Creation’s groanings can be felt on all dimensions of reality in response to its dislocation from Christ the Logos, the Alpha and Omega of all created things. Our understanding of truth, being, and existence has been contemplated throughout history by great philosophical minds and through a diversity of ideologies and spiritual thought. Nations war over ideological differences both internally and externally, and all the while, culture wrestles to hold on to meaning in an increasingly meaningless world that has estranged itself from transcendent and immanent Truth. In the midst of increasing disorientation, however, shared human experience continues to capture a glimpse of the dichotomous realities of beauty and suffering that are bound together in the mystery of sacrificial Love. The absolute truth of our being often emerging in times of immense challenge and manifest through love that is willing to endure all things cannot be hidden and penetrates through the very reason that opposes it.

At the heart of humanity’s tension and collective fragmentation, is the search for a tangible solution of a deeply intangible reality relating to the true nature of mankind’s being and our current dislocation from it. Central to Orthodox epistemological thought is the ontological reality of a Personhood that is fulfilled in Christ, the true Person, and the completion of all things in the created world. Christ is the fullness of Being, and mankind, created in His image and likeness, is given the potential to fulfill its true personhood only through union with Him. Drawing from his spiritual kinship with St. Silouan the Athonite and from his own spiritual experiences of a dynamic relationship with God through a lifelong journey of deep repentance and pure prayer, as well

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

as a grounding in Orthodox theology, St. Sophrony formed his theology of personhood, describing how this transformation assimilates in man. St. Sophrony’s specific message for this age is that the divine seed of personhood or the Hypostatic Principle, as he calls it, is planted in man’s “deep heart,” hidden from our fallen awareness. This potentiality would have been lost to man altogether had it not been for the incarnation of the Son of God.1 In his letter to Cledonius, St Gregory of Nazianzus explains, “for that which has not been assumed He has not healed.”2 In His humility and deep love for mankind, God chose to condescend and become man. Uncreated God assumed created life and restored the divine connection that had been severed through the fall. Christ’s life, suffering, death and resurrection revealed His plan for the salvation of mankind while also illuminating the synergic path of restoration to man’s pristine condition before the fall of Adam.3 It is in the free surrender to this cycle of life, death and resurrection that the soul of man learns what it is to be united with Christ, that he might draw closer to the two great Gospel commandments of love by fulfilling their ontological dimensions.4 God is Love and man’s assimilation to love is an ontological one, a way of being, a transformation from death to life, where the heart, freed from the self, is united to God and embraces the entirety of humanity in infinite love. As mentioned, St. Sophrony discusses his theology of personhood in terms of the Hypostatic Principle, which he deems is the basis of man’s personhood in God’s image and likeness.

1 Jean-Claude Larchet, Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses: an Introduction to the Ascetic Tradition of the Orthodox Church translated by Kilian Sprecher (Montréal: Alexander Press, 2017).

  • Gregory of Nazianzus, “To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius,” I.5.3-4, NPNF 2/7:439-442, Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989).

3 Larchet, Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses.

4 Archimandrite Sophrony, His Life Is Mine (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).

The Alexandria School Journal

Archimandrite Zacharias tells us that Elder Sophrony provided four central points of his theology of the person a few days before his death and asked his fellow monks to write it down5:

  1. Christ is the true person as was revealed to Moses: “I am He who is.”
  1. Man also is a person created in God’s image and likeness.
  1. The content of the person of Christ is His self-emptying love unto the end, by which he accomplished the salvation of the world.
  1. Man likewise proves himself a person when he acquires love for God to the point of self-hatred, pure prayer which accompanied this, and prayer for the world similar to Christ’s prayer at Gethsemane. (The Elder uses the term self-hatred to express his disdain for every impurity he sees in himself and his own self-will).

The 3rd and 4th points of St. Sophrony’s Hypostatic Principle reveal the content and means that man’s personhood in Christ might be fulfilled through self-emptying love. In his writings, Sophrony points to two significant events in the life of Christ that reveal this. The agony of the internal sacrifice of His Will to the Will of the Father in the garden of Gethsemane and the crowning completion of this submission through His sacrifice on the cross for the love and salvation of mankind. In Hebrews 2:10 we read: “for it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Likewise, man, made in the image and likeness of God, is to be made perfect through

  • Archimandrite Zacharias, Man, the Target of God (Dalton, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2016).

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

perfecting suffering. It is this subject with which this paper is concerned. To begin an exploration into the role of pain and suffering in the actualization of the hypostatic principle in us, it is helpful to know a little about the original nature of man, the distortion of this nature after the fall, his current state, and the glorious truth of what he is destined to be.

In his patristic synthesis, Larchet provides a comprehensive description of man’s original state: oriented completely towards God to find fulfilment in Him, and destined to realize perfection by His deification—that is, becoming god by grace. Man possessed all virtue as a seed in his nature, being in a continual state of prayer and unity with the divine, in ceaseless glorification of His creator and connected through the Logos to all of creation.6 When Adam sinned by choosing to be his own god, mankind became ontologically separated from its creator and all of creation. Man’s being, no longer directed towards the worship of God to which it was created for, became re-oriented towards the love of self. As Larchet describes it, “the mirror of his soul was darkened and ceased to reflect its creator.”7 His spiritual eyes closed to God’s image inside of himself and with his carnal eyes opened, man could no longer see the fulfilment of his being in God and His presence in all of creation. With the distortion of the image of God in man and the severing of his union with the divine, the virtues weakened to give way to vice and man forgot his authentic nature and glorious destiny. Larchet presents a consensus of the Church Fathers, who describe man’s state after the fall as one of spiritual sickness, madness and pathology.8 Instead of fulfilling their original purpose of turning all of his being towards God, man’s faculties, including his intellect, desire, memory, anger, the senses and imagination that were bestowed to him to lift him towards

6  Larchet, Jean-Claude, Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses: An Introduction to the

Ascetic Tradition of the Orthodox Church (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2012), 21.

  • Ibid., 21.

8 Ibid.

The Alexandria School Journal

union with God, now dislocated from their purpose, fragmented and reoriented towards the fulfillment of self through pleasure and the avoidance of suffering at all costs.9 In separation from God, man therefore became separated within himself, his mind severed from his heart without the unifying love of God to make him a whole integrated person. This inner fragmentation of man’s being as Larchet has described is like a darkened or broken mirror that cannot reflect or recognize the good, beautiful, and true image of her creator within herself and within others. In separation from the Uncreated love of God, man was separated from all other created life that he was created to be in unity with including his own kind to which he turned himself against. No longer able to perceive the immanence of God through creation, instead of fulfilling his role to lift up all of created life before God in contemplation and worship, man sought to manipulate creation for his own pleasure and fulfilment. Man lost his ontological center that through Christ enlightens his intellect to wisdom and virtue. He became dislocated from the temple of his heart where he was once able to abide in continuous communion with Christ and exist as a being of love in the image and likeness of Love Himself. In light of this, we can better understand St. Sophrony’s statement that the two commandments of love are ontological dimensions that can only be truly carried out when they become assimilated as a part of our very being in Christ.

Through the incarnation, Christ’s hypostatic union with mankind remedied this predicament and enabled humanity once again to recover the potential of our original nature so that we might fulfill our destiny as Christological beings. Christ reveals to us that when we are united to God, our nature is both human and divine. He is the true archetype of man, and physician and healer of souls.10 He came not just to deliver man from the penalty of his transgression, but for man’s

  • Ibid. 10 Ibid.

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

healing, the integration of his being. This is further illustrated in that the Greek sozo, meaning salvation, is synonymous with healing. Larchet describes this process as an ontological restoration of human nature, a reorientation of our faculties, and a re-appropriation of man’s true destiny and being.11 It is within this framing that we can better understand the spiritual life in Christ in all its dimensions as the healing grace of God transmitted within the body of Christ through prayer, worship, thanksgiving, the sacraments, love, charity, hospitality, beauty, and relationships. All of these when approached correctly are the means to unify man within himself and realign his faculties towards Who they were created for. When man is unified within himself he is able to dwell in the continual presence of God, his eyes opened to the vision of God all around him, he learns to realign his will to the will of God. According to Larchet, this journey is one that is two-fold, a lifting up towards virtue and a simultaneous detachment and death to the inner vices that plague our heart and keep it in bondage and the uprooting of which are often associated with the deep inner pain of self-denial.

In his third point on the subject of the Hypostatic Principle, St. Sophrony states that it is Christ’s self-emptying love, His kenosis, made manifest by His voluntary suffering and death on our behalf, that is the content of His personhood. This is again reflected in Hebrews 2:10. Therefore, to realize the potential of our hypostatic being, we too, as Christological beings, must walk the path of self-denial in our own kenosis and healing. In His Life Is Mine, Elder Sophrony observes that to actualize our being as hypostasis, we need to grow, and this growth is linked with pain and suffering.12 If we are to fulfil our true personhood, we must take the same path as the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, who “poured out His life unto death” so that by “His stripes we are

  1. Ibid.

12Archimandrite Sophrony, His Life Is Mine (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001).

The Alexandria School Journal

healed.” To enjoy the power of Christ’s victory over death in the Resurrection of our true personhood, first requires the endurance of the cross, that the old man might be crucified with Him (Rom. 6:6). Isaiah 53 similarly says that “after He has suffered, He will see the light of life.” Zacharias explains that to purify ourselves from our “luciferic self-confidence”, man must “overcome his fallen nature that abhors pain…for through such sufferings he becomes similar and akin to Christ.”13 Thus we may be united to Him instead of being united towards the love of ourselves. The pain of self-denial can be viewed as a creative pain as the self wrestles to become free from the bondage of the passions that serve it. Demonstrated through His life of humble abandonment to the Will of His father and His submission to death on the cross, God invites us to participate in our healing by cooperation with His divine grace and Will. To deny ourselves and our fleshly passions in a kenosis of continual repentance. Larchet writes that the asceticism of the Orthodox Church and the gifts of grace from the sacramental therapies—and particularly baptism and communion–illuminate the path we must walk to benefit from salvation and return to our original health.14 The kenosis or death of the self requires an obedient and faithful acceptance of the bitter medicine of suffering and a readiness to endure what is needed for the healing of our soul. As noted earlier, in turning away from God, man turned towards love of self, using his faculties to seek pleasure and avoid suffering. The self-denial of ascetic practices and discipline help us to subdue these fallen inclinations, so that our hearts may open to communion with God (the partaking of His divine grace) and our spirit can be reoriented to Him. A treasure trove of ancient remedies prescribed and tailored to address the variety of the soul’s ailments are recorded by the church fathers. These seasoned sojourners have traversed the high mountains and the deep valleys of the soul amidst the perilous spiritual elements of scorching fires and raging waters. With

  1. Archimandrite Zacharias, Man, the Target of God, 131.
  2. Larchet, Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

violence, they emerge victorious and offer us a church Tradition that reveals the true essence of the Christian faith as the path towards freedom through the circumcision of the heart, the healing of the soul and the fulfilment of personhood in Christ. The church fathers through their dedication to the inner life uncover the unseen world of spiritual sojourning that undergird the visible world and the challenges we face. Just as the path of voluntary asceticism is the way of healing for the monk through the submission of will, pain and suffering have an important role to those called to asceticism in the world. Understanding pain and suffering within the context of man’s personhood has important implications for how man should externally and internally respond to it.

Suffering in its various forms is a type of asceticism in that it involves a discomfort and displeasure that awakens man from the deep sleep of his fallen state. Due to his fallen nature, man is typically inclined to shrink away from or avoid suffering at all costs and the world has developed a multitude of mechanisms to facilitate this end. This takes the form of external means through the plethora of distractions and sleeping aids available to us that have become increasingly immersive in this digital age. In the world in which we live, pain, suffering, tragedies, disease, and death continually surround us. For those untouched by significant adversity, the anxiety of this inevitable reality remains. Yet pain medications offered by the world to numb the pain, addict or distract us, temporarily chase away the reality and remembrance of death. Our successes, careers, talents, family, material wealth, health—all bring temporal comfort to the soul, but all are fleeting. Each one can be taken away in an instant, bringing the pain of separation from the things that give us meaning, and revealing the fragility of the foundation of our being when it is laid outside of God. However obscured, the reality of suffering is unavoidable. It surrounds us in people, places and events that awaken us momentarily from the haze of our distorted perceptions. Metropolitan Nikolaos, in his

The Alexandria School Journal

book When God Is Not There, observes that although life’s distractions offer us a tonic of forgetfulness there are instances in life and places (e.g. airports, prisons, hospitals, nursing homes) that awaken us to the reality of pain, separation and death.15 Like these places, which hold within them death, sickness, separation and pain, our trials or the trials of those around us can open the door for grace to enter. This grace stirs in us a desire to turn and seek the One who in our sleepful stupor we have forgotten, the One Whom our soul was created to love.

Material success means to a large degree, discomfort and self-sacrifice can largely be avoided. When relationships force us to face ourselves and confront us with discomfort they can be quickly rendered disposable. Internally, walls are constructed and defense mechanisms are initiated to protect us. The mind is engaged to convert experiences that wound the self or ego by the construction of defense narratives that shield us from harm. Just as effective as they are at keeping affliction out, they simultaneously prevent the inner circumcision that softens and cultivates the heart. The heart, which according to Archimandrite Zacharias is the very meeting place of God, becomes inaccessible, resulting in a disconnection from self, others, and God.16 Furthermore, the avoidance of pain and suffering can be the antecedent of more debilitating psychological distress. In Joshua Knabb’s Christian integration of a contemporary therapeutic model, he cites psychological research that suggests that it is not the experience of pain that becomes pathological but “experiential avoidance,” the avoidance of pain, that obstructs us from living lives of value and purpose and more importantly from existing in the state of being we were

15 Metropolitan Nikolaos and Caroline Makropoulos, When God Is Not There (Montréal: Alexander Press, 2014).

  1. Archimandrite Zacharias, The Hidden Man of the Heart: (1 Peter 3:4) (Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St John The Baptist, 2007).

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

created for.17 This pain or discomfort that we try to avoid is the same pain that when accepted and received in humble thanksgiving and submission to God becomes a redeemable powerful energy that powerfully penetrates even the most hardened defenses towards the deep heart of man. Through the cross, Christ not only conquered death but he changed the very nature, energy and meaning of pain and suffering, transforming it into an expression of His perfect love.18 The mortal wound inflicted on the soul instead of bringing man to his destruction has become the pathway to eternal life.19 All pain then, regardless of its source can be utilized when surrendered to God as a powerful leverage to loosen the bonds on our heart that suffocate and constrain our soul from receiving life-giving and transformative love.

Through this lens, in the teaching of St Sophrony, times of tribulation, pain and suffering can be transformed into powerful healing opportunities when in the midst of the pain we are able to transform it from psychological to spiritual energy. Fr. Zacharias describes a process where we can dissociate from the source of the pain and leverage the experience of pain in the heart as the energy of repentance.20 In this way, all pain and suffering can be accepted with thanksgiving as a gift from God and represents the cup that we drink in willful submission to the Father. Such a practice is not only practical but it renders that which may cause us harm into something that is not only innocuous but redeemable as life-giving healing grace. This by any means is no easy task, especially in the midst of the involuntarily tragedy of loss, separation, debilitating sickness or approaching death. The soul struggles against itself against its helplessness and inability to control, violently wrestling with God as it pushes back this cup of bitter medicine. In these times of pain and

17 Joshua  J.  Knabb,  Faith-Based  ACT  for  Christian  Clients:  an  Integrative

Treatment Approach (New York: Routledge, 2016).

  1. Archimandrite Zacharias, The Hidden Man of the Heart: (1 Peter 3:4).
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.

The Alexandria School Journal

utter weakness, our eventual humble abandonment to the will of God as we cling to Him with faith and hope invites the glory of His power and love to be made manifest in us. His power is made perfect in our humble acceptance of weakness (2 Cor. 12). The grace of God through this process is granted entry to a place in our heart that may have been previously inaccessible, bringing healing to our soul and engaging us in a process of liberation from the bondage of the passions that dominate our will. When, on the other hand, we set our sights on the avoidance of suffering at all costs, we deny ourselves grace-filled opportunities to grow into our hypostasis. In enabling others to do the same – although this may be well-intentioned –we may only be helping them avoid an experience that could bring them closer to the truth of who they are.21

Understanding our nature and the beautiful gift of personhood that God has placed in our depths radically reframes our understanding of suffering and adversity and by doing so it alters its capacity to harm us when in the certainty of the Goodness of God we accept His will in all things. Therefore, although adversity typically results in the experience of pain or suffering, the pain itself, no matter it’s severity or nature, can be transformed in different ways and is not deterministic in its consequences. St John Chrysostom illustrates this by saying “No one can harm the man who does not harm himself.”22 We can imply by this word that how we are injured by adverse experience is determined by our very framing of the experience, how it is understood and how it shapes the meaning we make. Pain itself, in bringing discomfort, naturally produces a bias towards the negative,

21 There is a difference between helping to alleviate suffering where possible through love and support in the midst of adversity and facilitating strategies that help to avoid this experience altogether. We can take our lead from God Himself who alleviates our pain by being near to us in times of trial and giving us the strength to endure. Just like the three Holy Youth in the fiery furnace described in Daniel 3, the angel of Lord did not extinguish the flames but by joining them in the fire He rendered the flames powerless to harm them.

  1. St John Chrysostom. No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Harm Himself (N.p.: Independently Published, 2019).

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

which can narrow our thoughts and determine how we define the problem and solution. Suffering is often experienced from the lens of our own self-will, it represents a challenge or diversion on the road that we had planned to take. The resulting pain is a conglomerate of grief of a painful event with the agony of the self-wrestling as it struggles to trustfully lay itself down. Seeing the way ahead has been closed, can cause us to remain frozen at an impasse.

If, as St. Sophrony states, that growth in personhood is linked to pain and suffering, then perhaps we need to review the means we use to medicate or avoid it or how we formulate our own meaning from it. Reflecting on the symbol of physical pain and its function, pain alerts us to a part of ourselves that requires attention, a part of our body that is hurt and requires healing. Indeed, without pain, we might find ourselves in mortal danger when an injury remains hidden, unseen and completely outside our awareness. Pain, then, whatever the source, rather than being a problem, is a messaging system, a normative and appropriate response to mankind’s current state and the state of the world in which we live. As a signaling system, it can become a catalyst to begin a journey towards deeper treatment and healing. As patients, we put ourselves in the hands of medical experts that investigate our condition and prescribe the appropriate treatments to target the source of our sickness. Treating just the symptoms to alleviate them without getting to the heart of the root cause would continue the cycle of pain and treatment and keep us from being fully free of the malady. Much is the same with psychological injury in the fullness of its spiritual dimensions and the sickness of the soul. Only the true physician of souls, Christ Himself, can access the deep wounds of our heart and perform the delicate work of healing heart surgery that is necessary to receive Him fully in our hearts that we may come to the fulfilment of our personhood in Him. In this way, the acceptance of inner pain, without judgement or resistance, and in the attentive presence of God, in the faithful knowledge

The Alexandria School Journal

of His goodness and love, we can, in gratitude, lay ourselves down on the sacrificial altar of healing and surrender into the hands of Him who desires to reform us into glorious freedom. The redemptive implication of this represents a monumental shift in how we conceptualize and understand pain and suffering. The very wounds and injuries that have the potential to lead us towards death, now by the power of Christ’s death and resurrection have the capacity to propel us towards new life, to lift us up to soar on eagles wings (Isa. 53:5). The Christological life in man means a conversion from death to life, to a life ascending to the high places with Christ, bringing to life St. Paul’s proclamation that all things will be used for good for those who love God (Rom. 8:28). It is this reality that is absent from the secular approach that undergirds modern psychology. Without a epistemological lens that acknowledges the nature of man and his relationship with God, psychological frameworks are incomplete in their categorizations of pathology and in their ability to establish effective treatment models that incorporate the totality of what it is to be a person.23

Professor Renos Papadopoulos is a psychologist and global expert on trauma and has extensive field experience in refugee care. Furthermore, he is an Orthodox Christian and direct disciple of St. Sophrony whose life theology undergirds Papadopoulos’s professional and spiritual formation. In his

  1. Psychology is undergirded by a secular worldview that does not incorporate the totality of what it means to be human within its diagnostic frameworks and treatment models. The result is that it does not take into account underlying spiritual dimensions that pertain to the health of the mind and man as a whole being. Nor does it consider pathology in the light of man’s separation from his source of being because it lacks the lens of a created-uncreated ontology. A treatment model based on psychological theory alone would likely focus on the alleviation or management of symptoms and the restoration to a previous state of wellbeing. A pastoral approach that incorporates Orthodox epistemology may utilize psychological treatment models as tools within a wider therapeutic approach that considers underlying spiritual dimensions and the eternal Will of God manifest in His healing action on man’s soul during times of suffering to carry him to a deeper and more whole way of being and towards the fulfilment of personhood.

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

research, Papadopoulos examines the etymology of the word trauma.24 Understood in this case as psychological injury, trauma can mean either a ‘rubbing in’ of a psychological wound or a ‘rubbing away’ where a mark or wound is erased.25 In our tendency to see adversity in its negative dimensions missing the ‘rubbing out’ of trauma we ignore the capacity for injury to be a springboard of healing that can actually open dimensions of being that were previously out of reach. Using the example of those who are refugees from their home country, much of the pain is generated from the dislocation of a place and/or persons that provide belonging. This dimension of home and belonging is not just a physical place but includes the relationships formed over time that bring a sense of settlement and grounding that unconsciously undergirds our sense of being. Papadopoulos observes that those at the crossroads of suffering at this existential crossroads have before them a path that can lead to a deeper revelation of identity that is rooted in eternal truth.26 This phenomenon, documented through extensive research in his field work with refugees he describes in his professional work as Adversity-activated development.27 Adversity becomes a pathway towards true personhood, it is a dislocation that brings about a resettlement from a familiar place of secure captivity through uncertain terrain and perilous wilderness towards the promised land of inner freedom. The struggles of the refugee experience very directly reveal the pain of humanity’s dislocation from God, a story told throughout the holy scriptures. It is the journey to the dwelling place with God in the heart, a restoration of the everlasting union between

  1. Papadopoulos, R.K. “Failure and Success in Forms of Involuntary Dislocation: Trauma, Resilience, and Adversity-Activated Development” The Crucible of Failure. (Jungian Odyssey Series, Vol. VII, pp. 25-49. U. Wirtz, et al. editors, 2015)
  1. Ibid.
  1. Ibid.
  1. Papadopoulos, Renos K., and Nikos Gionakis. “The Neglected Complexities of Refugee Fathers.” Psychotherapy and Politics International 16, no. 1 (2018).

The Alexandria School Journal

God and man that reorients him back to his original health and nature.

Metropolitan Nikolaos, in When God Is Not There, documents his encounters as a chaplain, sharing many examples in which the mystery of God in man is made manifest in the midst of difficult circumstances.28 He observes that when suffering is accepted, for example in serious physical illness, previously hidden dimensions of being that would have remained hidden, rise to the surface.29 It is a transcendent mystery perceived by all those who are there to witness and be transformed by it. He shares stories of trials that are rendered powerless against an emergent inner joy and thanksgiving that would be illogical to the rational mind. These lives proclaim the hidden wonder of man’s being. In the midst of crisis, however, the soul can easily find itself overwhelmed with physical and existential pain, obscuring from it the divine plan of God to bring to light the hidden depths of man that is woven into his being. The role of caregivers, priests, and friends is to share humbly in the sufferings of others, bringing the comforting presence of Christ with eyes open to the movement of God’s grace that manifests truth and revelation in both persons sharing this sacred space. Suffering not only provides an opportunity for the revelation of Divine Love within us, but also for those around us.30 The humble acceptance of God’s will in those who suffer is a powerful revelation of God’s love and presence. Metropolitan Nikolaos observes that suffering generates love in the people around us, and we become bonded together in mutual compassion.31 When people offer their love to those who suffer, it can bring with it a powerful grace of consolation that overcomes the weight of suffering. In this shared space, a tangible love is revealed. Muse relays the concept of the dia-

  1. Metropolitan Nikolaos and Caroline Makropoulos, When God Is Not There.
  2. Ibid.
  1. Ibid.
  1. Ibid.

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

logos, as the transformative encounter between persons where Christ’s presence “in the midst of two or three” converts dialogue into “trialogue” and provides noetic illumination through a meeting of the uncreated with the created.32 Christ-in-our-midst is revealed in true hospitality and communion between persons as He brings a mutual awakening of our hearts into deeper truths of being. This can be especially therapeutic and powerful when we share together in each other’s suffering.

One of the most difficult things to experience in suffering is the apparent absence of God in the midst of the pain. In encountering people who have endured immense tragedy, it is difficult to find the “right words” as they wrestle with questions about God’s presence or absence in times of suffering. Metropolitan Nikolaos suggests that it is not a question of whether God is there, but whether we are aware of His presence, and whether we are able to see when and how He manifests Himself in the chosen time. He observes that our ability to see depends on the purity of our vision to perceive “God’s moment for our soul.” This, he says, requires faith in the promise of His continual presence, patience, and an ongoing struggle to purify our sight, so that we may see Him in the humble places of our life. As co-pilgrims with suffering persons we encounter throughout our life, a loving and compassionate presence can help vision to expand to see the presence of eternal love that transcends suffering, lifting the soul, even through the darkest of hours.

The above exploration reframes the agonizing pain of loss, near-death and adverse experiences that while having tragic consequences can simultaneously have the potential to initiate renewal and transformation. This transformation of pain however, can be equally powerful in its smaller manifestations. The daily practice that is needed for the

  1. Stephen Muse, When Hearts Become Flame: an Eastern Orthodox Approach to the Dia-Logos of Pastoral Counseling (St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2015).

The Alexandria School Journal

acquisition of virtue often requires painful self-sacrifices of the vices that occupy our heart. Submission to God of the areas in our life that we try to control, for example, fear, anxiety, offence, insecurity, sadness, or even food and material comforts require an acceptance to endure discomfort with hopeful thanksgiving. Vanity and pride that control our thoughts and behavior may require the painful self-sacrifice of silence and humility when we feel a strong inclination to speak so that they may lose their unrelenting grip on our heart. All submission to pain with thanksgiving to God has the potential to draw us into deeper humility that attracts the healing grace of God. Like Job, without understanding why we suffer we can accept pain as a necessary vehicle for the actualization of our true being through the testing of our faith. “In this you greatly rejoice . . . though you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7).

Elder Sophrony once said that “suffering can destroy or beautify, we must see both of these potentials when we encounter others.” The four points of the hypostatic principle give us who are caregivers, priests, and friends, the lens by which we can perceive what those who are placed in our life are experiencing. We must always be able to bring into our mind the wider context of a person’s life on the eternal plane, rather than be fixated by the presence of pain and suffering. In every instance, it is God’s will that man might turn his soul towards Him that His image be restored and transformed into His likeness and united in Him. We were created for a purpose, and that purpose is to fulfil our identity, the fulfilment of our personhood. Fr. Zacharias tells us that the ontological content of man develops proportionally to his participation with divine

Cooper: Hypostatic Principle

grace.33 This creative work is often at its height in the face of the trials and tribulations that force man into crisis, the turning point where he must choose between his own will or to submit himself in faith to the will of God. It is a choice between life or death. This is perhaps best represented in an event that, as mentioned, held great significance to St. Sophrony, Christ’s agony and submission to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane. It is then not much to heed what Christ asks of us when His hour had come, to stay with Him, to keep watch and to pray. Likewise, we must come alongside others in love, to stay and pray with those who suffer, for where two or three are gathered, the presence of Christ illuminates, turning even the deepest darkness of Hades into light (Ps. 139).

To conclude, even amidst extreme devastation and pain, we can be sure of the unchangeable and wondrous truth of mankind’s true personhood. No amount of tragedy can remove the imprint of God on the soul of man and every adverse experience has the potential to actualize the true ontological content of our being that might otherwise remain hidden from awareness. The distorted image of God in man as a result of the fall requires a continuous metanoia where by the grace of God we can orientate ourselves and all our faculties towards the worship of God that they were created for. There is no doubt that the restoration of man’s health involves the agonizing pain that is caused by the uprooting of invasive vices that are alien to our heart. In this way, the soil can be healed and the seeds of virtue implanted in man when he was first formed can thrive and flourish in fruitful abundance. The choice remains for us to participate in Christ’s healing work or to shrink back from the pain and find our own way that hardens the heart or numbs us into a sleepy forgetfulness of the very things that God is eager to use for

  1. Archimandrite Zacharias, Christ, Our Way and Our Life: a Presentation of the Theology of Archimandrite Sophrony (Maldon: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 2012).

The Alexandria School Journal

our salvation. No matter the nature or source of inner suffering, there exists a deep mourning of the soul as it struggles to accept the loss and wrestles for control before she can willingly surrender herself to the will of God in an act of self-emptying. This is true even for weaknesses that enslave and torment the soul. When accepted and surrendered to God in prayerful petition, the very passions that were once obstacles become a vehicle for His strength to be manifest in our weakness when in helplessness we call upon His Name. Christ is truly the redeemer of all things, bringing forth life from death, drawing us to freedom through pain and suffering and expediting our healing through sickness of soul and body. This process is truly synergistic when in faithful knowledge of the goodness and immeasurable love of God we can humbly accept all things as redeemable gifts from God with thanksgiving. In the care of others, when rooted in the knowledge of the unchanging truth of man’s eternal Personhood, our eyes can remain open for the signs of life that Christ the physician illuminates before us as He draws all into a reciprocal mode of healing. By the grace of God, we can become the healing hands of Christ when emptied of self-love, we come alongside others and embrace them in our hearts as He draws both them and us towards a wholeness of presence that receives the healing grace of God. The Holy Spirit illuminates the precious treasure that lies hidden in the deep heart of man. As we endure the painful trials of life, an identity emerges that is not defined by what it has suffered, but by the truth of what is revealed.