Symbols
- Michael Haldas
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
“The Lord knows that we can only make sense of the world through rational engagement with it, and so we are given patterns and symbols to enable us to venture beyond simplistic meanings and toward the numinous…Words are symbols that refer to something beyond themselves…odd conversations, signs, symbols, and sacraments are sprinkled throughout our lives. They are like bread crumbs leading us into the Kingdom of God. Never imagine that you fully understand or that the journey is complete.” (Fr. Joseph Lucas, Fr. Stephen De Young, Father Stephen Freeman)
“…both Scripture and liturgy grew out of, and rely on, the natural world—recall the earthy, humble parables of Our Lord, or the rich natural language used in Mass, or the seasonal cycles that govern the liturgical year. Insofar as a civilization loses contact with this natural symbolism…the content of the faith becomes largely unintelligible to it….We must see that the reality of the world depends upon its being a symbol of heavenly realities. If creation is not a symbol of heaven, then its essence, its substance, would be of little importance. For example, if the world is just the arbitrary product of God’s will, then God could have made some other world, or not have given us gender, and so forth. And if the world’s form is arbitrary, then it is no longer “good,” no longer beautiful and holy.” (Ben Reinhard, Fr. Conrad Pepler,Timothy G. Patitsas)
“Light is always the symbol of consciousness…To those who have eyes to see, all the invisible (spiritual) world is mysteriously presented in symbols of the visible world; and all the natural world depends on the supernatural world. Everything in the fallen world has the potential to lead the mind to God, to encourage us to move toward that communion of love which alone is true fullness of life.” (Robert A. Johnson, Nikolai of Zicha, St. Maximus the Confessor, Dr. Mary S. Ford)
“And we don’t just receive sacraments; we are meant to become sacraments for others and for the life of the world. You don’t become who you really are until you attain this sacramental status, this level of symbol. We are meant to be the icons of God, his epiphanies in this world….When we love, we become the symbol of what we love. This is such an essential point about the life in Christ…” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“The feeling of joy exceeds all our feelings. Joy is the feeling of a successful, victorious completion of any good deed and any effort. Joy is the triumph of truth. Joy is the symbol of all that is holy and perfect. How many rich gifts the Lord gives us throughout our lives! And all of this is a subject and reason for joy: joy in youth, joy in wise and pure old age, joy in strength, joy in beauty, joy in successful work and study, joy in family life, joy even in the solitary life, joy from doing good deeds; joy when we forgive those who offend us; joy in prayer, joy from going to God’s church, joy from meeting people; joy from the shining sun; joy that we are alive!” (Metropolitan Vladimir Sabodan)
“[The] Church has a symbolic understanding of the world where everything is seen as a symbol of the action of God in the world and where the very existence of the universe is wholly dependent on, indeed is a function of, its relationship to God.” (Archpriest Lawrence Cross)
“The whole spiritual world seems mystically imprinted on the whole sensible world in symbolic forms, for those who are capable of seeing this.” (St. Maximus the Confessor)
“The strange, the extraordinary, thing, is that we did not really die, nor were we really buried or really crucified; nor did we really rise again; this was figurative and symbolic; yet our salvation was real. Christ’s crucifixion was real, His burial was real, and His Resurrection was real; and all these He has freely made ours, so that by sharing His sufferings in a symbolic enactment we may really and truly gain salvation.” (St. Cyril of Jerusalem)
“When the Fathers used the word “symbol,” they understood that something was actually, really and truly made present. A symbol makes present that which it represents…In our modern world, a symbol represents something that is not there, it is a sign of absence. Indeed, because our modern world-view is essentially one of nominalism, we believe that the ancient notion of symbol is simply impossible. It feels like superstition to the modern consciousness.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“…we have lost our sense of soul because we have lost our respect for symbols; our modern mind is trained that symbols are illusion. We say, “It is only your imagination,” not realizing that all the missing parts of ourselves that we long for, the “lost lane into heaven,” are constantly mediated to us in the forgotten language of the soul: the symbols and images that emanate through dream and imagination.” (Robert A. Johnson)
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