Page 18 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
into history the eschatological vision of the Kingdom of
God—the vision of His glory, the ultimate destiny of human-
ity.
The churches she built assumed outwardly the form of the
“inclined heaven” of divine love, which Christ embodied
through His Incarnation; while within, they conveyed the
radiance of His coming Kingdom—through abundant light,
the resplendent forms of the glorified saints, the splendor of
the priestly vestments, and the entire artistic adornment. En-
listing art in the service of theology and theology in the ex-
pression of art, the Orthodox Church imprinted civilization
with an indelible seal—one that her great artistic creations,
especially of the Byzantine era, will bear forever: in iconogra-
phy, architecture, poetry, music, and letters.
This great cultural inheritance of humanity, this expression
of the greatness of Orthodoxy, is the fruit of a theological in-
terpretation of our being and of the being of the world. It is a
gift of divine love to the human person and to all creation.
This majestic vision of the ultimate destiny of the human
being and of the world—born from the Incarnation of divine
love in the person of Christ and the calling to our “deifica-
tion”—did not make the Orthodox Church a place of escape
from history and its struggles. Even as her worship so vividly
reveals the image of a deified world, the world of the final
Kingdom, Orthodoxy has never overlooked the harsh reality
of evil that shakes human life in its historical existence.
She believed, more than most, in the truth that in order to
reach the Resurrection one must necessarily pass through the
Cross—to be “emptied” of glory in order to be glorified. Thus,
alongside the grandeur of her worship, the Orthodox Church
placed great emphasis on ascetic life, filling the world with
faithful who emptied themselves of all honor and glory, cru-
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