This Sunday, we commemorate the Second “Triumph of Orthodoxy” on the Sunday of Saint Gregory of Palamas, a fourteenth century Archbishop of Thessaloniki, who defended the true Faith and taught us that nothing created can save us. This Sunday builds upon the inspiration of the Triumph of Orthodox and keeps our momentum going as we continue on our Lenten Journey together.

    Only God’s uncreated, deifying Grace, manifested through His Energies, Operation, and Love, can save us. Unknown as to His Essence (Apophatic), we can only know God through His Energy and Operation (Kataphatic). A Glorious Reconciliation, He is, at one and the same time, transcendent and immanent, knowable and unknowable, God and Man. God is the Mystery of the Trinity Who welcomes us by His Love into the Communion of this Mysterious Fellowship.

    Although historically complicated and theologically intricate, I shall try to cut simply and cleanly to the heart of the issue by applying the medieval tool of Occam’s Razor—or if you prefer, Alexander the Great’s sword to the Gordion Knot. In the spirit of Great Lent, Holy Simplicity will reign.

    Nothing created can save us. Nothing limited can grant infinity. Nothing temporal can grant eternity. Only the uncreated God can save us; and this, He does by His Grace and Love that He reveals to us, in knowable and unknowable ways, just as He did at His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor through His uncreated Light, Which we were able to experience but not understand.

    This revelation on Mount Tabor is quite instructive: Christ, having assumed our human nature in its entirety, has made it possible for our human nature to be One with the Divine Nature and be transfigured, saved, and glorified at the Right Hand of the Father in Communion with the Holy Spirit. Light of Light, True God of True God, He allows us to share in the warmth and sustenance of this uncreated Light revealed at Mount Tabor.

    Thus, this Beacon of Light and Great Luminary of Orthodoxy, Saint Gregory Palamas (+1357/8), Archbishop of Thessaloniki, defended the true faith from all the false teachings (hence, a continuation of the Triumph of the Orthodoxy) that needlessly distracted and led people away from the One True God Who, out of His infinite Love, condescends to invite us into Communion with Him through His uncreated, transformative Divine Energy.

     Just as the Divine fire did not consume the steel of the sword that guarded Paradise, as the Divine fire did not consume the burning bush before Moses, as the Divinity of the Son did not consume the humanity of the Mother of God, as Jesus Christ is both God and Man, and as Holy Communion is both the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood (God’s offering) as well as the bread and wine (man’s offering), so God’s uncreated energy works to transform and unite us with Him, and thus, save us in Him without destroying us.

     Such is God’s Love that He allows us to know Him in Communion through His Operation, Energy, and Grace, ineffably conveyed through His creation in order to meet us, touch us, heal us, and reconcile us. This is His Divine Condescension that makes possible our deliverance and Ascension with Him.

     However, although we can experience or know Him as to His condescending and self-emptying Love through His energy or operation which He ecstatically shares with us, we can never know Him as to His Essence. This is impossible and illogical. For quite simply put: How can the created understand the Creator? If we, as limited and temporal human beings, know or understand God as to His Nature, then, by definition of God, He is no longer God.

     Being sentient, experiential beings, we can understand created energies, but something created cannot save us. We cannot understand the uncreated energies of God that He shares by His Grace, but only the uncreated can save us. This is a sublime Mystery and Gift that we accept—not one that we have merited or earned.

     Neither we, nor anything created, can bridge the infinite gulf between God and Man, Heaven and earth, Infinite and finite, Eternal and ephemeral. Only God can do so, by His Grace, Energy, Operation, and Divine Transfiguring Light perpetually and mysteriously working through His creation for the salvation of His creation.

     Therefore, we are always by, and in, His Grace, for outside of His Grace, we are nothing. Although our prayers and efforts are necessary, we, and by extension, all of God’s creation, are incomplete and imperfect. However, God’s Grace is sufficient, completing and making whole whatever is lacking in us. Again, this is a Gift that we need only prayerfully, joyfully, and gratefully accept.

     In the fourteenth century, Saint Gregory Palamas and the Church prevailed over the teachers of a created energy just as the early Church overcame the teachers of a created god in the fourth century. In the words of Saint Peter, like a lion on the prowl, Satan, for over a thousand years, tirelessly worked to destroy the Great Church of Christ.

     Do not be fooled. Nothing created can save you. Salvation is not for man or creation to grant. This is solely the Province of God, the Creator. This is in essence the distillation of a complicated argument. As Creator, God can work within His laws of nature or outside of His laws of nature, but It is His energy operating in this world that saves us, and nothing or nobody else can.

    Limited, humanity cannot grant divinity. Unlimited, only divinity can grant divinity. This is why, in His Infinite Love, God became Man. There is no created intermediary. There is no intermediary between God and man, save the God-man, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He is the Bridge that spans the gulf between God and man and Heaven and earth. The vanity of man’s protestations to the contrary, we have Jesus Christ; we have no need of something “created” (the useless, unnecessary, and noisy speculations of the arrogant) to save us.

    God has come. He came simply, humbly, and quietly as a Child. We need not think and agonize over other ways to be saved. We cannot create; only God creates. We cannot save; only God saves, and He does this through Jesus, His Son, Whose Name simply and instructively means “God saves.” Saint Gregory was victorious over the teachers of a created means of salvation just as Saint Athanasios was victorious against the teachers of a created god.

    May we take inspiration and continue the momentum on our Lenten Journey together as we celebrate this Second Triumph of Orthodoxy in our Churches throughout the world and joyously proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Way to God the Father in Communion with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

†Father Jim