Monday, April 20, 2009

A new law of existence

The following was stolen in its entirety from Fr Milovan's worthy blog, Again and Again, which you should visit anyway, in which case I wouldn't have to steal quite as much…
(I'm shameless! I even stole the icon!)


…strictly speaking, those who have accepted baptism, and kept the grace of baptism, should not die even a physical death; they die ‘by economy’, by a special dispensation, says St. Maximus the Confessor, the greatest theologian of our Church. They die by a special dispensation, so that the same judgment of Christ might be repeated in them, that death also be put to shame in them - as unjust…. And in those faithful, who keep the grace of baptism and are continually fed by the Body and Blood of Christ, the same judgment takes place in that occurred in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every time we perform a commandment, every time we participate worthily in the Body and Blood of Christ, we abolish death in us, we make death unjust…. Through Christ a new law of existence was inaugurated. What begins with an unjust death, or even with unjust suffering that leads to death, has glory, says St. Peter (cf. 1 Peter 4:13), and leads to life…. This is the new law, which the Lord established by His voluntary Passion, Cross and Resurrection.

—From The Enlargement of the Heart: ‘Be ye also enlarged’ (2 Corinthians 6:13) in the Theology of Saint Silouan the Athonite and Elder Sophrony of Essex by Archimandrite Zacharias Zachariou (South Canaan, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2006), pp. 238-241.

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