In Wisdom Be Attentive

Last updated on: June 18, 2009 at 2:00 am by Henry Karlson

In Wisdom Be Attentive 2009-06-18T02:00:30-05:00 Henry Karlson

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PRIEST: Let us love one another, so that with one mind we may confess:

PEOPLE: The Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in substance and undivided.

These words precede the proclamation of the Nicene Creed in the Divine Liturgy, pointing out that the proper way for the Nicene Creed to be prayed is through Christian unity exemplified by love. To believe as the creed suggests is to believe in love, and to follow the path of love. The creed is a revelation of love, portraying the way love, God, is grasped by the human mind through revelation.[1]

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Such love is important, because it is this love which unites Christians and makes them one before God. “And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11). Indeed, it is as John points out, the unity between the Father and the Son is the unity of love. “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1John 4:8 -10). God is one because God is love, and God is Triune because God is love.[2] Of course, for Christians, this unity is imperfect and only analogous to the love found in the divinity: their unity in love is a created unity. Humanity was made in the image and likeness of God, in the image and likeness of divine love, and will always have the characteristic of being created, even if, by grace, they are deified and participate in the divine life. This unity was always meant for humanity, and was established in its creation, but it was lost because of sin. Humanity became divided as the persons (in Adam) changed from persons relating to each other in self-giving love to self-seeking individuals. Through grace, this wound in humanity can be healed. Grace allows us to overcome the egoistical self, and return, in love, to the unity God intended for us.[3]

It is through love we express the unity of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our minds are lifted up to God only when the heart is pure and united with our fellow Christians. The creed is properly expressed communally, because it is only through community that the reality of the creed is portrayed. We are to be one in faith, one in love, undivided as the body of Christ. The creed shows us how the Trinity is of one substance; this prelude to the creed shows us how we too are of one substance. It tells us how the creed points out not only a truth of God, but a truth about ourselves. When we do not love, when we have anger or resentment against someone, our sin divides us and prevents us from the pure worship of the Trinity. Of course, properly praying the creed, and meaning what is said in it should help us in our journey to God, and therefore, even if we pray it in human frailty, it is better to pray it than to be silent; but the realization of the creed is only established in the realization of our love.

PRIEST: The doors, the doors. In wisdom let us be attentive.

These words mean different things at different times. Originally, the creed was not recited alongside catechumens. Those who were not enlightened (baptized) were made to leave the sanctuary, and the doors of the church were closed and locked. The creed and the eucharist to follow both represented communion, the communion of restored humanity. It is for this reason why those who were not yet established in the body of Christ, in the New Adam, were not allowed in the sanctuary, for they could not recite the creed nor partake of the mysteries in koinonia, that is, in the unity of Christian love.[4]

Now that the non-baptized are not removed from the sanctuary, these words have taken on other, allegorical and spiritual, meanings. Nicholas Cabasilas, for example, suggests that the doors are now our mouths and ears – we are to praise God and open our ears to the wisdom being proclaimed. “Open the doors in this wisdom, he says, proclaiming and listening to these high teachings constantly; not inattentively but eagerly, devoting all your minds to it.”[5] Gogol, however, adds another dimension. Acknowledging that these words were first used to tell the congregation that the doors of the church are to be locked, he says that we are now to guard the doors of our heart. “Now this explanation is addressed to those present, that they may guard the doors of their hearts, where love belongs according to the Church’s teaching, so that the spirit of enmity may not invade this inner altar of the soul.”[6]

Following along with Cabasilas and Gogol, it is important to remember that we are opening up the doors of our hearts, one to another, so that we can be united in love, and in that love, we can represent the re-establishment of creaturely Sophia, created wisdom. In this way, we suggest that the wisdom being proclaimed is the Wisdom of God (Uncreated Sophia) and its image in the cosmos, creaturely Sophia. The creed can be memorized and understood as words of knowledge; this, of course, is where we begin, but, as Christians, we are expected to transcend the path of knowledge and enter the path of wisdom. Wisdom transcends knowledge; it is only in wisdom, in Sophia, in the unity of love, that the meaning of the creed is realized. The Father is consubstantial with the Son; the Son, in his humanity, is consubstantial with us. In creaturely Sophia we are united to the Son; and in Uncreated Sophia, the Son is united to the Father. Christ is the mediator between God and man because he is both creaturely and Uncreated Sophia; through Christ, we partake of the divine life; in wisdom, we are to be attentive, for in that wisdom we will see God. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1John 3:2).

Footnotes

[1] The words of the creed are important, but we must understand that is merely a pointer to the truth, and the words themselves construct a way by which we can grasp the truth of divine love and to prevent an erroneous misdirection leading us away from such love. This is made clear by St Hilary of Poitiers: “But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought in silence to fulfill the commandments, worshiping the Father, reverencing with Him the Son, abounding in the Holy Ghost, but we must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others compels us to err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart,” St. Hilary of Poitiers, “On the Trinity*”* in The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 9 (Peabody Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), Book II.2.

[2] While there are many who will point this out, both in the East and in the West, Richard of St Victor helped bring this insight to the forefront of Trinitarian discussions in his book, The Trinity. For example, he suggests that the fullness of love between two people can only be established when that love is expressed and participated by a third. “For when two persons who mutually love embrace each other with supreme longing and take supreme delight in each other’s love, then the supreme joy of the first is in intimate love of the second, and conversely the excellent joy of the second is in the love of the first. As long as only the first is loved by the second, he alone seems to possess the delights of his excellent sweetness. Similarly, as long as the second does not have someone who shares in love for a third, he lacks the sharing of excellent joy. In order that both may be able to share delights of that kind, it is necessary for them to have someone who shares in love for a third,” Richard of St Victor, On the Trinity in Richard of St Victor. Trans. Grover A. Zinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 388-9.

[3] God, according to Bulgakov, is Sophia, Wisdom. . “The tri-personal God has his own self-revelation. His nature, or Ousia, constitutes his intrinsic Wisdom and Glory alike, which accordingly unite under the one general term Sophia. God not only possesses in Sophia the principle of his self-revelation, but it is in this Sophia which is his eternal divine life, the sum and unity of all his attributes,” Sergei Bulgakov, The Wisdom of God. trans. Rev. Patrick Thompson, Rev. O. Fielding Clarke and Xenia Braikevitc (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 54. In this way, humanity is to be understood as creaturely Sophia. Uncreated Sophia is the divinity; in human unity, we discover creaturely Sophia, the principle and foundation of humanity, that which makes us in the image and likeness of God.

[4] Obviously, another concern the early Christians had was whether or not outsiders and strangers were visiting for honest reasons, that is, whether or not they were scoping out the community to bring its members to the attention of Roman authorities. Nonetheless, the sign of communion was of utmost importance, and allowed for this tradition to continue beyond the time of persecution. Yet, the transformation which eventually allowed the catechumens (and other non-members of the Christian community) to remain in the sanctuary during the celebration of the creed and the eucharist can be understood by the fact that, as humans, they share, by their nature, a lesser kind of communion with members of the church. They are at once one with the church and yet still stand apart (as shown by the fact they cannot partake of communion).

[5] Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. J.M. Hussey and P.A. McNulty (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977), 67.

[6] Nikolai Gogol, Meditations on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. L. Alexieff. Ed. Archimandrite Lazarus (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1995), 37. He then acknowledges that the doors also represent our mouths and ears and they should be opened, upon which the curtain (if there is one) at the iconostasis is to be removed. “The curtain represents the doors on high which are opened when the attention of the mind is directed to the highest mysteries,” ibid.

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