Another way to talk about this is the three-fold path — purgation, illumination, union — a central strand in Orthodox Tradition beginning with the Apostles. All that God made was good. The unique image of that goodness in harmony with God is Eden. God's constant design for His Creation is this goodness-in-harmony. The purpose of our lives is to return to this Eden, purging ourselves of every ungodly thing, permitting God's light and love to fill our souls and persons, and by that process, to be united to Him.

Consider the Mount of Transfiguration on Mount Hermon (near Caesarea-Philippi, where Jesus had asked, "Who do you say that I am?"). The Lord Jesus becomes filled with God's pure, white light, revealing in turn a beautiful tableau of life-in-harmony — harmony with the Law (Moses) and with the Prophets (Elijah), all in union with God the Father, Who voices His Presence. To the Jewish mind of the first century, this would be a perfection of harmony: to be just, that is, perfectly attuned to the Law and the Prophets like a trued wheel or a tuned harp, and to be righteous, that is, blameless before the Law and the Prophets.

In a haunting counter-image to this ascent, two hundred angels descended from Heaven to Mt. Hermon lusting after the comely and beautiful daughters of Eve (1 Enoch 6:2) swearing an oath to fornicate with them lest any have second thoughts (Ibid, 6:5).

In our part of the world, this subject falls upon the ears of our Christian neighbors as gibberish. They ask if we at the Hermitage have "been saved." Are we "born again"? Looking upon the Hermitage Sisters, — who have spent twenty-five years in Haiti, dwelt unprotected among lepers in remote India, lived in unremitting poverty, have relieved suffering among the poor day after day for decades, who pray day and night without fail, and who strive for personal purity — I reply, "Who among you can say they have made Jesus the Lord of their life to a scope and depth such as this?" The question of salvation does not begin and end in emotion or in the abstraction of our thoughts. The scope and depth of salvation lies in our transformation — from animals of the earth to godly creatures filled with Divine light.

From the beginning it has been so. The Hebrew Scriptures read as the story of a constant falling away from holiness by God's people and of God calling them back to Himself Who is Holy. Even in the Sinai wilderness, where God sought to purify them, they rejected manna demanding blood and animal meat.

In our own time, a striving for holiness continues to be practiced by Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Church teaches that personal sanctification is salvation by the grace and leading of God. This does not mean simply to eat a vegan diet or to go on a fruit fast though this is part of the Orthodox life. It is far more holistic than that. It is all-encompassing — a striving to be blameless before God in all things and to reverence our bodies as the holy temples they are and were made to be.

Advancing along this upward path, we find that a transformation occurs within us — our hearts become tender toward the poor and oppressed; we become uncomfortable with luxurious living or conspicuous consumption; we develop an allergy to the world, the flesh, and the devil; and we naturally wince at indecent images or trashy movies.

It goes without saying that these principles trace back to the dawn of time following the expulsion from Eden. And certainly they were primary to the spiritual life 3,000 years ago. As we saw in yesterday's reflection, the religious life of sanctification was practiced hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus by the Essenes, who in turn received this tradition from the religious life of the First Temple in the time of David and Solomon. (This link to First Temple spirituality has been demonstrated by scholars of our own time via the texts and traditions of Merkavah mysticism.)

The Essenes of the first century A.D. lived near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Qumran following the fall of Jerusalem. They wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. According to the Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, they constituted the third major party of Jewish believers along with the Pharisees and Sadducees. But while the Pharisees preoccupied themselves with legalistic debate and the Sadducees preoccupied themselves with the aristocratic roles of governance, the Essenes were entirely absorbed in lives of holiness. The defining marks of their community were sanctification; a community of godly love; empathy toward the oppressed and poor; poverty, chastity, and obedience; and a low view of the luxurious life and worldly pursuits.

The First Temple built by Solomon did not come about willy-nilly or through royal whims concerning interior decoration. Its aspiration was to be a permanent and faithful expression of the Tabernacle of the Sinai wilderness, which, in turn, was to be a ritual expression of the Garden of Eden,

The Tabernacle, with its expression as the First Temple, was oriented east-to-west from its entrance to the Holy of Holies. That is, the path expressed a return to Eden and thence to High Heaven. The area to the east represented the fallen world. Entrance into the courtyards around the Temple signified a degree of holiness and intention to return to God's embrace. Entering the Tabernacle itself was reserved for those who had attained holiness. The western wall of the Temple was the Garden wall, for past it lay Eden. Beyond, hung the veil separating Eden from the Holy of Holies signifying High Heaven, represented by a "golden cube." In the Tabernacle the cube was smaller:

This place was ordained by God to be Heaven to a fallen world. One would not simply enter it or boldly reclaim it. One might only approach it slowly, cautiously, and through a process of personal sanctification:

An expected outcome of worship in the Tabernacle or Temple was to ascend to the upper reaches of the human state becoming angelic:

In the Orthodox Church today the Sanctuary continues to represent the Holy of Holies. No animal products of any kind may enter (save beeswax and wool). The Orthodox Altar, recalling the golden cube of the Tabernacle and First Temple, continues to be constructed as a cube. Orthodox life also gives away these family ties:

How different all this is from the liturgies of the West, which are more grounded in sacrifice than in spiritual transformation. Following the Roman Church's departure from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in the eleventh century, the theology of sacrifice dominated, led by an Italian Benedictine monk named Anselmo. Western Churches would become oriented, that is, situated from the west to east. The idea is that one must pass through the table of death (the Altar where the body of Jesus is laid for sacrifice) in order to pass on to the rising sun in east, signifying a return to Paradise (a word found on the eastern apse walls of early Western churches).

Jesus alone is said to effect union with God, not ourselves participating in His example of sanctification. But we think of St. Paul's words characterizing our own

The aim of Orthodox worship is not to offer a sacrifice over and over in the spirit of Penal Substitution Atonement, but rather to effect At-One-Ment with God — a return to Eden and thence to Heaven, ascending back into our higher, we might say, angelic natures. The Lord Jesus is the Temple (Jn 2:21). He is the perfection of Heaven in earth and earth in Heaven. He has made it possible for the veil to be removed that all may enter the Holy of Holies, which is why the veil is rent at His crucifixion (Lu 23:45).

The antiquity of these ideas in Christian tradition is seen in many places including the holy icon accompanying this reflection — depicting John the Baptist, the man of Eden, dressed only in natural clothes, eating only manna, fragrant of the morning of the earth. He cherished and kept his angelic nature (given all of us at birth), signified by his wings, and then called to his brothers and sisters in seraphic love to be cleansed of the world that they too might ascend toward Heaven. St. Peter characterized his ministry as a second Noah's flood (all that baptism water), suggesting a journey westward, through and past the flood of Noah, to our original harmony and happiness in Eden and union with God, signifying High Heaven.

In our Epistle lesson this morning, St. Paul describes Jesus breaking "down the middle wall of separation." Jews of the spiritual school would have pictured the Temple and the wall or veil separating us from God:

Through this we are able to understand present-day worship as a successor to Temple "angelic worship" — that is, priests ascending to their higher nature and meeting with angels in the most holy place. We are better able to understand Jesus when He tells Nathaniel that he will see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (Jn 1:51). We begin to grasp the nature of human life as a journey that is angelic in its essence, that each of us is a Temple in which the middle wall is to be broken down, as we ascend to an original, Edenic nature — that when St. Paul and St. Peter describe each of us as being a Temple (1 Cor 6:19-20) or as living stones built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 1:5), we understand.

May I say one last thing this morning about the Essenes, who wrote of a luminous figure standing above all. He was called "the Son of Man." He possessed Divine powers. He would act as judge in the last times. He would sit in a throne of glory unto the ages of ages. They called Him the "Teacher of Righteousness."

Do we know such a One Who greatly valued righteousness and who taught it?

• "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."    (Mt 5:6)
• "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."   (Mt 6:33)
• "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."   (Mt 5:10)
• "Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears let him hear!" (Mt 13:43)
• "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous unto eternal life."    (Mt 25:46)