We were created naked but clothed with light, light that shone upon the world to transfigure it. But at the Fall God clothed us with ‘garments of skins’ (Genesis 3.21) to protect us from a world become hostile. And now, in our fallen state, our own skin has become a barrier setting us apart from the universe, and signaling that the organism hidden within is a machine for consuming everything outside until its inevitable death. And the predatory theme is reinforced by the fact that all our clothing, animal or vegetable, is dead. It protects us from nature and from our own nature. We alternate between this envelope of dead skins, which is impervious to the life of the cosmos, and the brief ecstasy of the living skin, which has nothing to do with eternity but serves, almost impersonally, to perpetuate the species.
However, our skin is still an ideal of beauty and a reminder of paradise. When we bare it to the wind and the sea we are seeking the eros of the child in paradise; eros not of the sexual organs but of the whole skin. And in the early days of the hippie movement there was a recovery of the ancient significance of clothing as the ‘cosmization’ of humanity, in both senses of cosmos, meaning universal order and finery; in clothing ourselves, we put on the world as an ornament.
Meanwhile everything is still ambiguous; ‘cosmization’ is not deification, and our beaches in summer are crowded, to adapt a Gospel expression, with sepulchres not whited but tanned!
Only in Christ can we secretly recover our garment of light, when we put on his transfigured humanity. This secret light can shine through the ‘garments of skins’ and, for a moment, or more lastingly, transform the chaos around us into cosmos. This sometimes happens with true love, when we experience, in Rozanov’s words, ‘innocence, chastity, holiness of the skin…without which tenderness, passion or love would be inconceivable’. In such a love, the transfiguration of the world is already beginning, the garments of skins are becoming the garments of light.
It happens most of all when someone achieves holiness. There are plenty of examples in Christian hagiography of the transfiguration of the senses and body, but the most significant is certainly St Seraphim of Sarov.
After living for a long time under a rule of silence, Seraphim seemed animated directly by the Spirit; he prayed continuously; thousands of visitors came to him; he read hearts and prophesied and healed souls and bodies. One day in the winter of 1831 he was in the forest talking to a young layman, Motovilov, whom he had cured, and whose spiritual father he had become. Motovilov, in a state of mental anguish, asked the old monk how to discern the presence of the Holy Spirit. Seeing that mere words would have no effect, Seraphim instantly appeared before him transfigured, and made him come into the light.
‘We are both in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Why are you not looking at me?’
‘I cannot, Father. Lightning is flashing from your eyes. Your face is brighter than the sun.’
‘Do not be afraid. You are shining as brightly as I. You are also now in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, otherwise you would be unable to see me… Have the courage to look at me. God is with us.’
‘I looked at him, and a still greater fear seized me. Imagine someone who is talking to you – and his face appears like the sun at midday. You see his lips moving and the expression of his eyes changing, you hear the sound of his voice, you feel his hands gripping you by the shoulders, but at the same time you see neither his hands, nor his body, nor yours, only a brilliance which spreads all around, to a distance of several yards, lighting up the snow which was settling on the grass and falling gently on the great staretz and on me.’
Then St Seraphim, by a series of questions, makes Motovilov undertake a kind of exploration of his new state, bringing him to acknowledge that he feels ‘extraordinarily well’, and that he is filled ‘with an inexpressible silence and peace’. And besides peace, gentleness, joy, warmth and fragrance. ‘Years ago, when I went dancing, before I left for the ball, my mother would sprinkle me with scents that she used to buy in the best shops… but their smell could not be compared with these spices.’ As a result of Seraphim’s teaching, the Spirit enlightened not only the soul but the body, making it impervious to cold and transfiguring even the sense of smell, the most primitive of the senses, bound to the mysterious smell of the earth.
‘And so it must be,’ the saint concluded. ‘Divine grace dwells in our lowest depths, in our hearts. As the Lord has said, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. By Kingdom of Heaven he means the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is within us at this moment, warming us, enlightening us, rejoicing our senses and filling our heart with joy.”‘
And these are not Hindus who are having this transcendental experience, but Christians; they are ‘bearers of the Spirit’ only to the degree they remain ‘bearers of the Cross’, utterly dedicated to the unlimited vulnerability of personal love.
~Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
