‘We went through the fire and water; but Thou broughtest us out into a place of refreshment.’[1]
Pentecost completes the cycle of the great feasts of the Dispensation of the Lord. The Holy Spirit came to seal the salvation of mankind wrought by the Lord Jesus. On this day, the Sunday of All Saints, the Church teaches us that the Saints are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, the Heavenly Father shed the gifts of the Holy Spirit like rain. Wherever these gifts found good earth, they bore the fruit of holy life. Thus, Pentecost is not just the birthday of the Church, but also of all her Saints. The Saints are the fruit of the Spirit of holiness, the foremost light-bearing children of the Church, whose work it is to produce images and likenesses of Christ. For the Church of the Old Testament this work was impossible. It adhered to the letter of the law, unable to conceive within its bowels the Spirit which ‘bloweth where it listeth’.[2] Thus it failed to bring forth the fruit of holiness and was discountenanced by the Lord.[3]
‘The judgement of God must begin at the house of God.’[4] ‘The house of God’ is Christ above all. The ‘judgement of God’ means the judgement that annuls death and reveals divine love ‘unto the end’. This judgement is made manifest in the unjust death of the Lord Jesus for the sake of the world’s salvation.
Each man who follows the Lord Jesus[5] is the ‘House of God’ and thus the judgement of God has to be repeated in his life. Holy Scripture bears witness that this judgement acts throughout history and perpetuates the grace of salvation for every generation because our God, is the God of our Fathers. The Lord has formed Fathers and children, and the children in their turn become Fathers. Christ is ‘the Father of the age to come’,[6] He is the Author of a new humanity, regenerated through the grace of the Holy Spirit, without any preceding sin. Through His death and Resurrection, Christ gave the grace of rebirth to those who participate in His paternity. ‘But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’[7]
God does not command a natural life, but a life beyond nature. Desiring to give His chosen equal honour with Christ, he subjects them to the chastening unto which He also delivered His Only-begotten and beloved Son. The Lord often leads His chosen to the threshold of death, so as to slay every desire within them, not only their passions, but even the desire for life in this world. Only then is the miracle of spiritual rebirth made possible.[8]
As we can discern in the lives of the Saints, the chastening of the Lord is oftentimes harrowing. ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God’.[9] God allows afflictions, sufferings and trials to come upon His faithful servants, so that the souls of the Saints, already in this life, may abide in the depths of hell. However, within this immense darkness, they encounter the Lord Jesus, Who, in His descent to hell and His ascent above the heavens has ‘filled all things with Himself’.[10] Thus, His faithful servants can unite with Him no matter what the conditions, a fact which abolishes all impasses and gives a new perspective to suffering and tragedy. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’[11]
The grace of meeting the Lord leaves ineffaceable marks upon us. Henceforth, the soul lives in the assurance that nothing can separate her from the love of Christ, neither ‘tribulation, or distress, or persecution… nor death nor life …nor any other creature.’[12] Returning to everyday life, man is dead to every attraction and temptation of the world, because he has known something indescribably greater, indescribably more glorious.
When the Saints passed through periods of trial and chastening so as to enter into the glorious place of God’s presence, they learnt many mysteries of the spiritual life. Perhaps the greatest mystery is that which Saint Silouan referred to as the ‘Great Science’. This science teaches man how to humble his spirit, so as to remain out of reach of the enemy’s attacks and free his heart to love God.
The Saints, the images of Christ, follow the ‘Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’,[13] Who hastens to suffer for man’s salvation. The perspective of the Gospel inverts every aspect of the established order: ‘That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.’[14] Whosoever embraces the inverted perspective of the Gospel, inevitably crucifies his mind and reason. This crucifixion attracts grace, which works self-hatred in the soul for the ‘abomination of desolation’ hidden within her bosom. This energy, vehement by nature, cuts man from everything created and joins him to the Person of Christ, so that he attains to perfect likeness unto Him.
Following the footsteps of Christ, the Saints of all ages, the Apostles, the martyrs, and the ascetics tasted a voluntary death according to the commandments of God, so as to overcome in their corruptible flesh the involuntary death to which mankind is condemned due to preceding sin. Through perfect obedience and surrendering to the holy will of God, they put to death every trace of self-love. They continually experienced the passage from death to life, and lived only for their Redeemer and Saviour Jesus.
The life of the Saints was crowned with martyrdom either external or internal, that is, ‘in secret’. The ascetics poured out tears striving unto blood to cleanse their heart from the passions, to render it comely and give all its space to God to ‘walk and dwell therein’.[15] Throughout their lives they were as those appointed to death, battling against the spirit of pride, because experience taught them the inviolable truth of the revelation of the Lord, that ‘He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’.[16] They knew that when they humbled their spirit and set themselves below every creature, they received grace, which works the great miracle of the passage from darkness to light and preserves the unbreakable union of man’s heart with the Spirit of God.
Salvation is nothing other than man’s entrance into the communion of the Saints. Certainly, very few from each generation inherit the grace of the Saints, but when man receives their word with trust and follows it faithfully, even if he has not comprehended its depth, he receives a portion of grace, which becomes the key to entering into their sublime assembly. In this way the poor and humble are enriched by the glorious and entirely sanctified members of this communion. Participation in the Mysteries of the Church, and above all in the Divine Liturgy, opens the gate of Paradise, where the faithful enjoy divine bliss in communion with God, the Angels and the Saints and treasure up the grace of salvation.
‘Many are your names and greater are your gifts.’ Despite the general degeneration of the latter days, the Church has not yet lost its ability to produce images of Christ. This is a perceptible grace that cannot be found in any other confession. Even if these ‘images of Christ’ may not work miracles in a manifest way, they work the greatest miracle day by day in their lives, according to Saint Silouan: ‘They love the sinner in his fall.’[17] Wrought by the grace of the Church, this fact alone disperses every doubt and disbelief which would impede man from surrendering with trust to all the teachings of Christ and His Saints. ‘God is wonderful in His Saints.’[18]
The Saints in this world are ‘a sweet spiritual fragrance’. They are the brightest stars in the noetic firmament of the Church who attest to ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever’[19] and ‘with us alway, even unto the end of the world’.[20] They give a pattern and an example. Through their voluntary death they prove themselves conquerors of involuntary death. Just as the Jews before their exodus from slavery to the Egyptians ate the Passover ‘in haste’, thus also the saved walk upon the earth and live in this world hastening towards the unshakeable and eternal. Their converse is with heaven; they steadfastly direct the eyes of their soul there, whence they will receive their Saviour and Redeemer. Sometimes they cast a glance to the earth, only to discern the misery and poverty of this transient life, and then they turn with greater longing to the plenitude of Heaven, the only thing that can fill the chasms within the heart. This was already the culture of the Saints during the first Christian centuries, when they all shared the recognition that they were strangers and sojourners in this world. As they had lived the passage ‘from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God’,[21] they knew God not only as Judge and avenger, but as a Father ‘the closest and dearest of fathers’.[22]
‘The soul that has come to know God through the Holy Spirit strains up to Him; the memory of God powerfully raptures her mind, and the world is forgotten. And when the soul remembers the world, her ardent desire is for all men to receive the same grace, and she prays for the whole world. The Holy Spirit Himself moves her to pray that all men may repent and know God, how merciful He is.’[23]
[1]. Ps. 65:12.
[2]. John 3:8.
[3]. Cf. Matt. 21:18-19; Mark 11:12-4 and 20-21.
[4]. 1 Pet. 4:17.
[5]. See Heb. 3:6.
[6]. Cf. Isa. 8:18.
[7]. John 1:12-13.
[8]. Cf. John 3:3.
[9]. Heb. 10:31.
[10]. Cf. Eph. 4:10; Anaphora, Liturgy of Saint Basil.
[11]. Ps. 22:4.
[12]. See Rom. 8:35-39.
[13]. See Rev. 13:8.
[14]. Luke 16:15.
[15]. See Levit. 26:12; 2 Cor. 6:16.
[16]. See Proverbs 3:34; James 4:6.
[17]. See Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. Rosemary Edmonds, (Tolleshunt Knights, Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1991), p. 346.
[18]. Ps. 67:36.
[19]. Heb. 13:8.
[20]. Matt. 28:20.
[21]. Rom. 8:21.
[22]. Saint Silouan, p. 372.
[23] See Saint Silouan, p. 331
Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou
‘We went through the fire and water; but Thou broughtest us out into a place of refreshment.’[1]
Pentecost completes the cycle of the great feasts of the Dispensation of the Lord. The Holy Spirit came to seal the salvation of mankind wrought by the Lord Jesus. On this day, the Sunday of All Saints, the Church teaches us that the Saints are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, the Heavenly Father shed the gifts of the Holy Spirit like rain. Wherever these gifts found good earth, they bore the fruit of holy life. Thus, Pentecost is not just the birthday of the Church, but also of all her Saints. The Saints are the fruit of the Spirit of holiness, the foremost light-bearing children of the Church, whose work it is to produce images and likenesses of Christ. For the Church of the Old Testament this work was impossible. It adhered to the letter of the law, unable to conceive within its bowels the Spirit which ‘bloweth where it listeth’.[2] Thus it failed to bring forth the fruit of holiness and was discountenanced by the Lord.[3]
‘The judgement of God must begin at the house of God.’[4] ‘The house of God’ is Christ above all. The ‘judgement of God’ means the judgement that annuls death and reveals divine love ‘unto the end’. This judgement is made manifest in the unjust death of the Lord Jesus for the sake of the world’s salvation.
Each man who follows the Lord Jesus[5] is the ‘House of God’ and thus the judgement of God has to be repeated in his life. Holy Scripture bears witness that this judgement acts throughout history and perpetuates the grace of salvation for every generation because our God, is the God of our Fathers. The Lord has formed Fathers and children, and the children in their turn become Fathers. Christ is ‘the Father of the age to come’,[6] He is the Author of a new humanity, regenerated through the grace of the Holy Spirit, without any preceding sin. Through His death and Resurrection, Christ gave the grace of rebirth to those who participate in His paternity. ‘But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’[7]
God does not command a natural life, but a life beyond nature. Desiring to give His chosen equal honour with Christ, he subjects them to the chastening unto which He also delivered His Only-begotten and beloved Son. The Lord often leads His chosen to the threshold of death, so as to slay every desire within them, not only their passions, but even the desire for life in this world. Only then is the miracle of spiritual rebirth made possible.[8]
As we can discern in the lives of the Saints, the chastening of the Lord is oftentimes harrowing. ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God’.[9] God allows afflictions, sufferings and trials to come upon His faithful servants, so that the souls of the Saints, already in this life, may abide in the depths of hell. However, within this immense darkness, they encounter the Lord Jesus, Who, in His descent to hell and His ascent above the heavens has ‘filled all things with Himself’.[10] Thus, His faithful servants can unite with Him no matter what the conditions, a fact which abolishes all impasses and gives a new perspective to suffering and tragedy. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’[11]
The grace of meeting the Lord leaves ineffaceable marks upon us. Henceforth, the soul lives in the assurance that nothing can separate her from the love of Christ, neither ‘tribulation, or distress, or persecution… nor death nor life …nor any other creature.’[12] Returning to everyday life, man is dead to every attraction and temptation of the world, because he has known something indescribably greater, indescribably more glorious.
When the Saints passed through periods of trial and chastening so as to enter into the glorious place of God’s presence, they learnt many mysteries of the spiritual life. Perhaps the greatest mystery is that which Saint Silouan referred to as the ‘Great Science’. This science teaches man how to humble his spirit, so as to remain out of reach of the enemy’s attacks and free his heart to love God.
The Saints, the images of Christ, follow the ‘Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’,[13] Who hastens to suffer for man’s salvation. The perspective of the Gospel inverts every aspect of the established order: ‘That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.’[14] Whosoever embraces the inverted perspective of the Gospel, inevitably crucifies his mind and reason. This crucifixion attracts grace, which works self-hatred in the soul for the ‘abomination of desolation’ hidden within her bosom. This energy, vehement by nature, cuts man from everything created and joins him to the Person of Christ, so that he attains to perfect likeness unto Him.
Following the footsteps of Christ, the Saints of all ages, the Apostles, the martyrs, and the ascetics tasted a voluntary death according to the commandments of God, so as to overcome in their corruptible flesh the involuntary death to which mankind is condemned due to preceding sin. Through perfect obedience and surrendering to the holy will of God, they put to death every trace of self-love. They continually experienced the passage from death to life, and lived only for their Redeemer and Saviour Jesus.
The life of the Saints was crowned with martyrdom either external or internal, that is, ‘in secret’. The ascetics poured out tears striving unto blood to cleanse their heart from the passions, to render it comely and give all its space to God to ‘walk and dwell therein’.[15] Throughout their lives they were as those appointed to death, battling against the spirit of pride, because experience taught them the inviolable truth of the revelation of the Lord, that ‘He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’.[16] They knew that when they humbled their spirit and set themselves below every creature, they received grace, which works the great miracle of the passage from darkness to light and preserves the unbreakable union of man’s heart with the Spirit of God.
Salvation is nothing other than man’s entrance into the communion of the Saints. Certainly, very few from each generation inherit the grace of the Saints, but when man receives their word with trust and follows it faithfully, even if he has not comprehended its depth, he receives a portion of grace, which becomes the key to entering into their sublime assembly. In this way the poor and humble are enriched by the glorious and entirely sanctified members of this communion. Participation in the Mysteries of the Church, and above all in the Divine Liturgy, opens the gate of Paradise, where the faithful enjoy divine bliss in communion with God, the Angels and the Saints and treasure up the grace of salvation.
‘Many are your names and greater are your gifts.’ Despite the general degeneration of the latter days, the Church has not yet lost its ability to produce images of Christ. This is a perceptible grace that cannot be found in any other confession. Even if these ‘images of Christ’ may not work miracles in a manifest way, they work the greatest miracle day by day in their lives, according to Saint Silouan: ‘They love the sinner in his fall.’[17] Wrought by the grace of the Church, this fact alone disperses every doubt and disbelief which would impede man from surrendering with trust to all the teachings of Christ and His Saints. ‘God is wonderful in His Saints.’[18]
The Saints in this world are ‘a sweet spiritual fragrance’. They are the brightest stars in the noetic firmament of the Church who attest to ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever’[19] and ‘with us alway, even unto the end of the world’.[20] They give a pattern and an example. Through their voluntary death they prove themselves conquerors of involuntary death. Just as the Jews before their exodus from slavery to the Egyptians ate the Passover ‘in haste’, thus also the saved walk upon the earth and live in this world hastening towards the unshakeable and eternal. Their converse is with heaven; they steadfastly direct the eyes of their soul there, whence they will receive their Saviour and Redeemer. Sometimes they cast a glance to the earth, only to discern the misery and poverty of this transient life, and then they turn with greater longing to the plenitude of Heaven, the only thing that can fill the chasms within the heart. This was already the culture of the Saints during the first Christian centuries, when they all shared the recognition that they were strangers and sojourners in this world. As they had lived the passage ‘from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God’,[21] they knew God not only as Judge and avenger, but as a Father ‘the closest and dearest of fathers’.[22]
‘The soul that has come to know God through the Holy Spirit strains up to Him; the memory of God powerfully raptures her mind, and the world is forgotten. And when the soul remembers the world, her ardent desire is for all men to receive the same grace, and she prays for the whole world. The Holy Spirit Himself moves her to pray that all men may repent and know God, how merciful He is.’[23]
[1]. Ps. 65:12.
[2]. John 3:8.
[3]. Cf. Matt. 21:18-19; Mark 11:12-4 and 20-21.
[4]. 1 Pet. 4:17.
[5]. See Heb. 3:6.
[6]. Cf. Isa. 8:18.
[7]. John 1:12-13.
[8]. Cf. John 3:3.
[9]. Heb. 10:31.
[10]. Cf. Eph. 4:10; Anaphora, Liturgy of Saint Basil.
[11]. Ps. 22:4.
[12]. See Rom. 8:35-39.
[13]. See Rev. 13:8.
[14]. Luke 16:15.
[15]. See Levit. 26:12; 2 Cor. 6:16.
[16]. See Proverbs 3:34; James 4:6.
[17]. See Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. Rosemary Edmonds, (Tolleshunt Knights, Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1991), p. 346.
[18]. Ps. 67:36.
[19]. Heb. 13:8.
[20]. Matt. 28:20.
[21]. Rom. 8:21.
[22]. Saint Silouan, p. 372.
[23] See Saint Silouan, p. 331
Sunday of All Saints (part 2)
21 June 2020Today, one week after Pentecost, again we celebrate a feast, commemorating all the Saints that were well pleasing to the Lord in this life and partook of His imperishable life. Last Sunday we celebrated the coming of the Comforter and the immaculate Church, in her wisdom, has instituted this feast to commemorate all the Saints, the renowned fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Saints of every age provide palpable evidence of the truth of God and the wondrous Tabernacle built on earth with the coming of the Holy Spirit. They bear witness to the integrity of the Church who bears in her bosom these earth-bound Angels, these Heavenly men.
The secret Person, the Holy Spirit, the hidden friend, is revealed outright in His gifts to the Saints. The image of Christ is painted in the heart of the faithful by the Spirit of Truth, the Person of the Holy Spirit, and is marked upon the Saints of the Church in each age. The Holy Spirit gives an eschatological orientation to man’s life because He quickens, now in the present moment, Christ’s awaited coming, His burning presence, that will consume and destroy the lawless,[1] while stirring up a furnace of desire in the hearts of ‘those who loved His appearing’,[2] enabling them to ‘lay aside all earthly care’.
The hypostatic principle, as set forth by Saint Sophrony, is realised by all the Saints in their very being. The mystery of Pentecost is active in their lives at all times, as they attract the grace of the Holy Spirit and spread it out over the world, on behalf of which they untiringly intercede. ‘They were chosen of the Holy Spirit to pray for the whole world, and the Holy Spirit gave them a well-spring of tears.’[3] ‘The Lord bestowed the Holy Spirit upon the Saints and in the Holy Spirit they love us… The Holy Spirit gives His chosen such a wealth of love that their souls burn as it were with a flame, in their desire that all men should be saved and behold the glory of the Lord.’[4]
There are three levels of life: the unnatural, the natural and the Divine. The unnatural is the demonic life of eternal oblivion and hatred for God and man.[5] The natural is expressed in man’s love for ‘those who love him‘,[6] which is not censurable, but it is not enough for salvation. The supernatural life led by the Saints aims to recompense the Lord the tender love that we owe Him according to His commandment. The precepts of the Lord do not refer to the given fact of natural life, but to a supernatural life. They were imparted to man to detach him from the transient and shakeable, lifting him onto the transcendent level of divine love. The Holy Spirit heals ‘every wound hidden within us’, it cures the pestilence of forgetfulness of God, renews the soul and leads first to what is natural and then to what is beyond nature, as is attested by the Saints of all generations.
The man who tastes the gift of the Holy Spirit, irrevocably directs himself towards what is higher, because every separation from his Creator, albeit brief, creates an acute pain in his heart and he experiences an awesome darkness, all the terrors of hell, the corruption of death. In the eyes of the world this state appears to be madness. However, according to the Apostle Paul, it is ‘wiser than the wisdom of men’,[7] because God saved man through the madness and weakness of His love. As Saint Silouan writes: ‘The soul from love of the Lord has lost her wits as it were. She sits in silence, with no wish to speak, and looks upon the world with crazed eyes, having no desire for it and seeing it not.’[8]
Today’s Gospel reading,[9] a synthesis of verses from two different chapters of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, speaks about two elements that characterise the lives of the Saints: good confession and taking up the cross. In His incomprehensible condescension and goodness, the Lord granted the works of his hands parity with Himself, concluding a covenant with man on equal terms. If any man confesses Him, Christ will confess him as his own before the Heavenly Father. If any man forgives the small and relative sins of his fellow men, then God will forgive the great sins and evils that have affronted Him since before all ages.[10] Man’s confession belongs to the level of the temporary, the kingdom of transience. The confession of God takes place where ‘time is no longer’[11] and leads mortal earth-bound men into eternity.
Confession ‘in Christ‘is an inner confession of life in the Spirit. It is an imitation of the ethos of the Lamb of God ‘brought as a sheep to the slaughter’.[12] It is a life of holiness within the world of sin and passions. The true witness does not make portentous proclamations, but bears the living sensation of God in his heart. He speaks, walks, breathes as like unto the Son of God.
The Lord also witnesses in the Spirit to salvation within the heart of man, through the incorruptible consolation flooding him, through the ‘unique gift’ that makes him acceptable before the Heavenly Father and a member of the communion of the ‘spirits of the Saints made perfect’. This witness is possible when there is living communion with the Lord, a ‘bond of love’[13] and faith forged with Christ and all the members of His Body, because only together with all the Saints can anyone comprehend ‘what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and know the love of Christ that passeth all knowledge’.[14]
Whoever is engrafted within the Body of Christ seals a covenant with the Lord. Already in this life, he tastes the first fruits of a dynamic relationship with Him that is always changing from fulness to fulness and will be perfected in eternity. The spirit that inspires this relationship differs fundamentally from the spirit of this world and inevitably splits the believer away from its values, so he makes ‘foes from his own household’.[15]
The Holy Spirit enlarges the heart to lead man ‘into all truth’, into all the fulness of divine love that enfolds ‘Heaven and earth and the nethermost parts of the earth’[16] with its Light. The epode of the Akathist for the Saints ends with the verse: ‘Rejoice thou, universal Fathers’. Some of these Saints never left the holes in the earth where they laboured in asceticism within the desert, but the content of their heart was all Adam, ‘from one end of the earth to the other, from the beginning of Creation till the end of times’ and they presented the whole world before the throne of God in their prayer of intercession.
As Saint Sophrony bears witness: ‘Wherever man may betake himself, whatever desert he may retire to, if he treads the path of real life in God he will live the tragedy of the world, and live it even more intensely and profoundly than those actually in the world, because the latter do not know what they are missing. Men suffer many privations but with the rare exception they are not conscious of their main lack. When they are deprived of their worldly goods and realise what they are missing, they suffer and lament; but what would the weeping and wailing be like if they realised their chief deprivation! With what ardour would they seek ‘the one thing needful’.[17]
According to the Apostle Paul, some people sow corruption through sinful actions, but others sow eternity through good works.[18] The fiery prayers of the Saints for their personal salvation and the salvation of the world are preserved by the angels until the Second Coming as precious incense in golden vials.[19] The Day of the Lord will be a surprise, not only because no one will know ‘the times or the seasons’,[20] but because all ‘the secret things of man’s heart’[21] will be made manifest. The genuine and faithful servants of God do not reveal the power of the Spirit and the love that they bear within them. Often the taking up of the cross is the hidden work of a man who battles again sin in the depths of his being, who seeks the Light of humility and strives not to trample upon the covenant that he has concluded with the Lord. He takes up the cross because he yearns not to be confined any longer within the suffocating frame of his own self, but to live for the Lord, Who bought him with His precious blood.
God promises divine equality, desiring to say to man, ‘all that I have is thine’,[22] but first he puts his true children to the test to see if they will respond with gratitude and philotimo to His promises and not answer, ’Have me excused, I cannot come.’[23] The judgement of the Lord’s unjust death is repeated in each of His Saints. He allows suffering and temptations in their life that try their heart like gold in a furnace.[24] ‘As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as a burnt offering.’[25] He permits that they may descend even into hell, not that they might perish, but so they might have the honour of knowing the path of the Lord Jesus unto the end. In this way, they may share in the victory of His Cross and Resurrection, becoming brethren of the ‘Firstborn’[26] and Beloved Son of love.
