After a sermon recently, a parishioner confidently told me that I was wrong in suggesting that human beings can do anything to draw near to God – the traffic is only one-way and God comes to us when we don’t expect it. Whether wittingly or not, he had wandered into one of the perennial conundrums of the spiritual life, and one which I’ve explored before on this blog: is the human-divine traffic only one-way or is there room for human effort in the mystery whereby we encounter the living God?

Sometimes the conundrum is phrased in terms of a human ascent in stages towards the God who has already, in descending, opened the path towards that transformative encounter. Sometimes it’s framed as a debate about God’s grace, given to us who do not merit it and who can do nothing to attain it, though no orthodox Christian teachers would deny divine initiative in this life-giving meeting. Some have taught that the spiritual life is mostly one of struggle against the passions, with the experience of loving union with God only coming towards the end of our lives, and some deny that it is possible to experience anything at all of divine light in this world.

One distincitive voice in this discussion is that of S. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), an unconventional monk who was a subtle inheritor of the traditions of Origen, Evagrius and Pseudo-Dionysius, who had his own fair share of controversy over this matter. He taught that anyone could be the recipient of an experience of divine light in this world, not only those who had striven for it through ascetical struggle. Indeed, it is the will of God that all his children should experience the transfiguring light of his mercy. The human being is not, however, without agency in this matter. Indeed, he was clear that we will not experience this divine illumining unless we desire it and unless we undergo a metanoia, a repentance. So, although Symeon may seem like one who undermines the notion of a pattern of staged progress towards being united with God in love, a path of ascent towards our theosis, there is ‘work’ to be done by the human person, and that is the ‘work’ of desiring God and turning towards him, the one who is already there for us.

Fr John McGuckin’s excellent article on Symeon’s Hymns of Divine Eros summarises his spiritual teaching in this way:

Symeon’s great contribution to Christian spirituality, therefore, is how the incomprehensibility of God is defended not by insisting on God’s inscrutable absence from the earthly creation, but by celebrating the manner in which an incomprehsibly deep mercy reaches into the heart of alienation and returns the human soul to its correct purposes: the vision of the Creator. [in the 3rd volume of his collected essays, Illumined by the Spirit, SVS Press, 2017]

Symeon writes from the perspective of one who has experienced the divine light and who wishes others to feel that presence for themselves. It requires only readiness. I guess that, for some of us, that state of readiness entails a little more work than for others, as there may be all kinds of barriers in the way of that desire. But God is not out of reach!

When we try to speak of how it is that we enter into a life-giving encounter with God, we draw on our own experiences, as Symeon did, but also on the collective and accumulative experiences of our ancestors in the faith and on the paradigmatic words of Scripture. It is a process we can describe only haltingly, as we are speaking of things we are not able fully to voice. In these accounts, there are many repeated patterns and common threads, but there are also singular examples that don’t fit any mould. This should not surprise us, as we are all different, but there are two general truths we can affirm: God takes the initiative; God usually works with us. With Symeon, I would affirm a third: God desires that we experience his transfiguring light in this life.