18. St. Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes

Great detail book coming from an ancient writer that is very applicable today.

This work contains two of St. Gregory of Nyssa's collections of homilies, the first on the Lord's Prayer and the second on the Beatitudes. They are classic works on the nature of the spiritual life by one of the most important Church Fathers of the late 4th century and one whose popularity has increased in the 20th century. "The effect of prayer is union with God..." (The Lord's Prayer, Sermon 1). In his five sermons on the Lord's Prayer, Gregory invites the reader - the listener! - to embark upon the pursuit of the infinite God in praying the prayer that Jesus taught to the disciples. Each point in the prayer is like a kernel that contains profound spiritual truth, and the ultimate purpose in prayer is attaining likeness unto God. "The pure in heart shall see God." This simple statement is at the very heart of Gregory's understanding of the Beatitudes. Commenting upon a different Beatitude in each sermon, he posits that the they are like a series of steps ascending to God. This ascent is a becoming a son of God, sharing intimately in God's own life. Many readers may be surprised at the way that Gregory approaches Scripture. He is rather disinterested in getting into the socio-historical context in which each of the above emerged and far more interesting in discussing the application of them to the Christian life. This is no merely "practical application", however. St. Gregory teaches that God is dynamically active. It is, in many ways, a playful image: the God who incites our desire for Him is infinite and incapable of being exhausted by us. "It seems to me that what we desire is nothing else but the Lord Himself" (The Beatitudes, Sermon 8) and this holy desire is a striving forward for God, with God, into God. As unending pursuit, it is unending union. In our spiritual activity (praying the Lord's Prayer) and in our ethical and moral life (living the Beatitudes), we hear the intimations of "the sweet voice of the Spirit" (The Beatitudes, Sermon 6). Rather than separating the theological from the practical or the mystical from the moral and ethical, St. Gregory keeps them all together as inseparable parts of the same thing: our life in Christ.