God’s face is known only when projected on the face of human beings. And you cannot know yourself unless you see beauty in the face of others, that is if you consider them “beautiful” as you think you are. You come from him (the other) when you realize that he is not “ugly”. And the other will not be yours if you do not accept by faith that God has lifted away from him all ugliness. And the lifting away of ugliness does not come from Man, but from grace, that is it comes down on you. And you establish a kinship with God in the sense that you become related to the Lord. And because He sees Himself in you, He makes Himself your kin conjoining Himself to you and that strengthens your kinship to Him.
Your beauty does not come from outside you for God bestows it on you so you can become what you are called to become; and if you acquire much glory, it becomes the natural means for others to see the Lord in you.
The reflection of the Divine glory on you is impossible if your eyes behold other than God. God is revealed in Nature and it is His mantle. And when you read Him in it, you will “ascend” to Him with that reading; yet the center of nature is the human being, and it is in him, above all, you can “ascend” to the Lord.
Yes God is revealed in nature but His loftiest revelations are in Man. And God offers Man His beauty freely though God is not in need of him; while Man derives his richness from God only, God being the source. And when God pours of His love on one of us, that love reaches to the others but it is not from us. Love is imparted from God to whoever wants and He helps him with it such that if the person builds his reality on that love, then that Love will be able to reach whoever one wants. Man is a carrier of the Divine love after it has acted in him and wrought him in the sense that it is a life that you live such that when others sense it in you they would say: “That’s how the power of God changes people”.
If you do not become a new person who authentically acts in love, you remain one who only speaks of love and not one who has tasted it and been changed by it. If the Lord becomes your ideal that is you have become someone who is turned to Him, you become in His likeness. And he who is illumined, becomes a god, that is a beginner in deification, acquiring the attributes of God and in communion with Him. This entails the dismissal of all false gods and pretentiousness, that is you have to purify yourself always so that you receive from God only what He wants for you in the hope of you giving to others what you have received. And if you look at the faces of the illumined believers, you will behold the one light of the one God who reveals Himself in the same way in this person or that.
The oneness of God is revealed in the oneness of His manifestations; then you are like your brother, yet each one of you keeps his own personality and that unique manifestation of God in it. Holiness does not imply the dissolution of one in another. The one who unites is God, and his manifestations in different people are different. Such a difference accounts for the communion of saints. Communion presupposes variety and plurality in the manifestations of holiness and its actions; one person has a Church rank while another does not, this one is a monk while the other is a married man, this one is a martyr while the other is not. The manifestations of holiness are different yet their essence is one, and it is one in the oneness of holiness since this unity is in the Lord himself who is our holiness and its giver.
Holiness does not mean spiritual perfection. That pertains only to God. But holiness means that you want it (holiness); it means that you seek to be nothing before God and you see yourself as nothing on the path of striving for holiness. That means that you should know that you are a sinner, a broken one on whom God will have mercy.
Yet when the devil suggests to a person to mar his “face” because he is bored of God, then the Light will leave him. His being will be destroyed or at least it will crack. Each one of us is prone to falling, and as far as being virtue is concerned, none is guaranteed. Virtue is the result of daily strife and an awareness of our fragility and God’s protection for us. You have to seek after the Divine help always when you are attacked with seduction of any kind; or we would be getting a ticket to take us to “hell” which will “burn” us in this world and the coming one.
God’s face might shine on you to remove the ugliness that has dwelled in you. That is the business of His love which can make you grateful. And beauty might come back to you suddenly and not in stages. You learn much about sin; it educates you, it makes you cry, it hurts you. Keep what it has taught you in mind; be concerned for the downfalls without panicking because the trust you have in the Lord is more powerful than fright. In that you are pampered by God. You are in the bosom of His Fatherhood until He takes you back to Him and you “sleep” (i.e. die) in His mercy.
Your coming back to God can be of importance in that the brethren can benefit from your repentance; if they find “beauty” in that (your repentance), you would draw them to the beauty of your face when your God was visiting you, and then, with them, you come back to the communion of saints and you would become the Body of Christ.
Then you would know the freshness of what you have been dreaming of as if you have been “kidnapped” to Heaven and all what is in you would sing until you hear the sound of angels making music around the Throne; and you wonder asking “how come the angels sing a new song to the Lord?”
This angelic situation can obtain here in this world as you go about your daily job and service. Heaven is not a place; it is the depth of existence in you or your own depth in existence and those “depths” are God who gives you life as He beholds you. And when His goodwill is on you, do not seek anything else because nothing can be added above that.
I meant to say that, in this world, God is with us and in us and He fills the universe. That does not mean that God is mingled with what is created as in pantheism; He is distinct from the Creation and is above it, but He is “strewn” in the universe or else He would be considered as “absent” from the creation. Therefore, as the Orthodox say, our relationship with Him comprises our seeing Him in His Energies; and when you see Him in you and in the universe then it means that you have accepted Him. But if you see Him “dissolved” in the material and psychic existence, then it means you had denied Him as Creator.
The issue here is that the Creator is always “up there” and always “down here”. And if you do not receive Him as one with you and in you, then there is no real creation (new birth). Creatorship carries createdness in the sense that the Lord, being the Creator, is in an ongoing movement towards you (the created) and you are always beholding Him. Creatorship has no end. The Lord did not make an object that He would throw away. He shepherds it or else it would become lifeless. All what is of our being of mind, spirit, soul and body exists through the Divine Providence; the former is an expression that implies the continuance of “creation” or in other words the continuance of God’s embrace (lit. bosoming) of the creature.
Between you and your Lord, there must be an encounter; that is your face is towards His face in order that His face would forge yours. And if you become intimate with Him to the point of constant companionship, then that would be a union – one in which there is no dissolution. He would “put you on” and you would “put Him on” as St. Paul says in 1Cor. 6: 17 “The one who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.”
At that words become powerless and tasting (experiencing) takes over.
Translated by Riad Moufarrij
Original Text: “وجه الله” –An Nahar- 26.11.2011
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