Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Face

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"Now, we speak of God as a person. The word 'person' indicates a sense of limitation, at least as it is used in modern languages. Nevertheless, the Greek word prosporon, which was used from early times to speak of the three persons of the Trinity, did not mean a person in the modern sense. Rather, prosporon meant a face. It meant that God could be met face to face, that we can be face to face with the living God. God is not a faceless, eyeless being. He has a beautiful image--of this we are assured in the story in St. John's Gospel of the man born blind... This man was born blind; he had never seen anything in his life. When Christ gave him his sight, the first thing he ever saw was the face of God become human, and his eyes met the eyes of divine love and compassion. this is what we mean in saying 'God is a person.' And so, again, we must ask ourselves: Is our God personal? Have we ever had the experience or the certainty that faith gives us that we are face to face with God, with a living God, who listens, who sees, who understands, who is open to us, and who speaks to us?"

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

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