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In other words, grace is natural to man. The divine power is a part of man's NATURAL integrity. There is not a set of gifts given to "nature" and then another set of gifts given to "supernature". When our parents "fell from grace" there was not a fall into "nature" stripped of "supernature," rather it is something UNnatural (this means that there is no concept of 'natura pura' either actually or theoretically). The fall is a fall into dialectic. I cannot be a human person without grace. We stand within the Incarnation and understand this question and we can equally say with Michael Baius - against the Thomistic tradition on some conception of the "absolute gratuity of grace" without reference to the Incarnation - that given that God wills the mystery of His embodiment in Jesus Christ, God could not have created me other than I already am. The vision of God is natural to man, what God does in Redemption, He does in Creation. God intention in Creating was to will the mystery of His embodiment in Jesus Christ.

If the image of the king is the king, the image of Christ is Christ, and the image of a saint the saint, and if power is not divided nor glory distributed, honouring the image becomes honouring the one who is set forth in image. Devils have feared the saints, and have fled from their shadow. The shadow is an image, and I make an image that I may scare demons. If you say that only intellectual worship befits God, take away all corporeal things, light, and fragrance, prayer itself through the physical voice, the very divine mysteries which are offered through matter, bread, and wine, the oil of chrism, the sign of the Cross, for all this is matter. Take away the Cross, and the sponge of the Crucifixion, and the spear which pierced the life-giving side. Either give up honouring these things as impossible, or do not reject the veneration of icons. Matter is endued with a divine power through prayer made to those who are depicted in image. Purple by itself is simple, and so is silk, and the cloak which is made of both. But if the king put it on, the cloak receives honour from the honour due to the wearer. So is it with matter. By itself it is of no account, but if the one presented in image be full of grace, men become partakers of his grace according to their faith. The apostles knew our Lord with their bodily eyes; others knew the apostles, others the martyrs. I, too, desire to see them in the spirit and in the flesh, and to possess a saving remedy as I am a composite being. I see with my eyes, and revere that which represents what I honour, though I do not worship it as God. Now you, perhaps, are superior to me, and are lifted up above bodily things, and being, as it were, not of flesh, you make light of what is visible, but as I am human and clothed with a body, I desire to see and to be corporeally with the saints. Condescend to my humble wish that you may be secure on your heights. God accepts my longing for Him and for His saints. For He rejoices at the praises of

The purpose of life is not to resist it or to indulge in it, but to live. As St. Ireneaus in the early second century observed, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive" as we see in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Marriage as a spiritual path moves along the "narrow path that leads to life" between these two extremes where the Divine Energies and the vital sap of daily life in the world converge. The Orthodox Church holds marriage in honor as a Mystery of the Church-a means of Grace uniting heaven and earth-where the word and action of the Lord turn ordinary water into the wine of the Spirit creating an effervescence in the soul of the partakers