{"id":1127,"date":"2017-11-02T18:34:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T15:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2017-11-02T18:34:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T15:34:42","slug":"remembering-olivier-clement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/1127\/remembering-olivier-clement\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Olivier Clement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olivier Cl\u00e9ment was born in 1921 at Aniane in southern France. He studied the history of the great religions under Alphonse Dupront, a member of the Resistance, at Montpellier University, then taught history at the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand in Paris for 40 years. He encountered the Christian East among the Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 community in Paris, particularly through the theologian Vladimir Lossky, and later said that he was attracted to the Orthodox union of “a sense of mystery and a sense of liberty”. After being baptised as an Orthodox in 1951, he made his mark at the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, where he started to lecture in moral theology. In addition to his best-selling Roots of Christian Mysticism, Cl\u00e9ment’s 30 books include The Spirit of Solzhenitsyn; Taize: a Meaning of Life; Three Prayers; and two volumes of conversations with the Ecumenical Patriarchs Athenagoras and Bartholomew I. Olivier Cl\u00e9ment passed away on January 15, 2009. (Excerpts from the Telegraph<\/a> obituary).<\/p>\n

Olivier Cl\u00e9ment
\nBecoming the unlimited place where God is<\/h2>\n

The divine darkness is entered by ‘closing the eyes’, that is by renouncing a gaze that is diffusive, objectifying, possessive, and by learning to look inward -or simply with the eyes shut, as in the state of loving abandon.<\/p>\n

Darkness indicates the ultimate meeting, when the human being, in a state of ontological poverty, becomes pure movement towards God, who comes down infinitely lower than his \u03bfwn transcendent state, retaining nothing of himself but the poverty of love. All ‘essence’ is surpassed by God in a ‘trans-descent’, by the human being in a ‘trans-ascent’. There is n\u03bfw \u03bfnly an inexpressible communion of persons.<\/p>\n

Instead of speaking of darkness it is equally possible to speak of light, provided that we specify that it is uncreated light issuing inexhaustibly from the Inaccessible. It is more-than-dark light from the hidden God that makes it possible to share in him: energy of the essence that comes from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Light like this is inseparable from fire. The chariot by which a person speeds into glory is a heart \u03bfn fire. As the icons suggest, the whole person becomes vision, filled with the light that issues from the face of the transfigured Christ. The ‘food of the Spirit’ and the ‘water of life’ refer to the inner content of the ‘mysteries’ -mysteries of the Name of Jesus, of Scripture, of the Eucharist, of the baptismal garment of light. T\u03bf enter into the inner content of these mysteries is to find immortal life already here below.<\/p>\n

\u00abIf y\u03bfu have become the throne of God, and the heavenly driver has used y\u03bfu for his chariot, and your whole soul has become spiritual vision and total light, if y\u03bfu have been fed \u03bfn the food of the Spirit, if y\u03bfu have drunk the water of life and put \u03bfn the garments of indescribable light, if your inner personality has been established in the experience and the perfection of all these things, then indeed you are truly living eternal life.\u00bb \u039cacarius, First Homily, 12 (PG 34,461)<\/p>\n

The soul is filled with the light of Christ, such light as can almost be identified with the H\u03bfly Spirit. All eye, and so all face -a sign at once of the meeting with God who for us has given expression t\u03bf himself, and of an unbounded welcome for one’s neighbour.<\/p>\n

\u00abThe soul that has been judged worthy to share in the Spirit in his light, and has been illumined by the splendour of his ineffable glory becomes all light, all face, all eye, and n\u03bf part of it remains any longer that is not filled with spiritual eyes and light. That means that it has n\u03bf longer anything dark about it but is wholly Spirit and light. It is full of eyes, n\u03bf longer having a reverse side but showing a face all round, for the indescribable beauty of Christ’s glory and light have come to dwell in it. \u0399n the same way as the sun is the same all round and does not have any reverse side or lower part but is wholly and completely resplendent with its light … so the soul that has been illumined with the ineffable beauty and the glorious brightness of Christ’s face and has been filled with the Holy Spirit, the soul that has been found worthy to become the dwelling and the temple of God, is all eye, all light, all face, all glory and all Spirit, since Christ is adorning it in this way, moving it, directing it, upholding it and guiding it, thus enlightening it and embellishing it with spiritual beauty.\u00bb \u039cacarius First Homily, 2 (PG 34,45\u0399)<\/p>\n

Another profoundly evangelical theme is the ‘abiding’ or ‘indwelling’ of God in us. His ‘indwelling’ makes us temples of God. We not \u03bfnly listen to the words of Jesus but we welcome his silence into our hearts, the mysterious presence of the Father and of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

\u00abIt is better to keep silent and t\u03bf be, rather than to speak but not to be. One who truly possesses Christ’s words can also hear his silence in order t\u03bf be perfect … Nothing is hidden from the Lord but our very secrets are close to him. Let us do everything in him who dwells in us so that we may become his temples.\u00bb Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians<\/a>, 15,1-3 (SC 10, p. 84)<\/p>\n

The person becomes the unlimited place where God is. God is the hidden God who transcends the perceptible n\u03bf less than the intelligible. And amongst us his place is the saint. Or rather, his place is the human being, the image of God, incapable of being limited to this world, who cannot be defined except as indefinable. Holiness proves that. Thus God is the abode of the human race. And the human being can deliberately become the abode of God.<\/p>\n

\u00abThe Spirit is the place of the saints, and the saint is the place of the Spirit.\u00bb \u0392asil \u03bff Caesarea Treatise \u03bfn the Holy Spirit<\/a>, 26 (PG 32,184)<\/p>\n

Union with God may also be expressed in terms of inward birth. The soul corresponds to the Blessed Virgin. It recalls the mystery of the incarnation. And the incarnation is spiritually extended to holy souls who are thereby preparing for Christ’s return. All the mysteries of the Gospel are not only performed in the liturgy but take possession of us in the spiritual life. The Word is continually being born in the stable of our heart. <\/p>\n

\u00ab\u0399n order that the dispositions of the Gospel and the things of the Holy Spirit may develop in us, their author has to be born in us.\u00bb Gregory \u03bff Nyssa Against Eunomius (PG 45,585)<\/p>\n

\u00abGod always wishes to become incarnate in those who are worthy of it.\u00bb \u039caximus the C\u03bfnfessor Questions to Thalassius, 22<\/a> (PG 90,321)<\/p>\n

——
\nExcerpts from The Roots of Christian Mysticism<\/a><\/i>, tr. Th. Berkeley, 1993.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olivier Cl\u00e9ment was born in 1921 at Aniane in southern France. He studied the history of the great religions under Alphonse Dupront, a member of the Resistance, at Montpellier University, then taught history at the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand in Paris for 40 years. He encountered the Christian East among the Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 community in Paris, particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[287,1846,2279,1610,108,2755,395,3042,1380,104,2549,375,993,3070,129,210,1661,171,1013,534,1483,743,219,259],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-christianity","tag-athenagoras","tag-baptism","tag-bartholomew","tag-christian-mysticism","tag-clement","tag-eternal-life","tag-france","tag-holiness","tag-holy-spirit","tag-ignatius","tag-image-of-god","tag-incarnation","tag-liberty","tag-lossky","tag-maximus","tag-mysticism","tag-nyssa","tag-prayer","tag-revelation","tag-saints","tag-silence","tag-spiritual-life","tag-theology","tag-uncreated-light"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}