ANUARUL ACADEMIC 2003-2004 - Facultatea de Teologie "Andrei ...

Old Testament would have remained in an imperfect immortality, because theycouldn’t have resurrected with the body. And the man’s life is not completewithout body” 28 .“The general foundation of the Church Mysteries is the belief that God couldwork upon the being in its visible reality” 29 . In this sense, the most comprehensivemystery is the union of God with the entire creation, and man has a special positionin this great mystery, since he is the icon and the main organ of the great anddynamic mystery of the union of the Logos with the entire creation 30 . “The humanspirit transfigures the matter it is united with from the very beginning, organizing itas body, as medium of working of the spirit. In the mystery of man all his parts andfunctions are mysteries because they take part in his mystery as a whole. Mysteryis the material eye which sees, mystery is the word uttered by man, as combinationof sound and meaning, as the sound’s gain of meaning. Mystery is the human face,matter enlightened by thinking and sensing” 31 . “The holy Mysteries emphasize, thesame way as God’s incarnation, the huge importance of the human body and itseternal value as transparent medium of the divine richness and depths (…).Sanctifying the body means sanctifying the soul, too, or making it a more and moretransparent medium and a more and more adequate organ of God’s presence. Anybodily gesture has repercussions on the spiritual life and any thought or feelingreverberates in the body… It is impossible to totally pull out of the soul the roots ofthe body, the same way it is impossible to look upon the body as mere matter” 32 .The resurrected bodies remain unchanged from the point of view of theirbeing, but they are to be transfigured by the ghost. However, Christianity believesin an eternity of the matter, in a matter unhamperedly transfigured by the powerand infinite richness of the spiritual life and by the divine energies. Christianityadmits a kind of mystical materialism and knows a holy matter. Since holy is theGod’s body by whose reception our bodies gain holiness” 33 . We have here the most28 Ibidem, p. 26-27.29 Ibidem, p. 9.30 Ibidem.31 Ibidem, p. 9-10.32 Ibidem, p. 16.33 Ibidem, p. 415, 417.156