When we speak of beauty that is not merely an external and fleeting spectacle or an aesthetic category, but a power that saves the world, then Mount Athos, through its very existence and way of life, has something to tell us—for it is called the Garden of the Theotokos and the Mountain of the Transfiguration.
And the Theotokos, according to the hymnography of the Church, is: the all-pure and full-of-grace Virgin, “adorned with the beauty of the virtues,” who received “the radiance of the Spirit,” “the beauty-bestowing comeliness,” namely the God-man Lord, “who adorned all creation.”
Yet, in order to approach with the required reverence and to understand the mystery of the beauty that saves, we must not forget that beauty is not one thing, love another, and goodness yet another. “The Good is hymned by the sacred theologians both as good, and as beauty, and as love, and as beloved… and as that which calls all things to itself; hence it is also called beauty.” That is to say, God—who is love and ineffable beauty—creates all things “very good.” And through beauty He calls all creation to participation in life.
By heeding the call of divine beauty, the human being becomes a participant in the blessed life of the Holy Trinity. By resisting and disobeying, one creates the hell of non-communion, the curse of unnatural ugliness, which does not save but destroys both the human person and creation.
And we must not forget that, besides the true beauty which calls and saves, there also exists a counterfeit beauty—one that provokes and destroys,
because it is not a manifestation of goodness but a mere appearance of beauty, and it functions as a lure. It dazzles and ensnares the human person, leading ultimately to enslavement and destruction, while promising a salvation that seems—by a kind of magic—easy and effortless.
Within this struggle, and in the trial of choosing between kinds of beauty, the history of the human being and of humanity unfolds:
Which beauty will draw us more strongly? To which shall we submit ourselves?
From the very beginning, a certain beauty led us astray—a beauty that destroyed us—because we separated it from love and obedience to God. We moved hastily and recklessly. “Fair to the sight and good for food was the fruit that brought me death.”
In the new creation, once again, a woman becomes the occasion of salvation. The unknown and worldly insignificant, yet humble and undefiled Virgin of Nazareth is revealed as the “blessed among women”: she receives the archangelic greeting and conceives the Son and Word of God.
The beauty of the virtue of the righteous, the zeal of the Prophets, and the expectation of all humanity prepare and bring to birth the beauty and virtue of the Virgin.
The Virgin, through her holy humility and her voluntary obedience to the will of God, was revealed as the instrument of the salvation of the entire world. She is the “boundary between created and uncreated nature,” the “ladder by which God descended,” and the bridge that “leads those on earth to heaven.”
Her child is God (God the Word), and God is the child whom she herself gave birth to. As a “mother beyond nature and a virgin according to nature,” she lives, through the Holy Spirit, the motherhood of perpetual virginity and enjoys the virginity of divine motherhood. She unites heaven and earth.
And while we had disfigured the beauty of the image of God, God the Word becomes, through the immaculate blood of the Ever-Virgin, perfect man and “mingles the sullied image with divine beauty.”
God the Word did not appear merely outwardly, but mingled our entire nature “with divine beauty.”
The salvation of the human person is understood and lived as participation in, and restoration to, the primordial beauty.
Divine beauty saves the human person not magically, without his awareness, nor from the outside by force—for that would demean him. On the contrary, the human person is saved by being honored: by becoming himself a creator, a source of beauty and salvation for many, “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” From his whole being, as thanksgiving, is born the doxology to God.
And the Virgin, as the one who gave birth to God, revealed human nature itself as capable of becoming Theotokos. Through the example and the help of the Panagia, every soul that enters stillness and is purified, submitting to the divine will, can become a Theotokos by grace: to conceive and to give birth to a small joy that surpasses death. Then the human person lives the visitation of Grace in his entire being, the visitation of the Panagia in his inner world. And he wonders, like Elizabeth: “And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
This presence of the Theotokos remains as the protection and the nurturing guardian of Mount Athos.
Fr. Vasileios Gondikakis
Source: “Peiraiki Ekklisia,” Monthly Magazine of the Holy Metropolis of Piraeus, May 2009.
