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Office Of Readings | Week 12, Thursday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Homilies Of Saint Gregory Of Nyssa On The Beatitudes | God Is Like An Inaccessible Rock
‘God is like an inaccessible rock. Love revealed by Jesus.’
Biblical And Theological Background
Saint Gregory takes seriously the words of Matthew 5:8: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ The Greek term used in the Gospel, katharoi tē kardia, implies not just moral innocence but interior single-heartedness—an undivided orientation toward God. The promise to ‘see’ God (opsontai ton Theon) recalls not physical sight, but the spiritual perception granted to those transformed by grace.
Yet Gregory quickly points out the apparent contradiction. Saint John writes that ‘no one has seen God’ (John 1:18), and Saint Paul affirms that God ‘dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16). Even Moses is told, ‘No one can see My face and live.’ (Exodus 33:20) Gregory is not content with simplistic answers. Instead, he invites the reader into the tension between the divine hiddenness and the soul’s longing for vision. Here, the paradox is not an obstacle but a path into contemplation.
Saint Gregory’s Mystical Vision
The core of Gregory’s teaching lies in his doctrine of epektasis—the soul’s eternal movement into God. For Gregory, to ‘see God’ is not a one-time visual experience but an ever-deepening participation in the divine life. Purity of heart becomes the condition that enables this spiritual ascent. The soul, made in God’s image, reflects the divine light like a clear jar filled with water drawn from a pure spring. The water and the vessel are not identical to the source, but they image it faithfully.
In this sense, Gregory synthesises both kataphatic (affirmative) and apophatic (negative) theology. God is truly known—but never fully grasped. The more we purify ourselves, the more capable we are of receiving the divine light. Yet the light always exceeds our capacity, drawing us onwards. It is this vision—forever partial, forever beckoning—that characterises the Christian journey.
Platonic And Patristic Heritage
Gregory’s thought bears the mark of Christian Platonism. Like Plato, he sees knowledge as ascent, and true vision as a matter of the soul’s purification. But where Plato speaks of the Form of the Good, Gregory speaks of the personal God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Gregory also builds on the foundations laid by earlier Fathers such as Origen and Basil the Great. From Origen, he inherits the idea of Scripture as a ladder to God, and from Basil, the insistence that the Christian life is a continual pursuit of holiness. But Gregory extends these insights, marrying them with a powerful poetic and mystical language.
Contemporary Resonance | Jesus Christ Today
The beatitude is not a relic of ancient mysticism; it is a summons to every Christian. In an age of distraction, superficiality, and moral ambiguity, the call to purity of heart is countercultural. Purity is not merely about chastity, but about integrity, simplicity, and focus. It is about aligning the whole self—thoughts, desires, will—with the love of God.
Modern spiritual writers echo Gregory’s insights. Thomas Merton speaks of the ‘false self’ that must be stripped away to encounter God in truth. Pope Benedict XVI, in his own reflections on the beatitudes, notes that ‘purity of heart enables man to see according to God—not simply external appearances, but inner reality.’
A Reading From The Homilies Of Saint Gregory Of Nyssa On The Beatitudes | God Is Like An Inaccessible Rock
The feelings that come to a man who stands on a high mountain peak and looks down onto some immense sea are the same feelings that come to me when I look out from the high mountain peak of the Lord’s words into the incomprehensible depths of his thoughts.
When you look at mountains that stand next to the sea, you will often find that they seem to have been cut in half, so that on the side nearest the sea there is a sheer drop and something dropped from the summit will fall straight into the depths. Someone who looks down from such a peak will become dizzy, and so too I become dizzy when I look down from the high peak of these words of the Lord: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
These words offer the sight of God to those whose hearts have been purified and purged. But look: St John says No-one has seen God. The Apostle Paul’s sublime mind goes further still: What no man has seen and no man can see. This is the slippery and crumbling rock that seems to give the mind no support in the heights. Even the teaching of Moses declared God to be a rock that was so inaccessible that our minds could not even approach it: No-one can see the Lord and live.
To see God is to have eternal life – and yet the pillars of our faith, John and Paul and Moses, say that God cannot be seen. Can you understand the dizziness of a soul that contemplates their words? If God is life, whoever does not see God does not see life. If the prophets and the Apostle, inspired by the Holy Spirit, attest that God cannot be seen, does this not wreck all the hopes of man?
It is the Lord who sustains our floundering hope, just as he sustained Peter when he was floundering in the water, and made the waters firm beneath his feet. If the hand of the Word stretches out to us as well, and sets us firm in a new understanding when these speculations have made us lose our balance, we shall be safe from fear, held safe in the guiding hand of the Word. Blessed, he says, are those who possess a pure heart, for they shall see God.
Prayer With Jesus
Lord God, You are the fountain of light and life, and the hope of all who long to see Your face. Grant us the grace of purity of heart, so that in our thoughts, desires, and actions, we may reflect Your beauty. Still the turmoil of our passions, clear the fog of sin from our hearts, and draw us ever closer to You, who are the light no darkness can overcome. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
- Beatitude: A pronouncement of blessing from Jesus, particularly those found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5).
- Epektasis: Gregory of Nyssa’s term for the soul’s infinite progress into God.
- Apophatic theology: The approach to God through negation, emphasising what God is not, due to His transcendence.
- Purity of heart: A biblical concept signifying integrity, undivided love, and readiness for divine communion.
- Kataphatic theology: The approach to God through positive affirmations about His attributes.
- Platonism: A philosophical tradition that influenced many early Christian thinkers, emphasising the soul’s ascent to the Good.
- Divine vision: The experience of God’s presence and beauty, understood not as physical sight but as spiritual perception.
The parables which comprise the eschatological discourse – following the Sermon in the Temple and, on the Mount of Olives, to Christ’s disciples privately – are completed with Christ’s announcement of a rigorous last judgement. The structure of time will be complete. Those who have been true to Christ and his teaching will be admitted to glory. Those who have failed, who have remained in sin, will be forever excluded. There will be justice. Just as we will have implicitly judged ourselves, so Christ will judge [ … ]
Christian Art | Boy At Prayer With Jesus Office Of Readings | Eastertide Week 3, Friday | A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Ephraem | Jesus Christ’s Cross | Salvation Of The Human Race ‘Christ’s cross, the salvation of the human race.’ Death Swallowed By Life | Triumph Through Paradox Saint Ephraem’s homily on the Cross is shaped by the paradox at the heart of the Paschal mystery: that death is undone by death. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, takes on flesh so that he might enter into death, not as a victim, but as a conqueror. Ephraem does not reason this out philosophically, nor does he dwell on emotional pathos. Instead, he draws out the inner structure of salvation as something enacted by God in the flesh, and received by us in faith. Christ’s Body As The Instrument Of Victory Ephraem insists that death could only be defeated from within. Jesus Christ assumes a mortal body so that he may be subject to death. This is not a concession but a strategy. The Incarnation is already an act of warfare—a descent, a confrontation. Death can only touch the human. So the divine Word becomes human in order that death might take him. But in taking him, death overreaches. It consumes the flesh but encounters the divine life within it. The imagery is rich, but the argument is precise: the very body that death uses to kill Christ becomes the weapon Christ uses to destroy death. ‘Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed,’ Ephraem says, ‘but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death.’ This is Chalcedonian Christology preached with Paschal faith. It holds together the full humanity and full divinity of Christ in the single action of salvation. The Descent And The Harrowing Of Hell Ephraem’s reflection is also an early and vivid witness to the doctrine of the Harrowing of Hell. Jesus Christ enters death not to remain there, but to liberate those held within it. He breaks into the ‘fortress’ of death and ‘scatters its treasure’. He descends to summon the dead. This is not mere metaphor: for Ephraem, Christ’s real descent to the dead is a necessary part of our redemption. The Resurrection begins not simply with Christ leaving the tomb, but with his descent into the place of death to lead others out with him. Eve And Mary | The Reversal Of History A patristic hallmark appears here as well: the Eve–Mary typology. Eve, the ‘mother of the living’, becomes through her disobedience the cause of death; Mary, in whose womb Christ takes flesh, becomes the bearer of Life itself. This is not a peripheral contrast. It is essential to Ephraem’s sense of how God saves: not by abandoning history, but by entering it and reversing its wounds. The damage is undone from within. The vine is replanted. The same human race that fell is the one restored. The Cross As The Tree Of Life Ephraem develops the image of the Cross as the Tree of Life. Just as the Fall came through a tree, so does redemption. But unlike the tree in Eden, which brought death when touched unlawfully, the Cross is the tree that brings life when embraced in faith. Here we are reminded that for Ephraem and the Fathers, salvation is not a new system imposed from without. It is the healing of creation from within its own history, its own wounds. God does not cast away what is broken; he enters it, redeems it, and makes it the means of grace. Resurrection And Eucharistic Seed Toward the end of the homily, Ephraem turns to the image of sowing: Christ’s body, buried in the earth, rises as the first fruits of a new humanity. He compares the dead body of Christ to a grain sown in the ground, echoing John 12:24. What is buried in apparent defeat becomes the beginning of a harvest. The Resurrection is not simply Christ’s triumph; it is the beginning of the general resurrection, and of the Church itself. What is sown in weakness is raised in power. The Church is the field in which this seed now grows. Response And Imitation The homily ends not with an argument, but with a summons. If Christ has offered his cross for the enrichment of all, then the proper response is to offer ourselves—’the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love’. Doctrine leads to worship. Soteriology leads to doxology. In the liturgical life of the Church, we do not merely remember these mysteries; we enter them. We stand beneath the Cross and follow the One who walked into death to bring us out. A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Ephraem | Jesus Christ’s Cross | Salvation Of The Human Race Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it. Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man. Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the […]
Saint Hilary’s commentary on Psalm 128 explores the meaning of the fear of the Lord, distinguishing it from common human fear. Unlike the instinctive dread that arises from danger or suffering, the fear of the Lord is something to be learned, cultivated through wisdom, obedience, and love. Saint Hilary emphasizes that Scripture does not present fear as an isolated virtue but as part of a broader journey that involves seeking wisdom, following God’s commandments, and ultimately arriving at a love that perfects fear. The fear of God, therefore, is not servile terror but a reverent disposition that shapes the believer’s entire way of life [ … ]
