(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 της Τριάδος εφανερώθη 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.
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