by St. Gregory Palamas (+1359)
David indicates that our Lord Jesus Christ has no genealogy with
regard to His divinity (Ps 110.4), Isaiah says the same (Isa 53.8), and
later so does the Apostle (Heb 7.3). How can the descent be traced of
Him “who is in the beginning, and is with God, and is God, and is the
Word and Son of God” (Jn 1.1-2, 18)? He does not have a Father who was
before Him, and shares with His Father “a name which is above every
other name” and all speech (Phil 2.9). For the most part, genealogies
are traced back through different surnames but there is no surname for
God, and whatever may be said of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, They are
one and do not differ in any respect.
Imposssible to recount is Christ’s descent according to His divinity,
but His ancestry according to His human nature can be traced, since He
who deigned to become Son of man in order to save mankind was the
offspring of men. And it is this genealogy of His that two of the
evangelists, Matthew and Luke, recorded. But although Matthew, in the
passage from his Gospel read today, begins with those born first, he
makes no mention of anyone before Abraham. He traces the line down from
Abraham until he reaches Joseph to whom, by divine dispensation, the
Virgin Mother of God was betrothed, being of the same tribe and homeland
as him, that her own stock might be shown from this to be in no way
inferior. Luke, by contrast, begins not with the earliest forebears but
the most recent, and working his way back from Joseph the Betrothed,
does not stop at Abraham, nor, having included Abraham’s predecessors,
does he end with Adam, but lists God among Christ’s human forebears
(Luke 3.23-38); wishing to show, in my opinion, that from the beginning
man was not just a creation of God, but also a son in the Spirit, which
was given to him at the same time as his soul, through God’s quickening
breath (Gen 2.7). It was granted to him as a pledge that, if, waiting
patiently for it, he kept the commandment, he would be able to share
through the same Spirit in a more perfect union with God, by which he
would live for ever with Him and obtain immortality.
By heeding the evil counsel of the pernicious angel, man transgressed
the divine commandments, was shown to be unworthy, forfeited the pledge
and interrupted God’s plan. God’s grace, however, is unalterable and
His purpose cannot prove false, so some of man’s offspring were chosen,
that, from among many, a suitable receptacle for this divine adoption
and grace might be found, who would serve God’s will perfectly, and
would be revealed as a vessel worthy to unite divine and human nature in
one person, not just exalting our nature, but restoring the human race.
The holy Maid and Virgin Mother of God was this vessel, so she was
proclaimed by the archangel Gabriel as full of grace, being the chosen
one among the chosen, blameless, undefiled and worthy to contain the
person of the God-man and to collaborate with Him. Therefore God
pre-ordained her before all ages, chose her from among all who had ever
lived, and deemed her worthy of more grace than anyone else, making her
the holiest of saints, even before her mysterious childbearing. For that
reason, He graciously willed that she should make her home in the Holy
of Holies, and accepted her as His companion to share His dwelling from
her childhood. He did not simply choose her from the masses, but from
the elect of all time, who were admired and renowned for their piety and
wisdon, and for their character, words and deeds, which pleased God and
brought benefit to all.
Observe also that the Holy Spirit makes it clear to such as have
understanding that the whole of divinely inspired Scripture was written
because of the Virgin Mother of God. It relates in detail the entire
line of her ancestry, which begins with Adam, then passes through Seth,
Noah and Abraham, as well as David and Zerubbabel, those in between them
and their successors, and goes up to the time of the Virgin Mother of
God. By contrast, Scripture does not touch upon some races at all, and
in the case of others, it makes a start at tracing their descent, then
soon abandons them, leaving them in the depths of oblivion. Above all,
it commemorates those of the Mother of God’s forebears who, in their own
lives and the deeds wrought by them, prefigured Christ, who was to be
born of the Virgin.
Now these things are examples and types of greater mysteries, since
it was necessary that the royal line be united in many ways with the
priestly race, which would bring forth the family of Christ according to
the flesh; because in many ways Christ is truly the eternal King and
High Priest. And the fact that adopted sons are counted as sons, that
the law approves of adoptive fathers no less and sometimes more than
natural fathers, and that the same, appropriately, applies to other
kinds of kinship, was a clear example and type of our adoption by
Christ, our kinship with Him and our calling according to the Spirit and
the law of grace. For the Lord Himself says in the Gospels, “Whosoever
shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother” (Matt 12.50).
Do you see that the family and kin of Christ are not engendered
according to nature, but according to grace and the law that comes from
grace? This law is so far superior to the law given through Moses that,
whereas those called sons according to the law of Moses are neither born
of God nor do they transcend human nature, those styled sons by the law
of grace are born of God, brought to perfection above nature and made
sone of Abraham through Christ, more closely associated with him than
sons according to blood. All who have been baptized into Christ have put
on Christ, according to Paul (Gal 3.27), and although they are other
people’s children according to nature, they are born supernaturally of
Christ, who in this way conquers nature. For as He became incarnate
without seed of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary, so He grants
potential and power to those who believe in His name to become children
of God. For “as many as received him,” says the evangelist, “to them He
gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God” (John 1.12-13).
Why, when he says, “which were born of God,” does he not say “and
became sons of God,” but “received power to become” sons? Because he was
looking towards the end and the universal restoration, the perfection
of the age to come. The same evangelist says in his epistles, “It doth
not yet appear what we shall be: but when He shall appear, we shall be
like Him” (1 John 3.2). Then shall we be children of God, seeing and
experiencing God’s radiance, with the rays of Christ’s glory shining
around us, and ourselves shining, as Moses and Elijah proved to us when
they appeared with Him in glory on Mount Tabor (Matt 17.3, Luke 9.30).
“The righteous,” it says, “shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom
of their Father” (Matt 13.43). We receive power for this purpose now
through the grace of divine baptism. Just as a newborn infant has
received potential from his parents to become a man and heir to their
house and fortune, but does not yet possess that inheritance because he
is a minor, nor will he receive it if he dies before coming of age, so a
person born again in the Spirit through Christian baptism has received
power to become a son and heir of God, a joint-heir with Christ, and in
the age to come he will, with all certainty, receive the divine and
immortal adoption as a son, which will not be taken from him, unless he
has forfeited this by spiritual death. Sin is spiritual death, and
whereas physical death is annulled when the future age arrives,
spiritual death is confirmed for those who bring it with them from here.
Everyone who has been baptized, if he is to obtain the eternal
blessedness and salvation for which he hopes, should live free from all
sin. Peter and Paul, the leaders of the highest company of the holy
apostles, made this clear. Paul said of Christ, “In that He died, He
died unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God,” adding,
“likewise we also ought to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God”
(Rom 6.10-11), whereas Peter wrote, “Forasmuch then as Christ hath died
for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: that ye
no longer should live the rest of your time by the lusts of men, but by
the will of God” (1 Pet 4.1-2). If it was for our sake that the Lord
lived His time on earth, to leave us an example, and He passed His life
without sin, we too must live without sin, in imitation of Him. Since He
said even to Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh, “If ye were
Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham” (John 8.39), how
much more will He say to us who have no physical kinship with Him, “If
you were My children, you would do My works”? It is therefore consistent
and just that anyone who, after divine baptism, after the covenants he
made then to God and the grace he received from it, does not follow
Christ’s way of life step by step, but transgresses and offends against
the benefactor, should be utterly deprived of divine adoption and the
eternal inheritance.
But, O Christ our King, who can worthily extol the greatness of Your
love for mankind? What was unnecessary for Him and what He did not do,
namely, repentance (for He never needed to repent, being sinless), He
granted to us as a mediator for when we sin even after receiving grace.
Repentance means returning once again to Him and to a life according to
His will out of remorse. Even if someone commits a deadly sin, if he
turns away from it with all his soul, abstains from it and turns back to
the Lord in deed and truth, he should take courage and be of good hope,
for he shall not lose eternal life and salvation. When a child
according to the flesh meets his death, he is not brought back to life
by his father, but someone born of Christ, even though he fall into
deadly sins, if he turns again and runs to the Father who raises the
dead, is made alive once more, obtains divine adoption, and is not cat
out from the company of the just.
May we all attain to this, to the glory of Christ and of His Father
without beginning and of the life-giving Spirit, now and for ever, and
unto unceasing ages. Amen.
From Homily Fifty-Seven of St Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of
Thessalonica, on the Sunday of the Forefathers of the Lord, between the
years 1347 and 1359.
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