Anyone who knows me knows I am an Orthophile, and that I suffer from Orthomania, i.e. I deeply love unto madness the theology and liturgy of the Eastern churches.
Though the real-world circumstances of that love emerged from my father’s Orthodox faith, the other-worldly grounds for my mania lie in the unrelenting dedication of the East to philokalia, the love of beauty. They get, in a way unique to their gifts, that the Gospel is inherently beautiful, overflowing with the splendor of God’s lavish goodness; and that the Church is meant to be a radiant sacrament of the Kingdom here and now among us.
In that vein, let me share with you this splendid visio et audio divina, a veritable visual-auditory feasting on divine beauty ad orientem:
“Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty.”
3. “Let us so act, that, by the practice of this love, we may come to see ourselves in Your beauty in everlasting life.” That is: “Let me be so transformed in Your beauty, that, being alike in beauty, we may see ourselves both in Your beauty; having Your beauty, so that, one beholding the other, each may see his own beauty in the other, the beauty of both being Yours only, and mine absorbed in it. And thus I shall see You in Your beauty, and myself in Your beauty, and You shall see me in Your beauty; and I shall see myself in You in Your beauty, and You Yourself in me in Your beauty; so shall I seem to be Yourself in Your beauty, and You myself in Your beauty; my beauty shall be Yours, Yours shall be mine, and I shall be You in it, and You myself in Your own beauty; for Your beauty will be my beauty, and so we shall see, each the other, in Your beauty.”
Perfect capstone on my comments – San Juan is the mystic of cruciform beauty, indeed!