QUOTE:A patient, to be healed must be touched, and humanity had to be touched by Christ. Humanity was not in heaven, so only through the incarnation could it be healed. Besides, it was no more inconsistent with His divinity to assume a human body than a heavenly body because all created beings are on a level beneath the deity. Hence, abundant honor is now due to the instrument of His birth. (The Great Catechism, Gregory of Nyssa, ca. 335-336 AD)
COMMENTARY:
In order for the physical world to be restored, God had to become part of it. In His taking on physicality, the seed of divinity was planted in the material. This seed continues to grow and flower, and as time progresses, the effects of the cure become more and more visible. However, the corruption runs so deep that the observer might be hard pressed to draw this conclusion. One must take the long view for this healing to become apparent. To see the healing one must compare where humanity was two-thousand years ago to where humanity is today. Only then does the healing touch of the God-man begin to come into focus. Ask yourself this: would I want in a world where of pre-medicine, pre-hygiene, pre-refrigeration, pre-abolishment of slavery, where women and children were property, and so on? Overcoming these maladies are the healing touch of the Christ. “Abundant honor is now due to the instrument of His birth.”
What a brave and strong statement Father Carlos makes here. An observation made valid by viewing history correctly.
ReplyDeleteRemember, "BC" when it meant "Before Christ"?
I have often mused how that, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every great English Languge University founded in America, if not the world, was founded first to train men to freely preach the Gospel.
All of the great so-called "sciences" came out of this freedom whose basis is none other than "the glorious liberty of the Sons of God".
But that was then,this is now.
Its foundations ignored, these institutions- which now axiomatically may be called ignorant- have led a movement that objectifies the physical. What the New Testament again and again calls either "creature" or "creation" is set over and against humanity as a category to be studied, and ultimately exploited, too many times for fulfil a lust for power or greed.
Instead of filling up all that Divinity becoming part of the Creation means, too often I have followed the way of the world and ignored the "ktisis", the creature/creation that I am, and foolishly sought to ignore it by leapfrogging from it over my soul/psyche in an attempt to become "spiritual".
However, separating and then ignoring the physical and psychological only made me a victim to their many and varied addictions, desires and complexes, and left me wide open to many counerfeit spiritual influences.
What I thought was the Spirit, was only my ignored bodily and psychologically valid impulses. What I thought was God's will, were my Ego driven demands.
I deceived myself.
When will I finally learn, that I am truly
In-divisible?
Only the Word of God is sharp enough, "piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit".
And that Word, is the Lord Jesus Christ.
No surgeon ever born could lay me on an operating table, and with the sharpest steel or most revealing laser EVER divide my body from my spirit from my soul from my intellect from my physiology , etc., etc.
To the contrary, I have come to see that it is Gods will for me to fill up COMPLETELY, what it means to be KTISIS, a creature.
In fact, just as in heaven the angels look down in wonder at the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ acheiving righteousness in my flesh, Ktisis/Creation itself waits in wonder too.
"For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." Rom 8:19
"Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Rom 8:21,22
"Christ did not get baptized by John the Baptist so that the waters might cleanse Him, but that He might cleanse the waters."
Father Carlos Miranda
AMEN!
The wonders of this Modern Age, with the advancements of medicine, hygeine, refrigeration, etc. etc., are, to Historical Churchmen like myself, as much a proof of His Lordship as His Resurrection was.
In fact, it is the natural and logical extension of His Resurrection Life in and through Ktisis/Creation.
My task is to participate fully in it.
To participate actively in the Healing of Ktisis/Creation.
Markus,
ReplyDeleteOne on the sad side affects of today's popular theology is that we need not polish brass on a sinking ship. In otrher word, this will all be destroyed so why bother with it? This misses the whole pont of the incarnation, and its healing of the world. I appraciate your comment, it stands diectly against this popular theology.