the knowledge of God

🔆 Saint Symeon the New Theologian, speaking about the knowledge of God, offers a beautiful image: a person stands on the shore and gazes upon a huge, boundless ocean, so great that he cannot encompass it with his sight. But still he sees something: he sees the surface of the water, the infinity merging with the horizon. Such is man’s knowledge of God when he has not yet united with Him. Man stands and in reverent awe contemplates the greatness of God, His all-infinite perfection. But when man plunges into the ocean, that is, unites with the Divinity, then he no longer sees all this boundlessness: he is already in the ocean, he in a certain sense (of course, without losing his self-awareness) merges with this ocean. And then he experiences the complete bliss of communion with God, indescribable to those who have not experienced it. The same can be said about knowing the meaning of life. When a person reasons about what the meaning of life consists in, he looks at the subject of his reasoning as if from the outside, but when he has actually understood this, then he may perhaps not even be capable of reflecting on this topic, nor does he need to.

Schema-Archimandrite Avraham (Reidman), “I Choose Simplicity…”