HOLINESS AS THE FOCAL POINT OF WITNESS

GEORGESKHODR*

“Holiness” appears to define Christian existence, while “witness” or “tes-

timony” Christian conduct and speech. In other words, holiness is what
Christians are in God’s sight, living and moving in God; and witness or
testimony is the power of the message carried to other human beings. I should
like to demonstrate the fundamental indivisiblity and unity of these two states.

“One is holy . . .”
For me, the striking feature of the “holy” who live in our midst is the
simultaneity of the two perceptions, each as powerful as the other - that of
the power of God and that of the frailty of saints, each necessarily
conditioning the other. In the Byzantine liturgy, before the communion the
priest breaks the eucharistic bread and proclaims: “The holy gifts for the holy
people of God.” Then the choir protests on behalf of the congregation: “One
is holy, One is Lord, Jesus Christ.” This is an affirmation that grace
constantly creates us and that we would never expect to attain here on earth to
“the stature of the fullness of Christ.” As the recognition of our nothingness,
humility - “the topmost rung on the ladder of virtue” (according to St John
Climacus) - permits us to see our poverty the more we contemplate the glory
or light of the Lord. There is a double paradox here. If holiness constitutes a
meeting of divine grace and human will, a synergy or cooperation, it remains
a dogmatic affirmation that the human reality never disappears in the work of
sanctification.
Humanity is confronted by God to all eternity and this is why our love for
God is not a fusion with God, which would entail the cancellation of creation.
No one has ever fathomed the depths of the love that God and humanity
experience for one another. This is the incommunicability of the mystic
nuptial celebrations. “I contemplate Thy richly-dight nuptial room, 0 my
Lord, and I lack the garment fitting me to enter it.” The reference is to the
eternal nakedness of the human being at prayer and to the eternal garment
presented to us by our Lord.
Yet Symeon the New Theologian, one of the great spiritual guides of tenth and
eleventh century Byzantium, taught that the spiritual human being lived in the
awareness he or she had of grace. The new birth of the Spirit is identified with

* GEORGESKHODRis metropolitan of Mount Lebanon (the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of

Antioch), author of many books on theology and on Christian witness in the Arab world, and
lecturer on Arab civilization. He is also a member of the Middle East Council of Churches’
Working Group on Christian-Muslim Relations. This article was translated from French by the
Language Service of the World Council of Churches.

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INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION

knowledge of this same Spirit. The human being, it is true, is carried along by
baptism and there is no inflow of grace that would take place outside the life of
the church. But according to St Symeon, baptism by itself would be no more
than an ablution were it not completely assimilated by the gift of tears. The
grace imparted to us never engenders in us a sense of personal merit, conscious
as we are of being always “unprofitable servants.” Yes indeed, we are aware of
the holiness of God in us, of our role as links in a human chain, and of our utter
unworthiness. This divine-human game remains utterly ineffable.
Holiness is unintelligible outside the category of eros. When St Ignatius of
Antioch said of Jesus, “My Eros is crucified!” he realized that it was by
martyrdom that he would gain access to the nuptial room. Agupt and e r m have
been set in opposition. But God is passionately in love with humanity. In the
death of his son, he gives himself to humanity and inspires in humanity an
answering love of God. The human being searches his or her own heart and
verifies by obedience the reality of the longing for God. “If you love me’‘ -
with love, he means - “You will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Contemplating Christ’s resurrection

Seen by us, God’s countenance becomes a transfiguring power, The human

being believes because the heart i s touched. Faith is the first moment of
commitment vis-2-vis our Lord. Because of the intensity of the light, God’s
countenance is still veiled. But when the beloved introduces us into his
intimacy. the frontier between faith and sight becomes indistinct and the
promises of future life already begin to be fulfilled. We come to realize that
the kingdom is within us. Now, in place of the petition, “Thy kingdom
come!” the version of the Lord’s Prayer favoured by St Gregory of Nyssa
reads: “Thy Spirit come!” Love for God becomes itself the dynamic of faith,
inspires faith, awakens faith and, when it becomes incandescent fire, envelops
faith.
In the depths of holiness, faith and hope tend to fuse with love. The person, in
fact, who has arrived at the full awareness of being loved by God is already
translated to the kingdom and carries it with him to life’s end in death. The
person in whom God “is well pleased” and who, in the Son. has been declared a
child of God. already sees the light that never sets. In a certain sense, that
person has already been raised from the dead. It is such persons who have a
clear vision of the resurrection of Christ as holy and as Lord. We are alive in the
living one who, in the Spirit, rises in us. It is the Spirit who reveals him to us as
risen from the dead. No knowledge surpasses the vision of the eternal Easters
?hat we taste in purity of heart.
Christians know they depend on God alone to the extent that they are detached
from everything by their self-renunciation. Because they always do what is
pleasing to the Father, they allow themselves to be guided by the Word and, in
the measure of their obedience, are “purified, irradiated, illumined and made fit

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 HOLINESS AS THE FOCAL POI” OF WlTTNESS

to see the revelation of the great mysteries whose profundity no one has seen
nor ever can see.”’

Understanding the mystery of the new creation

When Jesus says that the pure in heart shall see God, he is speaking of an
immediate vision of the Creator and the creation. For it is the pure in heart, the
saints, who welcome the Lord in their contacts with human beings; and it is in
serving others that they serve the Lord. In the hope of the glory for which the
universe is destined, they already see the world transfigured. It is also in the
saints that other human beings can glimpse the light and the unity of the world.
It is a matter of believing that holiness shines not only on our brothers and
sisters but on the whole cosmos. The destiny of the world is the freedom of
matter. The latter is now “subjected to futility not of its own will but by the
will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free
from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the
children of God” (Rom. 8:20f.). God will free the cosmos from its bondage
because of the saints and with a view to the harmony that is to rule in a
transfigured universe. In the hope of this transfiguration, within the historical
process, in order to fill time with its fullness, holiness is the holiness of the
whole ecclesial community. It is a structure, St Paul says, “which is joined
together and which grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also
are” - with all the others - “built together in the Spirit into a dwelling place
for God” (Eph. 2:21f.).
This totally excludes the individualist idea of salvation and of the momentum of
salvation. We are borne away together on the river of the divine love. St Isaac
the Syrian could not bear the thought of anyone remaining in hell eternally.
“What is the loving heart?” he asks himself. “It is a heart aflame with love for
the whole of creation, for human beings, for the birds, for the animals, for the
demons, for all creatures. Having this heart makes it impossible for a human
being not to weep with immense compassion gripping the heart. And the heart
melts and can no longer bear to see or even hear of suffering of any kind, even
the slightest pain inflicted on a creature. Such a human being prays without
ceasing, therefore, for the animals, for the enemies of the Truth, for those who
do him mischief, prays that they may be preserved and purified.” St Isaac even
prays for the reptiles, moved by an infinite pity which wells up in the hearts of
those who are united to God.
No one achieves salvation on their own nor for themselves alone. A human
being is constituted by the fact of loving. When the Lord dwells in a human
heart, he enlarges it to embrace the infinite spaces. And it is this that gives it the
understanding of the mysteries of the new creation. “United in love,” as the
Apostle says in Colossians 2:2, Christians will arrive together “for building up

I St Symeon the New Theologian, Cutechesis XIV.

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the Body of Christ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of
Christ” (Eph. 4:12f.). We are on the way not to the perfection of the solitary
believer but to that of the perfect human being, in the collective sense, i.e., the
whole Christ, Head and Body.

Participating in the divine nature

All theological discourse on holiness, however, has to be rooted in the Trinity

itself, since holiness is the Trinitarian life in us. For our starting point is the
profound conviction that God is the source of our knowledge of humanity. He
alone reveals humanity’s nature and destiny. In this perspective, Christian
anthropology is founded on the biblical affirmation that we are “participants of
the divine nature” (I1 Pet. 1:4). It is from this revelation in particular that the
famous patristic dictum is derived: “God was made man so that man might
become God,” a dictum that the doctrine of man’s deification (theosis)
highlights.
The fundamental point here is that the human being discards nothing of its
humanity in order to remain in the image of God and becoming closer to this
likeness. Nor is God diminshed by the fact of giving himself to humanity.
Humanity is not made more human by detaching it from God. In one manner of
speaking, the human being becomes a synonym for frailty and compromise
with sin. What the Fathers seek to affirm is that our true nature is not that of the
Fall, but that of the Ascension. Our true nature is our nature assumed by Christ,
glorified but hidden in him, seated at the Father’s right hand, i.e., partaking the
dignity of the divine nature. Our sanctification is a permanent ascension, our
formation as a new creation originating in the Head. “Because God was made
man, man can become God. Man is raised by divine ascensions just as God in
His love for men humbled himself by assuming the worst of our condition while
remaining the same” (St Maximus the Confessor).
Despite the unbridgeable gulf between the essence of the Creator and that of the
creature, God must, however, remain in some manner accessible. There must
be something in God in which we can participate if we are to be worthy of the
title “participants in the divine nature.” What our Orthodox Fathers call “divine
energy,” an eternal divine impetus towards us that is not God’s incommunic-
able essence, caused divinity really to dwell in us. Grace is a true light that
illuminates the whole of being.
The human being becomes this God whom he or she loves. The one who
desires revolves around the one desired and already partakes of the one desired.
“This participation in divine things is the likeness between the object and
subject of participation. And this likeness is. according to the energy, the
identity of the participants with the participated” (St Maximus the Confessor).
In both body and soul, the human being receives the beatifying glory that
penetrates it entirely. This is why (and once again it is St Maximus the

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 HOLINESS AS THE FOCAL POINT OF WITNESS

Confessor who dares to say it out loud), “the creature, having become divine by
deification, henceforth bears and manifests only the divine energy, so that in all
things there is now only one single and unique energy common to God and his
elect, or rather, there is now only God, inasmuch as, fittingly for love, he in his
wholeness enters his elect wholly.”

The way to holiness

This is the culminating point of union. But the union is prepared by watchfulness,
by the true desire for grace and by the effort made to obtain it. “The Kingdom of
Heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). But
the giants of the spiritual life have never regarded their spiritual exploits as more
than simple preparations for the reception of the gifts of heaven. This is why St
Seraphim of Sarov (beginning of the nineteenth century) declared that “prayer,
fasting, vigils and all other Christian practices, although very good in themsel-
ves, in no way represent in themselves alone the goal of our Christian life. They
are simply indispensable means for attaining this goal. For the real goal of the
Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. As for fasts, vigils, prayers,
almsgivingand other good works performed in Christ’s name, they are the means
to the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.”
In other words, there is no technique of holiness, not even a discipline that
automatically paves the way to holiness. The ascetic effort is itself already a
fruit of grace and it remains indispensable throughout life if we are to avoid
demonic illusions. Imagination, human discourse about deification - these are
dangerous reefs. A deep seriousness in practising the Beatitudes, watchfulness
over our sight, what Origen called “the circumcision of the senses,” the
canonical fasts, continuous prayer - these are maintained by the gifts of the
Spirit and are, so to speak, toothing-stones - or interfaces - for these gifts.
According to the traditional rule: “In union with one another, the justice of
works and the grace of the Spirit fill with blessed life the soul in which they are
united. ”
The struggle and the charism join together in the person. Nature is no longer
denatured by sin nor demonized by seduction. Nature gets better, like the dawn
of the ultimate Sunday that will know no twilight setting. In an internalized
asceticism, received in conversion, the Christian realizes that the yoke of the
Lord is light. The heart, which has been the home of passion, servitude,
becomes the centre where the kingdom is unveiled, where the light is seen and
where the believer guards the treasures entrusted to himher by the vision of
God. The heart of the believer is guarded by the Spirit, the contemplative
faculty of being, the site of the image of God in humanity. The mind, which
must remain cool, sees to it that the heart is not blinded by the ardour of “carnal
desires.” The balance and the blossoming of the converted human being - this
is called by the outstanding fighter of the spiritual life in the east: “the descent
of the Spirit into the heart.”

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The absolute of the gospel

This ideal of holiness does not change with the ephemeral fashions of the
passing centuries. It is not tied to one kind of life. Whether one is a monk or a
layperson, a man or a woman, celibate or married, whether one lives a simple
farming life or is engaged in industry or advanced technology - the human
heart knows the same temptations and receives the same energy of God.In all
these states of life there is but one single inspiration: the absolute of the gospel,
because this absolute is salvation. “The patience of the saints” awaits sinners
with tears. The saints are acquainted with the depths but know that God is
greater than our hearts, and that the hell of human beings will one day be filled
with light. Holiness is a paschal gift, a hymn of joy sung with the hope that love
is omnipotent.
It is holiness itself that is witness. Because God is utter holiness, the command-
ments contained in his Law are the Testimony. The tablets of the Law are kept in
the Ark of the Testimony (Ex. 25:22) and the Tabernacle itself will be called the
Tabernacle of the Testimony (Ex. 38:21). The prophets bear the testimony of
God when he accuses his people (Jer. 29:23) because his purpose is to transform
his people into a kingdom of priests which, in the New Testament, in a reversal of
these terms, becomes the “royal priesthood” (I Pet. 2:9). In verse five of this
same chapter, this priesthood is called holy ”to offer spiritual sacrifices” in
holiness of life. The Apostle introducesthe idea of witness in connection with the
consecration of the congregation to God:“You are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful
deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.”
If the prophets of ancient Israel were called witnesses, this was because the Word
they proclaimed was the very presence of God. The Spirit speaking through them
was bearing witness of himself. By recognizing each of the prophets as a
canonized saint and celebrating their memory by a special feast in each case (St
Isaiah, St Daniel, etc.), the Orthodox Church recognizes that the person of the
prophet was transformed by the Word. Some theologians speak of all the
prophets as having been deified.
But the faithful witnesspar excellence is Jesus, being himself the Word of God in
person. He speaks of what he knows, he bears witness to what he has seen (John
3: 1 1). He makes known the Father because he rests in his bosom (John 1: 18).
What makes him witness is the complete and reciprocal intimacy between him
and the Father: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the
Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him”
(Matt. 11:27). Only because the witness lives in communion with God by love
and obedience is his testimony communication. This is why Jesus became the
abiding witness of God until the end of history when he was made perfect through
his sufferings (Heb. 2:lO). When, in virtue of his death, Jesus was made the
Lamb of God, he became the Great Shepherd of our souls.

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 HOLINESS AS THE FOCAL POINT OF WITNESS

There is no other witness than that of the Cross. This is why, after the
Ascension, Peter asks in the following terms for a replacement for Judas: “SO
one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day
when he was taken up from us - one of these men must become with us a
witness to his resurrection” (Acts 1:2lf.). To have been with Jesus is the source
of the testimony to his victory. This is why the Eastern Christian calls the
contemplation of Jesus “bios upostolikos” (apostolic life). Only the one who
lives by Christ is sent (an apostle).
Ultimately, the witness is the martyr. In Greek, the word is the same for both.
Those who are for Christ will overcome the Devil “by the blood of the Lamb
and the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12:ll). For love conquers nature “in
virtue of the fact that the one who loves and the one loved are united by death”
(Feast of St George in the Byzantine Calendar).
There still exists in the church, however, the ministry of the teacher and that of
the preacher. The priesthood itself is defined as the ministry of the Word. In
truth, the word of a teacher of the gospel is able to reach the hearts of the people
only if it has already pierced the heart of the one who transmits it. Those of fire
have a word of fire. Teaching can enlighten a mind but does not lift a being to
the glory of God. Only a spiritual father, i.e., one capable of giving birth to
another in Christ, can do this. This person can be outside the ordained ministry.

Witnessing in a pluralist society

This model of witness remains equally valid in a society that is pluralist in

religion or in a secularized society. The heart that is indifferent, cold,
disillusioned or imbued with hate becomes sensitive to the person who loves in
freedom - for such a person becomes a revealer if those who live alongside the
person who witnesses know that his or her strength comes from Christ.
Love exercises a pressure towards understanding. It does not despise this or that
cultural instrument; for example, a profound knowledge of other religions in a
pluralist society. What is in fact needed is the recognition of others in their
otherness, making them welcome in their diversity by understanding them.
When hearts are open, an attitude and even a substance of dialogue between the
respective messages in all their originality is mandatory. The witness does not
necessarily engage in comparative theology (symbolics), still less does he or
she practise polemics. He/she is sensitive and receptive to all the spiritual
beauty that emanates from non-Christians, welcoming it as a gift of the Spirit.
This sensitivity is possible only when one is free from fear, from a “minority”
complex, from the sense of being imprisoned in an historical ghetto. Indeed, in
every human society that is not suffocating from a complete absence of
freedom, the Christian is called to creativity. In silence, the face of the witness
is radiant and pacific.

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Openness of heart can go hand in hand with an absence of education. The

witness whose only training is the text of scripture and the liturgy is a “burning
and a shining light.” The fundamental place for witness is the identification
with the poor. To be free from one’s possessions, not to dominate anymore, to
share with all to the point of utter poverty, to regard all as the Lord - this is the
inner climate par excellence of the witness to the gospel. The spirit of voluntary
poverty, the asceticism of the monks, their prayer and humility, are the
Christian virtues to which Islam has always been responsive.

Witnessing in a secularized society

Witness in a hierarchical society, in a developing society of the kind we have
just described, is basically no different from that borne in the secularized
world. Conservatism or religious formalism, fundamentalism (or integrism),
these reveal the absence of the living God just as much as the society that makes
no reference to God at all.
Like secularized society, traditionalist society may believe in different
mythologies, but the group that claims to be ruled by God settles down in fact
in an idolatrous conception of a vengeful god who holds people down in a state
of tutelage, or who freezes them in a tribal mindset, even if it is that of a tribe
governed by God. In its desire for the technology it lacks at present, a human
group already has a foretaste of the mythology of technology and of a scientism
that is rather more primitive than contemporary neo-positivism.
The history of all societies cames no message and the religion of the media
everywhere introduces chatter and emptiness, both of which are domains of
death. If here the fear is more of an ecological cataclysm and everywhere of a
nuclear accident, the collapse of empires or of tiny countries it is in no one’s
interest to defend, people comfort themselves once more in distress by a
gnosticism that makes an idol of their own mind, or by reincarnation, drugs or
sex assuage their fear of death.
Certainly a new apologetic has to be found, prolegomena of faith connected
explicitly with the modern sciences. After the Big Bang it is no longer possible
to perpetuate a philosophy tied to an outworn wisdom. There is certainly a new
language, a new way of articulating the possibility of a pre-understanding of
faith. And there is a genuine culture to be saved as well as the feeling
inseparable from understanding - just as there is a freedom to be defended or
to be struggled for where it has been lost, since freedom is the most favourable
climate for the normal development of the human being and for the acceptance
of a faith that is not just credulity, superstition or fear of God.
We should not be afraid of the secularized society that leaves God out of its
reckoning. In certain respects it is healthier than the pagan world, which
worships false gods.
Let Christians, renouncing power and violence, become the poor and peace-
making servants of the crucified God who establishes the liberty of the

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individual. Let them struggle in the world alongside those who are seeking the
meaning of the world. Let them stand surety for the faith of others. Let them also
stand surety for those who, though lacking in faith, nevertheless, often with great
humility, create a certain beauty, a certain goodness. ’
It is in the divine beauty of being, of all beings, that God is revealed. The one
whom the Lord transfigures till his or her face becomes the icon of Christ is the
one who bears witness faithfully. Only the saints will accomplish the unity of
the church. If God does not purify a person’s heart, the human mind will never
know the truth. The person whom God clothes in light is both the content of the
witness and the focal point of the witness.

Olivier CICment, in Anachroniques. Paris:DesclCe et Brouwer, 1990, pp. 57f.

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