03 February 2006
Patristic Quote for the Day
It therefore followed that each man's soul inherited the wickedness of the first Adam. It spread from his soul to his body, and from his body to the bodies which derived from his, and from those bodies to the souls. This, then, is the old man whom we have received as a seed of evil from our ancestors as we came into existence. We have not seen even one day pure from sin, nor have we ever breathed apart from wickedness, but, as the psalmist says, 'we have gone astray from the womb, we err from our birth' St. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, page 76-77
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And even the depth of our sinfulness cannot keep Him from us, cannot lessen His love for us, even His own Justice cannot bar Him from becoming us and being with us. See another section from St. Nicholas:
"Just as human affection, when it abounds, overpowers those who love and causesthem to be beside themselves, so God's love for men emptied God (Phil 2:7).... He seeks love in return and does not withdraw when He is treated with disdain. Heis not angry over ill treatment, but even when He has been repulsed He sits by the door (cf. Rev 3:20) and does everything to show us that He loves, evenenduring suffering and death to prove it....
"It was necessary, then, that the greatness of His love should not remainhidden, but that He should give the proof of the greatest love and by loving display the utmost measure of love. So He devised this self-emptying and carried it out, and made the instrument [i.e., Christ's human nature] by which He might be able to endure terrible things and to suffer pain. When he had thus proved by the things which He endured that He indeed loves exceedingly, He turned man, who had fled from the Good One because he had believed himself to be the object of hate, towards Himself....
"What could be equal to that affection? What has a man ever loved so greatly? What mother ever loved so tenderly (Is. 49:15), what father so loved his children? Who has ever been seized by such a mania of love for anything beautiful whatever, so that because of it he not only willingly allows himself to be wounded by the object of his love without swerving from his affection towards the ungrateful one, but even prizes the very wounds above everything?"
[Cabisalis, St. Nicholas. Tr. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. The Life in Christ (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.) pp.162-4.]
Amen! I would love to quote that whole book!!!! It is so full of goodies. God gave to St. Nicholas Cabasilas the ability to see things as they are in Him in such a simple way - and to express them so profoundly. I mean, think of it: who would have seen that ascending epiclesis (mentioned in his book on the Divine Liturgy) of the Western canon? But that's exactly what it is! Okay, okay. Enough gushing, but he is marvelous!
Do have the quote on, or the reference to, the "ascending epiklesis" of the Western Canon? I'd love to see it.
Alas, I do not have a copy of his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy at hand. The particular section to which he was referring in the Roman canon was the Supplices te rogamus:
Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: jube haec preferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae majestatis tuae...
We humbly beseech Thee, Almighty God, to command that these things be borne by the hands of Thy holy angel to Thine altar on high, into the presence of Thy divine majesty...
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