Illuminate

 

It's easy, in this dark, barbarous and benighted age to become a doomer, and with that blind to the light. But hold on, here's this from Archpriest Andrew Phillips:

Christ teaches us then that all things can be used for our healing and benefit and salvation, but that they must first be touched by His grace.

In this way our bodies, mere flesh and bones and blood, can become containers of Christ. Our souls activated, we can become lamps of the Holy Spirit; the eyes of our souls, the doors of perception, become seeing, and we see the whole of God's Creation as it really is. We see that every blade of grass and every hill, every tree and every cloud, every drop of rain and every ocean, all creatures and all people, are miracles of God's handiwork, signs of His sacramental presence among us, and we see that we live not in the banal, everyday world, but in potential Paradise, the world as it really is, as God made it first, for we see God the Creator behind all things and all people.

And then we too, together with the man born blind, can say:

'I was blind, now I see'.

Amen.

Amen indeed, especially so to we see that we live not in the banal, everyday world, but in potential Paradise, the world as it really is. Especial emphasis on as it really is. 

That very same thought struck me as I walked from, of all places, the local Shamrock back to the Compound, the sun rising and filling the air with golden light. Illuminate, φωτίζω.

Lift up your hearts,

LSP