Page 246 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
vealing. For forty years she labored in the desert with all her
strength to be cleansed of her passions. Yet it was only when
she received the communion of the Immaculate Gifts that her
earthly life reached its completion in sanctification. The goal
of her asceticism was Eucharistic communion.
The Divine Eucharist is the culmination of sanctification
not only because it offers man the fullest union, bodily and
spiritual, with the Only Holy One, but also because it is the
most perfect portrayal of the Kingdom of God: that final state
in which all creation will eternally glorify the “Holy, Holy,
Holy Lord Sabaoth.” Holiness, therefore, is not a private pos-
session, not an ethical achievement, and not an individual
state. It is an ecclesial experience. It is the glorification of God
in the communion of the Church, and it reaches its fullness in
the Divine Eucharist.
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