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St. Gregory Palamas 1296-1359
We accord relative veneration to the Holy Icon of the Son of God, Who was circumscribed as having become incarnate for us, ascribing veneration in a relative manner to the prototype. We venerate the precious Wood of the Cross, and all the symbols of His sufferings, as being true Divine trophies over the common enemy of our race. In addition to the saving image of the precious Cross, we venerate the Divine Churches and places, as well as the sacred vessels and the Divinely-transmitted Scriptures, because God dwells in them. Likewise, we venerate the icons of the Saints, because of our love for them and for God, Whom they truly loved and served, in our veneration lifting our mnds up to the figures depicted in the Icons. We also venerate the Relics of the saints, since the sanctifying Grace of the same has not departed from their most sacred bones, just as the Godhead was not separated from the Master’s body in His three-day death…
…We cherish all ecclesiastical traditions, both written and unwritten, and above all the most mystical and All-Sacred Rite, Communion, and Assembly, the source of perfection for all the other rites, at which, in recollection of Him Who emptied Himself without emptying and took flesh and suffered on our behalf, according to the Divine command which He Himself fulfills, the most Divine Consecration of the Bread and the Cup is celebrated, in which these become the life-giving Body and Blood. He bestows ineffable communion and participation on those who appraoch in purity. We cast aside and subject to anathema all those who do not confess and believe as the Holy Spirit foretold through the Prophets, as the Lord decreed when He appeared to us through the flesh, as the Apostles preached after being sent by Him, as our Fathers and their successors taught us, but who have either started their own heresy or followed to the end those who have made an evil start.
We accept and salute the Holy Ecumenical Synods: The one in Nicea, of the 318 God-bearing Fathers, against God-fighting Arios, who impiously degraded the Son of God down to the level of a creature and sundered the Godhead that is worshipped in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into created and uncreated; the one after it in Constantinople of the 150 Holy Fathers, against Macedonius of Constantinople, who impiously degraded the Holy Spirit down to the level of a creature and no less than the former sundered the one Godhead into created and uncreated; the one after it in Ephesus of the 200 Fathers, against Patriarch Nestorios of Constantinople, who rejected the hypostatic union of Divinity and humanity in Christ, and completely refused to call “Theotokos” the Virgin who truly gave birth to God; and the fourth in Chalcedon of the 630 Fathers, against Evtyches and Dioskoros, who propounded the evil doctrine of one nature in Christ; and the one after it in Constantinople of the 165 Fathers, against Theodore and Diodoros, who entertained the same ideas as Nestorios and commended his ideas in their writings, and against Origen, Didymos, and Evagrios, who were from an older period, but had attempted to infiltrate the Church of God with certain fables; and the one after it in the same city of the 170 Fathers, against Sergios, Pyrrhos, and Paul of Constantinople, who rejected two energies and two wills appropiate to the two natures of Christ; and the one in Nicea of the 367 Fathers, against the Iconoclasts. (excerpted from “A Confession of the Orthodox Faith Set Forth by His Eminence, Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica” trans. Hieromonk Patapios)
