“If the Word of God is living and active and if whatever the Lord willed he made; if God said Let there be light, and there was light, and Let there be a firmament, and it was so; if by the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the breath of his mouth; if the heaven and earth, water, fire and air and all the order of them, as well as man who is the most famous of living creatures, were accomplished by the Word of the Lord; and if God the Word himself willed to become man and assumed flesh from the pure and spotless blood of the holy and ever-virgin Mary, without human seed: can he not make the bread his body and the wine and water his blood? He said in the beginning: Let the earth put forth vegetation, and even till now, thanks to the rain, it continues to put forth its produce, impelled and empowered by the divine command. God said: This is my body and This is my blood and do this is memory of me ,and by virtue of his own all-powerful command, it is so until he come (for Paul says: until he come); and rain falls upon this new culture through the epiclesis, the over-shadowing power of the Holy Spirit. For as whatever God made He made by the energy of the Holy Spirit, so now it is the energy of the Spirit which performs the things that are supernatural which cannot be discerned except by faith.”
-St. John Damascene
No comments:
Post a Comment