Page 74 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
uniquely, and without comparison.
For this reason, the person must not be confused with per-
sonality. Personality is a collection of properties—physical,
moral, intellectual. It can be measured, evaluated, compared.
But the person transcends all such categories. The person is
not defined by qualities, nor judged by them. The person is the
unique and irreplaceable affirmation of existence itself.
This understanding of the person enters the life of the
Church through the revelation of God’s love and freedom
toward the world, manifested in Christ—especially in His love
for sinners and enemies.
The Church becomes, therefore, the place where the hu-
man being is no longer judged according to capacities, achieve-
ments, or characteristics. This is the meaning of forgiveness,
as it is given in baptism and renewed in repentance: the ac-
ceptance of the person simply as person, as a unique and un-
repeatable being.
In this sense, the Church’s healing is not primarily what she
teaches, but what she is.
She is a community of love—not a sentimental or inward
feeling, but a concrete mode of relationship. This love is real-
ized in coexistence, in mutual reception, in belonging to a
community that does not exclude or condition acceptance
upon worthiness. It is a love that affirms the other in their very
existence.
Within such a community, the human person is gradually
healed. One learns to love and to be loved—not on the basis
of qualities, but in freedom.
As Saint Maximus the Confessor writes, “Perfect love does
not divide the one human nature… but, with this constantly
as its aim, loves all equally.” For Christ Himself, in manifesting
His love, suffered for all, without distinction. In Him, love is
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