The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [49]

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, 2
9, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48.

Our greek font.

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Acquiring of virtues and the sight of the light are those that lead us to unpassion, for Symeon, and no waivers as such at certain things or passions, that not lead us immediately to something positive, to our fill by grace^[1].

For our Father the unpassion is a filling of grace, of something concrete from point of view spiritual and is not a ontological negative state.

Putting in antithesis of the various virtues and states which we have here does not than take out in relief difference of holiness of some and of others.

Symeon knows and the beginning of virtues and their completeness for that he traveled all this interior process and he knows to talk about it in fidelity mode.

His demarche is that known to us the fact, that some spiritual states are in our power to achieve, to live and others are divine gifts^[2].

What is dw/ro,n Qeou/ [the gift of God] can not be experienced unless it God gives us, after what we exercise in the virtues that make us proper to the charismata^[3].

Thus standing the things, Symeon shows that the perfection of virtue is „of the men who walk in the light”^[4] and those who are unpassioned and perfect are those who have overcome, in perfect mode, the demons in their being^[5], dressing in brilliant [lamprw/j] face in th.n zwhfo,ron tou/ Kuri,ou ne,krwsin [killing of-life-bearers of God]^[6].

The death about that Symeon speaks here, this death which it brings the divine brightness, the divine light in our being is the true definition of unpassion.

 vApa,qeia is not a state of interior insensibility in mystical symeonian theology, a kind of petrification of our feeling, in which we do not react interior at any stimulus from outside or from within us.

But the unpassion at Symeon is a charismatic state, coming behind of a real killing of passions from our being, that consists in our filling by the light and the happiness into it.

Symeon speaks about unpassion as about the divine state in that we are filled by all the good from part of God and in which He gives us in abundant [dayilw/j] mode and unceasing  [avdialei,ptwj] the incorruptible delight and eternal [th.n a;fqarton trufh.n kai. ave,naon]^[7].

For our Father the unpassion is a charismatic state that occurs in history and not in outside it, but it represent a filling of us by grace.

The characteristics of unpassion are at Symeon avrrh,tou cara/j [unspeakable joy]^[8], our decorating with avrrh,tw| do,xh| kai. avstraptou,sh qei,a| stolh/| [un unspeakable glory and with a divine bright garment]^[9], in so kind that, those who live this divine state refeel it as to. polu. ba,roj th/j do,xhj [a great weight/ burden of glory]^[10], of divine [glory].

The positivity of unpassion and the fact that it represent a filling of light and not a notable absence of interior reactions, emerges, we believe, sufficient of markedly from the following passage, where Symeon speaks about interior unification of man lived in this state of holiness: „when the human desire [h` evpiqumi,a tou/ avnqrw,pou] was filled with all these (of the divine light), uniting [sugkraqe,n] the whole irascible [qumiko.n] part with rational [logistikw/|] part and lustful/ willing  [evpiqumhtikw/|], then the three make one in the sight of the light of trinitarian oneness [triadikh/j e`na,doj] and into this they know their Master’s own delight. 

For then will no longer recognize at all their threefold division, for they will be in all one”^[11].