in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I would like today to dwell on what is possibly one of the most famous sentences in the entire corpus of the writings of our holy fathers, and indeed one of the most important. And having dwelt on that sentence and what it means, to share a few others from the same author that I find so very powerful and encouraging in the spiritual life. The sentence in question comes from the writings of our holy hierarch St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the great Cappadocian fathers, the most poetically minded of the three whom we usually think of under that title, the others being St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Basil of Caesarea. St. Gregory of Nazianzus was a deeply poetic figure, a solitary by inclination, but called by God through the instigation of his brethren and others to a life of defense of the faith and articulation of spiritual truth in the face of the ongoing heretical disputes of his generation. The text

from which I want to begin is St. Gregory's 101st epistle, as it's numbered in the Corpus that we have today, which is written to Clonus. I'm sure that many of you have encountered this letter before and perhaps read it, but certainly, you will have heard this phrase: That which he God has not assumed, he has not healed; but that which is united to his godhead is also saved. That which God has not assumed, he has not healed; but that which is united to him, to the godhead, he has saved. This single sentence, in all of its compactness and beauty, is perhaps the best summary that we have in all of patristic testimony to the nature of the Incarnation as a saving reality for humankind. God became man in order that man might become God, something the same Saint writes elsewhere, as had others before him. God takes his Humanity unto himself, that we might be united to his divinity, and the nature of that salvation, the soteriological reality of that Incarnation, lies precisely in what the

saint here discloses. God saves us by uniting us to Himself. It's not simply an act of forgiveness of sins, though forgiving sins is essential. If the barrier of our sin remains something that divides us always from God, unforgiven and unhealed, then of course no spiritual progress can be made. But forgiveness in and of itself is not the nature of salvation. Salvation consists in our humanity being deified, being united to God Himself, and lifted up into that divine and eternal life. That which He has not assumed, He has not healed. St. Gregory, of course, is arguing this in the context of the ongoing disputes with Apollinarius and others in the post-Arian era of many doctrinal conflicts. And he's specifically arguing against the notion prevalent in some of those writers and thinkers that the Lord assumed humanity but without a human mind, or without a human soul, or without a human will, as was variously expressed in different versions of this line of thought. And in response to that, St. Gregory insists, No, Christ must assume in

the Incarnation, the whole of human nature, because what he doesn't assume, he doesn't heal, for healing is the act of being assumed into his life. This extraordinary testimony summarizes in a profound way the nature of our conversion into Christ. By that Incarnation, we love him deeply, we want to follow him, and yet for all that desire, for all that hope and will, unless he comes and takes our flesh and heart and mind and soul and all that we are and draws it into himself, there is no hope for that life of eternity. And the good news, the gospel of salvation, is that he has done precisely this. He has assumed all that is to say, he has assumed the whole of my nature, that the whole of me might be redeemed if only I will follow him repentantly, receiving that adoption. With that passage in mind, I want to read another from him, this coming from one of his theological texts, and it's something that builds on what he says in that letter, or rather the same sentiments expressed in

that letter in a way that deals with the joy and the awe that we have standing before the Risen God in Pascal resurrectional Glory. Speaking on the Feast of pasca, St Gregory naanis writes this another of his very famous passages, oration 1 section 4. Yesterday I was crucified with him. Today I am glorified with him. Yesterday I died with him. Today I am quickened with him. Yesterday I was buried with him. Today I Rise with him. And as he writes in the next uh paragraph of the same oration, Let us become like Christ since Christ became like us. Let us become gods for his sake since for our sake he became man. He assumed the worse that he might give us the better. He assumed the poor that through his poverty we might become rich. He took upon himself the form of a servant that we might receive back Freedom. He came down that we might be lifted up. He was tempted that we might conquer. And so in response to all of

that the saint writes we ought to give our lives. We cannot, of course, have it in our power to assume the godhead. That is a gift of God's mercy towards us, assuming our nature. But in light of all that he has done and is doing for us, let us respond with the wholeness of our being towards him, with energy and zeal, giving of ourselves to the one who first gave himself for us. As the saint writes a little later, let us give all, offer all to him who gave himself, or in another place, let us give ourselves, the possession most precious to God and most fitting. Let us give back to the image that which was made after the image. My dear brothers and sisters, such beauty comes to us from our saints, but it is a beauty not simply of emotion or expression. It is a beauty of the reality of the life we live. God has given himself, united us to himself, that we might be joined to him, saved by being assumed into his life. May we attain that.

great gift that he so freely offers, and live with him forever. Amen. [Music]

Why Jesus Became Fully Human

Why Jesus Became Fully Human

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