The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [48]
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.
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In the discourse of face he says in trenchant mode this thing, when he speaks of authentic sources which we can base in the treatment of unpassion’s reality.
The first source in the treatment of the subject is the experience of the previous Saints, who lived the state of unpassion as their proper quotidian life[1].
The second source is our proper mystical experience, that, as long as is real, is identical in essence with the one of the previous Saints[2].
Symeon was not only convinced of the identity between his mystical experience, mysterious and the Saints always, but, moreover, without this interior certitude he could not ever write anything and he would not be considered of it as something authentic, fully orthodox.
He lived as a living member of the Church, fully convinced of his situation in interior of the infinite connections that bind us to each other[3] and, in the same time, he knowing very well his helplessness and the personal ignorance.
But, retaking the traditional exegesis at Jn.14, 2, Symeon, based on his great spiritual discernment, affirms that „polloi. me.n {Agioi, ovli,goi de. avpaqei/j” [many are Saints, but few are unpassioned][4].
Our Father wants to say that Saints, in their earthly life, had varying degrees of holiness (if we look, in parallel mode, at their lives) and, likewise, are and in eternity, for that each grows on measure of his proper comprehension.
While some have had a beginning and a certain advance in life full of grace, namely of holiness, others reached yet of here at the state of unpassion.
Just therefore Symeon speaks about unpassion as about a high degree of holiness, without as thereby he excluds from the row of Saints on those who have not acquired yet of here the unpassion.
VApa,qeia yuch/j [The apathy of the soul] and avpa,qeia sw,matoj [the apathy of the body] are not identical, says Simeon[5].
The apathy/ the unpassion of the body is not useful of the single one, while the unpassion of the soul attracts after it and the body, for that introduces of it in the process of sanctification[6].
[1] SC 129, The Ethical Discourses, IV, 52-54, p. 12 / Idem, p. 220.
[2] Idem, The Ethical Discourses, IV, 54-59, p. 12 / Ibidem.
[3] If Father Professor Dumitru Stăniloae used the image of „the net of the meshs” (acc. Rev. Prof. D.Th. Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology [Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă], vol. 1, ed. cit., p. 202. To see the whole image in p. 201-202) for to show the multiple links between human persons, we propose the image of endless network of computers, with unsuspected of many connections, which is connected to the same source of energy.
The Church’s members are connected with all at the life of the Holy Trinity from where comes to us the divine grace.
If someone is connected at grace, if is wired at Trinity’s life, he will feel the same divine power and the same divine work as and his forerunners or as and his contemporaries which are connected at grace.
For this motive Symeon feels connected at the life of God, for that God shows His glory in his being, he feels how works the grace in him, how he sanctifies by what lives and thinks he and he sees that his experience is not a singular, but it is found and at Saints before him and at all living members, aware of the grace of them, of the Church.
[4] SC 129, The Ethical Discourses, IV, 62, p. 12 / Ică jr. 1, p. 221.
[5] Idem, The Ethical Discourses, IV, 65-66, p. 12 / Ibidem.
[6] Idem, The Ethical Discourses, IV, 66-67, p. 12 / Ibidem.