(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 (νους) 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 (νους) 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 αει ειναι) 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.
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