Reality
“Everything we can see is in reality calling us to something much deeper, and everything in creation transcends its material existence.” (Andrew Williams)
“…all of reality, including physical nature, has an allegorical character. It is not just “itself,” since the visible and sensible lead the mind, “as by a hand, to the contemplation of invisible things,”…Through the visible, the surface, the literal level, we can move to the invisible, the spiritual. As used within the Christian Tradition, this kind of allegorical interpretation, or way of seeing things, can rightly be called incarnational allegory, that is, two realities are considered together and seen as analogous, in order to give new insight while both maintain their importance. Applied to Scripture, this means that the spiritual level is seen through the literal, while both levels are kept together, and, as said, considered important, in a roughly analogous way to Christ being perfect God and perfect man in the Incarnation.” (St. Basil the Great, Mary S. Ford)
“Reality in the fallen world often has more to it than the “surface level”—more than meets the eye, and fallen humanity often can’t see those other levels of reality. That means, with God’s help, we often must look beyond, or beneath, the surface to see all these levels, or “true reality.” As St. Paul says in the context of patiently, bravely, and even cheerfully enduring afflictions in this life because of our hope for the next, “we look not at [to] the things that are seen, but at [to] the things which are not seen” (2 Cor. 4:18).” (Mary S. Ford)
“When Christians sought to discuss the Christian rites of Baptism and the Eucharist, they borrowed the Latin concept of sacrament. Christians understood that Baptism allowed them to participate in, and inducted them into, a much larger spiritual reality that intersected heaven and earth. The Christians did not make up their sacramental theology based on Roman practices but simply used prevailing language and categories to explain what Christ had revealed. What the Latin concept of sacramentum helped to clarify is that through the Christian mysteries, initiates come to participate in a transcendent reality. Participation in these mysteries inducted believers into a network of obligations, privileges, and benefits that rivaled the priorities of Rome. These sacred mysteries proclaimed that the Church, not the Roman state, was the true eschatological reality breaking into this world to set men and women free.” (Robin Phillips)
“Sacramentally, the purpose of attending church services is to participate in a higher spiritual reality…in a sacramental view of the world, nothing is “just” physical. Objects and actions have intrinsic, spiritual meaning. Everything is participatory…if you want to become something, you have to participate in it. And in sacramental Christianity, the thing you’re participating in is the higher spiritual reality of the arché [beginning, source, principle] Himself.” (Dr. Zachary Porcu)
“…every material reality has a spiritual aspect to it, that the seen and the unseen are deeply intertwined… If we had stood at Golgotha on the day of the Crucifixion, our material eyes would have seen Roman soldiers nailing Jesus to the Cross. But our eyes of faithfulness would have seen the young Warrior, ready to do battle, about to use this Weapon of Peace, the Trophy Invincible, as His means to enter into Hades, smash down its doors, and to defeat the devil and death. If you participate in the services of the Church, then you see both these realities simultaneously. This truth shines forth perhaps most brilliantly in Holy Week, where we feel both the agony and sorrow of Christ’s passion as well as the glory and victory of His destruction of death and giving resurrection to the fallen.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“All creation, seen and unseen, has its source in Him [Christ] as God. He is the beginning of all things. With respect to the creation, the Apostle John says, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (Jn 1:2-3).” (Dynamis 10/17/2018)
“Even in the 4th Century, philosophers wondered how the material cosmos could have been created by an immaterial being. That question is still a stumbling block for some atheists today. St Gregory’s [of Nyssa] answer probably would not satisfy unbelievers today, for Gregory’s solution is that the material creation is not merely physical but its existence is in God, so each thing has an immaterial nature because each thing’s form/essence is in God’s mind.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“This is the axiom: when we seek to use the unseen in a manner that controls or directs the world around us, we have left the path of true belief and entered the world of magic and superstition. It is, oddly, the opposite of the sacramental life. In the sacraments, material things are used for the purpose of communion with the immaterial with the sole intent of communion with God. In magic and superstition, we seek to manipulate the immaterial world for the sake of controlling and managing the material world. It is actually a form of secularism – one which presumes that the material world itself is the true and final place of our existence.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“There is the seen, and there is the unseen, the material and the immaterial. That which is material can be scientifically examined and experienced, the immaterial can only be seen and experienced spiritually. These are two worlds that are only seemingly at odds with one another. If you attempt to examine that which is of a spiritual nature using a science that is by its very nature meant to explore the material realm, you will fail. The things that are of God are far beyond the capabilities of our finite mind to comprehend. The divine can only be known through the nous, that place in the heart that is our true center. It, unlike the brain, is capable of knowledge that is beyond human comprehension, coming as it does from noetic knowledge.” (Abbot Tryphon)
“Christianity is a way of seeing all of life and reality through God’s eyes. That is what Christianity is: a world view, a system, and a way of life." (Chuck Colson)
“We are created as sensory beings for this very reason—so that God can reveal Himself to us. When we fail to see the reality around us as a divine manifestation of His presence, we forget the ultimate reality and begin to experience distortion. We become less real.” (Kevin Scherer)
“The only reason the material world had any meaning at all was because of its relationship to God. Medieval man held that reality—what was really real—was outside himself and that dwelling in the darkness of the Fall, he could not fully perceive it.” (Rod Dreher)
“Symbol, in its primary meaning, refers to something that makes something else present or that contains something else within it. It is sym-bole, a “throwing-together” of things. In our modern world, we believe a symbol is something that makes us think of another thing that is not there. Such a symbol is a sign of absence. The older and original meaning is like that of a sacrament (the Fathers had no problem calling the Eucharist a “symbol” in this older meaning). A symbol carries within it the reality of the other thing.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’” (J.R.R. Tolkien)