The Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas-- Sharing the Same Life with God

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

The Second Sunday of Great Lent is called the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, since we remember this great Church Father in a special way, because he reminds us concerning our goal: to take part in the same life with God.

    We human beings desire to share the same life with God.  Although our modern culture tries to convince us that death is natural, death still brings to us deep anxiety and sorrow, and only with great patience we achieve peace after the death of our loved ones.  We rarely suffer anxiety and sorrow over something that is purely natural.  But death is not natural.  We learn about this truth from the pages of Holy Scripture.  In the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, that great king of Israel tells us: “God did not make death, neither does He rejoice in the destruction of the living.  For He made all things that they might have being, and the generations of the world so that they might be preserved; For there was no poison of death in them. Nor was the reign of Hades on the earth. For justice is undying. But the ungodly summoned death by their words and works; Although they thought death would be a friend, they were dissolved. For they make a covenant with death, since they were deserving to share it in common.”  In this passage, we hear that our forefathers, Adam and Eve, are called “godless,” since by deed and word they departed from the presence of God.  But in the same book of the Wisdom of Solomon, the sacred author describes the whole plan of God, by which God Himself desires to save the human race and to renew His life in us.  It is no mystery to us just who these words describe: “Let us lie in ambush for the righteous man, because he is useless to us and opposes our deeds; he denounces us for our sins against the law and accuses us of sins against our upbringing.  He claims to have knowledge of God, and he calls himself a child of the Lord. He has become for us as a refutation of our purposes; Even seeing him is a burden to us, because his life is unlike that of others; for his paths go in a different direction.  We are considered by him as a hybrid, and he avoids our ways as something immoral. He considers the last things of the righteous as blessed and pretends that God is his Father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us put these things to the test at the end of his life. For if the righteous man is a son of God, He will help him, and deliver him from the hand of those who oppose him.  Let us test him with insult and torture that we may know his gentleness and test his patient endurance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for there shall be a visitation because of his words.  So they reasoned these things and were led astray, for their malice blinded them.  They did not know the mysteries of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness, nor judge the reward of the blameless souls.  For God created man for immortality, and made him an image of His own eternity.  But death entered the world by the envy of the devil, and those of his portion tempt it.”  It ought to be a source of wonder to us that the sacred author wrote these things so many centuries before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

     We have always wanted to share the life of God, and God always wanted us to have a share in it, but we received death because of our sins.  Now we are able again to inherit that share in the same life with God through the Mysteries of Christ.  Things which share the same life we call by the same name.  In other words, we human beings become God by grace, according to the aphorism of St. Athanasius the Great: God became man, so that man might become God.  We do not become God by nature, but we become God by grace.  We begin to receive this share of the life of God in this life.  We take part in God through His energy, and we see and know God by His energy.  Saint Gregory Palamas suffered greatly for this principle, but, in the end, he attained the victory through his heroic deeds.

     This is the faith of the Catholic Church—that we are able to see, to know God, and to take part in His life, if we live a life of penance and sincere prayer.  This principle of St. Gregory Palamas is the goal of Great Lent.