Main news for 1 March 2026

What is communion with God? What forms does it take? One thing is clear: no matter how hard a person tries, whatever efforts he applies, he can do nothing to draw near to God. Therefore a person cannot imagine God. Of course, human language can find words to describe the One in some way, but all these descriptions will only be a human perception of qualities that human beings themselves attribute to the One. What He is in reality can be told only by Him Himself, if, of course, He wills to do so. It is no accident that the highest achievement of pagan mysticism was apophaticism, the refusal of any definitions or descriptions of the One.

But can God Himself not tell a person what He is like? Yes and no. Of course, God can reveal Himself to a person, and He truly does reveal Himself when He considers it necessary. But how can He reveal Himself to him? No human being, nor anyone else among those created by Him, will ever see or know Him as God sees and knows Himself. We can know God only as He reveals Himself to us.

At first glance there is no problem here: symbols exist in human culture precisely in order to express something ambiguous, something in which form and content stand in complex, dynamic relations. The trouble, however, is that fallen humanity is inclined to absolutize form, often at the expense of content, especially when religious forms are involved, since they are most often used to express and embody revelation. In that case it is better to do without form altogether, at least without visual form: it is the image that most easily turns into something self-sufficient, obscuring and pushing into the background what it was meant to symbolize.

But communication is necessary, and words too can be emptied out, losing their meaning. Yes, of course; but it is simpler for God to communicate with us precisely through the word, for speech is a deeply personal process, inseparable from the expression and embodiment of meanings that a person has received and experienced as his own. Speech communication can even be beyond words; nothing prevents God from communicating with a person directly at the level of meanings, which the person himself will embody in words. In this way the dangerous absolutizing of form at the expense of meaning can be avoided.

And God does this above all for the sake of the human person, so that revelation may reach those to whom it is addressed in the greatest possible purity and fullness.