When the Son of God, the fullness of personal existence, becomes the Son of the Earth, he allows himself to be contained by the universe at one point in space and time; but in reality the universe is contained in him. He will not use his body to possess and exploit the world, but by his constantly Eucharistic attitude, he makes it a body of unity, flesh which is both cosmic and sacrificial. In him the world becomes a spiritual corporeity, not dematerialized but quickened by the Spirit. Willingly he buries his luminous corporeity in our suffering and burdensome corporeity, so that on the Cross, and in the sudden radiant dawn of Easter, everything is bathed in light; not only the universe, but all human effort to transform it. That is why the body and blood of Christ are not just grapes and wheat, but bread and wine!
In and around him, fallen matter ceases to enforce its necessary consequences and constraints, becoming once again a means of communion, a temple of celebration and meeting. In and around him, the world ‘frozen’ by our fallen ness melts in the fire of the Spirit and recovers its original dynamism. In and around him, time and space are no longer divisive, but are transformed by a dimension of resurrection.
Indeed, the first Christians saw the resurrection and glorification of Christ as affecting the whole cosmos. The Cross becomes the new tree of life, bringing within our grasp a risen state of existence. ‘This tree rises from earth to heaven. Immortal plant, it stands at the centre of heaven and earth, firm support of the universe, bond of all things, weaving the universe together… In his ascension, Christ gave life and strength to all things … as if, by the sacrifice of the Cross, the divine life had reached out and penetrated everything’ (Pseudo-Chrysostom, PG, LIX, 743-746).
Henceforward, everything, down to the conflicting principles that modern physics must hold together as it gets nearer to the essential matter of the world, bears the stamp of the cross. Thus the world is ‘sacramentally’, but secretly, transformed into an offering. Although illumined by Christ, it remains fixed in opaqueness because of the opaqueness of humanity. For the cosmos to be completely free it is not enough that God has become Man; Man must become God. Christ has made us capable of receiving the Spirit, of co-operating in the coming of the Kingdom.
The Fathers explain the transfiguration that is happening in terms of the hidden and the revealed. ‘The fire hidden and apparently smothered under the ashes of this world … will burst the crust of death and divinely enkindle it’ (St Gregory of Nyssa, PG, XLV, 708 B). And Maximus the Confessor sees a universal meaning in the episode of the Burning Bush, saying that through the communion of saints there shows forth and will show forth ‘that vast and indescribable fire hidden in the essence of things as in the Bush’ (PG,XCI,1148 C).
~Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
