教會階序 第 1 章 第 2/5 段

And of the ministers, some stand by the gates of the sanctuary, which are shut, others perform some other thing of their own order, while the elect of the liturgical arrangement, together with the priests, set forth upon the divine altar the sacred bread and the cup of blessing, after the universal hymnody has been confessed beforehand by the whole fullness of the church.

Upon this the divine hierarch performs a sacred prayer and announces the holy peace to all; and when all have greeted one another, the mystical recitation of the sacred diptychs is accomplished.

And when the hierarch and the priests have washed their hands with water, the hierarch takes his place in the midst of the divine altar, and around him stand, with the priests, only the elect of the ministers.

And the hierarch, having hymned the sacred divine workings, performs the most divine things, and brings before the eyes the things hymned through the sacredly set-forth symbols; and having shown the gifts of the divine workings, he himself comes to their sacred communion, and exhorts the others.

—as he is led up hierarchically in the purity of the deiform habit.

For the most sacred odes and readings of the Scriptures expound to them the teaching of a virtuous life, and before this the complete cleansing-away of corruptive evil; while the most divine, common, and peaceful imparting of the one and same bread and cup legislates for them an inspired conformity of manner, as for those fed at one table, and leads them to the sacred remembrance of the most divine supper and arch-symbol of the things performed—according to which the very Maker of the symbols most justly excludes the one who did not sup with him sacredly and conformably upon the sacred things, teaching reverently and in a God-befitting way that the true approach to divine things in habit grants to those who approach the communion that is according to their likeness to them.

These things, then, as I said, well delineated at the forecourts of the inner sanctuaries, and left sufficient for contemplation by those still imperfect, let us leave aside, and let us enter from the effects to the causes, in accordance with our sacred synaxis; and, with Jesus shedding light upon it, we shall behold the comely contemplation of the intelligible things, manifestly making to gleam forth the blessed beauty of the archetypes.

But, O most divine and sacred rite, having uncovered the symbolic vestments of the enigmas wrapped about you, be shown to us far-shiningly, and fill our intellectual eyes full of uniform and unveiled light.

For the most divine blessedness above all things, even though by divine goodness it proceeds into the communion of the sacred things that partake of it, yet it does not come outside its essentially unmoved standing and establishment, but illumines all the deiform proportionately, while it is truly about itself and is in no way moved away from its own selfsameness.

Likewise the divine rite of the synaxis, even though, having a uniform, simple, and condensed source, it is by love of mankind multiplied into the sacred variety of the symbols and proceeds to the whole of hierarchic imagery, yet uniformly it is again gathered from these into its own monad and unifies those who are sacredly led up to it.

In the same deiform manner the divine hierarch, even though he brings down his uniform hierarchic knowledge, in a good-formed way, to those below, using the multitudes of the sacred enigmas, yet again, as absolute and ungraspable by the lesser, he is restored without diminution to his own source; and having made his intellectual entrance into the One of himself, he sees purely the uniform principles of the things performed, making the end of his love-of-mankind procession toward secondary things to be the more divine return to the first.

And the psalmic sacred discourse, being conjoined with almost all the hierarchic mysteries, could not be detached from the most hierarchic of all.

...whether [the holy Scripture] expounded the manner of life and sacred teaching, or the hidden and mystical contemplation of the beloved and divinely-uttering one among the disciples, or the supramundane theology of Jesus, to those fit for deification, and rooted it together with the sacred and deiform uplifting of the rites; while the sacred writing of the divine odes, having as its aim to hymn all the theologies and divine workings and to praise the sacred discourses and sacred performances of the divine men, makes a universal ode and narration of the divine things, producing a proper habit, for the reception and imparting of every hierarchic rite, in those who sacredly discourse it in an inspired manner.

When, therefore, the comprehensive hymnody of the all-sacred things has harmoniously disposed the dispositions of our souls toward the things that are to be sacredly performed a little later, and by the unison of the divine odes has legislated like-mindedness—toward the divine things and toward ourselves and one another—as in one concordant choir of the sacred, then the things abbreviated and rather shaded over in the intellectual psalmic discourse are amplified, through more numerous and clearer images and recitations, in the most sacred readings of the holy-written compositions.

In these the one who sees sacredly will see the uniform and one inspiration, as moved by one and the same most divine Spirit.

Whence, fittingly, in due order, after the more ancient tradition the New Testament is proclaimed, of the inspired and hierarchic order showing forth, I think, this: that the one foretold the divine workings of Jesus that were to be, while the other accomplished them; and that the one wrote the truth in images, while the other showed it present.

For the perfective accomplishment according to the latter confirmed the truth of the former's pre-proclamations; and the divine working is the summation of theology.

Of these, some, wholly un-trumpeted as to the sacred rites, do not even behold the images, having shamelessly repudiated the salvific initiation of the divine birth, and having ruinously cried out against the Scriptures: 'I do not wish to know your ways.'

But the catechumens, those under demonic energy, and those in penitence, the ordinance of the holy hierarchy permits indeed to hearken to the psalmic sacred discourse and to the inspired reading of the all-sacred Scriptures, but does not summon them to the subsequent sacred performances and contemplations—rather, only the perfect eyes of the perfecters.

For the deiform hierarchy is full of sacred righteousness, and allots to each in a salvific way according to worth, granting sacredly the harmonious participation in divine things, to each in measure and proportion, in due season.

The lowest rank, then, has been allotted to the catechumens.

For they are non-participants and uninitiated in every hierarchic place of initiation, not yet having had inspired existence by divine bringing-to-birth, but being still brought to birth by the paternal Scriptures and shaped by life-giving formings toward the life-originating, light-originating, and blessed advancement that comes from the divine birth.

Just as, then, if fleshly infants should fall out, imperfect and unformed, from their proper birthing, as miscarriages and abortions they will have an unborn, lifeless, and unillumined falling upon the earth, and no one of sound mind, looking to what appears, would say that they have been brought forth to the light, freed from the darkness in the womb (for the scientific superintending art of bodies, medicine, would say that light works upon things receptive of light)—so too the all-wise knowledge of sacred things first brings them to birth by the introductory nourishment of the formative and life-giving Scriptures, and, having brought their substance to maturity toward the divine birth, gives to them in a salvific way, in due order, communion with the light-formed and perfection-working things.

But now, as imperfect, it separates them off from the perfect, providing both for the good order of the sacred things and for the bringing-to-birth and the life of the catechumens in the deiform rank of the hierarchic things.

And the multitude of those under demonic energy is itself unhallowed, but is second, toward the higher, to the lowest place of the catechumens.

...being still occupied either by the enticements or by the disturbances of things contrary.

But the sight and communion of the all-sacred things is contracted away even from them, and very fittingly so.

For if it is true that the wholly divine man, the worthy sharer of divine things, the one led up to the summit of the deiform that pertains to him in complete and perfective deifications, will not even perform the things of the flesh beyond the most natural necessities—and that, if at all, only incidentally—but will be a temple and at once a follower, in his highest deification, of the most divine Spirit, establishing like in like; then such a one could never be wrought upon by contrary phantasms or terrors, but will laugh at them, and will wrestle down and drive off those that approach, and will act rather than be acted upon; and, besides the impassibility and unyieldingness of his own habit, he will be seen even by others as a physician of such workings.

And I think, besides this—rather, I clearly know—that the most unmingled discernment of the hierarchic things knows, before these, those wrought upon by a most accursed energy: namely all who, having departed from the deiform life, become like-minded and like-mannered to the ruinous demons, turning away, through their utmost and self-ruinous folly, from the truly existent, immortally possessed, and eternally pleasant things, and desiring and working the material and most passion-ridden alteration, the perishing and corruptive pleasures, and the unstable well-being that is not in alien things but only seems to be.

These, then, first and more properly than the others, let them be separated off by the discerning voice of the minister.

For it is not lawful for them to partake of any other sacred thing than the teaching of the Scriptures that turns one back toward better things.

For if the supramundane sacred performance of divine things hides itself even from those in penitence—though they have already come toward it—not admitting what is not wholly most sacred, and proclaims even this all-purely, that 'To those who in any respect imperfectly grow weak toward the summit of the deiform, I am unseen and uncommunicating' (for the wholly most unmingled voice drives off even those unable to be bound together with the worthy sharers of the most divine things)—how much more will the multitude of those passionately wrought upon be unhallowed and alien from all sight and communion of the sacred things.

And since the uninitiated and unperfected in the rites have come to be outside the divine temple and the sacred performance set above them, and with them the apostates from the sacred life, and following these those who, through unmanliness, are passively affected by the terrors and apparitions of things contrary, as not having attained, through intense and unyielding inclination toward divine things, the unmoved and active condition of the deiform habit; then with them those who have departed from the contrary life, but have not yet been cleansed in habit and inspired love—pure and unmingled—from its phantasms; and after them those not yet wholly uniform and (to speak in legal terms) wholly unblemished and unhurt—then the all-sacred performers of the all-sacred things, and the lovers-of-the-vision, beholding in a holy-befitting manner the most holy rite, hymn with universal hymnody the good-working and good-giving Source, by which the salvific rites have been shown forth to us, sacredly working the sacred deification of those being perfected.

This hymn some call the confession, others the symbol of religion, and others—more divinely, I think—the hierarchic thanksgiving, as comprehending the sacred gifts that have come to us from God.

And when the divine love-of-mankind has thus been sacredly hymned, the divine bread is set forth covered, and the cup of blessing; and the most divine greeting is sacredly performed, and the mystical and supramundane recitation of the holy-written diptychs.

...that those divided against themselves should be gathered together and partake of the peaceful union of the One.

For if, being illumined by the contemplation and knowledge of the One, we are unified toward the uniform and divine gathering, we would not endure to fall down into the divided desires, from which arise the material and passionate enmities toward what is by nature of the same kind.

This uniform and undivided life, then, as I think, the sacred performance of the peace legislates, establishing like in like, and separating off the divine and uniform visions from the divided.

And the recitation of the sacred diptychs after the peace proclaims those who have lived holily and have come unalterably to the perfection of a virtuous life, exhorting and hand-leading us toward the blessed condition and deiform allotment that comes through likeness to them; and proclaiming those others as living, and, as theology says, not as having died, but as having passed over from death into a most divine life.

And consider that they are also dedicated to sacred remembrances—the divine remembrance being made manifest not in a human way in the imagining of the memory, but, as one might say, in a God-befitting way, according to the precious and unalterable knowledge, in God, of the deiform ones who have been perfected.

'For the Lord knew,' say the Scriptures, 'those who are his'; and 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones' (the death of the holy ones being spoken in place of perfection in holiness).

And consider this also sacredly: that, when the venerable symbols by which Christ is signified and partaken have been set upon the divine altar, there is present, without separation, the enrollment of the holy ones, manifesting their indivisible conjunction with him in supramundane and sacred union.

And when these things have been sacredly performed, according to the ordinance described, the hierarch, standing before the most holy symbols, washes his hands with water, together with the august order of the priests.

That, then, as the Scriptures say, 'he who has bathed needs nothing else save the washing of his extremities, that is, his outermost parts'—through which most extreme cleansing, in the all-pure habit of the deiform, and proceeding in a good-formed way toward secondary things, he will be free and absolute, as wholly uniform, and, turning back again uniformly toward the One, he will make his return undefiled and unstained, as preserving the fullness and integrity of the deiform—the sacred laver, as we have said, was in the hierarchy according to the Law, but now the cleansing of the hands of the hierarch and the priests hints at it.

For those who go to the most all-holy sacred performance must have been cleansed even of the outermost phantasms of the soul, and must approach it in likeness to it, so far as possible.

For thus they will be illumined the more brightly by the theophanies of the supramundane flashings, when the kindred mirrors more wholly and more transparently allow the proper radiance to pass through into the brightness.

And the washing of the hierarch and the priests, even to the extremities or outermost parts, takes place before the most holy symbols, as before Christ, who oversees all our most hidden thoughts, and as the most extreme cleansing is defined in his all-overseeing exactitudes and his most just and incorruptible judgments.

Thus the hierarch is united to the divine things, and having hymned the sacred divine workings, he performs the most divine things and brings before the eyes the things hymned.

What, then, we say the divine workings toward us are, must next be narrated as far as is in our power.

For I am not competent to hymn them all, much less to know them clearly and to initiate others.

But what is hymned and sacredly performed by the inspired hierarchs in accordance with the Scriptures, this, so far as is attainable to us, we shall say, having invoked the hierarchic inspiration as our helper.

Human nature, having from the beginning senselessly slipped away from the divine good things, the most passion-ridden life received in succession, and the end of corruptive death.

For, as a consequence, the ruinous apostasy from the truly Good and the transgression of the sacred ordinance in paradise delivered the one who had been driven, by the enticing and hostile deceits of the adversary, away from the life-giving yoke, over to things contrary to the divine good things, and to his own falls.

And wandering, and turned aside from the straight way that leads to the truly existent God, and subjected to the ruinous and malign multitudes, it was unaware that it was serving not gods nor friends, but enemies.

And while they unsparingly abused it according to their own mercilessness, it had pitiably fallen into the danger of non-existence and destruction.

But the most infinite love-of-mankind of the divine goodness did not, in a manner befitting goodness, refuse its own self-working providence toward us; rather, having come into true participation in all things at our level, sinlessly, and having been unified toward our lowliness—together with the unconfused and wholly unhurt condition of its own attributes—it thenceforth granted us communion with itself as with kindred, and showed us partakers of its own good things, having dissolved (as the hidden tradition holds) the dominion of the apostate multitude against us, not by power as overpowering, but, according to the saying mystically handed down to us, in judgment and righteousness; and having refashioned, in a good-working manner, the things at our level toward the wholly contrary.

For it filled the lightless part of our mind with blessed and most divine light, and adorned the formless with deiform beauties; and the dwelling of the soul, in complete salvation of our substance that was all but fallen, it freed from most accursed passions and corruptive defilements, having shown us a supramundane uplifting and an inspired manner of life in our sacred assimilations to it, so far as is possible.

And how could the God-imitating be engendered in us otherwise than by the remembrance of the most sacred divine workings being ever renewed in the hierarchic sacred discourses and sacred performances?

This we do, as the Scriptures say, 'in remembrance of him.'

Whence the divine hierarch, taking his place at the divine altar, hymns the aforesaid sacred divine workings of Jesus, our most divine providence, which he accomplished for the salvation of our race by the good pleasure of the most all-holy Father in the Holy Spirit, according to the Scripture.

And having hymned them and beheld their venerable and intelligible contemplation with intellectual eyes, he comes to their symbolic sacred performance—and this too in a God-given manner.

Whence, reverently and at once hierarchically, after the sacred hymns of the divine workings, he makes apology for the sacred performance that is beyond him, first sacredly crying out to him:

'You said, Do this in remembrance of me.'

Then, having asked to become worthy of this God-imitating sacred performance, and by assimilation to Christ himself to perform the divine things and to impart them all-purely, and that those who are to partake of the sacred things may partake in a sacred-befitting manner, he performs the most divine things and brings before the eyes the things hymned, through the sacredly set-forth symbols.

For having uncovered the covered and undivided bread, and divided it into many, and distributed the unity of the cup to all, he symbolically multiplies and apportions the unity, accomplishing in these things a most all-holy sacred performance.

For the one and simple and hidden of Jesus, the most divine Word, by his incarnation at our level, has proceeded, without alteration, in goodness and love-of-mankind, toward the composite and visible, and has, in a good-working way, transacted our unifying communion with himself, having united our lowly things, at the summit, with his most divine things—if indeed we too are fitted together with him, as members to a body, according to the sameness of the unhurt and divine life, and are not, deadened by corruptive passions, made unfitting, uncleaving, and unable to live together with the divine and most healthy members.

For we must, if we long for communion with him, look intently toward his most divine life according to the flesh, and by assimilation to it of sacred sinlessness, run back to the deiform and unhurt habit.

For thus he will harmoniously grant us the communion that is according to likeness.

These things the hierarch makes manifest in the things sacredly performed, bringing the covered gifts toward the manifest, and dividing their unity into many, and, by the union, at the summit, of the things distributed with those in which they come to be, making the partakers communicants of them.

...[Christ] being given form from us, and proceeding without alteration, from the One that is according to nature, toward our divided condition, and through this good-working love-of-mankind calling the human race into participation in himself and in his own good things—if indeed we are united to his most divine life by our assimilation to it according to our power, and thereby are truly made communicants of God and of the divine things.

And having partaken and imparted of the most divine communion, he ends in a sacred thanksgiving, together with all the sacred fullness of the church.

For the partaking precedes the imparting, and the receiving of the mysteries precedes the mystical distribution.

For this is the universal good order and rank of divine things:

that the sacred leader should first come to be in participation and fulfillment of the things that are to be granted, through him, from God to others, and so should impart to others also.

For just as, in the case of the solar flashings, the more subtle and more transparent of the substances, being first filled with the inflowing radiance, channel forth the light that overflows from them in every direction, in a sun-like manner, to those after them—so too in everything divine, one must not presume to be a leader for others who has not, in his whole habit, become most deiform and shown to be a fitting instrument of the divine inspiration and judgment.

In these things the whole arrangement of the sacred ones, gathered together hierarchically and having communicated in the most divine things, ends with a sacred thanksgiving, having proportionately come to know and hymned the graces of the divine workings.

So that those who are non-partakers and ignorant of divine things could never come to thanksgiving, even though the most divine gifts are, by their own nature, worthy of thanksgiving.

But, as I said, not having been willing even to look upon the divine gifts, out of their inclination toward worse things, they have remained ungrateful toward the infinite graces of the divine workings.

'Taste,' say the Scriptures, 'and see.'

For by the sacred initiation into divine things, the initiated will come to know their munificent graces, and, beholding all-sacredly, in their participation, the most divine height and greatness of them, they will gratefully hymn the supercelestial good-workings of the Deity.

Such, then, are the things of the most holy synaxis, and so beautiful are the intelligible visions, which, as we have often said, hierarchically work our communion and synaxis with the One.

But there is another perfective performance ranked together with this.

Our leaders name it the rite of the myron (chrism).

Having examined its parts, then, in order, according to the sacred images, thus, through the parts, we shall be led up hierarchically by sacred contemplations toward its One.

In the same manner as the synaxis, the ranks of the unperfected are dismissed—after there have gone before, namely, the hierarchic fragrant procession over all the sacred space, and the psalmic sacred discourse, and the reading of the most divine Scriptures.

Then the hierarch, taking the myron, sets it upon the divine altar, covered by twelve sacred wings, while all cry out with a most holy voice the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-possessed prophets; and having completed the prayer performed over it, he uses it, in the most holy rites of the things consecrated, for nearly every hierarchic perfective performance.

The introductory uplifting of this perfective sacred performance, through the things sacredly done with the divine myron, shows forth, I think, this:

...[that the divine men do not display] for vainglory the beautiful and fragrant assimilations, according to virtue, to the hidden God.

For undefiled are the hidden and beyond-mind fragrant comelinesses of God, and intelligibly they are manifested only to the intellectual ones, wishing to have like-formed to themselves, according to virtue, the incorruptible images in souls.

For the inviolable statue of deiform virtue, well imitated, looking toward that intelligible and fragrant beauty, thus shapes and fashions itself toward the most beautiful imitation.

And just as in the case of sensible images, if the painter looks unswervingly at the archetypal form, drawn aside by nothing else of the visible things, nor in any way divided, he will, so to speak, double that very one whom he paints, and show each in the other, save for the difference of substance—so too, for the lovers-of-beauty who are painters in mind, the steadfast and unbending contemplation toward the fragrant and hidden beauty will grant the unerring and most deiform likeness.

Fittingly, then, the divine painters, conforming their intellectual part unalterably toward the superessentially fragrant and intelligible comeliness, do none of their God-imitating virtues for the sake of being seen, according to the Scripture, by men, but sacredly behold, as in an image in the divine myron, the most sacred things of the church covered over.

For not only are they unseen to the unlike, but they themselves are not drawn down toward the sight of those things.

Whence, consistently with themselves, they love not the things that randomly seem beautiful and just, but the things that truly are; nor do they look to the glory irrationally accounted blessed by the multitude, but, judging the beautiful or the worse by itself in a God-imitating way, they are divine statues of the most divine fragrance—which, having in itself the truly fragrant, does not turn toward what seems, unlike itself, to the many, but imprints the unfeigned upon its true images.

Come, then, since we have beheld the outward comeliness of the whole beautiful sacred performance, let us look toward its more divine beauty, beholding it, in itself, having uncovered its veils, manifestly making to gleam forth the blessed radiance and filling us full of the unveiled fragrance to the intellectual ones.

For neither is the visible perfective performance of the myron uncommunicating or unseen to those about the hierarch; but on the contrary, reaching even to them and establishing the contemplation that is above the many, it is sacredly covered over by them, and is hierarchically separated off from the multitude.

For to the inspired men the ray of the all-sacred things, as to kindred of the intelligible light, shines purely and immediately, and unveiledly makes fragrant their intellectual perceptions; but it no longer proceeds in the same way to what is subordinate, but is concealed by them, as by hidden beholders of the intelligible, unparaded, under winged enigmas, for the sake of the undefiled toward the unlike—through which sacred enigmas the well-ordered ranks of those below are led up toward the sacred proportion that pertains to them.

There is, then, as I said, the sacred rite-performance now being hymned by us, of the perfective character of the hierarchic order and power.

And you will likewise see the hierarch bearing forth the beautiful fragrance from the more divine place toward the sacred things that follow, and, by his return to the selfsame, teaching that the participation in divine things comes to be, in all, to the sacred ones according to worth, while remaining undiminished and wholly unmoved and standing unalterably within the property of the divine establishment.

...not only having the power that is active against contrary terrors, but also bestowing it; and to those who have passed over into a sacred mind from worse things, they implant a sacred habit, so as not to be captured again by evil; and those who are in need of being all-pure, they perfectly cleanse; and the sacred ones they lead toward the divine images and the sight and communion of them; while the all-sacred they feast in blessed and intelligible visions, filling full their uniformity with the One and unifying them.