body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body... For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (I Cor.15:42-44; 53). Notice that, in his unique way, St. Paul realizes a contrast between the natural body, (Greek soma physikon), and the spiritual body, (Greek soma pneumatikon). Natural body is the present body, and the spiritual body is the deified body.
Fr. Staniloae goes on to say that the bones of the saints, by remaining incorruptible, show us that their personal souls and the grace of the Holy Spirit remain in a special connection with their bodies. That is why, while giving veneration to the holy relics and praying before them, we do not address the relics, we address the saint. Our veneration is passed over to the person, something similar to the veneration of the holy icons.
Bishop Kallistos Ware, in his' book The Orthodox Church, quotes St. Maximos the Confessor who said that the saints "are those who express the Holy Trinity in themselves." He writes that deification, theosis, as an organic and personal union between God and man, is a constant theme in St. John's Gospel, in St. Paul's Epistles, and more so in St. Peter's well known verse from his second universal Epistle: "By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption" (II Peterl:4). St. John Damascene, a.k.a. the theologian of the holy icons, emphasizes that when the Holy Scripture speaks about God, it doesn't speak about divine nature or essence, because that is unknowable. The word God refers to the uncreated divine energies, i.e., the grace of God that we can perceive in this world, and is "channeled" particularly through the holy Mysteries in the life of the Church. To quote St. Athanasios' very terse and familiar phrase "we become by grace what God is by nature." Deification takes place when God's grace interpenetrates our humanity.
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Secondly, even if one is being deified, it does not make him immune to sin. Deification presupposes continuous repentance. No matter how deified a saint may be, he never loses sight of his sinfulness: "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (I Cor.1O:12). "No one can stop sinning simply by deciding that he will no longer do so. Even if a man became 'perfect' through his own efforts, he would risk being very far from God and complacent in his virtue. Proud of his conquest - of his victory over his body, over human nature - he would fall into the sin of pride. Only love and a heart open to God, to His grace and to that uncreated Light which He gives to us can make us like God" (The Living God, p. 89).
St. Sisoes the Great, a great man of unceasing prayer, who is commemorated on July 6, begged the angels who came to take his soul to allow him one more hour to pray; he did this because he was not certain that he repented enough.
He understood that the road to final transfiguration is called, "repentance". That is why either from the pulpit or in some of my previous articles many a time I identified this holy Mystery with the very "seal" of our salvation. Woe unto those who expunged it from their "Christian" life! I have in mind not only those who do not have this holy Mystery in their "Christian" denomination, but those who are nominal Orthodox Christians, also!
Thirdly, Bishop Kallistos Ware points out that, there is no secret about what one must do in order to be deified. The man who approached Christ with the question: "Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" received the answer: "You know the commandments..." Yet, this proved not to be enough, because Christ admonished him: "One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me" (Mark 10:17, 19,21). So, keep the commandments, and practice your faith, do whatever your faith exhorts you to do. In other words, be a true, not a nominal Orthodox Christian!
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If someojne says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has never seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
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Fourthly, in order for one to be deified, one has to live in a community. Our love of God is made manifest through our love of neighbor. St. John the Theologian makes this point plainly, straightforwardly: "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" (I John4:20). "Man, made in the image of the Trinity, can only realize the divine likeness if he lives a common life such as the Blessed Trinity lives: as the Three Persons of the Godhead 'dwell' in one another, so a man must' dwell' in his fellow men, living not for himself alone, but in and for others," writes on Bishop Kallistos (The Orthodox Church, p.241). Theologian Thomas Hopko is known to have coined the phrase that the only place one may go alone is called hell. In loving one's neighbor with a Christly love, is the safest way for one to attain deification.
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Fifthly, love of God and love of neighbor must be practical. True, deification implies deep mystical experience, but it must be followed by actions to make it "flourish." It was out of their mystical experience that the greatest saints of the Orthodox calendar did not avoid the sick, the underprivileged and the poor of this world. It is an historical fact that even the great hermits used to comeback to the cities at least once a year to make their mystical experience in the heart of the wilderness flourish. Last but not least, deification presupposes life in the Church. It means that one avails oneself of the holy Mysteries, as divinely established channels by which the grace of God is poured into our souls. Christ purchased the Church with His own blood to offer us the means by which we may be sanctified to attain to divine likeness, deification.
The most irrefutable biblical foundation for the veneration of the holy relics is found in the Old Testament. After Elisha, Elias' disciple, died, "It came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulcher of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet" (II Kings14:21). In the New Testament we read that, "believers were increasingly added to the Lord.. .so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them" (Acts 5:15). Also, "God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them" (Acts 19:11-12).
So, the Orthodox Church, based on Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, has given due veneration to the holy relics. She collected and preserved the remains of the saints as far back as the second century. One early Church eyewitness gives a vivid testimony while describing the martyrly death of St. Ignatius the God-Bearer, Bishop of Antioch (+115), in Rome: "Of what remained from his body (he was torn to pieces by beasts in the circus), only the firmest parts were taken away to Antioch and placed in a linen as an invaluable treasure of the grace that dwelt in the martyr, a treasure left to the holy Church." Also, after St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (+156), has been burned to death by the Roman proconsul, his followers "gathered his bones as a treasure more precious than precious stones and purer than gold, and placed them.. .for the celebration of the day of his martyrly birth, and for the instruction and confirmation of future Christians."
Moreover, the Church has shown honor to holy relics bysolemnly uncovering and translating them, by building churches over them, by establishing feasts in memory of their uncovering and translation, in adorning their tombs and encouraging pilgrimages to them, and most importantly, in the constant rule of the Church to place holy relics at the dedication of altars, as well as to place them in the holy antimension which is indispensable for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy.
The holy Fathers of the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" have testified before their flocks of the miracles occurring from the holy relics, and many times they have called their faithful to be witnesses of the truth of their words. We mention among them some of the most prominent saints: St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, Blessed Augustine.
We have to mention, also, that, the holy relics, (Greek τα λειψαα; Latin reliquiae, meaning "what is left"), are venerated even if they are not incorrupt, out of respect for the saintly life or the martyrly death of the saint. In fact, the local Synod of Moscow of 1667, among some other synods, has forbidden the recognition of the reposed as saints solely by the sign of the incorruption of their bodies. This does not mean that the incorruption of the saints' bodies is no longer unanimously seen as one of the divine signs of their sanctity. The veneration may become more accentuated when there are evident signs of healing by prayer to the saints for their intercession with God.
I cannot conclude without mentioning the idea advanced by Fr. Michael Pomazansky, with which I am fully in agreement. In his book Orthodox Dogmatic Theology , in one of the footnotes he writes that, "One may say that the incorruption of a dead body is no guarantee of sanctity: examples can be given of Oriental swamis whose bodies were incorrupt long after death (whether by some natural means related to their ascetic life, or by a demonic counterfeit); and of some great Orthodox saints (for example, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Herman of Alaska) there remain only bones. The relics of St. Nectarios of Pentapolis (+1920) were incorrupt for several years, and then quickly decayed, leaving only fragrant bones" (pp. 326327).
"Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" asks St. Paul (I Cor.6:19; see also II Cor.6:16). He wants his Corinthian disciples to understand that every individual whose nature was renewed by Christ through the bath of Baptism is a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Shortly after Baptism, the newly illumined receives his/her personal Pentecost, the holy Mystery of Chrismation. The saints succeeded in perpetuating the Church's Pentecost, and their incorrupt relics are living witness of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is with deep theological meaning that our bimillenary Orthodox Church celebrates all of the known saints, but especially those who are known only by God, on the first Sunday after Pentecost, a. k. a. Sunday of All Saints. They attained to God's likeness by allowing God to reign on the only place where God cannot "reign without our consent," on the throne their own heart. They became by grace what God is by nature, the only goal set to every human being though Christ's Incarnation, the only goal of a true follower of Christ.
Rev. Dr. Dumitru Macaila is the pastor of SS. Constantine .& Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Swansea, Illinois.
* Romanian title of Fr. Staniloae's book is Teologia Dogmatica Ortodoxa, and was published in three volumes in 1978 at Bucharest, Romania. First volume was already translated into English, in two volumes, with the title The Experience of God. For the introductory paragraphs I used volume 3 of the book printed in Romanian language, pp. 349-350.
(BIBLIOGRAPHY)
Pr. Prof. Dr. Dumitru Staniloae, Teologia Dogmatica Ortodoxa, vol. 3, Editura lnstitutului Biblic si de Misiune of Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane, 1978.
Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin Books, 1991.
The Living God, A Catechism for the Christian Faith, translated from the French by Olga Dunlop, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1989.
Father Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, translated and edited by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994.
Source: http://www.helleniccomserve.com/veneration.html |
This exhibition of approximately 70 works explores the emergence and transformation of several key types of reliquary, moving from an age in which saintly remains were enshrined within closed containers to an era in which relics were increasingly presented directly to worshipers.
