35. The great Dionysius also says this: “When we become incorruptible
and immortal, and we arrive at the most blessed and Christlike condition, we
will be always with the Lord according to the saying. In pure contemplation we
will be filled with his visible revelation, which will envelop us with
exceedingly brilliant radiance, as it enveloped the disciples that most divine
transfiguration. When our minds become impassible and immaterial, we will
participate in his spiritual illumination and in the union beyond
understanding, by the unknowable and blessed reception of the rays which
surpass appearance, in a more divine imitation of the celestial intelligences.”
36. And the great Basil says: “The reward of virtue is to become God
and to receive the lightning flash of the most pure light, becoming a sun of
that day which is not cut off by darkness. For a different sun makes this day,
the sun which flashes with the true light. When once this sun shines on us, it
is no longer hidden in gloom, but enfolds everything in its illuminating power.
It continuously and perpetually enlightens those who are worthy and even makes
those who participate in that light into other suns. ‘Then,’ it says, ‘the righteous
shall shine like the sun.”’
37. The divine Maximus says: “The soul becomes God by the
participation of the divine grace. IT both desists from all the activities of
the mind and perception and at the same time stops the natural activities of
the body. The body is deified along with the soul in proportion to its participation
in deification, so that God alone then appears through both the soul and the
body, as their natural characteristics are overcome by the excess of glory.”
38. The great Dionysius says: “We do not see any deification or life
which accurately resembles the cause which is situated above all.” (Holy
Synod of Constantinople, “Synodical Tome of 1341,” in Creeds &
Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and
Valerie Hotchkiss [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003], as quoted in The
Orthodox Patristic Witness Concerning Catholicism [Uncut Mountain Press, 2024],
910-11)
