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(Fathers Of The Church V37.)
Fathers Of The Church V37.
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Little is known of the early life of St. John of Damascus. He was born and raised in Damascus a half century after the Moslems began to rule Syria. His father, an important official in the court of the Caliph, was allowed to practice the Christian religion.
When John took over his father's position at court, he was familiar with both Islam and Christianity. John eventually left the service of the Caliph to seek the solitude of a monk's life and entered the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem. Soon his reputation for holiness and intelligence made him a popular and respected preacher in the city of Jerusalem. Because of his background at court and his common sense, a number of bishops came to the monastery to seek his advice. John was loved and respected by those who came in contact with him. The Byzantine emperor Leo III, the Isaurian, issued in 726 a decree forbidding images in churches. John, the learned theologian and articulate preacher, quickly entered the controversy. Leo had ordered that all statues and pictures of religious subjects be removed from the churches because he felt they were close to idolatry.
The Church officials of Constantinople protested strongly, and many of the people, aided by the monks, resisted vigorously when the Emperor's soldiers came to remove the statues from the churches. In 787, long after John's death, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, meeting in Constantinople, ended the controversy by decreeing that images be restored to the churches.
St. John of Damascus opposed the Byzantine emperor in the controversy over religious images. He is considered the greatest medieval theologian of the Eastern Church.
John's most important work is the Fountain of Knowledge, presenting a closely reasoned system of theology based on the Scriptures and Church Fathers. It had wide influence in the Middle Ages in western Europe.
( Is all Christian art fundamentally blasphemous? That wa...)
(Fathers Of The Church V37.)
(Saint John of Damascus(c. 676 - 4 December 749) was an Ar...)
From his position of relative security in Moslem territory, John wrote and spoke freely against the iconoclasts, the "image breakers, " as those who supported the Emperor came to be known. His reasoning was so clear and forceful that his tracts became the principal weapons of those who opposed the Emperor. John argued that if God himself became flesh, then material things cannot be evil and are not to be rejected as aids to religious feeling. Images, he said, are the books of the unlearned, lifting them up from the symbol to that which the symbol points to.
Quotations:
"In former times, God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake. "
"The saints must be honored as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God. Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics, and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death so that we may also share their crowns of glory. "
"Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat. "
"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. "
"Gluttony should be destroyed by self-control; unchastity by desire for God and longing for the blessings held in store; avarice by compassion for the poor; anger by goodwill and love for all men; worldly dejection by spiritual joy; listlessness by patience, perseverance and offering thanks to God; self-esteem by doing good in secret and by praying constantly with a contrite heart; and pride by not judging or despising anyone in the manner of the boastful Pharisee (cf. Lk. 18:11-12), and by considering oneself the least of all men. "
"How can this come about?" Mary asked. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, " the angel answered, "and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. " And now you are the one who puts the question: "How can bread become Christ and wine His Blood?" I answer: "The power of the Holy Spirit will be at work to give us a marvel which surpasses understanding. "
"O Mother of God! If I place my confidence in thee, I shall be saved; if I am under thy protection, I have nothing to fear; for the fact of being thy client is a possession of a certainty of salvation which God grants only to those whom He intends to save. "
"Devotion to you, O Blessed Virgin, is a means of salvation which God gives to those whom he wishes to save. "
"Angels are intelligent reflections of light, that original light which has no beginning. They can illuminate. They do not need tongues or ears, for they can communicate without speech, in thought. "
"Now all things have been filled with light, both heaven and earth and those beneath the earth; so let all creation sing Christ's rising, by which it is established. "
"If the Word of God is living and powerful, and if the Lord does all things whatsoever he wills; if he said, "Let there be light", and it happened; if he said, "let there be a firmament", and it happened; . .. if finally the Word of God himself willingly became man and made flesh for himself out of the most pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever Virgin, why should he not be capable of making bread his Body and wine and water his Blood?. .. God said, "This is my Body", and "This is my Blood. ""
"To serve Mary and to be her courtier is the greatest honor we can possibly possess; for to serve the Queen of Heaven is already to reign there; and to live under her command is more than to govern. "
"Because the one who by excellency of nature transcends all quantity and size and magnitude. .. has now. .. contracted himself into a quantity and size and has acquired a physical identity, do not hesitate any longer to draw pictures and to set forth, for all to see, him who has chosen to let himself be seen. "
"The day of the Nativity of the Mother of God is a day of universal joy, because through the Mother of God, the entire human race was renewed, and the sorrow of the first mother, Eve, was transformed into joy. "
". .. we shall incur no slight injury, but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumults, so as to draw us away from what is good? Let us cleave, therefore, to those who cultivate peace with godliness?"
Christ sits in the body at the right hand of God the Father, but we do not hold that the right hand of the Father is actual place. For how could He that is uncircumscribed have a right hand limited by place? But we understand the right hand of the Father to be the glory and honor of the Godhead in which the Son of God, Who existed as God before the ages, and is of like essence to the Father, and in the end became flesh, has a seat in the body, His flesh sharing in the glory. For He along with His flesh is adored with one adoration by all creation. "
