The Beloved
by Fr Matthew the Poor (Fr. Matta el-Meskeen)
The purpose of this title is to draw our attention to a characteristic of Christ that arises out of his nature and to touch our hearts. If Christ was the Beloved of the Father, as he deliberately declared (“The Father loves the Son,” Jn. 3:35; 5:20), this is a state in the Father’s heart, as Christ explained in a mystery when he said, “I am in the Father” (Jn. 14:10). Here, the “I” ego is the full and complete being of Christ the Son, which filled the heart of the Father. But just as the Father loved the Son, so the Son loved the Father, with the same love and with the whole of the being that filled the heart of the Son.
This is why Christ hastened to add, out of his sense of his own being, “And the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:10), so that love in the Father and the Son became expressive of a power of totally mutual attraction, and we do not find the Son outside the Father or the Father outside the Son. So, Christ was able to say with conviction springing from this love that filled his being, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30).
How amazing and unimaginable is the mystery of love, which is the mystery of divinity and its sublime substance. Who can still say that the Father and the Son are two? For shame! On the contrary, they are one essence, one being and existence, Father and Son, Lover and Beloved. And this is the essence of God which has the fullness of perfection and sufficiency and is necessarily and inevitably one.
This is why it is said that the divinity is not divided and neither increases nor decreases and has within it neither first nor second, nor greater nor lesser, nor preceding nor following. At the same time, it is not a numerical unity, for number expresses a material existence, but the oneness of God expresses the whole presence, personified by an essence in which are both fatherhood and sonship. This essence is the whole being that encompasses all of the true presence and all that truly exists and from which emanates fatherhood and sonship, incomparably united in the intimacy of love, to raise up the world and everything in it by the power of love. This is what St. John meant when he said, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn.3:16). For God created the world by love and redeemed it by love, and love scorned death just as light scorns darkness and overcame it without a struggle. Thus, we have seen how love, or the Beloved, raises up from death a life that is established above the heavens.
God Created the World by Love. “For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). Here, we see how love creates existence from nothingness.
And God Redeemed It by Love through the Death of His Son. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).
And here we see love creating life out of death.
So, we have become the creatures of the Beloved: in him the Father created us and in him He redeemed us. By this creative redeeming love we are bound to the Beloved and the Father with the bonds of existence and life. Christ says concerning this, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn. 14:2). Thus, Christ is revealed to us in love.
He Who Loves Me. There is a love that exists in the mind of which the tongue speaks easily, so that it may be said, “Who is there who does not love Christ?”
But there is a love that exists in the heart which is like a throne of light upon which Christ is seated. Of this, no one can speak, but it overflows with his light so that no one can deny his presence. If the Beloved dwells in the heart, the heart can contain nothing but him, for he is everlasting and eternal, he is the fullness that fills all in all, and of his fullness we have received grace upon grace (Eph. 1:23; Jn. 1:16).
As the Son has filled the Father’s heart, and the Father only sees or loves in the Son, and we are loved by the Father in the Son, that is in Christ, so it is with us. Whoever truly loves Christ, Christ truly fills his heart, and no one can truly love another person, except in Christ.
"Christ Will Dwell in Your Hearts by Faith.” This is the spring of divine love that has been opened up for us as the greatest of God’s gifts.
Take note dear reader. The Beloved, with all the fullness of the love of the Father and his own love, lowered himself in obedience to the Father s love and was willing to dwell in our hearts by faith. So, if we believe in Christ, that he is the Father’s only beloved Son, and are certain that he is, he is able to transfer his presence to within our hearts and make his title “the Beloved” real within us. His presence in us thus becomes the pledge of our faith that he is, and his love for us the pledge of our faith in the Father s love for him.
Listen to what he says in a mystery: “If a man loves me... my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn. 14:23). There is a hidden mystery in this, for when we love him, we become open to his love, and then his love will definitely be poured out on us without measure. We must not forget that “God is love,” so who can know God apart from those who are able to love Him? So it is with the Beloved. Who can overwhelm him and make him enter willing or unwilling into their hearts, apart from those who are open to his nature through love? For we know that he is the fullness of love and so only enters a heart that is fully open to him. And we must still be constantly aware of the depth of the meaning of his title “the Beloved.” Certainly, the Father is remembered in it for he is “the Beloved of the Father,” and so it is impossible that he should enter alone into the hearts of those who love him. “If a man love me... my Father will love him and I will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn. 14:23).
How deep and burning is love! The awe-inspiring Father to whom are due all glory and honor and everlasting praise, can be received in our hearts in the Beloved. This is the mystery of the Beloved and his awesome sublimity. The title carries with it the fear of the Father—“Beloved of the Father.” The title “Beloved” is a door open to the fullness of God. If we go through it with our love, he will come to us with the Father in all his love. So, it is that the divinity works with humankind by coming to visit, or rather to make a dwelling: “We will come to him and make our home with him.” But we must not take lightly the coming of the Beloved Son with the Father, for it means that we have reached the depths of his love, and the depths of his love were revealed to us in his death. So, it is love on a cross. This is how Christ spoke truly when he said, “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:38). And so, the door to Christ and the Father is open, and the door is love on a cross. In order that we may be worthy of Christ and the Father, we must keep love and its cross in balance.
If the Beloved enters the heart, he makes it a home for himself and the Father. It is no longer a human heart, but a temple in which God dwells. O Son of God, what is left for me? Come and let the fire of your love consume me. What use is my existence? Your life swallows up my death, and so I live, “not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). O Paul, who brought yourself to death so that you might gain the life of Christ in you, in life and in death you gained them both.
Have you heard of a mother who loves her child and swears she will love him to the point of death? She has received the beloved as a guest together with the heart of the Father and his love. Have you heard of a bridegroom who loves his bride to the extent that he forgets to eat and drink and is continually on the brink of death? Know that he draws his love from the Beloved and love has so overwhelmed him that he prefers it to life. Celibates and virgins, it is the desire of the Beloved that he should find a home in your hearts, a place where he can practice divine forms of love with which to respond to the Father’s love for him, and that he should offer to the Church lamps to light up this dark night that has continued for so long. Husbands and wives, put on a new mind, for the treasure of the divine love in your hearts cannot be marred by marriage or the love of sons and daughters. Nor can marriage extinguish the flames of the Beloved’s fire; rather it makes the fire burn higher, for you have experience of the unity of love. So, raise it high above the cares of life and it will have greater honor in the eyes of the Beloved. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).
Do you see how St. Paul elevates the honor and glory of the love of a man for a woman, making it a parallel for the love of Christ for the Church? There is nothing strange in this. It is rather the mystery hidden in it that is amazing. For Christ loved the Church because it is his body, that is those who believe in him and whom he loves in order to draw them to the Father and perfect them in love as holy sacrifices on the throne of grace. This is the measure by which woman entered the mind and heart of Christ, for it is she who offers to Christ and to God the Father children for the kingdom and holy sacrifices by which the Church is enriched to fulfill its destiny. So, it is not strange that woman should stand in relation to man as the Church stands in relation to Christ. This is how Christ raises the value of marriage and makes it as holy as the work of the Church for the Father. St. Paul speaks of this too: “Therefore, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Whoever loves his wife loves... as Christ does the church” (Eph. 5:28, 29).
That the wife should be to the husband, in the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as his own body and as his own soul too, is the mystery of holy matrimony, for the two, the husband and the wife, through their mutual holy love in the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit, have become one body and one soul (The spirit is not mentioned, because the spirit is not involved in marriage. The human spirit cannot enter into marriage, except in Christ Jesus, when the human spirit and the spirit of Christ become, through sanctification, one spirit.). For the wife’s body has become to the husband like his own body insofar as he cares for it, loves and values it, and the soul of the wife and the soul of the husband become one in love.
What is truly amazing in the way St. Paul completes his mystical vision of the value of marriage in the sight of God is that he refers to it in terms, such as love, honor and esteem, which he would use of Christ and the Church. There are two aspects of this.
1. The first is defined by the sacred union between the husband and the wife based on mutual holy love. The husband loves the wife in Christ as his own body and soul, and likewise the wife. In this, the mystery of the sacred union takes place, and by that, marriage is in itself counted as being on the level of what Christ accomplished with the Church (the believers): “So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). That being so, marriage is considered a living model, a microcosm as a much repeated-repeated, self-sufficient unit, of the Church with Christ.
2. The second is that in the Church the baptism of boys and girls takes place, and thus, the Church becomes like a sacred womb giving birth to sons and daughters for the kingdom and for God. This is exactly how the wife is considered in the mystery of marriage, for she offers to the Church boys and girls upon whom the Church sets a seal in baptism so that they become sons and daughters of God and inherit the kingdom of God.
Thus, the mystery of the Church and the mystery of marriage perform one work together, which is in the last analysis the work of Christ. Then, if we look deeply into the title of Christ, “the Beloved,” we find that he is the power and spirit of the Church and also the power and spirit of marriage.
The Beloved loved the Church and betrothed her to himself, a pure virgin to bear him sons and daughters for the kingdom and the Father. And the Beloved entered into a mystery of marriage and joined the two under his love so that they should be one, so that they should have sons and daughters in the faith for Christ and the Father. The Apostle Paul completes the verse thus: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). That was for the sake of the Church. Now, what is the parallel to this in the love of a husband for his wife? Does it lie in his readiness to die for her?
We say that the Church has lived and lives, because Christ did, indeed, give up himself for her, as the Beloved of the Father. Out of his love he gave her life taken from his life. But in marriage the situation is not the same, because the husband’s readiness to die for his wife does not benefit the wife or give her life. What really benefits her and results in benefit to the husband and children too, in helping to fulfill the sacred purpose of love and marriage, is that the husband should constantly practice death for the sake of his wife and children in the sense of self-mortification in long-suffering and patience, and dying to desire and all that is not fitting for a Christian husband whose responsibility it is to guide the ship of the family through the shocks of the ocean of this world until it lands on God’s shore.
Here, the two pictures match: the death of Christ, the Beloved, for the sake of the Church to redeem her and give her life from his own life, and the continual self-mortification of the husband to redeem his family through his patience and long-suffering and love so that they should live in the peace of God and reach their destination. This is only possible if the Beloved fills the hearts of the husband and wife, for love is an energy that man can direct as he pleases. The husband’s love endures and grows and achieves the impossible if he draws from the Beloved the power of self-surrender for the Church, taking that power from Christ and using it for his wife. Then, the love of the Beloved is transformed in the husband’s heart and provides almost miraculously all the wife’s needs.
The mystery of marriage has profound power and significance, for it takes its depth from Christ and his union with the Father. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him” (Jn. 14:21). If marriage encompasses the love of the Beloved Son, then the power of the Most High will overshadow it and it will draw on the love of the Father and become a sign and a witness to the truth of the divine love that acts in holy matrimony.
The Body in Marriage. But what astonishes us is why St. Paul ends by saying: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it as the Lord does the church, because we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones” (Eph. 5:28-30).
"Because we are members of His Body, of His Flesh, and of His Bones.” This is a return to the value of the body in marriage, so that no one should despise it, for if the Church is the bride of Christ, she is at the same time his body, and we too are his body according to the mystery of the Church. We have undeniably become members of his sacred body, of his flesh and of his bones, because the fullness of the divinity dwelt in the body of Christ. If the husband has taken to himself one of the daughters of Christ as a bride, she is undeniably one of the members of the body of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones. So, how could the husband not love her and hold her sacred? And how could he not count her as his body and his soul? In the light of this mystery we also gain an exceptional understanding of how the two become one flesh. All this is contained within the concept of marriage in the light of the indwelling of the Beloved in this holy mystery.
Finally, we understand that the mystery of marriage is none other than the mystery of the divine love poured out by the Beloved wherever he is and whenever he blessed a man and his wife, desiring that they become one in the mystery of the divine love. But why does a man leave his father and his mother and unite himself to his wife? It is because through Christ she has become to him as it were a Church, his new body, which he has acquired from the Lord. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:28).
The Union Of Christ with The Human Soul So That Man Becomes One With Christ: This Is Spiritual Marriage, "Unity with the Lord." Just as Christ the Beloved dwells with husband and wife when the divine love is present to make them one body for the Church, so it is when Christ the Beloved comes to dwell in the human soul in the presence of the divine love, that man becomes one spirit with, or in, Christ. “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17). The basis of being united to the Lord is the fact that the body of the believer in the Lord is the temple of God. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit which is God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19,20). Thus, whoever does not choose to be united to a woman, that is, does not choose to be married, but chooses to be united to God and to give the needs of the spirit precedence over the demands of the body, he has in fact chosen to please God rather than to please a wife, according to the promise: “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife. There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit...” (1 Cor. 7:32-34). The Apostle Paul differentiates, thus, between marriage and celibacy for God: “He who marries does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:38). That is, it is not a question of holy and unholy, or pure and unclean. God forbid! It is rather a question of holy without anxieties and holy with anxieties!
Those who direct their lives and their bodies to choose to be united with the Lord are they to whom the Lord refers when he says that this is not for everyone, but for those who can receive it. “The disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry’ But he said to them, ‘Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it’” (Mt. 19:10-12). Here, “receiving” in the Lord’s mind is receiving the overcoming of sexual demands.
Thus, Christ speaks of being united with the Lord as something that is not for everyone. Rather, it is for whoever chooses it and has that desire, as the Apostle Paul makes clear: “Whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well... and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:37, 38).
From the words of the Lord and the Apostle Paul, the picture of what it means to be united to the Lord becomes clear: (1) It is not for everyone; (2) It is for those to whom it is given; (3) And for those who can receive it; (4) Marriage and being to a woman are good things; (5) But to choose to be united to the Lord is better; (6) Those who choose virginity, that is celibacy, and being united to the Lord, should not be the victims of their passions, but should be steadfast and in determined control of their desires.
The Lord Exalted The Whole Of Humanity, Married And Unmarried. The Union of Christ With The Soul Resembles A Spiritual, Heavenly Marrige. “And I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever... I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more [after his crucifixion and death], but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (Jn. 14:16-20).
"You Are in Me and I in You.” Christ speaks of this here before the crucifixion as an established fact that will be manifested to them after his resurrection from the dead: “in that day,” which is the day on which the Holy Spirit came upon them directly.
“You are in me [in the Beloved] and I in you” speaks of a state of perfect union, equal on both sides. We are in him, that is in “the Beloved,” and he is in us, so that there remains for us nothing that is outside him.
“And I in you” shows that the Beloved, with all his love, is in us. This is in fact spiritual marriage of complete union, the highest mystery of the work of the Beloved in us and the greatest mystery of the love of Christ.
When he says “I in you,” it might be though that he thus negates our existence. But he precedes it by saying emphatically that we shall also be in him with all our being. Therefore, our existence — in the Beloved —is confirmed and assured by his existence. And he says first of all, “I am in my Father,” like the introduction to the clauses of a marriage contract, a first clause, it indicates that the union takes place in the total presence of the Father, because he is one with Christ. That is the basis of our union with the Beloved and his union with us, in the sense that Christ — the Beloved — ratifies this sublime spiritual marriage by the presence of the Father, so that it is a holy marriage in every way in the sight of the Father and with his agreement and good pleasure.
Notice here, dear reader, that Christ speaks of his disciples as an image of the early Church. As we know, the Apostle Peter was one of the disciples and he was married and with him were others, both married and celibate together. Union with Christ in the presence of the Father as an exalted spiritual marriage, therefore, extends to encompass all the believers, married and unmarried alike, with no differentiation or distinction or discrimination.
In our opinion, this established a new spiritual and elevated state of virginity for humankind, which we have obtained through sanctification by the blood, which unites those who are virgins together with married men who have by the Spirit and by grace attained to a state of spiritual union in the body with a wife. Now, we certainly and clearly have before us a physical virginity and a spiritual virginity, a physical marriage and a spiritual marriage.
The physical celibate is called to physical marriage as is completely fitting. He is also called at the same time to spiritual marriage through union with Christ, which is also completely fitting. The spiritual celibate has renounced physical marriage in order to attain spiritual marriage to Christ alone.
The difference between the two is clarified by the Apostle Paul: “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord, (the Beloved)” only.
“But the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife.”
But we add from the Gospel and the general invitation to the kingdom that marriage can appropriately exist side by side with the original and basic call to union with Christ, and the husband and wife can be concerned together with the affairs of the Lord. This is absolutely undisputed in the Bible. Marriage between a man and woman and their physical union is not a simple choice in terms of either marriage or unity with Christ, either marriage or the kingdom of God. That is completely out of the question and contrary to all God’s promises about salvation and entry into the kingdom and attaining eternal life, which are for everyone. But what is added to the state of physical marriage is bearing the burden of the anxieties of the world, and we would add, bearing responsibility for the salvation of the wife or the husband.
The spiritual celibate, whether man or woman, who has fled the cares of the world and rejected marriage, is by definition called to union with Christ, attainment of salvation, seeking the kingdom and striving for eternal life, on the same level and with the same call as married people who have accepted marriage and become one flesh and borne the cares of the world together. They married with the understanding that their calling Christianity is first and foremost and above all else, to cleave to Christ and to strive to remain worthy of being unity with Christ. This applies to both man and woman, because each of them has his or her own spiritual struggle and his or her own spiritual journey, and their being together may make that struggle and that journey easier. Husbands and wives are called to salvation and eternal life by divine right and divine promise, just as spiritual celibates who have rejected marriage.
This brings out clearly what the Apostle Paul said: there is no difference between the two except the “care of the world,” which married people bear and which is replaced for spiritual celibates by the care of overt struggle with the enemy together with the subduing and subjection of the body for the benefit of the spirit.
The spiritual celibate is distinguished by gaining a high level of spiritual experience for the Beloved and the Church — that is if he really succeeds in subduing and subjecting the body and keeping his spirit in line with the will of Christ. He is also distinguished by being able to discern the mysteries of the Gospel and the characteristics of the way of salvation and eternal life and by being a leader of many people, both in his lifetime and after his death.
The married person is distinguished by two things. The first is his having a sister, whom he keeps and care for in the fear of God and whom he offers with himself as a perfect partner in one faith and one journey to salvation and one hope of the Kingdom of God, so that together they fulfill the will of God in their lives. The second is that he offers whatever sons and daughters it pleases God to give them — whether many of few—and if they are many the reward is greater — to the Church so that they enrich it in faith and love. The Church is the bride of Christ and his body, and so from their own bodies they make a gift that is an adornment for the body of Christ which grows and continues generation after generation.
The celibate, who consecrates his life to the divine Beloved, gives the Church a holy life, divine knowledge, heavenly light and living experience. He bequeaths to the Church his name and his spiritual struggle so that the Church may have more power, grace and light in the world, and presents a living model of a living, existential gospel that is passed on from generation to generation so that the light of the Church is never extinguished.
Married men and women add their bodies, or rather their one body unified in love, to the body of the heavenly Beloved (the Church), and out of their bodies they make a gift of love, the fruit of consecrated love, sons and daughters, to the temple of the Church so that it may increase in members and activity and love and work and service and light for the world.
Christ says at the end of his discourse on this subject: “He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.” Christ does not pick people out, but from a distance turns his eyes on the one who loves him more, as a lover does.
Once Again The Sublimity of Spiritual Marriage, That Is Union With Christ The Beloved. Here, Christ emphasizes and repeats that his unity with us is parallel to the Father’s unity with him and bound to it: “As Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in u s ... I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.” So is spiritual marriage elevated to the level of divinity. If we remember what we have previously said, that the unity of the Father and the Son is a unity founded on mutuality— “The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father” — it shows us that the unity of Christ in us and us in him is a unity of mutual love by the same power. It is a unifying love such that the oneness of man in the Beloved interacts with and approaches the oneness of the Father with the Son.
He Raised The Model Of Divine Mutual Love Between The Beloved Son And The Believers To The Level Of Supreme Witness To The Truth Of The Mission Of The Son To The World. “I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that Thou hast sent me” (Jn. 17:23).
He Raised The Model Of This Mutual Love Between Us And The Beloved Son So That We Should Witness That The Father Has Truly Loved Us As The Father Loved The Beloved Son. “That the world may know that Thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as Thou hast loved me” (Jn. 17:23), “that they may be one as we are one” (Jn. 17:22), “that they also may be one in us” (Jn. 17:21).
This is the miracle of the condescension of the divinity to enter into man through the mystery of the divine love between the Father and the Son, which is the basis of the divine unity between the Father and the Son.
Who can believe it? Is this not the wonder of the wondrous divinity, that God should so humble himself? That we should enter into the realm of the love of the Father, the same realm as that in which he loved the Son, or at least parallel to it (“As thou hast loved me,” “As we are one”)?
This is, indeed, the mystery of the Beloved, the Son who encompasses all the love of the Father, who when he humbled himself and took the form of a slave and became in form as a man when he took a body from the virgin, came down to our world with all the love of the Father in him. Through death and redemption, he raised humanity to his own level so that it entered with him and in him into the treasures and the inheritance of the Beloved, and became a redeemed humanity, participating with him in the same love of the Father. In this, Christ, when he was within sight of the cross, revealed his greatest mystery about the extent of the glory he has given us and made us participants in: “The glory which Thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn. 17:22). This is a promise of the extension of the love of God the Father to us throughout time and into eternity. This is the promise of the Beloved, the promise that heaven has recorded so that it will resound eternally and be fulfilled before our eyes and in our hearts day by day till he comes. Yes, he certainly will come and fulfill the promise openly, and we shall see the glory of the Lamb with our eyes. He is the guarantor of the promise he made, and he will see that his word is carried out. “I made known to them Thy name and I will make it known, that the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn. 17:26). Yes, come quickly, O Beloved, for our springs are dry.
Wake up, reader. This is not a dream, but a true vision and a certain promise recorded for us by the Beloved and ratified by the presence of the Father. We live now through the period of our betrothal, and we are being prepared every day by the purification of the Holy Spirit which we sense in the beatings of our hearts, so that we shall see and shall become participants in the fulfillment of the promise of the Beloved. Listen to what the Spirit says: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:12, 13). “For I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure bride to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). (“When will this hope be realized And the time for the wedding come And my eyes see the glory of the Lamb And my ears hear the sound of celebration?”)
Dear reader, it is clear that we discover the truth of all these blessed and precious promises, which the beloved Son has sealed with his blood, in the love of Christ, which we taste in prayer every day, in the praise of a jubilant, joyful heart, in chastity and purity of heart, in a longing, burning spirit, in our standing before the holy heavenly altar to receive the glowing coal of the divinity deep within us, but much more in the fire of love that sets our hearts aflame for the Beloved and other people, all other people. For everything will fade and wane, apart from love which is the spiritual wings that in the end will lift us and fly to bring us to rest on the presence of the Beloved and the Father.
The Apostle Paul, a man experienced in the knowledge of the mysteries of the Beloved, has given us, in a mystery, the key to the treasure so that we may attain the aim: “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints... and know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you maybe filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17,19).
This phrasing is perfectly parallel to that of the prayer of the Beloved in John 17. So, whether it is in the prayer of the mystery of Christ in John 17, or the explanation of it in the highest and truest of the Apostle Paul’s writings in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we find that everything centers on the realm of love which the Beloved spread abroad in our world. And he stands guarantor of all he has promised to accomplish.
Someone may say, “What are these wonders that you write of?” I reply, the Spirit says, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). “The Spirit searches everything even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10).
So, reader, if you say these things are beyond us, the Spirit replies, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9).
Or else why does the Bible say, “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5)? Was not the love of God that has been poured into our hearts poured out in order to grant us communion with Christ and the Father? “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this to you that your joy may be complete” (1 Jn. 1:3,4). Have we not said, O reader, that we are called to this same fellowship as a bridegroom and bride, through the confirmation of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit? Can we have perfect joy without the bond of marriage between the soul and the Beloved being ratified, in the sight and by the agreement and goodwill of the Father?
We cannot end these thoughts about the Beloved without repeating what the Apostle Paul said:
“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints... and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17 -19).
Here ends the mystery of the Beloved, who made his love the open door to “the fullness of God.”
We have agreed, O writer, with what you have written, but how do we begin and where is the way?
It is a beat of the heart which lovers recognize immediately as a sign that the Beloved has entered. That is the beginning of the way that leads where God wills.
Source: Fr. Matthew the Poor, "The Titles of Christ" (Rollinsford: Orthodox Research Institute & The Monastery of Saint Macarius, 2008) 73-90.
by Fr Matthew the Poor (Fr. Matta el-Meskeen)
[Love carries in it all the mysteries
of divinity, creation, salvation
and the promised inheritance.]
“He destined us to be his sons
through Jesus Christ, according
to the purpose of his will, to the
praise of his glorious grace which
he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
(Eph. 1:5-6)
The purpose of this title is to draw our attention to a characteristic of Christ that arises out of his nature and to touch our hearts. If Christ was the Beloved of the Father, as he deliberately declared (“The Father loves the Son,” Jn. 3:35; 5:20), this is a state in the Father’s heart, as Christ explained in a mystery when he said, “I am in the Father” (Jn. 14:10). Here, the “I” ego is the full and complete being of Christ the Son, which filled the heart of the Father. But just as the Father loved the Son, so the Son loved the Father, with the same love and with the whole of the being that filled the heart of the Son.
This is why Christ hastened to add, out of his sense of his own being, “And the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:10), so that love in the Father and the Son became expressive of a power of totally mutual attraction, and we do not find the Son outside the Father or the Father outside the Son. So, Christ was able to say with conviction springing from this love that filled his being, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30).
How amazing and unimaginable is the mystery of love, which is the mystery of divinity and its sublime substance. Who can still say that the Father and the Son are two? For shame! On the contrary, they are one essence, one being and existence, Father and Son, Lover and Beloved. And this is the essence of God which has the fullness of perfection and sufficiency and is necessarily and inevitably one.
This is why it is said that the divinity is not divided and neither increases nor decreases and has within it neither first nor second, nor greater nor lesser, nor preceding nor following. At the same time, it is not a numerical unity, for number expresses a material existence, but the oneness of God expresses the whole presence, personified by an essence in which are both fatherhood and sonship. This essence is the whole being that encompasses all of the true presence and all that truly exists and from which emanates fatherhood and sonship, incomparably united in the intimacy of love, to raise up the world and everything in it by the power of love. This is what St. John meant when he said, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn.3:16). For God created the world by love and redeemed it by love, and love scorned death just as light scorns darkness and overcame it without a struggle. Thus, we have seen how love, or the Beloved, raises up from death a life that is established above the heavens.
God Created the World by Love. “For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). Here, we see how love creates existence from nothingness.
And God Redeemed It by Love through the Death of His Son. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).
And here we see love creating life out of death.
So, we have become the creatures of the Beloved: in him the Father created us and in him He redeemed us. By this creative redeeming love we are bound to the Beloved and the Father with the bonds of existence and life. Christ says concerning this, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn. 14:2). Thus, Christ is revealed to us in love.
He Who Loves Me. There is a love that exists in the mind of which the tongue speaks easily, so that it may be said, “Who is there who does not love Christ?”
But there is a love that exists in the heart which is like a throne of light upon which Christ is seated. Of this, no one can speak, but it overflows with his light so that no one can deny his presence. If the Beloved dwells in the heart, the heart can contain nothing but him, for he is everlasting and eternal, he is the fullness that fills all in all, and of his fullness we have received grace upon grace (Eph. 1:23; Jn. 1:16).
As the Son has filled the Father’s heart, and the Father only sees or loves in the Son, and we are loved by the Father in the Son, that is in Christ, so it is with us. Whoever truly loves Christ, Christ truly fills his heart, and no one can truly love another person, except in Christ.
"Christ Will Dwell in Your Hearts by Faith.” This is the spring of divine love that has been opened up for us as the greatest of God’s gifts.
Take note dear reader. The Beloved, with all the fullness of the love of the Father and his own love, lowered himself in obedience to the Father s love and was willing to dwell in our hearts by faith. So, if we believe in Christ, that he is the Father’s only beloved Son, and are certain that he is, he is able to transfer his presence to within our hearts and make his title “the Beloved” real within us. His presence in us thus becomes the pledge of our faith that he is, and his love for us the pledge of our faith in the Father s love for him.
Listen to what he says in a mystery: “If a man loves me... my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn. 14:23). There is a hidden mystery in this, for when we love him, we become open to his love, and then his love will definitely be poured out on us without measure. We must not forget that “God is love,” so who can know God apart from those who are able to love Him? So it is with the Beloved. Who can overwhelm him and make him enter willing or unwilling into their hearts, apart from those who are open to his nature through love? For we know that he is the fullness of love and so only enters a heart that is fully open to him. And we must still be constantly aware of the depth of the meaning of his title “the Beloved.” Certainly, the Father is remembered in it for he is “the Beloved of the Father,” and so it is impossible that he should enter alone into the hearts of those who love him. “If a man love me... my Father will love him and I will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn. 14:23).
How deep and burning is love! The awe-inspiring Father to whom are due all glory and honor and everlasting praise, can be received in our hearts in the Beloved. This is the mystery of the Beloved and his awesome sublimity. The title carries with it the fear of the Father—“Beloved of the Father.” The title “Beloved” is a door open to the fullness of God. If we go through it with our love, he will come to us with the Father in all his love. So, it is that the divinity works with humankind by coming to visit, or rather to make a dwelling: “We will come to him and make our home with him.” But we must not take lightly the coming of the Beloved Son with the Father, for it means that we have reached the depths of his love, and the depths of his love were revealed to us in his death. So, it is love on a cross. This is how Christ spoke truly when he said, “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:38). And so, the door to Christ and the Father is open, and the door is love on a cross. In order that we may be worthy of Christ and the Father, we must keep love and its cross in balance.
If the Beloved enters the heart, he makes it a home for himself and the Father. It is no longer a human heart, but a temple in which God dwells. O Son of God, what is left for me? Come and let the fire of your love consume me. What use is my existence? Your life swallows up my death, and so I live, “not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). O Paul, who brought yourself to death so that you might gain the life of Christ in you, in life and in death you gained them both.
Have you heard of a mother who loves her child and swears she will love him to the point of death? She has received the beloved as a guest together with the heart of the Father and his love. Have you heard of a bridegroom who loves his bride to the extent that he forgets to eat and drink and is continually on the brink of death? Know that he draws his love from the Beloved and love has so overwhelmed him that he prefers it to life. Celibates and virgins, it is the desire of the Beloved that he should find a home in your hearts, a place where he can practice divine forms of love with which to respond to the Father’s love for him, and that he should offer to the Church lamps to light up this dark night that has continued for so long. Husbands and wives, put on a new mind, for the treasure of the divine love in your hearts cannot be marred by marriage or the love of sons and daughters. Nor can marriage extinguish the flames of the Beloved’s fire; rather it makes the fire burn higher, for you have experience of the unity of love. So, raise it high above the cares of life and it will have greater honor in the eyes of the Beloved. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25).
Do you see how St. Paul elevates the honor and glory of the love of a man for a woman, making it a parallel for the love of Christ for the Church? There is nothing strange in this. It is rather the mystery hidden in it that is amazing. For Christ loved the Church because it is his body, that is those who believe in him and whom he loves in order to draw them to the Father and perfect them in love as holy sacrifices on the throne of grace. This is the measure by which woman entered the mind and heart of Christ, for it is she who offers to Christ and to God the Father children for the kingdom and holy sacrifices by which the Church is enriched to fulfill its destiny. So, it is not strange that woman should stand in relation to man as the Church stands in relation to Christ. This is how Christ raises the value of marriage and makes it as holy as the work of the Church for the Father. St. Paul speaks of this too: “Therefore, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. Whoever loves his wife loves... as Christ does the church” (Eph. 5:28, 29).
That the wife should be to the husband, in the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as his own body and as his own soul too, is the mystery of holy matrimony, for the two, the husband and the wife, through their mutual holy love in the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit, have become one body and one soul (The spirit is not mentioned, because the spirit is not involved in marriage. The human spirit cannot enter into marriage, except in Christ Jesus, when the human spirit and the spirit of Christ become, through sanctification, one spirit.). For the wife’s body has become to the husband like his own body insofar as he cares for it, loves and values it, and the soul of the wife and the soul of the husband become one in love.
What is truly amazing in the way St. Paul completes his mystical vision of the value of marriage in the sight of God is that he refers to it in terms, such as love, honor and esteem, which he would use of Christ and the Church. There are two aspects of this.
1. The first is defined by the sacred union between the husband and the wife based on mutual holy love. The husband loves the wife in Christ as his own body and soul, and likewise the wife. In this, the mystery of the sacred union takes place, and by that, marriage is in itself counted as being on the level of what Christ accomplished with the Church (the believers): “So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). That being so, marriage is considered a living model, a microcosm as a much repeated-repeated, self-sufficient unit, of the Church with Christ.
2. The second is that in the Church the baptism of boys and girls takes place, and thus, the Church becomes like a sacred womb giving birth to sons and daughters for the kingdom and for God. This is exactly how the wife is considered in the mystery of marriage, for she offers to the Church boys and girls upon whom the Church sets a seal in baptism so that they become sons and daughters of God and inherit the kingdom of God.
Thus, the mystery of the Church and the mystery of marriage perform one work together, which is in the last analysis the work of Christ. Then, if we look deeply into the title of Christ, “the Beloved,” we find that he is the power and spirit of the Church and also the power and spirit of marriage.
The Beloved loved the Church and betrothed her to himself, a pure virgin to bear him sons and daughters for the kingdom and the Father. And the Beloved entered into a mystery of marriage and joined the two under his love so that they should be one, so that they should have sons and daughters in the faith for Christ and the Father. The Apostle Paul completes the verse thus: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). That was for the sake of the Church. Now, what is the parallel to this in the love of a husband for his wife? Does it lie in his readiness to die for her?
We say that the Church has lived and lives, because Christ did, indeed, give up himself for her, as the Beloved of the Father. Out of his love he gave her life taken from his life. But in marriage the situation is not the same, because the husband’s readiness to die for his wife does not benefit the wife or give her life. What really benefits her and results in benefit to the husband and children too, in helping to fulfill the sacred purpose of love and marriage, is that the husband should constantly practice death for the sake of his wife and children in the sense of self-mortification in long-suffering and patience, and dying to desire and all that is not fitting for a Christian husband whose responsibility it is to guide the ship of the family through the shocks of the ocean of this world until it lands on God’s shore.
Here, the two pictures match: the death of Christ, the Beloved, for the sake of the Church to redeem her and give her life from his own life, and the continual self-mortification of the husband to redeem his family through his patience and long-suffering and love so that they should live in the peace of God and reach their destination. This is only possible if the Beloved fills the hearts of the husband and wife, for love is an energy that man can direct as he pleases. The husband’s love endures and grows and achieves the impossible if he draws from the Beloved the power of self-surrender for the Church, taking that power from Christ and using it for his wife. Then, the love of the Beloved is transformed in the husband’s heart and provides almost miraculously all the wife’s needs.
The mystery of marriage has profound power and significance, for it takes its depth from Christ and his union with the Father. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him” (Jn. 14:21). If marriage encompasses the love of the Beloved Son, then the power of the Most High will overshadow it and it will draw on the love of the Father and become a sign and a witness to the truth of the divine love that acts in holy matrimony.
The Body in Marriage. But what astonishes us is why St. Paul ends by saying: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it as the Lord does the church, because we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones” (Eph. 5:28-30).
"Because we are members of His Body, of His Flesh, and of His Bones.” This is a return to the value of the body in marriage, so that no one should despise it, for if the Church is the bride of Christ, she is at the same time his body, and we too are his body according to the mystery of the Church. We have undeniably become members of his sacred body, of his flesh and of his bones, because the fullness of the divinity dwelt in the body of Christ. If the husband has taken to himself one of the daughters of Christ as a bride, she is undeniably one of the members of the body of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones. So, how could the husband not love her and hold her sacred? And how could he not count her as his body and his soul? In the light of this mystery we also gain an exceptional understanding of how the two become one flesh. All this is contained within the concept of marriage in the light of the indwelling of the Beloved in this holy mystery.
Finally, we understand that the mystery of marriage is none other than the mystery of the divine love poured out by the Beloved wherever he is and whenever he blessed a man and his wife, desiring that they become one in the mystery of the divine love. But why does a man leave his father and his mother and unite himself to his wife? It is because through Christ she has become to him as it were a Church, his new body, which he has acquired from the Lord. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:28).
The Union Of Christ with The Human Soul So That Man Becomes One With Christ: This Is Spiritual Marriage, "Unity with the Lord." Just as Christ the Beloved dwells with husband and wife when the divine love is present to make them one body for the Church, so it is when Christ the Beloved comes to dwell in the human soul in the presence of the divine love, that man becomes one spirit with, or in, Christ. “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17). The basis of being united to the Lord is the fact that the body of the believer in the Lord is the temple of God. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit which is God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19,20). Thus, whoever does not choose to be united to a woman, that is, does not choose to be married, but chooses to be united to God and to give the needs of the spirit precedence over the demands of the body, he has in fact chosen to please God rather than to please a wife, according to the promise: “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife. There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit...” (1 Cor. 7:32-34). The Apostle Paul differentiates, thus, between marriage and celibacy for God: “He who marries does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:38). That is, it is not a question of holy and unholy, or pure and unclean. God forbid! It is rather a question of holy without anxieties and holy with anxieties!
Those who direct their lives and their bodies to choose to be united with the Lord are they to whom the Lord refers when he says that this is not for everyone, but for those who can receive it. “The disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry’ But he said to them, ‘Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it’” (Mt. 19:10-12). Here, “receiving” in the Lord’s mind is receiving the overcoming of sexual demands.
Thus, Christ speaks of being united with the Lord as something that is not for everyone. Rather, it is for whoever chooses it and has that desire, as the Apostle Paul makes clear: “Whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well... and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:37, 38).
From the words of the Lord and the Apostle Paul, the picture of what it means to be united to the Lord becomes clear: (1) It is not for everyone; (2) It is for those to whom it is given; (3) And for those who can receive it; (4) Marriage and being to a woman are good things; (5) But to choose to be united to the Lord is better; (6) Those who choose virginity, that is celibacy, and being united to the Lord, should not be the victims of their passions, but should be steadfast and in determined control of their desires.
The Lord Exalted The Whole Of Humanity, Married And Unmarried. The Union of Christ With The Soul Resembles A Spiritual, Heavenly Marrige. “And I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever... I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more [after his crucifixion and death], but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (Jn. 14:16-20).
"You Are in Me and I in You.” Christ speaks of this here before the crucifixion as an established fact that will be manifested to them after his resurrection from the dead: “in that day,” which is the day on which the Holy Spirit came upon them directly.
“You are in me [in the Beloved] and I in you” speaks of a state of perfect union, equal on both sides. We are in him, that is in “the Beloved,” and he is in us, so that there remains for us nothing that is outside him.
“And I in you” shows that the Beloved, with all his love, is in us. This is in fact spiritual marriage of complete union, the highest mystery of the work of the Beloved in us and the greatest mystery of the love of Christ.
When he says “I in you,” it might be though that he thus negates our existence. But he precedes it by saying emphatically that we shall also be in him with all our being. Therefore, our existence — in the Beloved —is confirmed and assured by his existence. And he says first of all, “I am in my Father,” like the introduction to the clauses of a marriage contract, a first clause, it indicates that the union takes place in the total presence of the Father, because he is one with Christ. That is the basis of our union with the Beloved and his union with us, in the sense that Christ — the Beloved — ratifies this sublime spiritual marriage by the presence of the Father, so that it is a holy marriage in every way in the sight of the Father and with his agreement and good pleasure.
Notice here, dear reader, that Christ speaks of his disciples as an image of the early Church. As we know, the Apostle Peter was one of the disciples and he was married and with him were others, both married and celibate together. Union with Christ in the presence of the Father as an exalted spiritual marriage, therefore, extends to encompass all the believers, married and unmarried alike, with no differentiation or distinction or discrimination.
In our opinion, this established a new spiritual and elevated state of virginity for humankind, which we have obtained through sanctification by the blood, which unites those who are virgins together with married men who have by the Spirit and by grace attained to a state of spiritual union in the body with a wife. Now, we certainly and clearly have before us a physical virginity and a spiritual virginity, a physical marriage and a spiritual marriage.
The physical celibate is called to physical marriage as is completely fitting. He is also called at the same time to spiritual marriage through union with Christ, which is also completely fitting. The spiritual celibate has renounced physical marriage in order to attain spiritual marriage to Christ alone.
The difference between the two is clarified by the Apostle Paul: “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord, (the Beloved)” only.
“But the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife.”
But we add from the Gospel and the general invitation to the kingdom that marriage can appropriately exist side by side with the original and basic call to union with Christ, and the husband and wife can be concerned together with the affairs of the Lord. This is absolutely undisputed in the Bible. Marriage between a man and woman and their physical union is not a simple choice in terms of either marriage or unity with Christ, either marriage or the kingdom of God. That is completely out of the question and contrary to all God’s promises about salvation and entry into the kingdom and attaining eternal life, which are for everyone. But what is added to the state of physical marriage is bearing the burden of the anxieties of the world, and we would add, bearing responsibility for the salvation of the wife or the husband.
The spiritual celibate, whether man or woman, who has fled the cares of the world and rejected marriage, is by definition called to union with Christ, attainment of salvation, seeking the kingdom and striving for eternal life, on the same level and with the same call as married people who have accepted marriage and become one flesh and borne the cares of the world together. They married with the understanding that their calling Christianity is first and foremost and above all else, to cleave to Christ and to strive to remain worthy of being unity with Christ. This applies to both man and woman, because each of them has his or her own spiritual struggle and his or her own spiritual journey, and their being together may make that struggle and that journey easier. Husbands and wives are called to salvation and eternal life by divine right and divine promise, just as spiritual celibates who have rejected marriage.
This brings out clearly what the Apostle Paul said: there is no difference between the two except the “care of the world,” which married people bear and which is replaced for spiritual celibates by the care of overt struggle with the enemy together with the subduing and subjection of the body for the benefit of the spirit.
The spiritual celibate is distinguished by gaining a high level of spiritual experience for the Beloved and the Church — that is if he really succeeds in subduing and subjecting the body and keeping his spirit in line with the will of Christ. He is also distinguished by being able to discern the mysteries of the Gospel and the characteristics of the way of salvation and eternal life and by being a leader of many people, both in his lifetime and after his death.
The married person is distinguished by two things. The first is his having a sister, whom he keeps and care for in the fear of God and whom he offers with himself as a perfect partner in one faith and one journey to salvation and one hope of the Kingdom of God, so that together they fulfill the will of God in their lives. The second is that he offers whatever sons and daughters it pleases God to give them — whether many of few—and if they are many the reward is greater — to the Church so that they enrich it in faith and love. The Church is the bride of Christ and his body, and so from their own bodies they make a gift that is an adornment for the body of Christ which grows and continues generation after generation.
The celibate, who consecrates his life to the divine Beloved, gives the Church a holy life, divine knowledge, heavenly light and living experience. He bequeaths to the Church his name and his spiritual struggle so that the Church may have more power, grace and light in the world, and presents a living model of a living, existential gospel that is passed on from generation to generation so that the light of the Church is never extinguished.
Married men and women add their bodies, or rather their one body unified in love, to the body of the heavenly Beloved (the Church), and out of their bodies they make a gift of love, the fruit of consecrated love, sons and daughters, to the temple of the Church so that it may increase in members and activity and love and work and service and light for the world.
Christ says at the end of his discourse on this subject: “He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.” Christ does not pick people out, but from a distance turns his eyes on the one who loves him more, as a lover does.
Once Again The Sublimity of Spiritual Marriage, That Is Union With Christ The Beloved. Here, Christ emphasizes and repeats that his unity with us is parallel to the Father’s unity with him and bound to it: “As Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in u s ... I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.” So is spiritual marriage elevated to the level of divinity. If we remember what we have previously said, that the unity of the Father and the Son is a unity founded on mutuality— “The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father” — it shows us that the unity of Christ in us and us in him is a unity of mutual love by the same power. It is a unifying love such that the oneness of man in the Beloved interacts with and approaches the oneness of the Father with the Son.
He Raised The Model Of Divine Mutual Love Between The Beloved Son And The Believers To The Level Of Supreme Witness To The Truth Of The Mission Of The Son To The World. “I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that Thou hast sent me” (Jn. 17:23).
He Raised The Model Of This Mutual Love Between Us And The Beloved Son So That We Should Witness That The Father Has Truly Loved Us As The Father Loved The Beloved Son. “That the world may know that Thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as Thou hast loved me” (Jn. 17:23), “that they may be one as we are one” (Jn. 17:22), “that they also may be one in us” (Jn. 17:21).
This is the miracle of the condescension of the divinity to enter into man through the mystery of the divine love between the Father and the Son, which is the basis of the divine unity between the Father and the Son.
Who can believe it? Is this not the wonder of the wondrous divinity, that God should so humble himself? That we should enter into the realm of the love of the Father, the same realm as that in which he loved the Son, or at least parallel to it (“As thou hast loved me,” “As we are one”)?
This is, indeed, the mystery of the Beloved, the Son who encompasses all the love of the Father, who when he humbled himself and took the form of a slave and became in form as a man when he took a body from the virgin, came down to our world with all the love of the Father in him. Through death and redemption, he raised humanity to his own level so that it entered with him and in him into the treasures and the inheritance of the Beloved, and became a redeemed humanity, participating with him in the same love of the Father. In this, Christ, when he was within sight of the cross, revealed his greatest mystery about the extent of the glory he has given us and made us participants in: “The glory which Thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn. 17:22). This is a promise of the extension of the love of God the Father to us throughout time and into eternity. This is the promise of the Beloved, the promise that heaven has recorded so that it will resound eternally and be fulfilled before our eyes and in our hearts day by day till he comes. Yes, he certainly will come and fulfill the promise openly, and we shall see the glory of the Lamb with our eyes. He is the guarantor of the promise he made, and he will see that his word is carried out. “I made known to them Thy name and I will make it known, that the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn. 17:26). Yes, come quickly, O Beloved, for our springs are dry.
Wake up, reader. This is not a dream, but a true vision and a certain promise recorded for us by the Beloved and ratified by the presence of the Father. We live now through the period of our betrothal, and we are being prepared every day by the purification of the Holy Spirit which we sense in the beatings of our hearts, so that we shall see and shall become participants in the fulfillment of the promise of the Beloved. Listen to what the Spirit says: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:12, 13). “For I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure bride to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). (“When will this hope be realized And the time for the wedding come And my eyes see the glory of the Lamb And my ears hear the sound of celebration?”)
Dear reader, it is clear that we discover the truth of all these blessed and precious promises, which the beloved Son has sealed with his blood, in the love of Christ, which we taste in prayer every day, in the praise of a jubilant, joyful heart, in chastity and purity of heart, in a longing, burning spirit, in our standing before the holy heavenly altar to receive the glowing coal of the divinity deep within us, but much more in the fire of love that sets our hearts aflame for the Beloved and other people, all other people. For everything will fade and wane, apart from love which is the spiritual wings that in the end will lift us and fly to bring us to rest on the presence of the Beloved and the Father.
The Apostle Paul, a man experienced in the knowledge of the mysteries of the Beloved, has given us, in a mystery, the key to the treasure so that we may attain the aim: “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints... and know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you maybe filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17,19).
This phrasing is perfectly parallel to that of the prayer of the Beloved in John 17. So, whether it is in the prayer of the mystery of Christ in John 17, or the explanation of it in the highest and truest of the Apostle Paul’s writings in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we find that everything centers on the realm of love which the Beloved spread abroad in our world. And he stands guarantor of all he has promised to accomplish.
Someone may say, “What are these wonders that you write of?” I reply, the Spirit says, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). “The Spirit searches everything even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10).
So, reader, if you say these things are beyond us, the Spirit replies, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9).
Or else why does the Bible say, “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5)? Was not the love of God that has been poured into our hearts poured out in order to grant us communion with Christ and the Father? “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this to you that your joy may be complete” (1 Jn. 1:3,4). Have we not said, O reader, that we are called to this same fellowship as a bridegroom and bride, through the confirmation of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit? Can we have perfect joy without the bond of marriage between the soul and the Beloved being ratified, in the sight and by the agreement and goodwill of the Father?
We cannot end these thoughts about the Beloved without repeating what the Apostle Paul said:
“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints... and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17 -19).
Here ends the mystery of the Beloved, who made his love the open door to “the fullness of God.”
We have agreed, O writer, with what you have written, but how do we begin and where is the way?
It is a beat of the heart which lovers recognize immediately as a sign that the Beloved has entered. That is the beginning of the way that leads where God wills.
+ Fr Matthew the Poor, January 1994
Source: Fr. Matthew the Poor, "The Titles of Christ" (Rollinsford: Orthodox Research Institute & The Monastery of Saint Macarius, 2008) 73-90.
