6. Certain features of the
spiritual and theological tradition, common to the various Churches of the East
mark their sensitivity to the forms taken by the transmission of the Gospel in
Western lands. The Second Vatican Council summarized them as follows:
"Everyone knows with what love the Eastern Christians celebrate the sacred
liturgy, especially the Eucharistic mystery, source of the Church's life and
pledge of future glory. In this mystery the faithful, united with their
bishops, have access to God the Father through the Son, the Word made flesh who
suffered and was glorified, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And so, made
'sharers of the divine nature' (2 Pt 1:4) they enter into communion with
the most holy Trinity."(11)
These features
describe the Eastern outlook of the Christian. His or her goal is participation
in the divine nature through communion with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In
this view the Father's "monarchy" is outlined as well as the concept
of salvation according to the divine plan, as it is presented by Eastern
theology after Saint Irenaeus of Lyons and which spread among the Cappadocian
Fathers.(12)
Participation in
Trinitarian life takes place through the liturgy and in a special way through
the Eucharist, the mystery of communion with the glorified body of Christ, the
seed of immortality.(13) In divinization and particularly in the sacraments,
Eastern theology attributes a very special role to the Holy Spirit: through the
power of the Spirit who dwells in man deification already begins on earth; the
creature is transfigured and God's kingdom inaugurated.
The teaching of
the Cappadocian Fathers on divinization passed into the tradition of all the
Eastern Churches and is part of their common heritage. This can be summarized
in the thought already expressed by Saint Irenaeus at the end of the second
century: God passed into man so that man might pass over to God.(14)
This theology of divinization remains one of the achievements particularly dear
to Eastern Christian thought.(15)
On this path of
divinization, those who have been made "most Christ - like" by grace
and by commitment to the way of goodness go before us: the martyrs and the
saints.(16) And the Virgin Mary occupies an altogether special place
among them. From her the shoot of Jesse sprang (cf. Is 11:1 ). Her
figure is not only the Mother who waits for us, but the Most Pure, who - the
fulfillment of so many Old Testament prefigurations - is an icon of the Church,
the symbol and anticipation of humanity transfigured by grace, the model and
the unfailing hope for all those who direct their steps towards the heavenly
Jerusalem.(17)
Although strongly
emphasizing Trinitarian realism and its unfolding in sacramental life, the East
associates faith in the unity of the divine nature with the fact that the
divine essence is unknowable. The Eastern Fathers always assert that it is
impossible to know what God is; one can only know that he is, since he revealed
himself in the history of salvation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.(18)
This sense of the
inexpressible divine reality is reflected in liturgical celebration, where the
sense of mystery is so strongly felt by all the faithful of the Christian East.
"Moreover,
in the East are to be found the riches of those spiritual traditions which are
given expression in monastic life especially. From the glorious times of the
holy Fathers that monastic spirituality flourished in the East which later
flowed over into the Western world, and there provided a source from which
Latin monastic life took its rise and has often drawn fresh vigor ever since.
Therefore, it is earnestly recommended that Catholics avail themselves more
often of the spiritual riches of the Eastern Fathers which lift up the whole
man to the contemplation of the divine mysteries."(19)
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