(II) 12. St. Isaac the Syrian. (Ascetical Homilies. Homily 9027)


Our task, which we set before us, was to show what Christianity talks about, what (what is the Gospel, the Good News) the Church preaches, namely: God is Love, the salvation of the world, deification, the resurrection of everything has already occurred, death is destroyed, hell is overcome, eternal life is granted to all, Happiness and necessarily all created hypostases will sooner or later accept it and God will be all in all.28 I did not aim to convince anyone (this is impossible with words!)29, I only tried to help understand what the Church proclaims, and whether it is really so or not – you should check for yourself, having weighed all the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’, whether to trust the Church, which testifies about this (in my opinion (I say this, considering our weakness), there is no objective reason not to trust the Church – if you see such obstacles on the way to trust in the Church, I will gladly help you clear this path to the Church – by communicating via e-mail). If you need what the Church proclaims (i.e., Happiness), then you can read on, but if not, do not strain your eyes and do not waste time on ‘nothing’, because further we will talk about what needs to be done to enter into possession of the Gift, Happiness, given to us. Because understandably (taking into account everything said above), we must act (God has accomplished everything – saved, resurrected, deified, made us happy), the word is now with us: ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God’s loving call to full Happiness, Being. Therefore, the Church not only talks about Happiness but also says how to be Happy, under what conditions Happiness (= the Kingdom of God) is revealed and we become capable of containing it. The Church asserts that one can be saved (accept the Gift of deification, resurrection; salvation as acceptance of the Gift – this is the process of revealing the God-human reality and hypostatizing it by created hypostases) only in the Church (the Head of the Body of the Church, the Son of God, says that ‘no one comes to the Father except through the Son’!). That is, Happiness appears in the Church and is assimilated in the Church, that is, one can be Happy ONLY in the Church. And what is the Church? We will start the next sections with the answer to this question, in which we will try to talk a bit about how to verify the truth of the Gospel and become a believer (or better said – capable of containing faith (= experiencing God, knowing Him), which is a Gift of God), that is, Happy, a participant of the Church, a member of the Body of Christ.”

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