By St. Dionysius the Areogapite
.... The sacred institution and source of
perfection established our most pious hierarchy. He modeled it on the
hierarchies of heaven, and clothed these immaterial hierarchies in
numerous material figures and forms so that, in a way appropriate to
our nature, we might be uplifted from these most venerable images to
interpretations and assimilations which are simple and inexpressible.
For it is quite impossible that we humans should, in any immaterial
way, rise up to imitate and to contemplate the heavenly hierarchies
without aid of those material means capable of guiding us as our
nature requires. Hence, any thinking person realizes that the
appearances of beauty are signs of an invisible loveliness. The
beautiful odors which strike the senses are representation of
conceptual diffusion. Material lights are images of the outpouring of
an immaterial gift of light. The thoroughness of sacred discipleship
indicates the immense contemplative capacity of the mind. Order and
rank here below are a sign of the harmonious ordering toward the
divine realm. The reception of the most divine Eucharist is a symbol
of participation in Jesus. And so it goes for all the gifts
transcendentally received by the beings of heaven, gifts which are
granted to us in a symbolic mode.
The
source of spiritual perfection provided us with perceptible images of
these heavenly minds. He did so out of concern for us and because He
wanted us to be made godlike. He made the heavenly hierarchies known
to us. He made our own hierarchy a ministerial colleague of these
divine hierarchies by assimilation, to the extent that is humanly
feasible, to their godlike priesthood. He revealed all this to us in
the sacred pictures of the scriptures so that He might lift us in
spirit through the perceptible to the conceptual, from sacred shapes
and symbols to the simple peaks of the hierarchies of heaven.
From:
The Celestial Hierarchy
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