ABBOT AIMILIANOS OF SIMONOPETRA

ABBOT AIMILIANOS OF SIMONOPETRA

        In view of this miraculous happening in the late 1980’s, many other holy men and women who have experienced this same phenomenon of the Uncreated Light, we do not have to wait on the theologians to prove to us that the Uncreated Energies of God exist.   I constantly read in the lives of the Saints of Holy Orthodoxy that they experience the Uncreated Energies of God.  I personally have concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with Abbot Aimilianos of Simonopetra on Mount Athos who had experienced the Uncreated Light of God.  My experience in his presence cannot be explained in human terms.  I pray that you will be enlightened and blessed by the essay of Abbot Gregory.

+Fr. Constantine (Charles) J. Simones, Waterford, CT, USA, July 29, 2014, cjsimones300@gmail.com Taken from the blog Kandylaki

        Abbot Gregory tells us about the Uncreated Energies of God:  “In the Orthodox Church of Christ man can achieve deification because according to the teaching of the Holy Bible and the Fathers of the Church, the Grace of God is Uncreated.  God is not only Essence, as the Western Christian Church thinks; He is also Energy.  If God was only Essence, we could not unite with Him; we could not commune with Him, because the Essence of God is awesome and unapproachable for man in accordance with: “Man will never see His face and live.”  (Exodus 33:20).

        Let us mention a somewhat relative example from things human. If we grasp a live electric wire, we will die.  However, if we connect a lamp to that wire, we are illuminated.  We see, enjoy, and are assisted by the energy of the electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence.  Let us say that something similar happens with the Uncreated Energies of God.

        If we were able to unite with the Essence of God we too would become gods in essence.  In other words, everything would become as god, and there would be confusion so that, nothing would be essentially god.  In a few words, this is what they believe in the Oriental religions, e.g. in Hinduism, where the god is not a personal existence but an indistinct power dispersed through the entire world, in men, in animals, and in objects.  (Pantheism)

        Again, if God had only the Divine Essence—of which we cannot partake—and did not have His Energies, He would remain a self-sufficient God, closed within himself and unable to communicate with His creatures.

        God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and a Trinity in One.  As Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, and other Holy Fathers of the Church repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine love, a divine Eros for His creatures.  Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them.  This is expressed and realized by means of His Energy or, better, His Energies.

        With His Uncreated Energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it.  He gives essence and substance to our world through His essence creating energies.  He is present in nature and preserves the universe with His preserving energies.  He illuminates man with His illuminating energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies.  Thus, through His Uncreated Energies Holy God enters nature, the world, history and men’s lives.

        The Energies of God are Divine Energies.  They too are God but without being His Essence.  They are God, and therefore they can deify man.  If the Energies of God were not divine and uncreated, they would not be God and so they would not be able to deify us, to unite us with God.  There would be an unbridgeable distance between God and man. But by virtue of God having Divine Energies and by uniting with us by these Energies, we are able to commune with Him and to unite with His Grace without becoming identical with God, as would happen if we united with His Essence.

        So, we unite with God through His Uncreated Energies, and not through his Essence.  This is the mystery of our Orthodox Faith and life.

        Western heretics cannot accept this.  Being rationalists, they do not discern between the Essence and the Energy of God, so, they say that God is only Essence.  And for this reason they cannot speak about man’s deification, (θέωσις).  Because according to them, how could man be deified when they do not accept that the Divine Energies are Uncreated, but regard them as created? And how can something created, ε. g. something outside of God, deify created man?

       

In order not to fall into pantheism, they do not speak at all about deification (θέωσις). What then, according to them, remains as the purpose of man’s life, it is simply moral improvement.  In other words, since man cannot be deified by means of Divine Grace, the Divine Energies, what purpose does his life have?  The only purpose of life is that he becomes morally better.  But moral perfection is not enough for man.  It is not enough for us simply to become better than before, to perform moral deeds.  We have as our final aim to unite with God Himself.  This is the purpose of the Creation of the universe.  This is what we desire.  This is our joy, our happiness, and our fulfillment.

        The psyche (ψυχή) of man, who is created in the likeness and image of God, yearns for God and desires union with Him.  No matter how moral, how good man may be no matter how many good deeds he may perform, if he does not find God, if he does not unite with Him, he finds no rest.  Because God Himself placed this holy thirst within him he has the desire for union with Him, for deification (θέωσις).  Man has in himself this erotic power which he received from his Creator to love truly, strongly, selflessly, just as his Creator falls in love with His world, with His creatures.  This is so, that with this holy erotic impetus and loving power, man falls in love with God.  If man did not have the image of God in him, he would not be able to seek his prototype.  Each of us is an image of God and God is our prototype.  The image seeks the prototype and only when it finds it does it find rest.

        In the fourteenth century, there was a great upheaval in the Church which was provoked by the Western monk Balaam.  He heard that Athonite monks were talking about deification (θέωσις).  He was informed that, after much struggle, cleansing of the passions, and much prayer, the monks become worthy to unite with God, to have an experience of God, to see God.  He heard that they saw the Uncreated Light which the Holy Apostles had seen during the Transfiguration of our Savior Christ on Mount Tabor.

        But having the Western heretical rationalistic spirit, Balaam was unable to perceive the authenticity of these divine experiences of the humble  monks, and so, he began to accuse the Athonite monks as though it  was they who were deluded, heretical, and idolatrous.  In other words he was saying that it was impossible for someone to see the Grace of God because he knew nothing about the distinction between the Essence and the Uncreated Energy of God.

        Then God’s Grace brought out a great and enlightened teacher of our Church, the Athonite Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki.  With much wisdom and enlightenment from God, but also from his personal experience, he said and wrote much which taught in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church that the Light of God’s Grace is Uncreated; that it is Divine Energy.  That, in fact, deified men see this Light as the ultimate, the highest experience of deification (θέωσις). They see the Light of God.  This is the glory of God, His splendor, the Light of Mount Tabor, the Light of Christ’s Resurrection and of Pentecost and the bright cloud of the Old Testament.  It is the real Uncreated Light of God and not symbolic as Balaam understood it and others like him, believed in their delusion.

        Subsequently, three Great Synods at Constantinople, the whole Church of the East justified Saint Gregory Palamas, declaring that life in Christ is not simply the moral justification of man, but deification (θέωσις), and this means participation in God’ glory, a vision of God, of His Grace and His Uncreated Light.

       

We owe great gratitude to Saint Gregory Palamas because with the illumination he received from God along with his experience and his theology, he bequeathed to us the teaching and eternal experience of the Church concerning the deification (θέωσις) of man.  A Christian is not a Christian simply because he is able to talk about God.  And just as, where you really love someone and you enjoy his/her presence, so, it happens in man’s communion with God: there exists not only an external relationship but a mystical union of God and man in the Holy Spirit. 

        Even now, Western Christians consider Divine Grace or the Energy of God, as something created.  Unfortunately, this is also one of the many differences which must be considered in the theological dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.  It is not only the filioque, the primacy of authority, and the infallibility of the Pope which are basic differences between the Orthodox Church and the Papists.  It is also the above.  If the Roman Catholic Church does not accept that the Grace of God is Uncreated we cannot unite with them even if they accept all the other points.  For who is able to effect deification (θέωσις) if Divine Grace is a creation and not an Uncreated Energy of the Holy Spirit?

ΔΟΞΑ ΤΩ ΘΕΩ ΕΝ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΓΙΟΙΣ ΑΥΤΟΥ

GLORY TO GOD IN HIS HOLY SAINTS