Омилия о Православной вере 222

God is One, before all, above all, in all, and above all (Rom. 9:5; Eph. 4:6), whom we worship and believe in as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. One is in the Trinity, the Trinity is unfused and inseparably distinguished (according to Hypostases). The same omnipotent God is both Unity and Trinity. The Father is beginningless, not only because He is above time, but also because He does not have anyone as the cause of His existence. He alone is the Beginning, Root and Source of the Divinity, which features we see in Him in relation to the Son and the Holy Spirit. He alone is the initial Cause of beings, not only in the sense that He is the Creator, but also as the One Father of the One Son, and the One Originator of the One Holy Spirit. He is eternal, and He alone is eternally both the Father and the Maker. He is greater than the Son and the Spirit, but only in the sense that He is the Beginning; because in all other respects He is one with Them and equal with Them. The Son is One, beginningless, because He is above time; but He is not without beginning in the sense that He has the Father as His Beginning, Root and Source. He came from the One Father before all ages, incorporeally, not by radiation, passionlessly, and begotten; but being God from God, He was inseparable from the Father. As God, He (by His divine being) is not different from the Father, but as the Son, He (by His Hypostasis) is different from Him, for He is eternal and eternally the Son, and then the One Son. Unmerged He is eternally with the Father. He is not the Beginning and Cause of the Divinity contemplated in the Trinity, since He has His Beginning and Cause (of being) in the Father; but for the reason that everything was created through the Son, He is the Cause and Beginning of everything that exists (in the world). Being the image of God, He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but exhausted Himself in fulfillment of time, having received our image from the Ever-Virgin Mary, and by the favor of the Father and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, He was conceived according to the law of nature, and was born, being both God and Man. Having truly become Man, He became like us in everything, with the exception of sin (1 Pet. 2:22). Being truly God, He remained what He was, uniting within Himself inextricably and invariably two natures and two wills and two actions (divine and human). And He continued to be the One Son in one Person also after He became Man, performing all divine actions as God, and all human actions as Man, and submitting to ordinary human infirmities. As God, He remained passionless and immortal, and as Man, He voluntarily suffered in the flesh, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day. After the Resurrection, He also appeared to the Disciples and announced to them the power from above. He commanded them to teach all nations and to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to observe and teach all that He commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). He ascended into Heaven, sat down at the right hand of the Father, and created our nature equal in glory, co-throne and deified; in this same nature He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead and to reward everyone according to his deeds. When He ascended to His Father, He sent the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father, to His holy Disciples and Apostles. The Holy Spirit is also above time, beginningless together with the Father and the Son; but He is not without beginning in the sense that He has the Father as His Root, Source and beginning, and (comes from the Father) not by birth. He is without beginning, as He who comes from the Father, because He came from the Father before all ages, not through flow and passion, or by birth, but by procession. He is not separated from the Father and the Son for the reason that He comes from the Father and rests on the Son. He has this unity with Them without merging, and the difference is inseparable. He is God and from God; this must be understood not in the sense that it is one thing - that He is God, and another - that He is the Comforter, but He is the Hypostatic Spirit with His Face, emanating from the Father and sent through the Son, that is: manifested through the Son, being Himself the Beginning of everything that exists in the world. He is the Beginning of everything that exists in the sense that in Him everything is brought to its perfection. The same Spirit is also equal to the Father and the Son, with the exception of personal properties, namely, that He is neither unbegotten (like the Father) nor begotten (like the Son). He was sent by the Son to His Disciples, i.e. He revealed Himself to them. Because how else can we understand that He Who is omnipresent could “come” to me? How else can we understand that He who is not separate from Him could have been sent by Him? Therefore, He is “sent” not only by the Son, but also by the Father and through the Son, and Himself comes to reveal Himself. Because the effect of the message is a common matter (of the Persons of the Holy Trinity), and especially in relation to the manifestation of the Spirit. He does not reveal Himself by His (Divine) nature - because no one has ever seen or proclaimed the nature of God (John 1:18) - but sometimes we manifest ourselves. in the action of grace, power and action, which is common to the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Because, on the one hand, in the Holy Trinity we observe Three Persons, to Whom belong personal properties that belong to each Hypostasis separately. On the other hand, not only the supernatural essence of the Trinity is a common property of the Persons, which transcends any name, indication and participation, but also common to Them: grace, power, action, radiance, norm and immortality, and in short, all that according to which God communicates and unites by grace with the holy Angels and with people. The Holy Spirit is not deprived of His Simplicity due to the distribution and due to the difference of Persons in the Trinity, or due to the difference of powers and actions in the seven distributions. Thus, Almighty God is One, in One Divinity for us. Because neither the plurality of perfect Persons could ever happen, nor could we speak of the Self-Powerful One as giving Himself into plurality because He possesses power and powers. In addition to this, we honor the image of the Son of God, who by becoming Man for our sake became describable (in the flesh), raising our veneration of the image to the Prototype. We also honor the holy Tree of the Cross and all the symbols of His Passion, as divine trophies against the common enemy of our race. But we also honor the saving sign of the Holy Cross, sacred churches and places, sacred vessels and words spoken by God, because God dwells in them. In the same way, we also venerate the icons of all the Saints because of our love for them and for God, whom they truly loved and served; in this veneration, raising our minds to those depicted in these icons. We also venerate the Relics of the Saints, seeing that the sanctifying grace of their most sacred bones did not become scarce, just as the Divinity did not retreat from the Sovereign Body during His Three-Day Death. We know that by its nature nothing is evil, nor the beginning of evil is anything other than the error from the right path of people gifted with reason who abused the free will given to them by God. We love all church traditions, both written and unwritten, and most of all the most mysterious and most holy Service (of the Divine Liturgy), Communion and the meeting in the Church, in which (the service) and all other services are brought to a divine goal. These most sacred actions are performed in sacred and divine rites, according to His divine commandment and the action performed by Himself, in memory of Him who humbled Himself, without exhaustion, took on flesh and suffered for us. We reject and anathematize all those who do not confess and believe what the Holy Spirit has spoken through the Prophets; who deny what the Lord, revealing Himself in the flesh, announced to us; that the Apostles whom He sent preached; and that our Fathers and those who succeeded them taught us, but who instead believe either in the principles of their own heresies or follow to the end those who led in a bad way. We accept with love the Holy Ecumenical Councils: the Council of Nicea, composed by 318 God-fearing Fathers, who gathered against the God-fighter Arius, who wickedly blasphemed the Son of God, reducing Him to creation, and dissecting the Divinity, which is worshiped in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into created and uncreated; also (we accept) the Council of Constantinople, composed of 150 holy Fathers 223, gathered against Macedonius, who blasphemed the Holy Spirit, not recognizing His Divinity, and against the teaching of Apollinaris, who wickedly taught regarding the incarnation of the Son of God; also - the Council of Ephesus, consisting of 200 Fathers who gathered against Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who incorrectly understood the personal unity of Divinity and Humanity in Christ, and did not want to call the Virgin, who truly gave birth to God, “Theotokos”; also - the Fourth Council, in Chalcedon, where 630 Fathers gathered against Eutyches and Dioscorus, who taught that in Christ there is one nature; also - the Council in Constantinople, where 165 Fathers gathered against Theodore and Diodorus, who in their writings held the same opinion as Nestorius and were accomplices of his heresy - and against Origen, Didymus, and a certain Evagrius, who lived before them, and who tried to introduce certain fables (pagan fictions) into the Church; also - the Council, which was after this Council of Constantinople, and assembled in the same city, consisting of 170 Fathers, gathered against Sergius, Pyrrhus and Paul, who had the throne of Constantinople, who denied that in Christ there are two actions and two wills corresponding to the two natures of the God-man; finally - the Second Council in Nicaea, where 367 Fathers gathered against the iconoclasts. We also accept all those holy Councils that were gathered by the grace of God at various times and in various places to establish the right faith and Christian morality; Among them are those Councils that were assembled in the great City (Constantinople) in the famous Church of the Holy Wisdom of God, against Barlaam the Calabrian and with him Akindinus, who agrees with that teaching and hastens to avenge him through deception. They carry out a teaching that says that the grace that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit possess together is created, and is that light of the future age - by the power of which the righteous will also shine like the sun, which Christ showed us in advance when he was filled with light on Mount Tabor - and that in general all the power and action (energy) of the Trinitarian Deity is created, like all other properties of the Divine nature, which in itself, is different (i.e. uncreated). These people wickedly dissect the one Divinity into the created and the uncreated, and at the same time they brand as bi-theists and polytheists those who piously reverence that divine (Taborian) Light as uncreated, and all the power and action (energy) of the Divinity as divine; They stigmatize Orthodox believers in this way, on the basis that, as they say, none of the properties of God are spoken of as relating to His nature. But we reject both those (followers of Barlaam) and others (followers of Akindinus), as being both atheists and polytheists; and we, who believe in the one and at the same time trinitarian and omnipotent Divinity - Who is in no way deprived of His unity and simplicity (nature) due to powers or Persons - completely cut off those from the fullness (assembly) of Orthodox believers, just as the matchmaker, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ did through the “Synodal” and “Svyatogorsk” Tomov." Moreover, we expect the resurrection of the dead and the endless life of the next century. Amen. This conversation is not placed among the Conversations of St. Gregory Palamas, printed by Min. In an English translation, it was published by the “Brotherhood of St. Mark of Ephesus” in their organ: “The Vineyard” in Lent 1968 on pages 4 and 8. As the publishers point out, according to tradition, it was pronounced by the Saint at his episcopal consecration. The translation of this omilia from English into Russian is given below. The printed text here has an omission, which we have filled in here. In some places, for the sake of clarity, the text has been paraphrased. You might be interested in: