The Church is the lushest of ecosystems without any extinct species.  She is the great hospital for the souls of men, the house of God and gate of heaven- the garden of delights containing incorruptible fruits that restore us to incorruption.  She is the Bride of Christ 1

Jesus Christ was spoken of specifically by Hebrew prophets for 3,000 years; the nature of his birth, and life, his teaching, his passion, his death and resurrection, his glorious ascension and dominion in the heavenly realms as well as over all creation.  Other societies also produced prophets that prepared the way for Christ- like the Sibyls, Lau Tzu, Plotinus and Plato.  Wise men, sages and ‘enlightened masters’ appeared.  Some had disciples or spawned world religions.  Some were charlatans, some were responding in varying degree to the divine energies of God, but none were God.  None were prophesized about.  None of them posited a claim of pre-eternal divinity made incarnate.  None of them restarted, renewed, and recreated all of creation by their birth.  None of them presented a cosmology so ancient and new, in fulfillment of prophesy, yet beyond the imaginings of men, accompanied by miracles and terrible power- presenting a holy path and a holy elixir that would rejuvenate and recapitulate our broken nature.

And then- in the fullness of time- angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim escorted their pre-eternal God to earth, and he who snaps his fingers and creates galaxies, he who could not be contained by the entire universe, was contained in the womb of a virgin. The glory of God overshadowed her.  She- the new ark of the new covenant- containing not the staff of Aaron the high priest, the tablets of the law and the manna, but rather the fulfillment of all these- our great High Priest, the Word of God, the Bread of Life.

At the birth of our Lord, wizards from the orient followed a star, shepherds beheld choirs of angels, rivers reversed their flow, birds hovered stationary, the invisible worlds stood in awe, and into a squalid and wabi-sabi scene, the king of endless glory was swaddled and placed in a feeding trough to be the nourishment of the world.  At his side lay prostrate the ox and the ass, whose species he had created out of non-existence.  Now in time and space, they would silently nuzzle and worship their maker.

He grew and was excellent in every way.  ‘In him there is not only God but all the human race- He is the absolute fullness of both the uncreated First-Being and created being.  Continuing in his eternal hypostasis as God, he conjoined in It divine nature with created nature.  In the flesh he manifested the Fathers perfection to us- with extraordinary force he demonstrated the conjunction of God and man.’  He is no capricious deity amidst a pantheon of deities, but rather the creator of all visible and invisible worlds, the Alpha and the Omega, and the Lover of Mankind.

Immediately preceding him was the last and greatest of the prophets- John the Forerunner.  And who has ever loved like ‘the Friend of the Bridegroom’- who leapt in his mother’s womb in proximity to the Savior.  Before he was beheaded by worldly powers, he heard and witnessed at the Jordan River, the voice of the Father from heaven and the Holy Spirit descend upon our Lord in the form of a dove.  He pronounced that here is ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie’.  His (John's) was the perfect possession of a beautiful and complete aesthetic- an aesthetic of rustic impermanence that was achieved not as an end in and of itself, but as a by-product of a heart aflame with mystical union -wandering the wilderness, baptizing with water, preparing the way for the Master, supping on locusts and honey- more angel than man.

The one who John spoke of came amongst us as a man, walked in our midst and in the flower of his youth he addressed the multitudes. The blinding brightness of the beatitudes he spoke made dim the myriad philosophies of this world.  He healed every infirmity, cured every illness, restored sight to the blind, walked on water, fed thousands with a few scraps, he cleansed the lepers, turned water into wine, calmed the storms and raised the dead.  He said ‘come to me all you that labor and are burdened and I will refresh you, take my yoke upon you and learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart and you shall find rest to your souls for my yoke is sweet and my burden is light.’

He sought out the lonely places to fast and pray, and said that ‘foxes have dens, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’

He piped to us and we did not dance, he sang a dirge and we did not mourn.  He took on our entire humanity because man must be sanctified by the humanity of God.

The gospel he preached revealed a meta-cosmic transcendence over what were then and now the best ideas of man; beatitude over and beyond success, abandonment over power, gifts over rights, complimentarity over equality, mystical theology over social science, and the Prince of Peace over politicians.

Sanctifying and transforming all human experiences with his own experience, he endured sorrows, scourging, the thorns, the nails, and the spear.  Like a ragged stranger he was placed upon the cross.  He promised paradise to a repentant thief that hung near to him, and took pity upon and forgave his cruel tormentors.  With his body torn, his heart broken and melted like wax, he poured out the abyss of his mercy.  At the hour of his death, a darkness covered the whole world and violent earthquakes shook the whole earth, prompting the emperor Caesar in Rome to conduct a fearful investigation, and philosophers in Egypt to exclaim “either the Creator of all the world now suffers, or this, visible world is coming to an end.”

And in fact it was.  In fact it did.  Christ, the new Adam, was the recapitulation of all creation.  From a new garden, from a new tree- the wood of the cross- poured forth the sanguine fruit of the Tree of Life.  From his side came a new bride, the Church, in the blood and water of Eucharist and baptism.  The heavy curtain which veiled the holy of holies was rent asunder, and Christ our new high priest now comes to us from the tabernacle, through the royal doors of the iconostasis, intimately feeding us on his very body and blood, dipping our hearts into infinity.

But first he descended into the realms of the dead- proclaiming his way to all souls who ever came before him in created time and space.  He burst the lugubrious doors of gloomy Hades by delivering the souls therein, and by breaking the jaws of death, the graves gave up their dead.

On the third day he arose from the tomb after a brilliant burst of the divine energies burnt his image on the burial shroud that wrapped him.

He ate and drank, and the astonished apostles pressed their hands in the hole in his side while he walked through walls, defied all laws of physics, and traveled about as if by teleportation.

Before a throng of hundreds he ascended into the sky- to the astonishment of the onlookers, and into the heights of starry heaven- to the astonishment of the celestial hierarchies.  The cosmic catastrophe that occurred at the fall of our first parents resulting in the corruption of the visible worlds was now finally reversed by a greater and more awesome cosmic spectacle.  The eternally begotten Son assumed his place on the throne of the undivided godhead, but now with a glorified human body.  The first-fruit of a new creation, establishing and preparing the way for those who would join him.  From his throne all history does unfold until the consummation of this age when he comes in glory from the heavens and ‘every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him.’

In the meanwhile, his bride the Church administers his mysteries to the faithful and fulfills his command to ‘eat and drink his body and blood’.2  This is the Eucharist. This is the new and everlasting covenant.

In the Eucharist there is available to us the resurrected and glorified body of Christ, simultaneously containing the fullness of the entirety of his mystery; his birth, life, passion, death, descent into the dead, his resurrection on the third day, his ascension into heaven, his seating at the right hand of the Father, and his second and glorious coming again.

This is the only room without a ceiling.  Satiety comes about in two ways- Either appetite is quenched because it desired things that are trivial, or because it becomes nauseous by being drawn to what is base and repugnant.  In the latter case desire turns into loathing.  But for those who enter into the mysteries of the most holy Eucharist, which is infinite and beautiful, desire becomes more intense and has no limit.  ‘Filled with an ever increasing desire, the soul grows without ceasing, goes forth from itself, reaches out beyond itself, and, in so doing, is filled with yet greater longing’.

Even Romanticism, the most noble of worldly ideals, is plagued by a tragic and tinny disappointment post-consummation.  Yet only with the Eucharist is this not so.  It is the Bread of Angels, the torrent of pleasure- our daily and super-substantial bread, having every sweetness and savor and delight of taste.  The quest for the Holy Grail, which has captured the imagination of the West for millennia-, is a quest that ends (and begins) at every chalice on every altar of the holy Catholic/Orthodox churches.

This is our destiny.  This is our high calling.  More than animals, and more than angels, we are made to unite the visible and invisible worlds, vivifying and sanctifying all of creation by our sanctification, which happens, through our partaking of the divine nature.  This deification occurs in extraordinary ways but the seat and source of this process is the Eucharist that is contained within the sacramental liturgy, which is the interior life of the Church.