I. Concerning the Ranks of the Initiated.
[edit] These, then, are the sacerdotal Ranks and elections, their powers, and
operations, and consecrations. We must next explain the triad of the
Ranks being initiated under them. We affirm then that the multitudes,
of whom we have already made mention, who are dismissed from the
ministrations and consecrations, are Ranks under purification; since
one is being yet moulded and fashioned by the Leitourgoi through the
obstetric Oracles to a living birth; and another is yet to be called
back to the holy life, from which it had departed, by the hortatory
teaching of the good Oracles; and another, as being yet terrorized,
through want of manliness, by opposing fears, and being fortified by
the strengthening Oracles; and another, as being yet led back from the
worse to holy efforts; and another as having been led back, indeed, but
not yet having a chaste fixedness in more Godlike and tranquil habits.
For these are the Orders under purification, by the nursing and
purifying power of the Leitourgoi. These, the Leitourgoi perfect, by
their sacred powers, for the purpose of their being brought, after
their complete cleansing, to the enlightening contemplation and
participation in the most luminous ministrations.
And a middle rank is the contemplative, which participates in certain
Divine Offices in all purity, according to its capacity, which is
assigned to the Priests for its enlightenment.
For it is evident, in my opinion, that, that having been cleansed from
all unholy impurity, and having acquired the pure and unmoved
steadfastness of its own mind, is led back, ministerially, to the
contemplative habit and power, and communicates the most Divine
symbols, according to its capability, filled with every holy joy in
their contemplations and communions, mounting gradually to the Divine
love of their science, through their elevating powers. This, I affirm,
is the rank of the holy people, as having passed through complete
purification, and deemed worthy, as far as is lawful, both of the
reverent vision, and participation of the most luminous Mystic Rites.
Now the rank, higher than all the initiated, is the sacred Order of the
Monks, which, by reason of an entirely purified purification, through
complete power and perfect chastity of its own operations, has attained
to intellectual contemplation and communion in every ministration which
it is lawful for it to contemplate, and is conducted by the most
perfecting powers of the Hierarchs, and taught by their inspired
illuminations and hierarchical traditions the ministrations of the
Mystic Rites, contemplated, according to its capacity, and elevated by
their sacred science, to the most perfecting perfection of which it is
capable. Hence our Divine leaders have deemed them worthy of sacred
appellations, some, indeed, calling them "Therapeutae," and others
"Monks," from the pure service and fervid devotion to the true God, and
from the undivided and single life, as it were unifying them, in the
sacred enfoldings of things divided, into a God-like Monad, and
God-loving perfection. Wherefore the Divine institution accorded them a
consecrating grace, and deemed them worthy of a certain hallowing
invocation--not hierarchical--for that is confined to the sacerdotal
orders alone, but ministrative, as being ministered, by the pious
Priests, by the hierarchial consecration in the second degree.
II. Mysterion on Monastic Consecration.
[edit] The Priest then stands before the Divine Altar, religiously pronouncing
the invocation for Monks. The ordinand stands behind the Priest,
neither bending both knees, nor one of them, nor having upon his head
the Divinely-transmitted Oracles, but only standing near the Priest,
who pronounces over him the mystical invocation. When the Priest has
finished this, he approaches the ordinand, and asks him first, if he
bids farewell to all the distracted--not lives only, but also
imaginations. Then he sets before him the most perfect life, testifying
that it is his bounden duty to surpass the ordinary life. When the
ordinand has promised steadfastly all these things, the Priest, after
he has sealed him with the sign of the Cross, crops his hair, after an
invocation to the threefold Subsistence of the Divine Beatitude, and
when he has stripped off all his clothing, he covers him with
different, and when, with all the holy men present, he has saluted him,
he finishes by making him partaker of the supremely Divine Mysteries.
III. Contemplation.
[edit] The fact that he bends neither knee, nor has upon his head the
Divinely-transmitted Oracles, but stands by the Priest, who pronounces
the invocation, signifies, that the monastic Rank is not for leading
others, but stands by itself, in a monastic and holy state, following
the sacerdotal Ranks, and readily conducted by them, as a follower, to
the Divine science of sacred things, according to its capacity.
And the renunciation of the divided, not only lives, but even
imaginations, shews the most perfect love of wisdom in the Monks, which
exercises itself in science of the unifying commandments. For it is, as
I said, not of the middle Rank of the initiated, but of the higher than
all.
Therefore many of the things, which are done without reproach by the
middle Rank, are forbidden in every way to the single Monks,--inasmuch
as they are under obligation to be unified to the One, and to be
collected to a sacred Monad, and to be transformed to the sacerdotal
life, as far as lawful, as possessing an affinity to it in many things,
and as being nearer to it than the other Ranks of the initiated. Now
the sealing with the sign of the Cross, as we have already said,
denotes the inaction of almost all the desires of the flesh. And the
cropping of the hair shews the pure and unpretentious life, which does
not beautify the darkness within the mind, by overlarding it with
smeared pretence, but that it by itself is being led, not by human
attractions but by single and monastic, to the highest likeness of God.
The casting aside of the former clothing, and the taking a different,
is intended to shew the transition from a middle religious life to the
more perfect; just as, during the holy Birth from God, the exchange of
the clothing denoted the elevation of a thoroughly purified life, to a
contemplative and enlightened condition. And even if now also the
Priest, and all the religious present, salute the man ordained,
understand from this the holy fellowship of the Godlike, who lovingly
congratulate each other in a Divine rejoicing.
Last of all, the Priest calls the ordained to the supremely Divine
Communion, shewing religiously that the ordained, if he would really
attain to the monastic and single elevation, will not merely
contemplate the sacred mysteries within them, nor come to the communion
of the most holy symbols, after the fashion of the middle Rank, but,
with a Divine knowledge of the holy things received by him, will come
to the reception of the supremely Divine Communion, in a manner
different from that of the holy people. Wherefore, the Communion of the
most holy Eucharist is also given to the sacerdotal Orders, in their
consecrating dedications, by the Hierarch who consecrated them, at the
end of their most holy sanctifications, not only because the reception
of the supremely Divine Mysteries is the consummation of each
Hierarchical reception, but because all the sacred Orders, according to
their capacity, partake of the self-same common and most godly gifts,
for their own elevation and perfection in deification. We conclude,
then, that the holy Mystic Rites are, purification, and illumination,
and consecration. The Leitourgoi are a purifying rank, the Priests an
illuminating, and the Godlike Hierarchs a consecrating. But the holy
people is a contemplative Order. That which does not participate in the
sacred contemplation and communion, is a Rank being purified, as still
under course of purification. The holy people is a contemplative Rank,
and that of the single Monks is a perfected Rank. For thus our
Hierarchy, reverently arranged in Ranks fixed by God, is like the
Heavenly Hierarchies, preserving, so far as man can do, its
God-imitated and Godlike characteristics.
But thou wilt say that the Ranks undergoing purification utterly fall
short of the Heavenly Hierarchies (for it is neither permitted nor true
to say that any heavenly Ordering is defiled), yea, I would altogether
affirm myself, that they are entirely without blemish, and possess a
perfect purity above this world, unless I had completely fallen away
from a religious mind. For if any of them should have become captive to
evil, and have fallen from the heavenly and undefiled harmony of the
divine Minds, he would be brought to the gloomy fall of the rebellious
multitudes. But one may reverently say with regard to the Heavenly
Hierarchy, that the illuminating from God in things hitherto unknown is
a purification to the subordinate Beings, leading them to a more
perfect science of the supremely Divine kinds of knowledge, and
purifying them as far as possible from the ignorance of those things of
which they had not hitherto the science, conducted, as they are, by the
first and more Divine Beings to the higher and more luminous splendours
of the visions of God: and so there are Ranks being illuminated and
perfected, and purifying and illuminating and perfecting, after the
example of the Heavenly Hierarchy; since the highest and more Divine
Beings purify the subordinate, holy, and reverent Orders, from all
ignorance (in ranks and proportions of the Heavenly Hierarchies), and
filling them with the most Divine illuminatings, and perfecting in the
most pure science of the supremely Divine conceptions. For we have
already said, and the Oracles divinely demonstrate, that all the
heavenly Orders are not the same, in all the sacred sciences of the
God-contemplating visions; but the first, from G.od immediately, and,
through these, again from God, the subordinate are illuminated, in
proportion to their powers, with the most luminous glories of the
supremely Divine ray.
