Bishop Eric Menees
Archbishop Duncan was often fond of saying: “Keep the main
thing the main thing, and the main thing is Jesus!” Of course, Archbishop is
not new in the admonishment – the whole of the Church has pointed us in this
direction. In the fourth century, St.
Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, wrote these words:
Let Us Keep Our Eyes Fixed on Christ
We shall be blessed with clear vision if we keep our eyes
fixed on Christ, for he, as Paul teaches, is our head, and there is in him no
shadow of evil. Saint Paul himself and all who have reached the same heights of
sanctity had their eyes fixed on Christ, and so have all who live and move and
have their being in him.
As no darkness can be seen by anyone surrounded by light, so
no trivialities can capture the attention of anyone who has his eyes on Christ.
The man who keeps his eyes upon the head and origin of the whole universe has
them on virtue in all its perfection; he has them on truth, on justice, on
immortality and on everything else that is good, for Christ is goodness itself.
The wise man, then, turns his eyes toward the One who is his
head, but the fool gropes in darkness. No one who puts his lamp under a bed
instead of on a lamp-stand will receive any light from it. People are often
considered blind and useless when they make the supreme Good their aim and give
themselves up to the contemplation of God, but Paul made a boast of this and
proclaimed himself a fool for Christ’s sake. The reason he said, We are fools
for Christ’s sake was that his mind was free from all earthly preoccupations.
It was as though he said, “We are blind to the life here below because our eyes
are raised toward the One who is our head.”
And so, without board or lodging, he traveled from place to
place, destitute, naked, exhausted by hunger and thirst. When men saw him in
captivity, flogged, shipwrecked, led about in chains, they could scarcely help
thinking him a pitiable sight. Nevertheless, even while he suffered all this at
the hands of men, he always looked toward the One who is his head and he asked:
What can separate us from the love of Christ, which is in Jesus? Can affliction
or distress? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger or death? In other
words, “What can force me to take my eyes from him who is my head and to turn
them toward things that are contemptible?”
He bids us follow his example: Seek the things that are
above, he says, which is only another way of saying: “Keep your eyes on
Christ.”
~Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)
Thirty-nine
Articles of Religion
XV. Of Christ alone
without Sin
Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in
all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh,
and in his spirit. He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of
himself once made, should take away the sins of the world; and sin (as Saint
John saith) was not in him. But all we the rest, although baptized and born
again in Christ, yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
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