The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [89]

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, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88.

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Symeon reports at the experience of Saints for that they live the real union with Christ but they can and to narrate it to those who want to listen.

Our relation with Christ does not make from outside of us, ie this is not an exterior relation with Him, but from our interior, for He unites, in real mode, with us.

We feel the love of the Father for the Son from the depths of our being, for that the Son of the Father is in us from Baptism and He teaches us the love of the Father to Him and of Him to His Father and to the Holy Ghost.

Due to assume of human nature in His hypostasis, He was „akin with us through body…and made us, with true, partakers [of His deity]…[being] one body together with Christ into the Ghost”^[1].

Each member of the Church is member of Christ and each one is given the showing of the Ghost toward his personal benefit^[2].

Symeon insists on the impartation all of Christ, on the multiple existence of personal relations with Christ, which are on the measure of the personal charisms^[3].

His insistence on the fact of to comment and of the process the scriptural vision about Church, quoting and commenting pauline ecclesiological texts, shows us on Symeon as on one, which integrates, in creative mode, in the Tradition of the Church.

Symeon appropriates and presents in personal mode and personalist the human-divine principle of unity of the Church, ie the interior link of each one in part with God, through the Ghost.

Our entry in Church, through Baptism, as real annexation of the Lord, the reconscientization and its daily deepening in our life, forms the personalistic coordinate of symeonian ecclesiology and of the personal soteriology which he propagated it in Church.

Citing Eph. 5, 28-29, in connexion with the Jn. 6, 56^[4], Symeon shows that the Holy Eucharist is the factor of the real unity with Christ of the members of Church^[5], naturally alongside the real faith, clean, in Him. For that to have life, we must stand in direct link with the Head of the Church, eating daily on eucharistic Christ^[6].

The feeding with the Body and the Blood of Lord, which presuppose our continuous sanctification through grace, is that which makes us to feel in us the sap of the life-creating of the Body of Christ.

To be members of Christ, in paradoxical mode, means to have on Christ in us and to eat on eucharistic Christ for to unite, in beingly mode, with us.

Changing the ecclesiological paradigm of the body with that of beingly union with Christ, Symeon speaks about Church as about a beautified world [cosmon oresmenon]^[7], but he names it and Empress [i Vasilissa] of Sovereign^[8], followed by the virgins [parteni] from Ps. 44, 16, ie by each of us, which sanctify us the life^[9].

Symeon has in view, in all these images of the union with Christ, the mystical union, ecstatic with Christ, not only the sacramental union with Christ.

Even if he does not present us, of each date, the substrate of an affirmation, the fund of reality as such, he has of each date in view the full content, totalizer of ghostual life, which presuppose both the sacramental union with Christ but and the mystical union with Him.

In I, 7, the real space of the Church does not looked only in the dimension of personal frame, where is highlighted the aspect of our interior link with Christ, but Symeon tries to present and a realistic-integrative vision of the whole pleroma of the Church: „For as Christ God is Head of the Church, all so He makes for it temple [naos], after how and the Church itself was made a temple of Him and a beautiful cosmos [cosmos oreos]”^[10].

The interior process of sanctification produces per-total an impressive ghostual vision of the Church. The Church appears at a its ghostual contemplation as a beautiful world, as a world full of holiness and divine wisdom.

The personal relation of each of us with God creates a thrilling image of Church, the image of a living community, total engaged, which produces conquering beauty, both at personal level, but and in its outside.

The image of Church as temple of God is used by Symeon as a direct evaluation of I Cor. 3, 16, showing that we are, with true, living temples of God, for that the Holy Ghost dwells into us^[11].

The Church is the temple, the citadel ​​and the cosmos of the Emperor God, in which speaks God^[12], but is, in the same time, body of Christ, His bride and His upper world^[13].