the Great 100 days

The Great 100 days began this evening at sun down of the Feast of Transfiguration.  It lasts until the Feast of Pentecost on Sunday May 31, 2020.   I look forward to where this journey will take me as I join others in restoring a teaching of the Early Church which has been lost for the past 500 years.

Theosis:

1. We participate in God’s energies. Energeia is the Greek term, and it means an action or a working, but always of a divine sort (this is true in the classical tradition as well as in the Bible; see e.g. Col. 1:29, 2:12; Acts 4:24; I Cor. 12:10; Eph. 1:19 and elsewhere; Phil. 3:21). This participation begins with repentance and forgiveness and proceeds from there. The term energeia occurs some 30 times in the New Testament, and is never translated properly.
2. We become “godly,” to use an old Protestant term. By participating in God’s energies, we align with God’s will and purpose in the world.
3. We put into practice (praxis) the spiritual teachings of Jesus by participating in the sacramental life and ascetic practices of the church.
4. We contemplate God (theoria is the Greek term and it means “beholding” as in wonder); thus and so do we come to know what it means to be fully human. St Irenaeus, again: “the glory of God is a human being fully revealed” (Against Heresies, Book V).
5. We enter into struggle (podvig in Russian) against the temptations in order to conform to the image of Christ. A podvig is the special effort we make to align with God. It is a term that means not only effort, but a special resolve to become more attuned to God’s work in our life through ascetic practice. Not that we ever earn God’s favor by such labors; they are a gift to ourselves that enables us to focus more clearly on God’s presence in our lives.

To follow along with Dr. Alexander John Shaia's work on the 100 days visit: https://www.facebook.com/AlexanderJohnShaia/