The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [51]

Here, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.

Our greek font.

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After this passage, Symeon guarantees those said about unpassion with his proper experience of unpassion.

He tells his auditorium that this maka,rion pa,qoj [happy suffering]^[1] was given and to him, although he feels between those who are oi` avperrimme,noi [unexpected/ unwanted/ rejected/ aborted]^[2].

After many prayers, said our Father, and he was worthy to suffer the love for people of God and His grace^[3].

The scandalization that can produce a such trenchant confession is void, as long as the unpassion is real in that who gives details about it.

Symeon is not only convinced by his proper experience of unpassion, but he acknowledges and its importance for the future Christians, who want to seek God and find Him^[4].

Our Father positions prophetically in this situation, as one who feels taught in mystic face by God^[5] and who knows the real value of his words for those who sanctify their life, on the one hand and, on the other hand, emphasizes the decisive role of his writings in what regards the benefit [wvfe,leian] and the encouragement [protroph.n] of those who will seek the sight of God^[6].

He considers his writings as a part of the Church’s Tradition^[7], as authentic transmission of the divine truth, revealed through personal revelation from part of God and as a testimony what will impel considerable on those who will sanctify their life in the future.

In the end of his majestic discourse that I commented, Symeon more gives another eloquent definition of the unpassion.

Our Father says that what guards us unblemished [avmw,mouj] is the ignition into our being of the one flame and greater of the fire of divine’s desire^[8].

With other words, the unpassion is the state in which we are full of the glory of God and in that the glory potentiates us and more the longing for God, that we are the true pyres burning by the longing of God.

From the symeonian exposure results the fact that the unpassion is a divine reality at that we arrive at self in the our spiritual increase, if we listen the exhortations of the Holy Ghost from our heart.

The unpassion is our filling of the divine light and the adaptation at eternal life still here, on earth.

Any attempt to assimilate of it with the insensibility or with a state pure human, at which we arrive through self-censorship is not found in symeonian theology.

At our Father the unpassion is a divine gift reached by one who is cleansed of passions, which sees the divine light and he is filled by it, in so kind that he does not seize anymore the pleasures of the world, for that he is kidnapped by the pleasure infinite greater which produces in him the glory of the world what will come.