Advent with St John Damascene
Rev Chris Doig continues our journey through Advent, Rebecca Blakey writes about a Highland author we should take more notice of, Ann Scott-Moncrieff; and we celebrate St John of the Cross. Welcome!
We are moving into the third week of Advent and Rev Chris Doig continues his series on Advent with St John Damascene. If you have missed any, scroll down to the bottom of the email and click on St Moluag’s Coracle which will take you to an archive of past newsletters.
Week 1: St John the Evangelist
Week 2: St John the Baptist
Week 3: St John Damascene
Week 4: St John Paul II
Each week will be based on the thought and spirituality of the saint while considering the meaning of Advent and the tradition and practices of the season.
We are now approaching a mountainous area near the Kidron valley, not too far from our final destination – some 15miles from Bethlehem – but we will require a moment of rest before we pick up our tent again and march on to see the light coming into the world (Jn 1:9).” It is worth making a stop at Mar Saba monastery, where we will be given some solid food for the second half of our journey through the desert.
There we will meet a holy man, a monk who dedicated his life to prayer and writing. Similarly to the Baptist, he left the city to prepare a way for the Lord out in the desert. It is not for no reason that the Church invites us to celebrate the feast of St. John Damascene - a great doctor and theologian – in the season of Advent. He had a profound understanding of the Incarnation which shaped all of his writings, most well-known of all, his three forceful apologies on divine images (πρὸς τοὺς διαβάλλοντας τὰς ἁγίας εἰκόνας) against the wave of iconoclasts which was bashing against the side of the Church, fuelled by emperor Leo III’s prohibition of images and campaign to destroy them in 726.
The three discourses are rooted in the understanding of the two natures of Christ. The Confession made at the Council of Chalcedon I rings in John’s words : “the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically.” This is just a fancy way of saying that his two natures were not mixed, confused or separated – they were perfectly united together.
Now, the whole point of the Incarnation is divine filiation, or divine adoption. Think of St. Athanasius’ Christology: “The Son of God became Son of men so that sons of men might become sons of God.” Damascene uses similar words: “I venerate the Creator, created for my sake, who came down to his creation without being lowered or weakened, that he might glorify my nature and bring about communion with the divine nature.”[1]
This communion comes about according to our nature; it doesn’t do violence to it.[2] John loves the image of fire to describe this process: “for just as iron plunged in fire does not become fire by nature, but by union and participation, so what is deified does not become God by nature, but by participation.”[3] Jesus came to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:47) and is prefigured in Isaiah 6 where one of the seraphim comes down to place a burning coal on the prophet’s lips: they symbolize the human and divine nature of Christ which purifies man and restores him to God. [4]
This process which he calls θέωσιϛ (meaning divinization or deification), symbolized by fire, implies a gradual process of becoming one with God; it takes time. Maybe we are impatient with ourselves and think we are far from this union. John wants us to be patient and see that salvation is a process and we gradually become more and more consumed by God’s love. Our deification involves our senses and John insists that we see holy images and veneration of the saints as part of that growth in union with God. It is what we are already doing as we journey with the saints; they are markers on the road and point us to Christ, because they have undergone the process of deification; they were plunged into the fire so much that they in a way have a likeness to Christ. Damascene tells us that “images are a likeness depicting an archetype”[5]; so are the saints – they are images of the Image. Holy Images, for John, are memorials of our salvation and so they sanctify our sight, just like the Word of God sanctifies our ears.[6] And as we remember what God has done, not only for us but for his saints, our memory and mind are sanctified. It is a good and holy thing to venerate images of Our Lord, the Mother of God and the saints, for the Holy Spirit overshadows them and God’s grace works through them.
John Damascene is delighted that we are accompanied by great saints like John the Evangelist and John the Baptist because they were plunged into the fire in a special way. They met the Image of the Invisible Father in the flesh (1 Col 15) and the image of God was restored in them because of their participation in the life of Christ. They were filled with the divine love and underwent that process of divinization, that is, were given “the power to become sons of God (Jn 1:12).” This is the reality that God wants to renew in us as we approach the mystery of Incarnation this Christmas.
St. John gives us these words as we leave the monastery and continue on our journey towards Bethlehem: “Apply your eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire.”[7]
[1] St. John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images (translated by Andrew Louth) First edition, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York: 2003) I, 4, p.22 [2]Ibid., 11, p.26. [3]Ibid., 19, p.33. [4] John of Damascus, Exposition of theOrthodox Faith in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume IX, (translated by Rev. S.D.F. Salmond, D.D., F.E.I.S.) WM. B Eerdmans publishing Company, Michigan: 1983) IV, 13, p.83 [5]St. John of Damascus,Three Treatises on the Divine Images (translated by Andrew Louth) First edition, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York: 2003) I, 9, p.25. [6] Ibid., 17, p.31. [7] John of Damascus, Exposition of theOrthodox Faith in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume IX, (translated by Rev. S.D.F. Salmond, D.D., F.E.I.S.) WM. B Eerdmans publishing Company, Michigan: 1983) IV, 13, p.83
Ann Scott-Moncrieff: Reclaiming Highland Catholic literature
For anyone looking for Good Children’s Literature (hard to find!) this Christmas, I would like to point you in the direction of two recently republished novels by the 20th century Scottish writer, Ann Scott-Moncrieff: Auntie Robbo and Aboard the Bulger. Auntie Robbo is the rollicking adventure of a young boy and his great aunt escaping from the authorities into the Highlands of Scotland. Aboard the Bulger is a delightful tale of four children who escape from an orphanage, commandeer a ship and sail it to discover the distant northern isles.
Image drawn by St John of the Cross. Click here for more on this.
The Mysticism of St John of the Cross: The great mystic and spiritual writer’s feast is on the 14th. Here Carmelite Father Kevin Culligan outlines the life and legacy of the Saint.
The Frank Friar, aka Fr Nicholas Blackwell talks about The Dark Night of the Soul
If you have missed any past Coracles you can click here. Most of our past articles are on the roughbounds website along with this years Highland Mens Conference. Please click on the button below. We are currently putting on the website most of Bishop Hugh Gilberts Catechetical talks. They are already RCDA site but he has given us permission to put them up on the roughbounds site as well.
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