The Kingdom of God is accepted by faith and hidden “within us”. The King came in the form of a servant and reigned through the cross. It is the kingdom of “the world to come”, and only in the glory of his second coming will all people recognize the true king of the world. For those who believe and accept it, the kingdom is already here and now, “the Lord has come, the Lord is coming, the Lord will come again.” This statement contains the whole of Christianity’s victorious faith.[1]
The liturgy is, before everything else, a joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. It is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy. Beauty is never necessary, functional or useful; but when expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate with flowers and candles; we do this out of love, not necessity. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth. The Divine Liturgy’s order and essence is movement and ascent from what is the world and man’s fallen nature to the heavenly Sanctuary, Christ’s Table in Kingdom of God, with the Deification, Theosis, of man.[2] The assembling of the people as the church is the beginning of the Eucharistic celebration with its ending and completion being that of the Church’s entrance into heaven and sitting at the table of Christ in His Kingdom. Jesus bestowed this to us, “And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My Kingdom.” (Luke 22:29-30). Jesus’ lifetime on earth, in the fallen world, a world enslaved to sin and death, manifested the otherworldly, the divine light of the kingdom of God at the last supper. This is the eternal meaning and the eternal reality of this event. The Eucharistic experience of the Church provides the meaning of the last supper. The church apprehends it as her own ascent to the heavenly reality, which Christ has manifested and granted.[3] The Liturgy begins with a blessing focusing on the end result of the Liturgy, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” The Church is the living experience of the new life and is sacramental and symbolic by it’s very nature, and in the liturgical experience and the life of prayer, it is never severed from that end for the sake of which it was created and saved, the “God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) – ultimately, Theosis of His Creation.[4] The Church creates, manifests and fulfills herself in and through the sacraments especially the Holy Eucharist. It is the Sacrament of the world and its fulfillment as the Kingdom of God. The assembly of the Church, the ascent to the throne of God and the partaking of the banquet of the Kingdom, is accomplished in and through the Holy Spirit. The Church is a Sacrament of the Holy Spirit.[5] The relationship between Clergy and Laity is a synergistic relationship, each helping the other on their individual paths to salvation, with the Clergy as the shepherds, the leaders of the assembly, who are ordained by God for this purpose, which is immediately realized through the Work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and will be fully realized at the Lord’s Second Coming.
Theosis of God’s people will not be completed until the Second Coming of Jesus.
Through God’s love for humanity and our willing preparation and participation to receive the Lord through the Sacraments of the Church; Deification, Theosis, becomes possible for the person truly seeking son ship in the Kingdom of Heaven. Theosis, is the culmination of the truly repentant person turning back to God to restore his image to the image and likeness of God.
The Holy Trinity is intimately involved in the Theosis of each and every person who comes to God with a repentant heart for forgiveness and sanctification. In Romans 8:26 St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit not only brings us strength through the Church, but He empowers us in our weaknesses especially in prayer. He also refers to the Spirit Himself making intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered, which is considered by the Holy Fathers to be the highest form of prayer. The saving and deifying grace of the Holy Spirit is at work on a very personal level when a person comes to God with a truly repentant heart seeking forgiveness and sanctification through the Lord’s Ark of Salvation, the Church. We are never totally aware of how God is moving in our lives, how He is active in our existence. We do know that He is there, that “in Him we live, and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God’s existence in our lives remains only partially in our awareness.[6] The purpose of our Church attendance is at the outset for our own personal sanctification. St. Seraphim of Sarov said, “Save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.”; however, man is a worshiping being and as such we are inspired to practice the liturgical experience after the Liturgical service has ended.
We leave the assembly of believers, but the assembly never leaves us; we carry the liturgy with us into our daily lives, into the world, where we begin the liturgy of missions.[7] We, as Christians, are required to show the world the light, which the darkness of the world prefers to hide. We are required to communicate to the world the light which we have received in our own lives: “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mat 5:16). We are to display true forgiveness in a world of revenge and we are to comfort our fellow man in a world, which prefers to ravage. The commission given to the disciples on Pascha is one of forgiveness. “Receive the Holy Spirit, and if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained;” This is preceded by “As the Father has sent me, so do I send you”. St. Paul said in 2 Cor 5:18-20, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation….we are ambassadors for Christ…”. We are also to comfort because light and forgiveness do not automatically remove the hurt and pain in our lives. Christians look to God to receive comfort and strength from him and turn to the world to share with others the comfort they have received: “The God of all comfort….comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor 1:4). This is our mission and the ministry of the Church, commanded by the Lord: light, forgiveness and comfort.[8] The work you do within a community will reflect your devotion and dedication to the cause of Christ.[9] In looking into the whole picture of Orthodox parish life and interpersonal relations, we see that what begins with the praxis of the pastor, must then flow through the communal relations of the people of the parish and ultimately into the world. Providing a truly Christian way of life for all those living between the First and Second Coming of the Lord.
Because the Second Coming of the Lord has not happened yet, God’s reign on earth is not yet complete. When God’s reign on earth is completed at the Second Coming, the church’s purpose in God’s divine plan for man’s salvation will be fulfilled. In Orthodox Theology, the doctrine of man is based on the biblical view defined by the Church Fathers. Man has the potential for perfection because he was created in the image of God. Man was not created to be a slave in any fashion. When God created man, he created him as a whole being, and when man collapsed, he collapsed not partially but as a whole being. Likewise when man was redeemed, he was redeemed totally, body and soul. Through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, God enters into union with the whole man.[10] The Holy Spirit leads the plan of salvation to completion and final fulfillment through the Sacraments of the Church, which help man to restore God’s Image and Likeness within himself, Theosis, so man may be saved from death and bestowed with eternal life at the Lord’s Second Coming.
At the Resurrection service of our Lord on Easter Sunday morning, we hear the joyous message, “Christ is Risen from the Dead, Trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs, he bestowed eternal life”(Resurrection hymn). Orthodox Theology is a Theology of Hope. We focus our hope on “the empty tomb”.[11] As St. Paul said “and if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty….for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Cor 15:14, 22). Jesus Christ will come again and until that time, he continually calls us to Him and leads and receives those who seek His Kingdom of Heaven. He is our Father. We are His children, His inheritors through Jesus Christ.
This is our calling until the Lord’s Second Coming – to work out our salvation and achieve as much as possible, through the help of the Holy Spirit within the Church, our own personal Theosis.[12] We are again in the beginning, where our ascent to the table of Christ, in His kingdom, began. We depart into life, in order to witness and to fulfill our calling, Theosis. Each person has his own calling while living our lives between the Lord’s First and Second Coming, but it is also our common ministry with all the faithful, our common liturgy in the communion of the Holy Spirit.[13]
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[1] Op. Cit., The Eucharist, p. 42
[2] Ibid., p. 27
[3] Ibid., p. 200
[4] Ibid., p. 35
[5] Ibid., p. 26
[6] Op. Cit., Out of the Depths Have I Cried, p.1
[7] Op. Cit., And He Leads Them, The mind and Heart of Philip Saliba, p. 104
[8] Op. Cit., Parish Life and Changing Interpersonal Relationships, pp.61-62
[9] Op. Cit., And He Leads Them, The Mind and Heart of Philip Saliba, p. 182
[10] Op. Cit., And He Leads Them, The Mind and Heart of Philip Saliba, p.93
[11] Ibid., p.94
[12] Op. Cit., Partakers of Divine Nature, p. 24
[13] Op. Cit., The Eucharist, p. 245
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