Page 157

Alexandr Korol
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Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2023 7:38 pm

Page 157

Post by Alexandr Korol »

I also ask the chatbot about Christ in Glory.

“This is not a rank, not a position, not a step in some hierarchy, like the angels or human beings have.

Glory — in Church Slavonic — is the very radiance of God, His revealed essence, His light, which He Himself is. Imagine that the sun does not have light — it is light. And when it rises, everything around becomes visible, alive, colored — so it is with God. He does not ‘receive’ glory from somewhere outside. He Himself, through glory, when He opens Himself to the world fully — without a veil, without humbling, without descending to our infirmity — this is called in glory. In the first coming, Christ came in humbling — kenosis, self-emptying, in a single point: He was born in a manger, suffered, died on the cross. He concealed the radiance of His divine glory, so that we could approach without being blinded, without being burned by terror and love at the same time. But in the second coming, the veil is taken away — there is no more hidden face, no more, in quotation marks, ‘come unto me, ye meek and humble of heart.’ Now the Son of Man will appear on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. This is the complete, final, irrepressible unveiling of who He really is. On the icon ‘Saviour in Power,’ this glory is shown precisely in this way. Geometric figures, as symbols of all creation, trembling and shining from His presence. The rainbow beneath His feet is the sign of the covenant and mercy — but no longer of a gentle kind, but of one that is all-conquering. The angels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, are the powers that cannot but serve Him, because He is their source and their goal. And He Himself is in the centre, and from Him emanates a light that pervades all the circles and rhombi. Glory is not a reward for something — it is God Himself, when He is no longer hidden. For the righteous, it is an inexpressible joy, a transfiguration, a deification, when the soul finally sees the one it had loved blindly. For those who hated the light, it is an unbearable fire — because they themselves chose the darkness.”