The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [61]

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, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60.

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Everything that we undertake for our salvation is not guaranteed than by the divine light, which, then when it comes in us, entrustes us by the truth of love and of our zeal for the holy life.

In the image of the girded oven, of the soul full by the fire of Godhead, Symeon shows the cleaning and the our filling by light, as union with the light and as brightness of us through it: „As the girded oven [eccheomenos clivanos]…after to gird strong, it makes wiht all transparent and like the fire…so and the soul…after what…were consumed [all bad ones from it, from the cause of light,]…remains only the being of the soul without passions [i tis psihis usia moni horis patus]…,[moment in that] the divine fire and inmmaterial unites with it in beingly [usiodos] face and anon this lights and shines and imparts [of light].

[For]…he imparts by the divine light and unspeakable [tiu che arritu fotos], and he makes fire through impartation [metexin]”^[1].

The image of union of the divine fire with our being is a personalization of all what means ardent dynamism in Scripture.

Saint Symeon uses from full the image of the light and of the fire, as and that of the divine enthusiasm, of unspeakable joy for to emphasize the paradigm of the divine sight.

If in the last image presented by us, the fire of the light ignited the heart and melted any impurity of heart, in the image of the bride who unites with her Bridegroom, the principal print that is fixed us in soul, that is transmitted us to understanding, is the cleanness of heart.

In the ethical Discourse 15, the bride [nimfi], our clean soul, our whole being full of cleanness, „unites to sleep [ti enosi singchitazomenos] with the Bridegroom Christ and rises together with Him [sinanistamenos] towards eternal life or, instead, [she remains] in Him always and she bears on Him, Who [remained] in her”^[2].

The conjugal union between bride and Bridegroom is real and it is one from the traditional mystical expressions of union with light.

Symeon does not use only on enosis in equation, but he precises, as and Paul in Ephes. 5, 23-32, that this union is one that is making in coitos, in the conjugal bed, ie in the largest profoundness of our being.

In the Hymn 15 appears the same image of the bride, of the soul-bride of Christ, where „the all souls become brides with which unites [enute] The Creator, and they [unite] the same with Him, and has place the ghostual wedding [o gamos pnevmaticos], This mingling  [simmignimenos] with them into a proper mode to God”^[3].

Symeon, as and Paul, does not render a libidinous image, lascivious of our relation with God, as a sublimation of sexuality and as a hypostasiation of it in the sphere of our mystical reports with God, but he uses the realism and the dynamics of sexual union as paradigm of union with God, which leaves in us real traces, concrete, deep.

The image of the conjugal union is deep scriptural and patristic, Symeon doing nothing, than to give a personalization very suggestive, clear, striking in the good sense of the word, for the one who meets it in his writings.

Saint Symeon has the astounding quality of  to be conqueror in his writings, precisely in that he uses quotidian images, extreme of known, banal, which raises them, suddenly, at the deep value of the mystical experience and, through that, he explains the deepest mysteries of deification.

The conjugal union or the drunkenness – as we will show immediately – realities very concrete and, at the first sight, having nothing to do with the ecstasy, they become at Symeon approachs to the mystery of holiness, of the divine union between God and the believer man for eternity.

On Symeon interests no the conformity of the example, of the paradigm with the mystical union, ecstatic, but the one between the senses of paradigm, which he emphasizes it in evident mode.