ELDER DAMASKINOS

 So here we say that the Gospel is the same for the laity and for

the monks [music]

Em and communion with

God in Christians

is achieved in the following way In the following ways: Em first-—first

man must believe in God In the true God He must believe, Who

is the true God The true God is the holy

trinity And how do we know that there is a true God because He is revealed to

man has been revealed to man and so we know that

He exists What God reveals God reveals His light

never His essence The light God reveals and we know from the

light that it exists Now we have this light of the sun

Well, from the light of the sun we know that there is a sun So also when God

reveals his light we know that God exists

Now the communion with God—how is it First of all, when God revealed himself in the

Old Testament to the people he revealed he spoke the incarnate Christ

spoke to the prophets of the Old Testament and conveyed to them the

will of the Father the will of God. That is, Christ conveyed it to the

prophets and the prophets conveyed the will of God to the people

This is how God appeared in the Old Testament E Christ spoke to the

prophets and the prophets spoke to the people Then the one who spoke to the

prophets in the Old Testament who was Christ again, the second person the Son

of God he came and became a man through the Virgin Mary He took flesh

The Virgin Mary gave Him flesh and became a man And he is the Christ. That is,

Christ is God in the form of a man And Christ has two natures The divine

nature, which he never abandoned and the human, That is, he also took the

human nature in addition to the divine that he had And thus Christ has in himself

in his person united united united divine and human nature

unconfused and irrevocable That is, there

There cannot be of any confusion between these two

natures And he has because he has two natures he has two wills The divine and the

human And always Christ

submitted his human will to the divine will

So then we have God who became

man and God became man Why did he become

man for out of

charity to give life to people who could not

overcome death Death in the Old Testament could not be defeated

So Christ comes becomes man He is crucified He dies on the cross

he defeats death with his resurrection and by the power of Christ's resurrection because

Christ is resurrected we will all be resurrected