+ + +     Exploring Christian Spirituality

ONEing......

"The human being is an animal who has received the vocation to become God." Basil of Cæsarea (329 - 379) quoted by Gregory Nazianzen (330 -390) in his Eulogy of Basil the Great, Oration.

That's the Christian Good News, and the basis of all spirituality. The Western tradition tends to suggest we will end with the vision of God. But the Eastern  ( often called the "Orthodox") tradition teaches us that our end is to be taken up into God. That's rather different... and that union with Christ, that Oneing, starts in this life. Union with Christ means that we are being changed - spirituality is the business of this change - this "growing up into Christ" as Paul calls it in Ephesians 4.15.

Union with Christ is what Paul was alluding to when he spoke of "having the mind of Christ"  - 1 Corinthians 2.16.  And again in Ephesians: 

 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4.21-23

The word oneing is used by Julian of Norwich in Revelations of Divine Love many times. For instance: 

And furthermore He would have us understand that His dear worthy Soul [of Manhood] was preciously knit to Him in the making [by Him of Manhood's Substantial Nature] which knot is so subtle and so mighty that --man's soul--is oned into God: in which oneing it is made endlessly holy. Furthermore He would have us know that all the souls that shall be saved in Heaven without end, are knit and oned in this oneing and made holy in this holiness. (Chapter 53)

ONEing is a powerful word.