2nd Week of Great Lent
St. Gregory Palamas
"I am the door: if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved" (John 10:9). This is the same as what the Lord says elsewhere: "no one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). And He confirmed the same even more closely when He said: "without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). He is a Christian who is entirely in Christ, and who, whatever valuable he possesses, has it all from Christ. His righteousness is Christ's, and his body is also Christ's. He who is saved is saved because he is clothed in Christ. Only in this position does he have access to the Father. We have fallen away from God and are therefore subject to His wrath. God's righteousness recedes and His mercy extends to us and receives us approaching only when we approach in Christ and through Christ. The seal of Christ is imprinted on the entire nature of a Christian, and he who bears it will walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. In order to be such, we have the sacraments - baptism and communion, mediated for those who sin after baptism by repentance. But this is from the Lord's side; from our side, to receive them, receptive dispositions must be formed in the spirit - faith, which confesses: I am lost and am saved only by the Lord Jesus Christ; love, which zealously strives to dedicate everything to the Lord Savior, sparing nothing; hope, which, expecting nothing from itself, is confident that it will not be abandoned by the Lord, but will have every help from Him - both internal and external - throughout life, until it is taken to where He Himself is.
St. Theophan the Recluse.
