John Damascene [Papal audience, May 6, 2009]

Assuming that most Catholics share my opinion that the Pope is a very wise man, with profound things to say about the Catholic faith, I'm thinking about translating his Wedesday audience talks from Italian into English as a regular feature of my blog. As this involves a lot of time and effort, I'd appreciate some input on whether this would be a useful thing to do. No point going to the trouble if no one is going to read it!

Dear brothers and sisters,
I would like to speak today about John Damascene, a person of the first importance in the history of Byzantine theology, a great doctor of the universal Church. He was above all an eye-witness of the transition from the Greek and Syriac Christian culture, shared by the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire, to the culture of Islam which had made space for itself by means of military conquest in the territory habitually recognized as the Middle or Near East. John, born into a rich Christian family, while still a young man assumed an important office in the caliphate, an office perhaps held also by his father, responsible for economic matters. But very soon, dissatisfied with life in the court of the caliph, he took up the monastic life, entering the monastery of Saint Saba near Jerusalem. This was around the year 700. Never again venturing from the monastery, he dedicated himself with all of his strength to asceticism and literary activity, not disregarding a certain level of pastoral activity, borne witness to by his numerous "Homilies". His feast is celebrated on December 4. Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him a Doctor of the Universal Church in 1890.

He is remembered in the East particularly for his three Discourses against those who calumniate sacred images, which were condemned after his death by the iconoclastic council of Hieria (754). But these discourses were also the fundamental reason for his rehabilitation and canonization by the Orthodox Fathers at the Second Council of Nicea (787), the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In these texts it is possible to trace the first important attempts in the legitimization of the veneration of sacred images, by associating them with the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

Moreover, John Damascene was among the first to distinguish, in the public and private devotions of Christians, between adoration (latreia) and veneration (proskynesis): the first can only be directed towards God and is spiritual in the highest degree, the second can make use of an image to address the one who is represented by that same image. Obviously, the saint can in no case be identified with the material from which the icon is made. This distinction soon became very important in giving a Christian response to those who were claiming that the strict prohibition of the Old Testament regarding the cultic use of images always and everywhere applied. This was also a topic of discussion of great importance in the Islamic world, which accepted this Hebraic tradition of the total exclusion of all religious images. Christians, on the contrary, in this context, had discussed the problem and found the justification for the veneration of images. The Damascene writes: "In other times God had never been represented in an image, being incorporeal and without a face. But since now God has been seen in the flesh and has lived among men, I depict what is visible in God. I do not venerate the material, but the creator of the material, who was made material for me and deigned to live in material and work my salvation through material things. For that reason I will not cease to venerate the matter by means of which salvation has been obtained for me. But I do not venerate it absolutely as God! How could something that has come into existence from non-being be God?... But I venerate and respect also all the rest of the material that has procured my salvation, in so far as it is full of holy energy and grace. Is not the wood of the thrice blessed cross material?... And the ink and the most holy book of the Gospels, aren't these things material? The altar of salvation that dispenses for us the bread of life, is this not material?... And, before all other things, is not the flesh and blood of my Lord material? I must either suppress the sacred character of all these things, or I must allow to the tradition of the Church the veneration of images of God and those of the friends of God who are sanctified by the name they bear, and who for this reason are inhabited by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore do not offend against matter: it is not contemptible, because nothing that God has made is contemptible" (Contra imaginum calumniatores, I, 16, ed. Kotter, pp.89-90). We see that, because of the Incarnation, matter appears as divinized, it is seen as the habitation of God. It is a question of a new vision of the world and of material reality. God has become flesh and flesh has become in truth the dwelling place of God, whose glory shines in the human face of Christ. Consequently the urgings of the Eastern Doctor are still extremely relevant, considering the very great dignity that matter has received in the Incarnation, able to become, in faith, sign and effective sacrament of the encounter of man with God. John Damascene remains, therefore, a privileged witness of the cult of icons, which became one of the most distinctive aspects of Eastern theology and spirituality down to the present. Yet it is a form of devotion that plainly belongs to the Christian faith, to the faith in that God who was made flesh and made himself visible. The teaching of Saint John Damascene was thus introduced into the tradition of the universal Church, whose sacramental doctrine provides for the fact that material elements taken from nature are capable of becoming means of grace in virtue of the invocation (epiclesis) of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the confession of the true faith.

In connection with these profound ideas John Damascene also posits the veneration of the relics of the saints, on the basis of the conviction that the Christian saints, having become participants in the resurrection of Christ, cannot be considered simply as 'dead'. In enumerating, for example, those whose relics or images are worthy of veneration, John specifies in his third discourse in defense of images: "First of all let us venerate those among whom God rested, he alone being holy who rests among the saints (cfr Is 57,15), like the Holy Mother of God and all the saints. These are the ones who, as far as possible, made themselves like God by their will and by the indwelling and the aid of God, who are truly called gods (cfr Psalms 82,6), not by nature, but by contingency, just as red-hot iron is called fiery, not by nature but by contingency and by participation in the fire. He says in fact: You will be holy, for I am holy (Lv 19,2)" (III, 33, col. 1352 A). After a series of references of this type, the Damascene was able to serenely deduce: "God, who is good and superior to all goodness, was not content with the contemplation of himself, but willed that there should be beings blessed by him who would be able to become participants in his goodness: therefore he created from nothing all things, visible and invisible, including man, a reality both visible and invisible. And he created him by thinking and realizing him as a being capable of thought (ennoema ergon), enriched with words (logo[i] sympleroumenon) and oriented towards the spirit (pneumati teleioumenon)" (II, 2, PG 94, col. 865A). And to further clarify the idea, he adds: "One must let oneself be filled with wonder (thaumazein) at all the works of providence (tes pronoias erga), praise them all and accept them all, overcoming the temptation to pick out in them aspects which seem to many unjust or unfair (adika), and admitting that the plan of God (pronoia) goes beyond the capacity of man to know and understand (agnoston kai akatalepton), while on the contrary He alone knows our thoughts, our actions, and even our future" (II, 29, PG 94, col. 964C). Plato, among others, used to say that all philosophy begins with wonder: our faith also begins with the wonder of creation, of the beauty of God who made himself visible.

The optimism of natural contemplation (physike theoria), of seeing in the visible creation the good, the beautiful, the true, this Christian optimism is not a naive optimism: it takes account of the wound inflicted on human nature by a freedom of choice willed by God and improperly utilized by man, with all the consequences of widespread discord that are derived from that. From here comes the need, clearly perceived by the theologian from Damascus, that the nature in which the goodness and beauty of God are reflected, having been injured by our trespass, has been "reinforced and renewed" by the descent of the Son of God into the flesh, after God Himself, in many ways and diverse occasions, had sought to show that He had created man not only for "being" but for "well-being". With passionate zeal John explains: "It was necessary that nature be reinforced and renewed and the road of virtue be indicated and concretely taught (didachthenai aretes hodon), the road that leads away from corruption and towards eternal life ... And so has appeared on the horizon of history the great sea of the love of God for man (philanthropias pelagos) ..." It is a beautiful expression. We see, on the one side, the beauty of creation, and on the other, the destruction wrought by human sin. But we see in the Son of God, Who descends to renew nature, the sea of the love of God for man. John Damascene continues: "He Himself, the Creator and Lord, strove for his creatures, passing on to them his teaching by example... And so the Son of God, existing in the form of God, lowered the heavens and came down...near his servants...accomplishing the newest thing of all, the only truly new thing under the sun, through which the infinite power of God was made manifest in fact" (III, 1.PG 94, coll. 981C-984B).

We can imagine the comfort and the joy that these words, rich in such fascinating images, spread in the hearts of the faithful. Let us also, today, listen to them, sharing in the same sentiments of the Christians of that time: God wants to rest in us, he wants to renew nature also by means of our conversion, he wants to makes us sharers in his divinity. May the Lord help us to make of these words sustenance for our lives.