We need the authentic experience of God’s grace, as every Christian in the history of the Church needs it. It is just that in our days the difficulty of obtaining it seems greater.
This experience works out the greatness of the “new” man, that is, the one who has been transported into a state of remaining human and not being… human. All this mean that the authentic Christian is very human. He brings out and honors his human nature; he does not despise it; he is not ashamed of it; he does not do it injustice. Therefore he understands the weaknesses of others and his own potential. Man is small and big at the same time.
He is a man deep and wide at the same time. It is a mystery inscrutable to himself and to everyone. His life has truth and love, his freedom to receive and his freedom to offer. That’s why he is very philanthropic and social. He is not saved alone, he communicates salvation. He can be emptied of his selfishness therefore he can be united with God and his brothers.
Moreover, authenticity helps the Christian to operate constantly on the borderline between God and man, between reason and mystery, between divine love and human suffering, between freedom and obedience. It inspires him to move in the beyond of personal space, of the human measure, of cosmic time, of the ego. It is on these frontiers that God is hidden; it is on these frontiers that one meets the brother, eternity, grace, truth, God Himself.
When our reason is challenged, faith is born. When we risk our emotions, grace arises. When we deny our will, we experience His love in us. When we contract our self, God is potentially resurrected in us.
Authentic experience is religious experience, martyrdom, apostolic and prophetic. This has exercise, sweat, blood, pain, suffering, testimony and humble confession. The authentic Christian lives joy through practice, deprivation, sacrifice. He lives hope through pain, illness, the subtle confirmation of God’s grace, the constant expectation of the sign, which he does not ask for but expects and when it comes it does not surprise him. He lives humility through His blessings and joys. All this is based on faith.
In the face of the brother he meets Christ himself. Beside him he is humbled, endures, is embroidered. With him he shares the fall, faith, life, grace, salvation. With him he is united. Differences underline freedom, diversity underlines the uniqueness of each person as an image of God, contrasts humble, and commonalities facilitate unity. The sins, the trials, the virtues, the divine interventions in one’s life are also in the life of the other. Everything is communicated. The foundation of this situation is love.
But the authentic Christian also clearly discerns the vanity of the world, the fluidity and impermanence of time, the perishability of materials, the deception of “here” and “now”, the brutality of human manners, the brutality of strong logic. That is why it is constantly operating in the “hereafter”. Instead of the now he lives for the now and instead of the here he feeds on the heavens. This mindset is fueled by divine hope.
“Faith, hope, love – the three”. These three are the foundation of the authentic experience of every Christian. It is these three that make up the “other” logic.
This reasoning makes him thin and noble in nature, frugal in manners and latent in choice. He becomes penetrating, insightful and transparent. But in his face God is reflected, from within him his grace shines. You see him and confess that “the Lord lives”. He lives the true God. That which cannot be seen physically cannot be understood through meditation.
At the same time he is great because he is always whole, whole and with everyone. Next to him you live his distance, but you feel with him. He’s never alone. Not only with some. Not with a few. There’s room for everyone. God shines through him.
It is this authenticity that makes the Christian not to be a worldly “modern” – a superficial imitator and passive expresser of the habits of the age he lives in. But to be “contemporary” in the sense of embodying God’s eternal message in the present. He embodies the tradition of the Church but also the image of its end. He is the man par excellence who connects the “ancient beauty” with “the future glory that is to be revealed”. A beauty and a glory that not only demonstrates the greatness of man, but above all refer to the “beyond all men” divine beauty and to the “gloriously given” Trinitarian divinity.
Authenticity, truthfulness, even if it betrays weaknesses, inadequacy, incompleteness of man, is the way to perfection and holiness. On the contrary, the adulterated mind, compromise, the false beautified image drowns the energy of God’s grace and makes man neglect the mystery and His divinity.
In this sense, the authentic man becomes not only a model of moral perfection, but above all he is transformed into a vessel for the manifestation of doctrinal truths. He lives his psychosomaticity, the harmony of his human nature and his divine destiny in Christology. He experiences the formation of the trinity of his soul and the communion of love with the Trinitarian brethren. It lives and reveals the divine economy in its entirety: the condescension of the divine Incarnation, the Trinitarian revelation of the Baptism, the glorious and “unitive alteration” of the divine Transfiguration, the revelatory depth and divine glory of the Last Supper, the emptying of the passion, the renewal and perfection of all things through the Resurrection, the deification of human nature through the Ascension, the outpouring of the spiritual gifts of Pentecost, the birth and march of the ecclesiastical holiness in the ocean of history, and finally the expectation of the end.
Metropolitan Nicholas of Messogaia and Lavreotiki
