting is often more difficult. Let what should happen, happen, and GOD, Thy will be done, not mine. Forgive me, LORD! Forgive me! Forgive me! I have all kinds of confusing and mixed visions. Now the worst memories are coming up, as an ultimate destruction.

Oh, sin, sin, how bitter your destruction is! You want to take my last drop of life and corrupt me and destroy me.
Oh, horrible sin! Oh, horrible sin! You evil spirits who laid me waste my whole life, let your ultimate destruction come now.

LORD, LORD, I know that I couldn’t fight against the passions. I know that I was weak. I know that the evil spirits deceived me.
LORD, LORD, shelter me, shelter me from the great laying of waste. Let death not be, let death not be an incrimination, my incrimination.
LORD, LORD, now I understand how bitter sin is in me. All the structures of the Soul and body will be broken. The very cells of the body will burn. The ashes from the burning will give off the stench of death. Corruption in me will give off an even uglier stench. They say that you suffocate in the smoke from corruption’s burning and that is how you give up your soul.
LORD, LORD JESUS, how can I enter into Eternity with the putrid measure of my sin?

Holy Mother of God, have mercy on me!
My holy angel, be near to me!
My Saint whose name I bear, do not abandon me!

Crossing the Borderland of death and ETERNTY’S Mystery will show me for what I am, completely, my Name, my Person, my Being, everything will reveal the image that I’ll have. The Image of Man is the Mystery of THE IMAGE OF THE SON of GOD, and this IMAGE is SELF-SACRIFICING LOVE. It is THE WORD of the Mystery of THE IMAGE OF THE GODHEAD breathed into me.

Could it be that I have a Likeness with the IMAGE of the SON of GOD? Death will empty me of Image and ETERNITY will clothe me in Image. The opposite eternity, that of death, will be the Image’s ceaseless destruction. ETERNITY will be the Image’s unending growth, of the Son’s Image, of the Creature of God, Likeness of THE IMAGE OF THE SON OF GOD.

LORD JESUS, THE SON OF GOD, do I have anything in common with Your IMAGE?
LORD, LORD JESUS, have Mercy on me and CLOTHE ME with YOUR IMAGE, so as not to be naked and disfigured. At the creation of my Soul, You, THE SON OF GOD, LORD JESUS, you offered me YOUR IMAGE, THE IMAGE OF YOUR DIVINE LOVE. This SEAL OF SON was the DIVINE model for my very Person, my appearance, the Seal of Son, my very Being.

Forgive me. I had the task of being Born, of Growing, of bearing FRUIT, and so, of crossing into ETERNITY. Simultaneously with my creation, THE ALLHOLY SPIRIT SEALED HIS DIVINE LOVE in the depths of my Being. Because of This it is known that my created Being is born of water – the SEAL of the Baptism of THE GODLY SON, and from the SPIRIT – the SEAL of the descent of DIVINE LOVE into the depths of Being, and of their UNION into the SEAL OF THE FATHER OF GOD, the Heart of the Mystery of Being properly speaking.

Oh, it is bitter for me! I abused and destroyed THE SEAL OF THE IMAGE OF SON. I darkened with the passions of death the SEAL OF THE IMAGE of the HOLY SPIRIT in me. And so I did not build the Union of Heart and ALTAR in my Being where I should have worshipped, and where the BLESSING OF THE FATHER OF GOD should have been.

Without the IMAGE OF THE ALLHOLY DIVINE TRINITY, I can not cross the Borderland of Eternity. But I will pass into the opposite, of death, and of death’s darkness with the disfigured image, without the LIGHT OF THE SPIRIT in my depths, and without THE ETERNAL HOLINESS OF THE FATHER.

Have mercy on me, LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD. Have mercy on me ALL HOLY, HOLY SPIRIT. Have Mercy on me HEAVENLY FATHER. I am created by DIVINE LOVE, don’t let LOVE abandon me – conquer all of my sin, let LOVE conquer it.

Behold me, I am naked at the Borderland between ETERNITY and death. My only riches will be my LOVE, THE DIVINE IMAGE’S likeness. I need to be dressed with LOVE as in a jeweled vestment, but I, like a sinner, LORD, LORD JESUS, I PARTOOK with Your HEAVENLY BODY. Dress me with Your BODY. ALL HOLY, HOLY SPIRIT, likewise, give me back the LIGHT OF LIFE and ETERNITY.

HEAVENLY FATHER, my Heart is not an altar where I receive You, but CHRIST’S BODY AND THE ALLHOLY SPIRIT’S LIGHT will make a small little corner in the Heart where Your BLESSING is.
LORD, LORD, forgive me at the crossroads of my life…

LORD, give me Your Mercy. LORD, give me the cry of the thief on the CROSS, who was able to receive Your FORGIVENESS. From now on, only the last VENERATION remains for me. I no longer make myself out to be a philosopher. I’m afraid to think of hell. I don’t have the daring or the obnoxiousness to think of the Heavenly, I only BOW towards Your Mercy, LORD.

Holy Mother of God, I know that you have a little drop of LOVE for me, even though I have disappointed you so much!
My Angel, I am ashamed by your lifetime’s insistence for me to do well, while I didn’t listen to you!
My Saint whose name I bear, I don’t have Your virtues, and I made a mockery out of your Name!
Oh, All you saints, be help for me now!
Oh, Heavenly Image of Monk, which I bore unworthily and without attention!
Oh, oh, Lord, oh, what Image will I have at the Borderland between ETERNITY and death?

I will be completely empty. It is not allowable for me to be hopeless because it contradicts the MERCIFUL DIVINE LOVE in this hour. I am struggling between Life and death. Life is stronger than death, and ETERNITY is stronger than all, and the Mercifulness of GOD, covers everything. These paradoxes of Mystery all exist at the same time. No one can say anything until the crossing of the Borderland of Mystery. There will yet be a Breath, a Word, like at my earthly Birth. My entrance into ETERNITY will be.

LORD, THE IMAGE of Your Likeness, how broken and darkened it will be, since I have passed through the liberty of sin. Now, behold, I enter into eternal freedom without sin.

Oh, unspoken Mystery, LORD, Glory to Thee. I WORSHIP You, LORD. I thank You for all the good things, and I ask Your forgiveness for all the evil. Forgive me, LORD! Forgive me! Forgive me! So much has remained for me to ask Your forgiveness for, and to WORSHIP with an ETERNAL KNEELING.

Yet again, my brothers, I ask you, prove your understanding and forgiveness, and don’t be sad, let us submit to the LORD’S Will. Have faith, only faith will rejoice in Life ETERNAL. Rejoice for ETERNITY’S JOY.

I’m not worthy of ETERNITY, I am worthy of death, but with the ETERNAL hope of Life I too, I too await the great hour; and I beg the Good LORD to give me a little drop of ETERNITY’S JOY, even unworthy as I am.

Oh, Love of Creature and DIVINE LOVE, You cross over everything.
Oh, JOY of ETERNITY…



(published in the volume "Ghelasie Isihastul, Iubitorul de Dumnezeu" ("Ghelasie the Hesychast, the God-lover"), Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2004, pp. 21-33. Transl. into English by Fr. John Downie)


Copyright: Platytera Publishing House.

marți, 27 aprilie 2010

"Diogenic Dialogues" with Fr. Ghelasie (III): "The ritual gesture" (transl. by Fr. John Downie)


(Interviews realised, adapted and commented by post-grad. theol. Gabriel Memelis)










The Ritual Gesture

Gabriel Memelis: Reverend Father Ghelasie, in the last conversation that we held you made some important specifications connected with iconic Orthodox ritual and its importance in our contemporary mystical context. So in general you define the ritual as not only being a simple relational, but as “the common that appears after the inter-relational.” The ritual is produced only if a reciprocity of relations exists between the divine and human, “afterwards, both parties’ responses are united and they make a single response…” The Kingdom of Heaven’s Mystery (which is as we know from the Fathers, greater than Paradise) is completed in God and creation’s union and co-dwelling, as a real encounter, as inter-penetration without confusion.
Similarly, you then say that this ritual’s mystery is hidden in the inter-Trinitarian life that overflows into creation through Christ. Our Orthodox iconic ritual has the mystery of inter-divine life as its ontological origins. The Son and the Holy Spirit make a kind of “double ritual” in the Trinity, one in the sense of being-ness, which is apophatic and beyond creation, and the other in which heavenly love permanently overflows into creation and at the same time receives love from creation. They make one common with creation and raise it. In the end you also discussed the importance of the faithful’s participation in liturgical ritual, and the importance of the ritual’s effects in remaking the Eucharistic condition in each one of us.
I would like to bring to mind that the purpose of these conversations that we are having by your graciousness, Reverend Father, is to make the message that you’d like to transmit accessible for those that many times meet with difficulty when reading your books. So, remaining on this note, in the following interview I would like you to develop the aspect of ritual gesture. It is understood that the iconic-Carpathian practice of prayer that you are proposing has the gesture of the icon’s veneration [1] as its center, which is a kind of antechamber to prayer of the mind. [2] As you once said Father, for those of today it is more difficult, if not almost impossible, to approach mental prayer head on, and so there is need for an introduction, for help along this path.
Therefore, I’d like to suggest having the importance of ritual gesture in a few words of Saint Macarius of Egypt as a point of departure, and likewise as a motto for our discussion today. These words are, “There is no need for many words, it is enough to stand with hands up raised.” The first question would then be – why is gesture in the first place and not the mind? Does gesture have a more direct resonance in the ontological depths of human nature? Is it possible to discuss gesture as the ontological language of man?

Fr. Ghelasie Gheorghe: As you’ve already reminded us in the introduction that you’ve made – from what I’ve understood – I affirm that gesture, or better said, the ritual, which I consider a synonym practically, isn’t only a product of a relational. It is itself an abyss of being, which then facilitates the relational. So this perspective must be understood and valorized (in spite of the usual opinion) that our being-ness, even though it is created, has a mystery of expression.
In fact, what does gesture mean? Gesture is a modality for the expression of our being-ness in its integrality, not with just one certain part. Common language [verbal], being more mental, only expresses a certain side of our being-ness. Through gesture the whole of being is expressed. We don’t realize to what extent we express ourselves in our gestures. In fact, for the one who can decipher and read them, for the one who can understand them and receive them as the mystery of the whole being’s expression, the gesture is precisely the normality of our being-ness’ expression. Gesture is considered something more than a language. [3] It’s a language too, but as I’ve said, in the sense of a complete expression of being-ness whose inner meaning is.
…Today, in general, the tumult of the “theologians” of the Protestant kind, as well as the mysticism of the oriental-hybrid influence, lean a lot towards a de-sacralization of the ritual and of gesture. They put a great accent on the mental, on a so called “spiritualist” or even “spiritual mysticism”, to such an extent that at a certain point some (without understanding it very well) speak about “grace” mysticism, which is completely foreign to grace properly speaking. Because of this we must emphasize, especially from the Orthodox Christian point of view, the theological of expression and response. Through our relational that we live, not just with God but amongst other creatures and ourselves, we should understand precisely an expression of the integrality of our being-ness. Not just through a single side…
To be better understood (in fact I related this in a more recent work, in a kind of anthropological attempt, On the Anthropological Trail, [4]) I’ll attempt to explain, as much as possible, what iconic means in the Philokalic-Carpathian acceptation of Neofite the Hermit. Only after this can we understand what iconic gesture is, which I attempt to accentuate on the basis of these Carpathian traditions.
Neofite the Hermit begins with the mystery of man’s configuration. What did God breathe into Adam (Gen. 2:7)? First of all He breathed man’s image into him. Many people make all kinds of speculations, but we say that what God breaths into Adam is the image of man. And what does the image of man mean? It is a pre-figuration of the image of Christ’s Incarnation. The image of man, then, isn’t his own image [it isn’t image in itself G.M.], but rather it is the Image bestowed by the Son of God; and through the bearing of this Image man also gains the image, the divine-creation mystery.
Beginning with this truth, we’ll say that our being-ness has the iconic, it has this sacrality in itself. From the viewpoint of the mystical vision of Neofite the Hermit, a few reference points can be traced, which in no way propose to exhaust man’s mystery. If the Holy Fathers say that man is a dichotomy of soul-body, and that in the soul there is an abyss of mind (νους) through which it is possible to access Divinity, the modality of Neofite the Hermit comes along with a kind of enlargement of this truth. [It considers] that man is first of all divine breath, which is actualized at each human being’s conception. Man’s image unites with the parent’s genetic dowry, configuring man as soul and body. [5] The Carpathian perspective emphasizes the sacred image, the iconic, which man has through God’s action of creating him.
To the extent that this iconic isn’t merely, as I’ve said [in the preceding interview], a product of a relational, it must be understood that it is at the foundation of our being-ness itself. For they say that this iconic is in a certain way similar with the very countenance* [6] of a person. Many people make different evaluations, as we’ve seen for example with Yannaras and other newer theologians who say that we are not yet persons, but we form ourselves into person which is for now only in potentiality… In the end, we don’t want to start a controversy, but only want to bring into relief the characteristical features of Neofite the Hermit, where a being reality in itself is emphasized a lot, which then facilitates and points out the relational. It is a configuration of mystery, where man is first of all iconic image* breathed by God. It is the image of man, the image of Christic incarnation that have the seal of image and likeness with God, as the Scriptures say. This image dresses both the spiritual and bodily parts. It’s not about a trichotomy, but something else: the soul-body dichotomy exists as man’s reality, but at the same time they exist in a unity, a common, which is precisely the iconic, a pre-figuration of the Christic Body. Many theologians consider the Christic Body as a mere material body that the Savior took, lowering Himself into the material, earthly, ordinary part. In the iconic sense, according to Neofite the Hermit’s vision, a distinction is made. On one hand the soul and body are dealt with, and on the other, “overtop” of these there appears a “vestment” of iconic body that Adam lost. This is why Adam saw that he was naked. He still had soul and body, but he no longer had that “vestment” of iconic body [“the garment of light” G. M.]. [7]
So now we can arrive at the understanding of iconic gesture, because our true expression, as being-ness, is in the integrality of the iconic body. Because of sin we lost this expression of the iconic body. Now we search to make the expression, be it through the soul as the mental (νους) part, or be it through the corporeal, as the sensible, mechanical, energetic part… This is why in Neofite the Hermit’s vision, the mystical ideal isn’t to express yourself in a mental or sensible form, but it is rather an expression of that mystical (or mysterious) integrality that we have. We still have the iconic image, but because of our sins it is covered. The Christic baptism that each Christian receives “activates” the iconic image. Through the spiritual life we then develop it and bring it back into evidence in all of its fullness. Until then, however, our expression is still made through the mental part of the soul too, or through the corporeal’s sensible part. And the true Christian, according to the gospel parable, can only participate in the Great Supper, the Wedding of the Son, if he has the “wedding garment” (Mathew 22:11-12). The wedding garment, according to Neofite the Hermit, is the reality of the iconic body. It is only through this that we can regain the true being-identity. [8]
It is said that we are, first of all imago Dei, in other words the seal of the Image of God, or in the theological sense, divine reason, that word that created us, that divine creating act. Then God also created in us, through the same divine creating act, an imago ipsi – our reality of being-ness: to the extent that our reality is the mystery of the image of God. This is oriented towards us in a special way – of interweaving and condition of standing face to face. The imago Dei is also the Son of God’s word for us in which the eternal Arch-model exists, where each one of us is contained, the Book of Life that the Holy Fathers talk about – with the personal reality of our creation. Our personality of creation, the imago ipsi, is permanently face to face with this reflection…

G. M.: Maybe even a dialogue exists…

G. G.: At first it is just a reflection in the divine image (imago Dei) oriented towards us in divine action, where we identify ourselves, and by identifying ourselves we can then have a dialogue. In this way the dialogue can’t take place in anything other than a sacrality, and this in turn can’t be in anything other than the ritual’s mystery. [9]
In the ritual’s mystery everything becomes clear. Truly, what is our ritual of creation expressed through? Our liturgical ritual has the mystery of an integrality, where the altar’s mystery is on the highest level. From the Biblical point of view, the mystery of relationship with God isn’t a simple relational – it first of all implies the construction of an altar. The Old Testament shows that in order to draw close to the Lord God, you must make an altar for Him. On the altar you must bring a gift. And God only comes in the gift; in the gift you hand yourself over, and in this gift a dialogue is made. It is impossible to have an abstract dialogue, without something concrete. Because of this, our liturgical ritual’s mystery can’t be made without the Eucharist, without the Savior’s Body and Blood.
The gift that we bring to the altar is at the same time ours, and at the same time it is a gift of the Lord Christ Who receives it and makes yet another “actualization” of the incarnation in the holy lamb. [10] The true encounter is in the Eucharist’s ritual where the two gifts unite. Our ritual is never empty; our standing face to face with God, in the authentic Christian sense, is precisely this understanding of the iconic. This is why, in the specific characteristics of Neofite the Hermit, the iconic is considered to be a kind of pre-Christic, pre-Eucharistic, in the sense that it is a reality of a common that forms it and that constitutes that same body in union, and even more so of that partaking. In this union (here’s the beauty of iconic mysticism) all the major dangers of mysticism are avoided, which are the following. If you have a tendency towards entering into God, you are a pantheist, because the Godhead is beyond the capacity and condition of creation. If the Godhead were to try to enter into creation’s being-ness, creation would be annihilated, becoming overwhelmed by Divinity. Christian mysticism comes with this “intermediary” iconic where the Divine (inaccessible to creation – and creation – that in a way can’t stand before the face of God without dying) can meet each other in a real way. Their meeting can be more than a simple relational, even more than a simple standing face to face. In the iconic common, the Divine truly enters into creation, and it [creation] truly enters into the Divine. In other words, the Divine truly incarnates, since we’re not talking about a dichotomy, and at the same time creation enters into Divinity without the risk of pantheism. All of the heresies in the Church’s history started from the fear of the Divine descending into creation and degrading Itself. For example, iconoclasts couldn’t understand how the Godhead could take on forms from creation. The iconoclasts’ mistake was that they didn’t understand that the Godhead doesn’t in fact take the forms of creation, and neither does creation take the forms of Divinity. A terrible mystery is realized that isn’t encountered in any other religion. That is the mystery of the icon, where, without destroying creation, God’s descent is just as possible as creation’s ascent into God without losing its created nature.
So, iconic mysticism brings an enlargement and at the same time a fulfillment of a mystic’s vision in general, and especially of the Christian ideal. God can meet with His creatures without confusion with them, and what’s even more, He can realize a common beyond nature (supernatural) where created nature participates in divine nature and It [divine nature] even participates in creation’s nature. And we emphasize, without the confusion of natures! So if the iconoclasts wouldn’t under any condition admit that the Divine could be “translated” into creation’s terms, and the other heretics maintained a distance between the Divine and the creation out of fear of pantheism (see for example Nestorianism and the heresies derived from it), in the Eucharistical, iconical sense the mystery that is realized between the Divine and the creation is truly the fulfillment of the mystical man’s ideal.
In conclusion, I’ll mention yet again that the ritual has, first of all, the gesture as a basis for “expression.” Why is it a question about gesture? Because gesture isn’t just a simple expression. We must always have the perspective of the integrality of expression, where offering is an action that begins with an expression of a certain orientation toward something, then latter on it is dressed in a garment of direct expression which is the word. Then there is an expression of fulfillment, where a union in silence is made, which is a partaking. It’s an encounter in the highest sense of the word. But it isn’t properly speaking a silence; it’s rather a gesture of receiving, where the mystery can no longer be expressed in words. It only has fulfillment, and the fulfillment itself is the expression.
This is why Neofite the Hermit emphasized the matter of our being-ness so much, which is gesture. Through the gesture our very foundation of being is brought into remembrance. We, the creation, have a being memory whose basis is, first of all, the memory of the Divine. Just as a child has the memory of his parents in him directly, we also have, first of all (in our being-ness), the ontological memory of the Divine. And just like a child, who through his gestures, before he can express himself and name his mom or dad, can recognize them, Neofite the Hermit considered that our first expressions towards God are made through the gesture of recognition. We are like children, like newborns brought into being, who through growth arrive at naming too, and finally we also make our response properly speaking. [11]
We must still penetrate one aspect a little deeper: the iconic image in itself is, for us humans, the Image of Son. In Neofite the Hermit’s traditional manner, he emphasizes the iconic of the Son’s Image a lot. It is man’s sacrality. All of the hesychastic practice in this tradition is centered on the mystery of the Son’s Image. What’s even more is that the character of offering and worship appears as a concrete form of the Son’s Image. This is why the essential feature regarding ritual gesture is the gesture of worship and of offering which is a pre-figuration of the altar and the sacrifice upon the altar. This is the Christian way for the Divine to “overflow” into creation, and for creation to have accessibility towards the Divine, for God’s encountering creation until reaching the point of the common of great mystery, the Eucharist. The gesture then is itself the foundation of the expression of our creation’s being-ness. Our creation’s image (which we receive – because the same creating, divine action that there was with Adam, is repeated with each man) is “breathed” by God into man differently than [He breathes it] into all the other earth dwelling creatures that He made through the word only. Through a special action, the image of man is in itself the Christic Image, headed towards incarnation. Every man is an actualization of Christ’s Image in a different modality, in a different form of creation, in a different individuality. So then this iconic image, which is our image of sacrality, in union with the part from our parents (from birth) by nature (see On the Anthropological Trail) configures the direct part of the soul and the corporeal. To the extent that the spiritual and the “material” parts of the child can’t grow or develop except on the basis of the image breathed by God. Here you find the Archetype of being-ness; this is reality, our identity, where the foundation must be laid… [12]

G. M.: How necessary and practical is it to propose for today’s faithful an ascetical practice centered on ritual gesture? I’m asking this because, since we know what ordinarily happens, the faithful are usually proposed with a minimalist recipe for piety. This consists of regular confession, communion at least four times a year, regular participation in the liturgy, without insisting a lot on guidance towards a way of living these liturgical actions. There is even a tendency to advise the faithful to have a certain reservation towards hesychastic practice, the motive being that these would only pertain to the superior or to the advanced…

G. G.: Dear sir, first of all we must specify from the beginning the following item: you are very interested in Christian mysticism… Now, there’s a lot of talk, even abusive talk, about hesychasm… We shouldn’t consider that hesychasm can exhaust everything that Orthodox Christian mysticism means. That’s why I prefer to use this last term…

G. M.: It’s a more comprehensive term…

G. G.: Yes, it is… Hesychasm, truly, is a mysticism consecrated more for those who practice stillness, for those who want to practice a severer asceticism. In the strict sense of the word, Christian mysticism can’t be reduced to hesychasm only. This is another thing I attempt to point out. Our Christian mysticism has as its foundation precisely this ritualistic part. The neo-Protestant [13] approach and more recently neo-pagan mysticism try to resurrect an ancient religious “style” and to compete with Christian mysticism. It’s not a mere coincidence that they are set against the ritual. We must understand one thing: if we take the ritual out of Christianity, then nothing remains… Christianity is precisely the ritual. Why? Because the center of our religion is liturgical, it is the incarnation of Christ. This is why it could be said that Christianity is nothing other than the Incarnation of Christ. If the ancient mystics dealt with a returning of the created into God, in the Christian sense, mysticism isn’t only that, but it’s also a much more profound entrance of the Divine into creation, and what’s even more, it is an encounter in the common, which is the iconic. God didn’t only create us in order to confer a reality that we must annihilate, in order to be absorbed back into Him. God created a reality in order for it to exist and in which He could remain. And what’s more, creation can participate in the Divine and – at the same time – it makes an altar, that ark-place where it can receive and keep Him. This is what Christian mysticism means. It’s not a spiritualistic mysticism. People make too much out of spiritualistic mysticism. Christian mysticism is iconic, it’s a mysticism of the Incarnation of the Divine, and even this Incarnation shouldn’t be understood in the spiritualistic sense that it tends to be understood today. Which is (something which I consider false) – that the Divine, having a few principles of information, could create material, which isn’t anything other than concentrated mind. And so the Divine, concentrated as spiritual principles gives form to matter after which matter must flow in the opposite direction, from mass to energy and then again into information and in the end, newly again into the Divine. [14] Without wanting to hurt anybody, we must say out right that this isn’t true Christianity. Christianity is something else. It is the Image of God that makes itself accessible through the mystery of the Incarnation’s Christic Image; the mystery of the Christic Image also creates a being-ness of creation that has the capacity to receive God, to respond and to make itself an altar for God. This is why creation is true creation only when it is an Altar, only if it becomes Eucharistic. If it doesn’t become Eucharistic, if it doesn’t make itself an Altar, it’s an empty creation – an illusional joke or a dream of the Absolute as in oriental mysticism… And God’s creation can’t be a dream or an illusion.
Therefore only Christianity stands in the formation of altar and of iconic. And this, in its turn, can only be made ritualistically; and because of this a new kind of catechism must be understood, which must emphasize the ritualistic aspect more. Christian practice mustn’t only be trained towards an abstract mysticism that throws the ritual into more of a formalistic domain, as you’ve said; true prayer in the Christian understanding is liturgical, ritualistic. If a Christian’s prayer isn’t ritualistic, then I don’t consider it to be authentic Christian prayer. Even more, the ritualistic mustn’t be understood in the ancient sense, where blood sacrifices predominated, of destruction. In the ancient sense ritual sacrifice meant cutting, destruction and pouring blood out in order to accede beyond – to go into “spiritual” reality. In Christianity it is exactly opposite. After the Christic sacrifice of the cross, blood is no longer sacrificed, but a new gift is brought. The “gift of death” is no longer brought, but rather the gift of partaking, of the Mystical Supper, of joy…

G. M.: Divine Blood is brought…

G. G.: Not only this, it’s not the sacrifice of the cross that is, properly speaking, in the Liturgy, but rather it’s the sacrifice of Christ the Resurrected One. In the Eucharist there is truly an anamnesis [15] where the redemption of Sacrifice is present, because of the yet sinful state of creation. [But] it’s not the Crucifixion that’s at the foundation of our liturgical, but the offering of Communion. The epiclesis is made by the descent of the Holy Spirit, He also “becomes incarnate” through the Eucharistic Body. What’s more is that there is even a blessing and a coming of the Father. That is why the Liturgy isn’t fulfilled until the Our Father is said. So, the whole Trinity is in the Liturgy, the whole Godhead encounters the whole of creation. I consider, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, that Christianity’s future is the Eucharistic, liturgical ritual’s future. Magical, occult, spiritualist mysticism can’t be Christian mysticism. Or in the Christian sense (as I’ve said at a different point) there can be no Spirit without the Eucharistic Body of Christ, and neither the body of Christ without the Holy Spirit.

G. M.: Somewhere in Hesychastic Practice, you spoke of a gesture, of a movement of spirit beyond ordinary movement. Sacred gesture isn’t an ordinary movement. It’s not a gesture in a technical sense, but implies a mysterious opening up of spirit. If you’d like, could you specify in more detail what this mysterious movement of spirit would consist of?

G. G.: As I’ve previously mentioned, this liturgical sacrality itself implies a response that is higher than our ordinary motions. There is already a sacralized movement in the liturgical. The sacred in the Christian sense, the divine image of the sacred in itself, is the Holy Spirit’s Image. And so along with Him [the Holy Spirit] our spirit is trained at the same time in the spiritualization that the Holy Fathers speak about. This is why I emphasize that Christian mysticism isn’t a mysticism of energy properly speaking, like in regular mysticisms. We don’t train our energy, but rather first of all, we find an integrality that is beyond energy, beyond all of our movements, to which we must transmit that movement of the spirit which is beyond them, and with this integral movement of spirit we can make the ritual’s sacred dialogue.

G. M.: You affirmed in the last interview that Christian virtues are – always – “iconic virtues.” The very re-learning of the sacred gesture is that which, so to speak, reconstitutes the iconic image of Son in us, it transforms us according to the Divine Image. From this it would result that virtues themselves are sacred gestures and come from the common of encounter which is realized through the ritual. How should we understand these things in comparison with the Fathers’ discourses that say that the virtues don’t have the gift of uniting us with God in the manner that only pure prayer does? May the virtues, as sacred gestures, maintain maximum union with God or are they only a base, a beginning of the ascetic road? And reciprocally, is pure prayer a sacred gesture?

G. G.: Dear sir, in general, my opinion is that you can’t separate prayer from the modalities of the virtues that we activate in our response towards God. It is good to maintain an integral vision where prayer, in the mystic sense, consists precisely of our own being-ness’ response towards God. So any response before God is a sacred response. Any sacred response means prayer, it is already conversation, it is already the relational. So, I don’t think that a clear separation between pure prayer and the virtues can be made. It is possible, at a very special mystic level, to deal with pure prayer (as it is brought to mind in the Philokalia), where you arrive at a response of your being’s totality, which is above all other responses. It is true that we, being in a continual spiritual growth, climb certain steps of the virtues, until we reach the supreme virtue, which is love, which we could call pure prayer. So there are some steps, but we mustn’t make too big of a differentiation…

G. M.: So practically all of the virtues could be assimilated to ritual gestures…

G. G.: …the connection of the virtues with gestures is something we must dwell on a bit. I consider that any expression towards the sacred is made first of all through gesture. What in fact does gesture properly speaking mean? In the strict Biblical sense, the gesture is altar, making an altar for God. If it were a simple expression of words the gesture would be incomplete. This is why I don’t believe that God makes man through word only, because then he would just be a “reflection.” He created him through breath. Breath is something more concrete and shows man’s vocation to be an altar of the incarnation. Man is an iconic image of altar, and when he expresses himself to God, an altar must be made where God can come to speak with him. Without an altar, in the mystical sense, you can’t do anything. Neofite the Hermit considered that the gesture is founded first of all on the condition of altar which each Christian must express. The word follows from this basis, and everything else comes after this foundation. Without an altar, the relationship between God and us would be made in nakedness. [16] And we know that nakedness only appears in the case where there is sin. The fullness between Divine and creation is none other than the altar, and the altar’s expression is gesture. The Mystic says, “From my gesture I make an altar and on the altar of my gesture come, O Lord, so that I can speak with You!” If you make an altar out of your gesture, in other words, if you configure for yourself an altar in your own gesture, then you can come into connection with God. [17]

G. M.: The accent that you place, Reverend, on the multiple valences of the ritual gesture reminds me of the Confucian model… Confucius proposed, of course in a completely different spiritual context, the same ontological ritualization of human comportment through the practice, assumed to the maximum level, of rituals. As we know however, the un-confoundable and irreducible essential feature of Christianity is the person. What then is the gesture’s role in the personalization of the faithful? Is sacred gesture a personal language par excellence? Does it have its origins in the being-ness language, properly speaking, of humanity?

G. G.: Just as we were saying, our created being (since it is the image and likeness of God’s being “transposed” into creation’s being-ness) has as its basis the person. And person has as its basis of expression the ritual of gesture. Person, in itself, is a gesture-like expression; and in the expression towards someone else [it is] in the modality of words. A distinction must be made, but not a separation: in itself, being-like movement is ritualistic, it is gesture. In comparison with an otherness, it is an expression through word, through which the other person’s attention is also drawn into the orientation of your ritual. That is why gesture is an expression in and of itself, and the gesture that is expressed beyond itself is the word. It is true that Confucius, though he lived before Christ and in a different religious context, had this intuition of the gesture’s importance since, as Saint Basil the Great says, pagans were not deprived of the Holy Spirit’s rays. We underline that in the Christian Orthodox sense, the gesture is itself the person’s foundational feature. Person and gesture are in a certain sense synonyms. Man, through gesture, expresses his own person, and what’s even more, he even becomes “super-personified.” In other words, gesture expresses the fullness of the persons’ being-ness. Through words only “a part” is expressed, while through the gesture the integrality…

G. M.: The religious experience of Christianity, whether speaking Biblically, ascetically or liturgically, is full of gestures. Since the eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil until Judas’ gesture of stretching out his hand with Christ into the dish, the bent of man’s fall depended on poor “administration” of the Eucharistic gesture. In this context, what would gesture-like living of the Eucharist mean? Because it seems as though liturgical actions have been made in order to be lived gesture-like… What do the priest’s gestures mean? And those of the faithful? What distinction is there between the two?

G. G.: We can’t speak of a difference between the priest’s gestures and those of the faithful… because, even if each of them is found on his specific level, their ritual gesture is the same. Our liturgical gesture is precisely this openness towards offering and receiving. If there is no gesture of offering and receiving, the ritual isn’t produced. Because in the Christian ritual, it is only to the measure that one abandons himself that he will receive. In the measure that the faithful open themselves up and abandon themselves they are making an altar after the likeness of the Church’s altar, and the liturgical ritual takes place on their altar too. Christ Himself and the Holy Spirit serve the Liturgy on this altar, and at the same time, the serving that the priest performs is extended into the hearts of the faithful. That’s why the Liturgy can’t be replaced with the private. Only in Church can man truly pray, actualizing his own liturgical in accordance with the Church’s liturgical. Since, as I’ve already said, man can’t truly pray unless an altar is made and Christ Himself comes into him with the Body and Blood, or the Eucharist. Saint Paësius the Great said that when he prayed he didn’t rise from prayer until Christ came into him, until he felt Him… So, he had arrived at a very high liturgical state. We ordinary people can’t have this lofty living where the direct liturgical is produced. But we do have the way of the Church where it is only in the priest’s sacerdotal liturgical that we can become a kind of altar, and the liturgical can be performed on our altar. This is true Christian prayer… If our prayer isn’t the kind where you make yourself an altar, it remains unfulfilled; it is only a kind of pre-prayer. You could write a whole book about the mystery of making yourself an altar so that you can pray, so that you can acquire prayer’s condition.
Normally, it is considered that prayer is a simple dialogue with God or a simple orientation towards Him. It is this too, but this is only a tendency towards prayer. Living and fulfilling prayer can’t happen until you become an altar, and moreover, unless the Eucharistic fulfillment is completed, the iconic common.

G. M.: This generalized ritual that you’re talking about could open up towards a new cosmological perspective, towards an iconization of the world. We know that, in general, the contemplation of the divine reasons [λóγοι] [18] in created things is dealt with as a step towards mystical union with God. What would be the distinctions between a gestical understanding of the world and a contemplation of its reasons?

G. G.: Dear sir, here we have a very profound problem, and again I emphasize a certain truth: man is super-creation as shown in On the Anthropological Trail. In comparison with nature man doesn’t only have some divine reasons [λόγοι], even though he has those too, as it is written, “God took earth from the ground…” So we also have, through this earth, all the reasons that God put into created nature. We have the whole memory of creation. However, man’s task is to turn these reasons into a response towards God, to make them a gift on an altar, an altar where he can meet with God. So, as Saint Maximos the Confessor says, man has the fulfillment of the liturgy as a cosmic vocation. If it is only through man that the Son of God, in His mystery, fulfills His liturgical act of the creation of the world, [19] it is also through man, through his ritual, that the lifting up of creation into God is produced. If God made the cosmization of the world, in other words, He made a world so open, and so large… or speaking in parable, if God wrote the Book of creation, which is the entire universe, then man must also write a book…

G. M.: Not just read from the Book of creation…

G. G.: Yes, exactly, he must give a response, inasmuch as we must present ourselves before God with a gift. The Christian Tradition, on the basis of a text from Revelations (21:14), says that a rock on which a name is written is given to each person, and older iconography shows angels and saints with something in their hands which they give to God. So, if God gave us everything, even His Body and Blood, then we too must give Him something. In Romanian folklore they talk about a “beautiful girl born with a book in her hand,” a book in which only the first page is written on; God’s writing is there. Man must write the second page. When you die and you present yourself before God, you have this book in your hands, on the basis of which you will be “judged,” and at the same time you will display your image of response towards the Creator… The mystery of man is constituted and disclosed not just by reading the Book of divine creation, but also by writing your own response (the iconic that I speak of) in that book.

G. M.: So, iconizing the world means writing the Book of your own response…

G. G.: Iconizing the world means giving a sacrality of response. This must be emphasized. If God gave us His Image, which is the sacred Image in itself, we must also give Him our sacred image. I love the parable very much that says that the Son of God presented Himself before the Father with the Book of Life. The Father’s eyes, while opening the Book of Life, fell in a special way on creation’s most sacred countenance,* which is the countenance* of the Mother of God. It is said that, given to this sacred image of creation, the Son said to His Father, “Father, there will be some who will love You so much, just as much as we love each other!” Love is the most sacred image. That’s why the saints are creation’s iconic images; if we speak of a sacred that is strictly Divine, we can also speak of a “divine” of creation, of an iconic of creation. Due to this, the common iconic is possible, where the Divine can incarnate Himself into an iconic of creation. This can “clothe” itself in the garment of the Divine iconic that is beyond all of creation’s forms. The mystery of iconization is so great…If the ancient mystics, and the current neo-pagans talk about a spiritualization, of a passage, of a kind of “super-dimensional grace,” in the Christian sense God speaks about Sharing Himself. Some say that for man to desire heaven’s condition is a kind of culmination of egoism, or that desiring a kind of living (existential experience) in distinction from God is somehow inferior. They would say that the ultimate state, therefore, mustn’t be a personalization, but a depersonalization. [20] This would be true offering: to annihilate yourself as an individual, to absorb yourself into the Divine. In the Christian sense, true offering isn’t an annihilation of self, because if you do that, what gift do you have left to give to God? True offering to God is for you to give a gift that can exist, not one that is lost, in the sense of renouncing yourself. True offering is for you to have the gift, to keep it, and yet to integrally abandon it. You don’t loose it because in the moment in which you annihilate it, it lost its very value as a gift. And when you have its value, when you know it exists, and you completely abandon it, then it’s true offering. [21] We don’t speak of an impersonalization, but rather a “super-personalization” which is precisely the iconic.

G. M.: And the final question, Reverend Father: we know that at the Supper in Emmaus, Christ makes Himself unseen at the moment of the breaking of the bread. Does this mean that His Eucharistic presence excludes His physical presence? Is this Eucharistic presence superior to the presence of the Son’s person, with the appearance, with the whole human Image, Whom you can address with gesture? The Eucharistic Body is a Body “without Image,” without a Face? Or is man created having a natural need for a visible presence of a divine Person, Who is gestically accessible?
G. G.: Dear sir, first of all the event to which you refer is “historical” so to speak, which proceeds the event of the Son of God’s fulfillment – His Ascension and Sitting at the right hand of the Father. And He left us a new modality for Eucharistic offering where He will be with us “until the end of the ages (Matthew 28:20).” Inasmuch as the Eucharistic modality isn’t a replacement of Christ, it is precisely the permanently open door through which we have access to Christ. And what’s even more, through the Eucharist’s Mystery (without which Christ isn’t the true One, but only a passenger, relative [an avatar], a Christ Who united with creation, and then took back what He gave) we have a new possibility. Christ doesn’t hide Himself in the image of Bread and Wine, but rather gives us another possibility. If He came and revealed Himself to us, then we must give Him an image too. If He gave us His Image through the Incarnation, Ascended to the Father and left us His likeness (in other words the Eucharistic presence), we must now take possession of His Image. True saints, when they receive Communion, truly see the Body and Blood. They really see Christ. We partake and the fact that we don’t see Him reveals that we haven’t arrived at giving the image [that is] in us to the Body of Christ. The ultimate fulfillment, like a pre-figuration of the eschaton, is when we give image to the Eucharistic Body of Christ, which we received in Communion. Each one of us communes in part, but if Christ gave us His Image, then we must give Him our image. That’s why He gives us the Body “without Image” so that we can give Him our image. [22] It is a very great mystery… And I, as a priest, become terrified when I think, “Lord, You gave me Your Image, and I, what image do I give You?” Our task is to give Christ’s image in us (see the Pauline discourses dealing with this topic) so as not to be naked and unworthy. [23] We however, the majority of us, communicate unworthily, and we communicate with God’s gift and mercy because the Savior gives Himself to us freely. To communicate worthily means giving form to the Christic Body, that true image which God intends for each one of us. We humble ourselves in our unworthiness, so that God can “compensate” the unworthiness with His gift. He gives Himself to us beyond our unworthiness…

G. M.: In other words, in this way, in the eschaton will there be a face to face encounter of the Image that Christ gave us and of the one that we gave to Him?

G. G.: Yes, communion will then be a face to face encounter, it will be eternal…

G. M.: And “truer,” as the hymn from the Resurrection Canon says…

G. G.: Exactly, this means “truer” when it will be face to face, countenance* to countenance* though also through a Eucharistic modality, now lived in the complete revelation of the image, God’s as well as mine, realizing the iconic of encounter.

G. M.: I was thinking of something you wrote somewhere in the Dictionary of Hesychasm, about the repetition of gesture as an opening of the Doors of Mystery, which produces an entrance into secret things…

G. G.: The gesture, as I was saying before, reminds us of the iconic image, which is precisely this placement face to face. And in the measure in which we live the gesture, the face to face state begins to take form* and by taking form* it arrives at fulfillment, at true encounter. Now we stand face to face with God (and this is done through His gift) but it’s not yet the fulfillment of the face to face dialogue, it’s not yet the complete, direct vision. There will be fulfillment when we will have direct vision.

G. M.: We thank you, Reverend Father, for your graciousness in granting me this interview.

The Holy Monastery of Frăsinei, April 14th, 1999


Notes:

[1] Închinarea in Romanian does not have an exact English counterpart. It refers here to the whole aspect of worship, the condition or state, yielding, dedicating, devoting, to God both in the inner aspect and concentration along with bodily manifestations, such as crossing oneself, bowing, kissing icons, the rubrics of veneration. Technically, according to western theological terminology we have separated this word into veneration and worship, though we should remember that these aspects are in truth inseparable, I’ve translated închinarea both ways according to its emphasis, though I’ve usually rendered it worship. It must be noted that the icon is obviously not considered to be God, but since God is omnipresent, icons are used as “reference points” where His omnipresence is seen and noticeable (trans. Note).

[2] Or prayer of the heart.

[3] The word limbaj can mean both language and terminology (trns. note). Father Ghelasie begins with a conceptual background (which is common to all the religions) always nuancing the irreducible essential characteristics of the Christian paradigm, which he latter unfolds. By inventorying the modalities of universal religious expression, anybody could ascertain the preference for nonverbal expressions (in the species of gesture), which are more appropriate than verbal language in transmitting the multiple meanings of mystical experience. The nonverbal language of gesture is an optimum form for the communication of the data of experience, especially in the relationship of Master-disciple. Mystics constantly prefer the words of silence (silence is the language of the world to come) which speak more than words, and preferred exemplariness (communicated in gesture) and positions compared to verbal didactics. And, while extra-Christian spirituality (especially oriental) tends towards an informal union with the Absolute, seeing the state of unio mystical as a limitation, in terms of an ontological situation that can’t even express gesture, Christianity makes the gesture (as terminology of being in a body) into a kind of indispensable expression whose prestige is founded (again as Father Ghelasie will develop it soon) in the reality of the Incarnation. If God “translated” Himself (exegestato) in the concrete flesh through Jesus Christ (John 1:18) the gesture is no longer a simple mute terminology…

[4] Pe Urme Anropologice, not yet available in English.

[5] Father Ghelasie proposes an anthropological approach that is different from the Greek paradigm of soul (mind) – body; the Carpathian modality doesn’t see the mystery of man mainly in this dichotomy, but in the integrality of the human being as an iconic being. The anthropological problematic is therefore organized around the being-image (chip) binome – structured through the breath-assumption of the Christic Archetype – not of the platonic soul-body binome. Man is configured as being “in himself” to the measure in which he bears (assumes) the Christic Archetype of Incarnation. Likewise, such a specification avoids the risks of an approach that is all too often spiritualistic, which counts too much on the soul’s “indestructibility” (in the anthropological approach), practically reducing man to the soul. And last but not least, it avoids the dilemma of the soul’s origins (creation or translationism) revealing that we must concentrate our attention, in fact, on this ultimate ontological structure of man, which is the seal of the Image of God.

[6] Whenever appears * it indicates we translate the Romanian word “chip” (trans. note).

[7] Through the act of creation man possesses an iconic sacrality of his own, as a basis for growth towards the likeness with God. This iconic reality isn’t a simple result of the divine creating act (even though it is relational) but is rather an ontological element on the basis of which it is possible to constitute the relational plane of the human person. It is a mystical constitution where the iconic image breathed into man by God mystically proceeds and “dresses” the soul-body aspect, as a vestment of iconic body (the very consequences of the two references to anthropo-genesis from Genesis 1:27 and 2:7 verifies this). Lost due to sin, this “vestment” can’t recuperate without the coming of the Christic Archetype. The ascetic mapping out of the Christian life will then be an iconizing continuation (an imaging) of the brush strokes of the iconic Model. This is done through a mystical chiseling, in and of itself, of the realities of the iconic body as “the wedding garment,” with which it is possible to enter into the great Feast of the eschaton. It should be observed then that Father Ghelasie refers to the “garment of light,” to the integrality of the soul-body, not only of the body. In the end, original sin introduced a degradation of the soul and body, and therefore a certain “mortality” of the soul according to the biblical phrase “earth you are, and to the earth you shall return (Gen. 3:19).” What remains of man, however, is the iconic image received through the divine breath, which had also been disfigured according to the measure of the departure from God. In the same way, the Resurrection of Christ restores and perfects the human being’s integrally, soul and body. In addition, we should note that the anthropological vision that Father Ghelasie elegantly puts forth avoids the heretical tendency situated between Apollonarianism and Docetism. All the Christological heresies in this interval had the attempt of integrating the teaching about the Incarnation to the models of classical Greek anthropology as their origin. By applying the dichotomous paradigm, the conclusions could have been none other than; the Logos, upon entering into man, had to dislocate or loose something (precisely in order not to be a kind of an addition beyond the full human nature as soul-body), whether it was dealing with the rational part of the human soul (Apollonarianism), or whether it was about His body (Docetism) as such. However, by perceiving man as being an iconic structure, where the image (the garment of iconic body) “dresses” the soul and body unitedly and distinctly these errors are avoided. Carpathian anthropology proposes a lesson for the Incarnation as a natural coming of the Archetype Who, without dislocating anything in man’s being, reconfigures it iconically, together with the soul and body. In other words, from this perspective the meaning of the Incarnation as “becoming Human” is clearer.

[8] Father Ghelasie improves the specifically schizoid religiosity of post paradisiacal man, where a discord exists between mental-psychological experience and corporeal devotion. The mark ad extra of these fractures is the divorce (ascertained in the extra-Christian religious space) between mysticism and ritual. Either the mystical experience excludes ritual forms, seeking for liberation on a trans-devotional plane, or the ritual gains an almost magical dominance, efficient in itself, throwing into the shadow the mystical participation and union with the Divine. Bringing to light the new reality of the iconic gesture as a modality of integral expression of the human being, Christianity annuls the tension between ritual and mysticism that is present in all of the other religions to differing degrees.

[9] Man is therefore, by creation an iconic being, a syntagm that implies, and at the same surpasses (it is incommensurable with), the soul-body dichotomy. Gathering fruit again from the principle of analogy, Father Ghelasie opens a new and especially subtle theme of man as “double image” – at the same time both godlike and unique. We should understand, however, that it isn’t about a doubling ab initio of the human being, but of an authentic iconological foundation of it that later develops as a dialogue reality. The iconic, to Father Ghelasie, has the sense of a unitary equilibrium between the divine and human image. On this foundation a permanent dialogue between imago Dei, and imago ipsi exists in man. The second constitutes as otherness to the measure in which it finds its identity in a dialogical mode in the first, so much so that man is not just a simple reflection “in the mirror” of God. This dialogue isn’t made in a vacuum, but rather in an atmosphere of the mystery of ritual. So man appears dependent on the creating and providential action of God, and likewise freely constituted as self-determining (αυτο εξουσία) existence, having opened the possibility of an unending deification. At the same time, the ontological growth of man is ritually structured and doesn’t lead to an indistinct fusion with Being, but to a unity of distinction owing precisely to the very subtle “dialectics” between imago Dei and imago ipsi.

[10] or Agnets, a liturgical term referring to the bread which becomes the body of our Lord and Savior.

[11] Father Ghelasie says that in iconic Carpathian mysticism the gesture is the Alfa and the Omega of the ascetic road towards God. The expression of man in self-abandonment towards the Creator begins with the gesture of recognition that is yet inexplicit. This results from the iconic-ontological memory of the Divine that our being-ness preserves and which is a priori to the explicit/verbal forms of expression. It continues with the response, expressed first through words and names, and also structured as ritual gesture, which is “the relational” of man with God, as Father calls it. In the end the expression is fulfilled with silence in union sharing/participating reciprocally (the apophatic silence of classical mysticism) which is the “encounter in the highest sense of the word.” In addition, the gesture-like nuance that Father Ghelasie imparts to apophaticism itself should be observed. Apophatic reality, which St. Dionysius the Areopagite paradoxically calls “the super-luminous darkness (υπερφότος γνόφος),” is called “the gesture of receiving and fulfillment where the mystery can’t be expressed in words” in Carpathian mysticism. It has its fulfillment as its very expression. As a Biblical feedback of the gesture paradigm, we could say that (in the paradisiacal state) Adam receives its imprint. This imprint is set in the Garden of Eden – this availability being the mounting (the setting of a precious stone) of man in the quality of “the natural link” of nature (φυσικός συνδεσμός), as St Maximos the Confessor says. This makes his gesture-theocentric orientation possible, the preliminary recognition of God. Then on this basis, he names the creatures. It’s not only a noetic event of the reading of the divine reasons (λόγοι) in creation, but truly gesture like utterance. God brings the creatures to Adam as a gift, and he names them in a gesture of Eucharistic response-offering, in a liturgical ritual. This happens even though it is missing a certain fulfillment (to the extent that Adam doesn’t find an appropriate helper). In the end, the creation of woman from Adam’s rib in his ecstatic sleep, also has a gesture-eucharistic connotation. The Fathers note the mystical symmetry between this episode and the prototype of the Church’s birth from the piercing of Christ’s side. In addition, the adamic sleep anticipates the atmosphere of gesture-apophatic silence of union with God that Adam, however, didn’t realize.

[12] Summing it up, the consequences of the anthropological mysticism of asceticism that is based on the gesture’s centrality would be the following. The divine breath (the image of Christic Incarnation), the vocation of man as an altar of incarnation, permits him the initial gesture of recognition (the ritual gesture is the basis for man’s expression in word and other forms), the culminating encounter with God in an apophaticism of gesture. The central axis is the connection between Incarnation and altar, then between this and gesture. Sacred gesture is founded then on the mystery of the very Incarnation of the Son of God, which is in this way a kind of gesture Archetype (see below). The human person has as the inner basis of expression the ritual gesture that “super-personalizes” it, putting in plenary evidence its possibilities of being. The gesture is in this way prior to the word, being a fuller expression (as we were saying). In addition, the gesture-word relation can be assimilated, at the anthropological level, by the relation between being and energy.

[13] The Orthodox Church in Romania makes a clear distinction between older divisions of Protestantism and the newer, more recent denominations. More traditional Protestants (Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans) have Church structure and organization that help them to control themselves and regulate their clergy and faithful. Neo-Protestants are usually independent in nature and centralized around one single “charismatic” leader. Therefore, many forms of abuse are easily found in dogma and practice which in truth are inseparable (trans. note).

[14] Father Ghelasie criticizes a certain “scientific theology” that hurries to legitimize terminologies and problematics that comes from contemporary scientific fields; though it has arrived today, by following these sciences, to remarkable discoveries, especially in the microcosmic world, the transference and uncritical interpretation of these results in the philosophical and theological perspective entails the risk of the reiteration of some pantheistic thoughts where the world is seen as “a great chain of Being” hanging from the Absolute. Such a paradigm was and is unacceptable to Christianity, being especially incompatible with iconic mysticism where the accent is placed just as much on the otherness of creation’s being as on the real encounter with God. The current danger is that, due to the fear of materialism, religion might migrate (under the incidents of the science of information) towards an evasionist spiritualism. Father contrasts the mystery of “material” with the iconic-eucharistic reality destined to be eternal.

[15] Remembrance or recollection.

[16] The Romanian word gol means both empty and naked (trans. note).

[17] Bringing to mind the succession of the steps of gesture asceticism (see footnotes 7 and 8), Father Ghelasie accentuates the dominant note of ritual in Christian mystical experience. This experience is (as we were saying in another section) legitimately seen as an essential ritualization, as a transposition into the dimension of the interiority of the liturgical ritual’s formational paradigm. Everything in Christianity begins and ends under the species of ritual. This perspective that Father Ghelasie proposes is not a unilateral hermeneutical grid, nor a metaphorical language, but an ontological one. Making an altar out of the gesture where you bring yourself as the offering is the perfect, total devotional act. It is the fulfillment of the human in the encounter with the divine. The altar properly speaking, configured in gestures, is the foundation on which the Christian builds his other modes of prayer. He therefore, acquires a prayerful constitution (see further on). It is the notion that draws the natural correlative of the Eucharistic condition that Father speaks to us about in the preceding interview. More precisely, the ascetic effort of the Christian is that of transposing himself into the state of prayerful being, of integral and untouched oblation (without blemish, as it is announced prophetically throughout each step of the Old Testament). God will transfigure him into Eucharistic being through the unconsuming combustion of the Holy Spirit.

[18] In the English translation of the Philokalia this term is given as inner essences or inner principles of created things (trans. Note).

[19] In the sense that the Son fulfills the act of the world’s creation as a gift for the Father, from the perspective of an iconic assumption of the Incarnation’s image.

[20] This is especially true in the case of oriental mysticism, where the state of liberation (moksha, nirvana, kaivalya) can’t be conceived as an individualized state of otherness before the Absolute. So, as Father Ghelasie reveals, these mysticisms perceive the very state of heaven as temporary, inferior to that of liberation. However, it must be said that the intuition of the Orient about the trans-individual nature of the final stage is correct. Father Ghelasie, however, affirms that Christian Revelation showed the trans-individual ontological situation as a “super-personalization.” In subsidiary (as we were saying in another location) the tendency of current theology is criticized, which identifies person with individual, with the manifest hypostasis of the human; but Father Ghelasie’s discourse precisely follows the direction of the person’s affirmation as first of all, an enstatic event.

[21] The mark that Father calls a “super-personalization” of man is that his gift keeps its value in eternity, and he even multiplies it through his very act of self-abandonment and receiving. He does not loose his otherness, but rather he increases it in the continual fluctuation of offering and reception. This is also the sense of the liturgical litanies: “Give them the heavenly in place of the earthly, the eternal instead of the fading!” Through self-sacrifice the offering obtains eternal value and at the same time confers eternal value and identity (super-personality) to the offerer. The gift remains an eternal location for dialogue and encounter because it is simultaneously and paradoxically maintained by the one who offers, in the sense that he guarantees its irreducible identity in aeternum, and offered all, because the offerer himself becomes the offering. In equal measure the offering “super-personalizes” the offerer, promoting his uniqueness (imago ipsi), and converts it into offering according to the image of the complete Christic sacrifice, fulfilling it as imago Dei.

[22] The Eucharistic Body and Blood that we receive at Communion is like “prime material,” like offspring of our being’s eschatological configuration. The Holy Gifts found in us are the Christic Archetype’s seal that we received at conception and we renewed at Baptism which becomes deified in an image of our own nature’s response through the yeast of Bread and Wine. So it could also be said that our Eucharistic condition prepares the eschatological. We could again compare this gradually growing route of human nature that Father Ghelasie deals with in liturgical terms, the iconic condition (prayerful constitution) – eucharistic condition – the eschatological condition, with the maximum ontological gradient, simple existence (τό είναι) – good existence (τό ευ είναι) – eternal existence (τό αει ειναι) Ambigua 157. If for Maximos starting out along these lines is made through the exercise of will, which advances from strength (potency) through work to rest, for Father Ghelasie the gradient is fulfilled and expressed in gesture; the gesture of recognition – the gesture of response – the encounter/rest in apophaticism of the gesture.

[23] In this context sin is equivalated with a disfiguration of the Image of Christ, with giving Him a slap across the cheek.


Translation from Romanian by Fr. John DOWNIE
Bucharest, 2008



(interview published originally in Romanian in the volume “Părintele Ghelasie de la Frăsinei, Iconarul Iubirii dumnezeieşti” (“Fr. Ghelasie from Frasinei, The Iconologist of the divine Love”, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2004, pp. 112-134)


Copyright: Platytera Publishing House


The French Version.

The Romanian (Original) Version.

"Diogenic Dialogues" with Fr. Ghelasie (II): "The iconic ritual" (transl. by Fr. John Downie)


(Interviews realised, adapted and commented by post-grad. theol. Gabriel Memelis)

The Iconic Ritual

Gabriel Memelis: Reverend Father Ghelasie, in our last discussion you made a very useful introduction for us about the specific characteristics of Romanian, or Carpathian hesychasm. You then noted that our indigenous mysticism could be characterized by an espe¬cial accent on the icon and iconization. And when you say “icon” you weren’t necessarily referring to the Athonite understanding of this term, in which the icon in itself maintains a kind of “trasfigurative metaphysical,” being a symbol or a modality “of passing through to the spiritual, to the spirit beyond ordinary materiality.” The Carpathian iconic is, as you were saying, “the revelation of a mystery” – the Incarnation, the co-dwelling of the spiritual, spiritualized along with the corporeal-material part. The icon is therefore a place, an altar, a kind of Eucharistic “pre-figuring.”
This makes Romanian (Carpathian) mysticism first of all, a mysticism of the icon, and implicitly, a mysticism with a Eucharistically pregnant character, which looks for the re-actualization of the iconic-Eucharistic image in man. Man must enter into the “process of Eucharistic transformation.” So because of this, Reverend Father, you accord the liturgical ritual overwhelming importance, through which the Eucharistic transformation of man is realized. And so the iconic practice that you prescribe wouldn’t consist so much of an accentuation of mental effort, but of the introduction “into a sacrality that gives back the condition of normality.”
For these reasons I’d like to center today’s discussion on the aspect of ritual and the connection between the liturgical and the ascetical. For a start I’d like to ask, where does ritual have its ontological roots? Could there be discussion somehow, of ritual on the Holy Trinity’s level, in the sense that the relationships between the Divine Persons could be viewed from a perspective of ritual? What would this kind of ritual in the Trinity mean, and what would its connection be with creation’s “ritual of response?”

Fr. Ghelasie Gheorghe: Dear sir, as a theologian you know, better than others, that to talk about God is, in our Christian theology, a delicate enough problem. The Holy Fathers especially accentuate the fact that Divinity is beyond all representations, all attributes, and all references [analogies] that we could make. In spite of all of this we must understand that Divinity doesn’t remain hidden, as Blaga says, but makes that very lowering… And so I insist very much [on the Incarnation], because – in the Christian theological use – Divinity is apophatic, but It does an extra-ordinary thing by Its coming towards creation, even if creation doesn’t have access (ontologically speaking, n.m. G.M.) to Divinity.
Again, what must be understood – and it is a truth I especially stress – is the very image of creation’s being-ness. In the end, we won’t go back to this topic again, because we discussed it in the last interview… And the delicate problem of the specific Carpathian characteristics that I try to make evident is precisely the fact that between creation and God there is an account of an inter-mediation. An inter-mediation in what way? God comes into creation, and it can’t receive Him, because it has the condition of creation. However much God would desire to show Himself, creation can’t see Him. Creation, because of its ontological conditions, however much it would like, doesn’t have access (directly), and can’t see God. So then that is why I accentuate the iconic, through which Divinity clothes Itself with something created [1] with which creation can have a kinship and through this kinship God can reveal Himself.
The theology of the Holy Fathers accentuates the uncreated energies of grace very much. In the Carpathian iconic understanding I accentuate the Christic image, because grace is also something divine, also inaccessible, in a certain way, to creation. So there must exist a something for kinship, and only Christ can make kinship. Grace is accessible to the world through Christ, it isn’t directly accessible (John 1:17). Some want to make a theology directly about grace, and afterwards about Christ Himself – to make Him into a kind of “product” of grace, which I don’t hurry to confirm… What I stress, however, is the fact that it is only the iconic which you brought to mind, brother, that is the mystery of the Divine and the creation’s co-dwelling.
And now we must yet understand one thing, a very deep and acute issue. Divinization – through the fact that it gives creation the condition of image and likeness (and I also see likeness as a category of being, and of created nature, not of energy) – confers a great importance to the inter-being-like [2] inter-personalism that I talk about. And we must understand that inter-personalism isn’t a simple inter-being-ness that would fall into a so-called pantheism of the confusion of beings. Because it is clearly known that Divine being, and creation’s being cannot be confused in any way. The ancients say that the being of creation must be absorbed into the Divine being, yet for us there can be no discussion of any kind about pantheism. The mystery of Person [Divine] is that it is capable to assume [distinct, without confusion] two natures. The Person [the Divine Son] can then “dress Himself” in the being nature of creation. And then It can make the iconic. And we must not see the Divine “outpourings” in creation as just mere grace energies. First of all we must see them as an iconic model in the sense of the Christic’s descent, that already makes them a kind of Divine-creation inter-personalism. So then, the qualities and attributes of grace depart afterwards, shining from the iconic. Some put the energies of grace first, then comes the Christic nature… I don’t know, I don’t think it’s a dogmatic deviation if I stress the fact that the assumption of the Christic image [by the Son of God] is first. It is an assumption of creation’s being nature, where the Savior’s Person remains apophatic – since He is God – but at the same time you can’t only deal with the kataphatic in the sense of energies or simple attributes. The Savior’s assumption of creation’s beingness isn’t just a simple attribute of the Godhead. [3]
The possibility of achieving a kinship between Divinity and creation is an extraordinary mystery. It is known that philosophy’s greatest problem is precisely this: how can a connection between the Divine and creation be made, between the uncreated and created? The ancients offered a pantheistic solution, where Divinity is the only being (the only one that has significant ontological density, n.m., G. M.), and creation is only an energetic transposition, in the end, pantheistic – in such a way that there can no longer be any real encounter between the Divine and creation. Divinity only makes an illusion of creation, and creation must destructurize itself in order to give occasion for the Divine to return to Its true state. From the Christian point of view, this is a true reduction [of the Divine] to a lower rank. In the Christian understanding, the Divine can’t pass into something un-divine, but Divinity makes – paradoxically – a kind of “auto-surpassing” (of ek-stasis, ecstasy, n.m. G. M.), assuming for itself a different condition, a condition of creation. Theologians stress, and rightly so, the energetic-grace part a lot, in order to evade pantheism. The Holy Fathers fought a lot with ancient pantheism, and they had to find a point of connection between the Divine and creation. It must be understood that in the context of today’s theology, the Christic has been diluted very much, and so could fall into a kind of “grace-ish” pantheism. [4]
If the Holy Fathers showed that there couldn’t be a “being” pantheism between the Divine and creation, today there may be a tendency towards a dilution of Christ into a few attributes of grace. In the end Christ Himself could be confused with grace, everything is grace and it becomes like a kind of grace Christianity… But grace is precisely the shining and witness of the Christic, it’s not what produces the Christic. Grace comes from the iconic. The iconic isn’t a product of the grace… I don’t think that this could be considered a heresy, but more of a theologumen or a theological enlargement.
The Holy Fathers, in the context of the spirituality of their time, up until Saint Gregory Palamas and even later, sought to deal with a being through grace, precisely to avoid being pantheism. Currently however, it [modern theology] must by all means arrive at a theology of grace through being. In other words, [it needs to arrive at a theology of grace through being] in order not to lose being, hidden, somewhere far off, so that there is only energy or grace. Especially in the current context of true neo-paganism that comes with energetic mysticism. [If it wouldn’t do this] it would mean that Christianity too, in a certain way, is nothing other than energetic mysticism…
I insisted – in my writings The Image of the Mother of God and The Christic Logos – on the fact that the Son of God, as Model and as connection with the world that He had made in the pre-Christic plan, He assumes a being-ness of creation. Because of this we can speak of a being-ness “in itself” of creation, not in the sense that this is confused with the Son of God, Who remains a divine being, but creation, so to speak, is the Son of God who assumed a being-ness of creation. This is precisely the iconic that I’m speaking of. Inasmuch as the being of creation is precisely this Divine-creation Mystery; the being of creation isn’t just a simple being…there is such a great mystery here…

G. M.: It’s an iconic being…

G. G.: It’s an iconic being in the sense that, at the same time, it represents the assumption of the Divine by creation just as much as the assumption of the creation by the Divine! Because, in the pre-Christic image, not only the Son of God Himself assumes creation, the image of creation, but the very image of creation assumes something from Divinity, [5] otherwise, there wouldn’t be an authentic connection (in the sense of reciprocity, G. M.: see note 7 from the previous interview). This is the mystery of the Christic Image: it is unrepeatable, unique, but it can be imitated through Christ…

G.M.: Yes, there is a reciprocity… however I’d like to get back to the issue of the ritual…

G.G.: Now, after I’ve stressed this [particular] understanding of the iconic, we must specify that Christian theology, in comparison with other religions, has supernatural Revelation, as it is called in the dogmatic textbooks. Through this Revelation the Son of God uncovers a few reference points for us about the divine things, beyond all the manifestations of creation…

G.M.: In the theological plan, as it’s said….

G.G.: Of course… and so, speaking about the Holy Trinity, the revelation of this Mystery doesn’t consist of saying that the Trinity is an image of attributes, as the energetic mysticisms hold. [6] The Trinity doesn’t merely consist of some energetic attributes. If we were to believe so, nothing would remain of Christian theology… We must understand that the Persons of the Holy Trinity aren’t attributes, but being-nesses. And if the Son of God always remembers the Trinitarian relational – He and the Father, together with the Holy Spirit – this means that the inter-Trinitarian life, inter-being-ness, is that which later pours itself out, through Christ even into creation. So, the Son of God performs the descent of the Divine in an outpouring, and we “translate” it into the meaning of ritual.
And what does ritual mean? We won’t dwell too much on the notion itself, because in the Christian understanding the ritual obtained other valences and other directions. We’ll just say that the ritual is a sacred relational, which isn’t only a simple gesture or a simple attitude, but it is the very life itself of the Godhead, which is more than a simple movement…[7] It is such a great mystery, and we use the word “ritual.” We must understand that between the Divine Persons there can’t be an ordinary ritual, an ordinary relational, but one in the sense of absolute sacrality, of absolute holiness and spirituality.
So, according to Christian Revelation, we say that God-Father, the Un-begotten, begets the Son and proceeds [8] the Holy Spirit. These relations are “translated” by us, in terms of our being-ness, as references to Divine ritual. Begetting and Procession, which we can’t imagine, but which we take, and I repeat, just as a few references, also have a sense of returning, where the Son and the Holy Spirit offer themselves to the Father. [9] In this way, I attempt to speak about a divine ritual in itself. Moreover, it’s said that – in Divinity – the Son’s love is everything. The entire Godhead is nothing “other” than the love of the Countenance of the Son. The Divinity of the Father is His love towards the Son, and [the Divinity] of the Holy Spirit is the very blaze of the Son’s love towards the Father. So, I stress the fact that the Son’s Countenance is itself “the mobile” in the Godhead – as much as we can say having these reference points – of the love towards the Father, of love in the sense of Image of Son. It itself is the very life of God.
Then the Son of God, through the fact that He assumes for Himself a being-ness of creation, pours out all His love of Son in a love of Son of creation (He is a “double Son,” so to speak). At the same time He pours out the image of heavenly life through [the “double Sonship”], because the Son’s love is love towards the Father. The Son of God comes and pours out, He seals us with the image of filial love, and at the same time He raises us and brings us with Him to the love of the Father. And then we can say implicitly that our iconic ritual has the mystery of inter-Divine life as its ontological origins. I don’t want to be understood in a Gnostic way, but we must say that we have some reference points through which the Son of God shares some truly spiritual, Divine realities with us.

G.M.: What is clear, and I think that I’ve understood this from you, Reverend Father, is the fact that the term “ritual” is more adequate for speaking about the interpersonal Trinitarian situations than the term “relation” is, in the philosophical or psychological sense…

G.G.: Dear sir, I associate a lot the ritual with the iconic, which I stressed from the beginning of our conversation. The ritual isn’t a simple relational. It is a common that appears after the inter-relational. The ritual is produced only if both parties make the relational, and then the responses of both parties unite and make one single response. [10] The ritual isn’t when you make a simple gesture towards someone. That’s only a simple relational; the ritual implies a reciprocity – the other one also makes a gesture and then, more over, the two gestures unite into one common [which don’t annul each other]. This common that I call iconic is precisely the ritual. That is why a great accent is placed on liturgical ritual in Christianity, which unfolds into the Eucharistic common, in which God’s love and the response of creation’s love unite.

G.M.: Changing the flow of our dialogue a little bit, I’d like to make the observation that, Reverend Father, in textbook theology there exists a false separation between “the theological plan” and “the economic plan.” How is this problem posed in iconic liturgical practice?

G. G.: Dear sir, we know very clearly that one must begin from the absolute of divine love. This love is so great that its outpouring into creation also implicitly assumes economy, so to speak. God doesn’t just make a simple creation, but rather at the same time, in His love, assumes it and accords it Providence in terms of care, and maintenance. The Son of God, pouring out His love of affiliation, assumes for Himself at the same time a work. It must be understood that creation, however much it would try, couldn’t raise itself to God by itself, if there wasn’t Christ. He is the love. So, the Christic work of raising creation to communion with the Divine could be considered as economy. Moreover, there is still sin that has intervened, and so the Son assumes yet another work for Himself, that of salvation. In the plan of salvation it is possible to speak of economy, and the Holy Fathers are right when they stress this fact a lot. Sin has affected, to a certain measure, the image of creation. It must be remade. It must be re-established.

G. M.: Do you believe that there exists a kind of similarity, from the viewpoint of ritual, between what “happens” between the Persons of the Holy Trinity and what happens between Them on one hand, and creation on the other?

G. G.: We can’t quite talk that way, because the basis of creation is the image of affiliation, while in divine being – according to Christian Revelation – the Trinity is an impenetrable mystery. The life of creation is a life of affiliation, through which we participate in the Father’s love and in the love of the Holy Spirit. However, what then is the form of Trinitarian life in Itself? This is beyond every reference point… We only know this much, that the love of affiliation, which is the basis of creation, is the personalism of our creation’s life – it allows us to participate in the outpouring of Trinitarian love, without however, confusing these things… And for us Christians ritual must be seen in the liturgical sense. The Son of God and the Holy Spirit make a “double” ritual. One in the way of being-ness, which is apophatic and beyond creation, and the other where heavenly love permanently pours out into creation and at the same time they [the Son and the Holy Spirit] take love from creation, make one common with [creation] and lift it up. The Son and the Holy Spirit perform this ritual of heavenly love. Saint Maximos the Confessor accentuates very much that our liturgical isn’t a simple liturgical, but is rather a cosmic one, super-cosmic and afterwards earthly… Everything is connected… The Son and the Holy Spirit serve the ritual in Themselves, then they come and serve the cosmic ritual, the heavenly liturgy, and at the same time they make this union with the earthly liturgy, so that at a certain point this common that we’ve been talking about is realized. Because of this the Holy Eucharist has earthly, cosmic, and super-cosmic dimensions… [11] The iconic image of the Holy Eucharist must be stressed very much.

G. M.: So, if I understand correctly, the two rituals – inter-Trinitarian and the ritual…

G. G.: Let’s not talk too much about inter-Trinitarian ritual however…

G. M.: The ritual that the Son makes in the Trinity…

G. G.: Dear sir, we must understand this aspect as a fine nuance. The Son doesn’t serve a ritual in the Trinity in the usual sense of the word, in the sense the term has. That could lead to misunderstandings… The Son of God along with the Holy Spirit who permanently actualizes heavenly life in Itself – which we could say, in quotations, is itself “ritual” that is far above all our qualities and attributes or conceptions. This “ritual” pours out towards us and therefore we are able to participate in it. And with this “ritual” as the origin we can serve our liturgical. Without this we couldn’t serve our liturgical.

G. M.: And thus the two rituals meet each other in the Son’s icon?

G. G.: Not in the Son’s icon, but in that communal icon, which is Eucharistic. In our Christian Liturgy there isn’t just the Christic, there is also the descent of the Holy Spirit. There is the Christic, and at the same time there is also the cosmic (heavenly) Liturgy, that participates in the union. The Eucharistic has many dimensions and we can’t reduce it to a single one.

G. M.: If you could tell us in continuation, Reverend Father, is it possible to discuss – in the sense we arrived at in our discussion – of a liturgical Philokalic? In other words, is a hermeneutic of liturgical living possible in the same way that the Fathers had a hermeneutic of ascetic living? And if it is possible, I’d like to ask you to explain to us how you understand the Eucharistic iconic image in more detail? What kinship is there between the ritual and the iconic image, between the Liturgy and iconic practice?

G. G.: If you have followed with attention, the answers have already been given in part… But to be more explicit, we will say that the iconic modality, which I stress, must not be viewed as a different theology, as some people accuse me of… It is only a special feature, just as the Synaitic feature, or Athonite or Slav exists. In the Carpathian manner it is precisely the iconic that is observed, where the great mystery isn’t just that God created the world but that the world also participates in the Divine. It is an enlargement, a greater openness: the relation between God and creation isn’t marginalized to the relational, to accessibility, but is rather the mystery of the Kingdom of God, of the common, of the union and co-dwelling between God and creation, of their real encounter. It gets very delicate here, because many fall into a theology that doesn’t deal with a real encounter between God and creation, but only a simple relational through which creation participates in a few reflections, in a few transpositions of Divinity and that’s about all…
In the Carpathian understanding, God can communicate with the being-ness of creation, but without confusion; the being-ness of creation can participate, through the Christic incarnation – in other words through Christ – in becoming kin [12] with the being-ness of God, precisely in this common that we’re speaking about. So the iconic is the common between the Divine and creation, it is the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven was only a kind of relational between the Divine and creation, while the Kingdom of Heaven is already an encounter, an inter-penetration. [13] We can talk about a kind of inter-penetration between God and creation, not in a pantheistic way, but in Christ.
The role of iconic practices (asceticism) and its connection with the Eucharistic intervenes here, in the sense that the iconic is a Eucharistic condition. [14] Between Christ and us there can’t be anything else except an iconic relational. Through baptism we gain the iconic seal, and receive the Christic condition, the iconic or pre-Eucharistic condition. We can’t stop here though, because we would no longer go to communion, to the Eucharistic’s fulfillment.
It is known that through the Ascension, Christ raised our condition of creation to the Godhead, to the right hand of the Father. The Son of God doesn’t remain up there, as if we were missing Him, needing to climb up even to heaven in order to meet again with Christ. He sends the Holy Spirit Who now enters into His work of direct and personal Image of the Son. The work through which the Resurrected and Ascended Countenance of Christ descends into the earthly Church, becomes incarnate again in the Eucharistic prosphora and at the same time an “incarnation” of the Holy Spirit is made. [15] So the Eucharist isn’t only the Body of Christ, but it is also an “incarnation” of the Holy Spirit. We insist a lot on the act of the epiclesis through which we invoke the Countenance of the Holy Spirit, because He brings us Christ the Resurrected. And through the Body of Christ the Resurrected, the Holy Spirit can also “become incarnate,” meeting in this way with creation. Because the Spirit, being “pure,” apophatic Divinity, wouldn’t meet with us directly, and through the fact that He unites with Christ through the Resurrection – He makes Himself accessible to us through the Eucharistic image. Only through the Eucharist do we have access to the Holy Spirit. This is where a very deep subject lies, which theologians should think a lot about…
In general it is considered that the Eucharistic comes through the Holy Spirit. In other words, He comes first and then “brings” the Eucharistic with Him. But this one thing must be understood: the Christic is Christianity’s absolute condition. Through the Christic condition the Holy Spirit makes Himself accessible to us and enters into work towards creation and, together with creation brings the Christic image to actuality and at the same time He brings Himself to actuality.

G.M.: How about the possible connection between the liturgical and the ascetical that I asked you about…

G.G.: In the Philokalic understanding that you were talking about my brother, we must understand that asceticism isn’t only a kind of hard life in order to acquire the virtues. Philokalic asceticism is precisely this iconic in-spiriting. As the Holy Fathers say, “Sin brought a deviation from holiness.” In order to arrive at the reestablishment of holiness we must perform a kind of asceticism, as it were, that consists of our breaking loose from our negative states in order to return to these virtues in themselves. In truth Christian asceticism is nothing other than a returning to something normal, a return to the natural. The natural, however, must be iconicized later on. We must give the Eucharistic condition [structure] back to the natural and only then can Eucharistic communion be made. And the Holy Spirit is with Communion’s Eucharistic at the same time! If it’s a simple Christic Eucharistic there’s no descent of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit there is no Eucharistic Christic and there is no Holy Spirit without the Eucharistic. [16]

G. M.: Reverend Father, it has been acknowledged that in contemporary theology there are two major tendencies. They are both presented as solutions for the spiritual reinvigoration of the faithful. One of them insists on cult and on the Eucharist, placing the Philokalia’s spirituality in the shadows somewhat, and viewing the Eucharist as the moulding agent in and of itself. The second tendency is called “neo-palamite” and views the solution for reinvigoration in the personalism of uncreated energies, implicitly placing the Eucharistic contribution on the second plane. How do you see the iconic practice resolving the problem of accent, whether it should be on exclusively individual or ecclesial asceticism? Or in other terms, how could they harmonize – from the Carpathian – iconic perspective – the communitarian aspect of the Temple with the inner aspect of the “temple of the heart.”

G. G.: Ι insist a lot on the mystery of the Eucharistic iconic, where it’s impossible to deal with just a simple relational, a unilateral relational. But [instead I deal] with one [relational] that is made in every direction – both towards the Godhead and towards creation – and even more, of a kind of a uniting of the relational into a common. The Eucharistic, in the iconic understanding, has the dimensions that we have already brought to mind: of earthly Church, and of heavenly Church, and even of a super-cosmic manner of pouring a divine Mystery out through the Son of God. So that, especially in the current situation, in which the world is unraveled and de-structuralized, the prime necessity is, first of all, to remake the Eucharistic condition. It is just as important as the act of receiving communion itself. In what way? If many say that their participation in the Liturgy is useless if they don’t commune, I would consider this opinion mistaken. In the Christic ritual of the Liturgy, even if you don’t commune, it remakes the Christic, Eucharistic condition. It is here that our temples of our hearts, as you say, brother, are remade. The Eucharistic can’t “come into being” until a temple exists, in other words, a Church. How can you make the Eucharistic in someone whose inner Church isn’t re-established?
It must be understood then that only through the participation in the liturgical ritual, can each person remake his own condition of Church and then, to the measure in which one begins to serve the Liturgy in his own temple, the Eucharistic Mystery is fulfilled in him. [17] Only then, having the Eucharistic condition re-established, is it possible to partake of the Church’s Eucharist, literally speaking. However, if we move too quickly to communing without previously remaking the interior Church, it’s as if you’re throwing pearls to swine… You can’t just make any house into a Church. The house must first be consecrated, it must be offered, in order for it to be given the condition of Church – so it can become as such. And so it is with us. We can’t commune until we acquire this condition… And afterwards, from the Christian point of view, the ritual is a kind of participation in a contest: everyone participates, but only some take the prize. All of the faithful participate in the ritual, but only those who’ve prepared themselves reach communion. [18] Nevertheless, the possibility exists for everyone to take the prize, in the measure in which they make some “performances.” You can’t just give the prize to anybody… This is the meaning of Philokalic asceticism as I see it.
As far as the tendency towards removing the Eucharist from the ascetic context is concerned, I believe that it is a mistaken understanding of the very iconic meaning of the Eucharist. An icon is that sacred something that you shouldn’t touch unless you yourself become sacred. It’s like the Holy Apostle Paul says, those who partake unworthily will have more to suffer. The Eucharist is a consuming fire and so this is the only way it works: if you find filth in you, it certainly won’t do anything but burn you. Something must be found that can resist the heavenly fire. What is in you that can resist this fire? If there is nothing there, the single solution is to do the ritual, to participate in the liturgical ritual and then, little by little, the interior temple will be rebuilt. Only then can you partake too…

G. M.: And the last question, Reverend Father, to what extent, or better said, in what way are the other types of hesychasm in the Eucharistic image? I’m referring to Egyptian, Synaitic, Greek, and Slav, where the accent seems to fall more on the ascetical than the liturgical.

G. G.: I don’t know to what extent the Philokalic spirit is understood… How I’ve tried to understand it, I see it also in the sense of the remaking of the image of the interior Church, of the Eucharistic condition. The asceticism of the Holy Fathers is nothing else than a remaking of the image of holiness from the inside, which also can’t be done without a ritualization. In as much as I understand it at least, every Christic virtue is a kind of ritualistic gesture. Every spiritual virtue is a ritualistic gesture so then the other mysticisms (Egyptian, Synaitic etc.) are in fact, in the final analysis, iconic mysticisms too. [19] It’s just that their particular ancient characteristics, since that was the context at that time, were to put a great spiritual accent directly on the mind. So because of this, their kind of ritual was more spiritualized than the iconic kind. They’re also a kind of iconic, but more spiritualized. While, in the Carpathian understanding there is also a spiritualized iconic, but it is more Eucharistically accented, where the Body and Blood’s part is just as emphasized as the spiritual part. The Eucharistic isn’t just something spiritual, but it is truly the Body and Blood of Christ.

G. M.: We thank you, Reverend Father, for your kindness in answering these questions.

The Holy Monastery of Frăsinei, April 2nd 1998

[1] This is not referring to, as in Catholicism, a created grace that makes an inter-mediation between Divine and created nature, fundamentally incompatible. Rather it’s about a kinship, as Father Ghelasie clearly states, an iconic kinship between God and creation (founded, as he will say shortly, in “the pre-creational Christic image”). Catholicism arrived at the doctrine about created grace because it developed a predominantly ontological argumentation, devoid of an iconic or personalist perspective. The notion of “kinship syngeneia” is in the spirit of Pauline and Patristic theology. It refers, as I’ve said, to an iconic kinship not strictly ontological.

[2] In Romanian "interfiinţial".

[3] In other words, the Incarnation surpasses the plane of simple names/attributes/Divine grace energies, it isn’t consumed on an exclusively energetic level, even uncreated energies. Saint Maximos speaks in this sense in Ambigua: “…the God of all, the Incarnate One, doesn’t simply have the name of man, but is in His entire being truly man.” Or further on, “…it’s not because He is the Maker of Man that we give the name of man to Him Who, according to nature being God, truly took our being (becoming substantial like us), but being (G. M.).” Moreover, the Son of God, on the foundation of a indefinite iconic mobility of His Hypostasis, to Whom is conferred an eternal possibility to incarnate, assumes for Himself – says Father Ghelasie – in a pre-creational plane, the image of man. The dialogical interval, the framework for relations between man and God is therefore iconologically founded in a pre-ontology of the human, and only this assumption can confer consistence to the devotional act of man as being concrete. While diminishing the role of uncreated energy, Father reminds us that the Hypostases have priority over them (obviously in the ontological and not chronological sense).

[4] The same criticism which in the previous interview Father brought against the dominance of the metaphysics of classical Greek philosophy, a dominance that was passed on to the Athonite type of Christianity, he now brings against the energetic cosmology of the Greeks, which migrated into Christian discussions. They [Greek energetic metaphysics] view grace energies first and only then the personal encounter with God, face to face. Only the iconic can constitute a basis for a real encounter.

[5] It may seem at the limits of Origenism, but Father Ghelasie is not speaking about an ontology of creation before the concrete act of the creation of the world by God. He is referring to a reciprocal assumption in both directions (Divine and creation), as a connection of relationship that will later become the foundation of the unique response and essential feature of creation before God. It’s about a kind of a pre-hypostatic union/assumption of the Son’s Image on the iconic level, a union that confers to it, in pre-time, a foundation and an irreducible ontological honor. In general, Father is pleading again for a constantly current theology, in the sense of returning to the Chalcedonian accent on the hypostatic-iconic union between God and man. It is known that the Synod of Chalcedon marked the decisive separation of Christian anthropology from that of Greek classicism, and by extension, any extra-Christian anthropology: in regards to the union of man with God, the decisions of this Synod reflect a singular and irreducible understanding, in the sense that the union stands on the auspices of a hypostatic event, it has in other words, ontological consistency, also simultaneously conserving the distinctions of nature. Because of this, Father Ghelasie makes an apology for returning, through a kind of suspension of the discourse about theology of “grace through being” in other words, to ontological priority, without negating the energies.

[6] For example Hinduism, where Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (that make up the Trimurti trinity) are simple attributive manifestations, temporary and in the end, illusions of the Absolute (Brahman). These hypostases are not ontological structures of Brahman, as is the case of the Hypostases in the Holy Trinity.

[7] In the Christian understanding ritual surpasses, again, the common significance of the other religions, where it has exclusive cosmological connotations [see the celebrated “etymology” of M. Buccellato of ritus (Latin) from rita (Sanskrit) – a cosmic order, a harmonic principle]. In pre-Christian religions, especially in oriental monisms, the ritual as a devotional act didn’t offer man access to the divine ontos (őντος). Thus the ideal man (in front of whom the ritual moment is a mere peamble where he obligatorily suffers cosmic determinations) is formulated in a-ritualistic and a-cosmic terms. In Chistianity, however, Father Ghelasie observes that the ritual is defined ”from above down” as an outpouring of inter-Trinitarian life into creation. In such a way, it can open access to the mysteries of the Godhead-Trinity itself. As a Biblical verification, the Revelation of the Holy Trinity at the Jordan is described in the Gospels as a theophany in dynamic dialogue (of the Father’s witness) and of gesture (the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove), thus in ritualistic terms. The Church, in the troparion of the Theophany chants: ‘As you were baptized in the Jordan, Lord, the worship of the Holy Trinity was made manifest” (’Εν ’Ιορδάνη βαπτιζομένου σου, Κύριε, η της Τριάδος εφανερώθη προσκύνησις). This confirms the proskynetical [worship like] ritual structure of inter-Trinitarian rapport, the mysterious supra-movement of the Trinity that Father talks about.

[8] The Romanian term purcede can be used as a transitive verb unlike the English proceed. However, in order to maintain the meaning of the interview I used proceed, which is its theological equivalent, as a transitive verb, with the Holy Spirit as its direct object. (transl. note)

[9] Meaning that the Son is born in an active mode, from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds, and this can be seen as archetypal ritual gestures.

[10] Proposing a new definition of the ritual, completely coherent with iconic ontology that brings it out into relief, a definition that renounces the category of relation, Father Ghelasie indirectly sanctions a certain tendency of current theology (visible in the otherwise remarkable theology of Hr. Yannaras). This is about a kind of Christian existentialism in which everything, including ontology, is placed and excessively interpreted under the species of the relational (see below). For Father Ghelasie, the ritual is fulfilled through the conjunction of each parties’ response into a new reality, iconic-Eucharistic. It is a meeting that doesn’t suppress the special qualities of those that meet together. And neither do they “consume” each other in simple relational terms. Again, we could think of a similarity with Saint Maximos’ theology that expresses the same thing in dynamical terms. The common ritual response/gesture is constituted in the inter-relational, as Father Ghelasie puts it, which brings us to the concept that Maximos named the state of the age to come (maximally anticipated in the Liturgy). There will then be mobile stability and a dynamic steadfastness, a placement of man before the face of God that will unspeakably surpass the two current modes of movement – active and passive. “There will no longer be any existing things that carry or is carried and moves those that are carried and move (Ambigua 53, for this antinomical dynamism see also Ambigua 170 and 180).”

[11] It must be noted that through this distinction, Father Ghelasie doesn’t speak in the spirit of gnostic stratification of the cosmos. For our Reverend, “the super-cosmic” means the level of the encounter of the love of God with the love of creation, the encounter of the celestial Liturgy with the earthly Liturgy. It is that common, that intensified level, which is called “the Holy above the heavens and the Spiritual sacrifice” of God, in the Orthodox Liturgical text.

[12] This term that Father Ghelasie often returns to can only create bewilderment if we remain cramped in a ontologistic vision. As it is well known in Christianity, being is a hypostatic truth, so we no longer have anything like an ontological break between being and existence which, in general, characterizes the ancient mystics be it oriental or Greek. In this perspective, the term “înrudire” (becoming kin/family) refers to the iconic image that God conferred to creation and that is the brush stroke of onto-personal compatibility between this and the Divine, without their confusion of being. Înrudire is iconic and ontological at the same time, inseparable.

[13] The distinction between heaven and the Kingdom of heaven is in accordance with Patristic theology, where this dynamic interval is the cosmic correlative of the growth of man from the state of the image to that of likeness of God. In the ritualistic terms of Father Ghelasie, Heaven was more under the mark of the encounter’s potentiality, yet incompletely fulfilled, while the Kingdom is reciprocal Divine-creation co-dwelling.

[14] Clearly not in the sense of a conditional cause, but of a constitution or Eucharistic pre-structure of creation made after the image of Christ (see the discussion from the previous interview). Iconic asceticism consists then of the process of the restoration of these Eucharistic constitutions through a mystic transposition of the Liturgical, ritual models in the dimension of interiority, from the Proskomedia to the Communion (see below).

[15] The entire text of the Proskomedia and of the Orthodox Liturgy comes to support these affirmations. The prosphora, which received the pre-Eucharistic condition during the Proskomedia, is transformed at the epiclesis into the “dough” of the New Creation rationally and spiritually founded through the work of the Father, and completed through the Son.

[16] The Son and the Holy Spirit unite in the liturgical work, as Father Ghelasie says, as they also unite it to the economic, reciprocally promoting and bearing witness for each other. The Spirit pours itself out and Eucharistically offers itself through the Son, and the Son opens the Eucharistic path towards the participation of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, it should be noted again as in St Maximos, the centrality of Christ’s Person in Father Ghelasie’s discourse.

[17] Once again, St Maximos also showed that the participation in the liturgical ritual is similar to an asceticism where the successions (ακολουθíα) of the liturgical actions are a type of what happens with the inner man. He likewise says, though clearly in other terms, that participation in the Liturgy opperates a iconic-Eucharistic reconstitutioning of man in the sense of a gradual interior transformation whose steps are developed ad extra in the very moments of ritual. “The Christian should never be absent for the Holy Liturgy” because the grace of the Holy Spirit is always present in an unseen way, and in a special mode during the Holy Liturgy. This transforms and changes each one of us that are found present, rebuilding us, (remodeling us) in a more godlike image, according with our features (μεταπλαττούαν επí τò θειóτερον ανάλογος χεαυτó), and raising us towards what is indicated through the mysteries that are completed… He activates the grace of salvation, indicated through each of the heavenly symbols (σύμβολον) that is completed, leading us in line and after an order (καθ’ χείρμον καί τάξιν) from the closest till the end of all Mystagogy XXIV.” In this fragment, the value of a forming model that St Maximos attributes to liturgical work should to be noted (see the use of the verb μεταπλάττω – to reshape clay or wax which has the same root as πλάσσω and in ancient Greek πλάττω – create as in Genesis 2:7). This brings man to a state of maximum ontological plasticity. In addition, Maximos sees this reshaping, as Father Ghelasie does, in accordance with the celebrated principle of analogy (ανάλογος χεαυτó). God recreates man in analogy with this model, respecting his singularity, as we have noted in the previous interview.

[18] As we have said in the preceding interview, this is the sense of “becoming worthy” that is discussed in liturgical texts, which is in order to remake your Eucharistic condition. We should also observe that, with the whole accent placed on the pre-Eucharistic preparation, Father doesn’t consider the remaking of the inner Church (Eucharistic constitution) a process that could develop autonomously before the Eucharist properly speaking. In reality it is also a type of Eucharistic transformation where the faithful (a living prosphora) gradually advances on the road to an inner Proskomedia. This is done through continual communion with the Spirit of Christ, towards the fulfilled Eucharistic condition lived as deification in the Communion. So then, it’s about a mystic synchronization between an interior ritual, served in the temple of the heart and the liturgical ritual, of a undivided conjugation that has the “common Eucharistic” as its precise base which Father has been speaking to us about. The accent of Father Ghelasie constantly falls, in a most authentic Orthodox Spirit, on the fact that the liturgical act is one of participation; and participation means response. It means the amen of the community of the faithful which isn’t a mere echo of the divine call, but is irreducible utterance that certifies the acquisition of the Eucharistic condition. Father insists on reminding us that the ritual of the Eastern Church is fulfilled in the space of a Eucharistic type of conformity between the Mystery and the faithful.

[19] By extension Father’s assertion verifies a universal reality. Any religious experience has double dimensions – mystical and ritual – these are interrelated languages where the same exigency and finality of religious practice are transposed. So the mystical experience is equivalent to an inner ritual, a reshaping of being through a continuous interior sacrifice. Reciprocally, the ritual is the reflex, it is an ad extra transposition in terms of gesture, of an inner itinerary, and at the same time a criterion of validity for inner experience. For these reasons interpreting the ascetic-mystical experience of diverse schools in ritual terms (inside of Christianity) is not at all a forced approach. What asceticism identifies as virtues is, in ritual terms, equivalent to a devotional gesture. It seems to me, therefore, that the virtue-gesture isomorphism that Father Ghelasie enunciates is altogether significant, to the extent that it reduces both the excessively moralistic connotations of virtue, and the certain mechanical formalism of ritual gesture. Under these auspices, virtue becomes again the sign and measure of the assumption of the ritual in the strict sense, of the formational model of the human being. St. Cyril of Alexandria also refers to the same virtue-ritual gesture isomorphism (or spiritual offering), “Those who haven’t freed themselves from the slavery and bondage of passions cannot bring God fruits and spiritual sacrifices, in other words, they cannot follow Him worthily with manliness.” Generally, St. Cyril’s sacramental theology pleads for the idea that Christian spirituality succeeds in surpassing the hiatus between the mystical and the ritualistic dimension of religious experience – which can be seen in other religions. Fr. Ghelasie naturally enrolls in the spirit of this tradition, as daring as his formulations may sometimes appear.


Translation from Romanian by Fr. John DOWNIE
Bucharest, 2008



(interview published originally in Romanian in the volume “Părintele Ghelasie de la Frăsinei, Iconarul Iubirii dumnezeieşti” (“Fr. Ghelasie from Frasinei, The Iconologist of the divine Love”, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2004, pp. 94-111)


Copyright: Platytera Publishing House

The French Version.


The Romanian (Original) Version.