Prayers

[Prayers] [bsummary]

Lessons by our Holy Fathers

[Lessons by our Holy Fathers] [twocolumns]

Orthodox Destinations

[Orthodox Destinations] [bleft]

St Justin Popovich: The goal of a Christian is life in and contemplation of the Holy Trinity...

The goal of a Christian is life in and contemplation of the Holy Trinity.

According to St. Isaac, love is “the primal contemplation of the Holy Trinity.” “The first of the mysteries is called purity, and is attained through the performance of the commandments. But contemplation is the spiritual contemplation of the intellect.” It comes from “the mind’s entering into rapture and understanding both that which was and that which will be.

Contemplation is the vision of the intellect.
In it the heart is chastened, renewed, and cleansed of evil, becoming familiar with the mysteries of the Spirit and the revelations of knowledge, rising from knowledge to knowledge, from contemplation to contemplation, and from understanding to understanding, learning and growing secretly until it is caught up into love, incorporated into hope, until joy takes up residence in its inmost parts, until it is lifted up to God and crowned with the natural glory of its own created being.”

Thus the mind “is purified and endowed with mercy, actually being counted worthy to contemplate the Holy Trinity.” For there are three sorts of natural contemplation in which the mind “is uplifted, active and engaged”: “two are of the created world—of the rational and the non-rational, the spiritual and the bodily; and the third is the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.”

St Justin Popovich

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