Following up on yesterday's post about the Blessed Mother song...
While I am on the road, I am doing most everything on my phone and its big-but-not-big-enough screen. When comments are submitted, the "publish" button is awfully tiny, and very close too the"delete" button.
...So could the person who sent a comment with the lovely quote from Nicholas Cabasilas please resubmit it?
Sorry for the extra effort of getting the quote and bibliographical source down again; thanks!
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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4 comments:
Sister,
I lifted the Casabilas quote from Vladimir Lossky's Mystical Theology..., page 140 if I remember correctly.
Shall repost soon as get to my copy.
Further to...
To paraphrase Lossky:
The dogma of the Mother of God has a strong Pneumatological accent; but which we can assume that through the double economy of the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is inextricably bound up with
ecclesiological and the eschatological reality.
Lossky V., In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 195
The entire chapter, which is most edifying (and titled Panagia) can be accessed online here:
http://jbburnett.com/resources/lossky/lossky-image11-panagia.pdf
Thanks so much, Steven! And for those whose Greek is a little rusty, the word "Panagia" that you see in the reference means "all-holy" and is the Greek title that corresponds roughly to the English "Immaculate."
Most welcome Sr. Anne!
The translators of Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church actually use the word "Immaculate" in the context of Nicolas Cabasilas' homily on the Annunciation (p. 141):
"The incarnation was not only the work of the Father by his power and by his spirit, but it was also the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the consent of the Immaculate, without the agreement of her faith, the plan was as unrealizable as it would have been without the intervention of the three divine Persons themselves".
The "incomprehensible distinction--identity of the nature and of the person" (p. 143) is made known in her flesh. This is most profound.
In another time and place Lossky (or at least his translators) say this:
"She was holy and pure from all
sin from her mother’s womb, but still this holiness does not place her outside the rest of humanity before Christ."
In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 203
All of this places the Panagia squarely in the apophatic realm. The means by which we commune with the divine persons in the fullness of the eschaton.
The "limitation" of Exodus 33:23 is subjected to a "divine reversal" (another wonderful eastern construct) in the God-bearing Mary -- and by extension in her children.
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