The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [74]

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, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73.

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Symeon intuits, in impeccable mode, the personal sense of oikonomia of salvation made ​​in the person of Christ. The work of Christ in us means just our full deification – alike of full deification of His humanity – through our impartation of  Christ full.

We cannot impart only of what we see but and of what we feel, from enough, in our interior union with Him, that is His deity, which sanctifies us in full mode.

In this sense named Symeon the Holy Eucharist as being the Body of the Lord, but not as a human body unghostual, empty of the Ghost, but full of the Ghost, fact for that is asomatos.

If in the case of ecstatic sight is experienced the glory of Christ, as cleansing light, lightening, sanctifying, in eucharistic impartation with Him we experience His glory as being likewise: cleansing of passions, lightening, sanctifying of the body and of our soul.

Imparting us with Him we receive „the grace of the Ghost, ie the fire of Godhead…[that gushes] from nature and from His being”^[1].

The eucharistic impartation, as and the ecstasy, makes us close, somewhat, to His unapproachable person, through the glory that gushes from it.

In the sight and the feeling of His glory we experience the unapproachable life of God and His transcendence, without as it to subsume, into something, to His gracial immanence, to Christ’s descent at us, through His glory and trough the giving the Body and of His divine Blood toward  our impartation.

Through His immanence lived by us, we feel how great is His transcendence, His real misunderstanding and His uncomprehension by us.

But His transcendence becomes for us a real one, felt interior, in personal mode, on measure what unite us with His glory or impart us with Him,   the One eucharistic.

Only in the Church, with other words, we know who is God, how shows our God the unapproachable, how fells He through the faith and the holy life into Him and which are the life and His love real.

The ghostual experience is the crucible where melts and re-builds the being and our life and where the feeling and the sight of God bring us a real attitude and theology about the life of God.

In the ethical Discourse 3, Symeon puts the equal sign between the content of ecstasy and the eucharistic impartation.

Although one is the ecstasy and another is the eucharistic impartation, however Symeon finds them a common denominator: the person of Christ.

Says he, into a grandiose mode: „The  unspeakable words,  spoken to Paul in Paradise, ie the itself eternal goodies which the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard and at the heart of man has not ascended, which God has prepared those who love Him [I Cor. 2, 9], is not find closed on a height, are not bounded by any place, are not hidden in any deep, are not kept at the head of the earth or of sea, but they are before you and before your eyes [Rom. 10, 6-8; Deut. 30, 12-14].

But what are these? Together with the goodies what are put the one part in heavens [ton apochimenon en tis uranis agaton], Itself the Body and the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we see and we eat and we drink in every day, are in recognized face those goodies.

Because in outside thereof you will not find anywhere nor any a single thing from those said,  even if you pervades running the whole creation.

And if you want to know, that those said are true, make yourself Holy trough the work of commandments and so impart you by the Holy ones and you will know then exactly/ with the detail, the power [tin dinamin] of those said to you”^[2].

Although symeonian theology is preponderant ecstatic, however, as we see, the ecstatic does not elude at him the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

Symeon does not ignore the Divine Eucharist but identifies it with the eternal goodies seen by Paul in ecstasy. Through the impartation with eucharistic Christ and through the sight of the glory of Christ does not occur with us something different, but, in both cases, we fill us by the holiness of Christ and we become conformable, alike Him.

But in both unions with Christ we must be proper the reception of His glory through a life of holiness. The terminal phrase from the quoted text, after how is seen very well, urges us to holiness, if  we want to do a hermeneutic of interior presence, of eucharistic Christ, in our life.

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[1] SC 122, The Ethical Discourses, I, 10, 123-125, p. 260 / Ică jr. 1, p. 146.

[2] Idem, The Ethical Discourses, III, 426-441, p. 420-422 / Idem, p.  209-210.