In the Bible, Man is depicted as one of the images of God’s breath. After creating a beautiful and good universe, God formed Man from dirt and breathed His own life into it.
After completing the creation of the New Universe, the Kingdom of the Father, the resurrected Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples and breathed His own breath upon their human bodies, proclaiming, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20.22). This act made them partakers of the life of the Most Holy Trinity.
Obedient to that creative power (Matthew 28.18), every Christian receives the same Spirit through the sacraments of the Church (Matthew 28.19–20). Every time we exchange the greeting of peace, our human bodies are quickened with God’s eternal life.
The environment of our lives is the new vineyard of the Father’s kingdom, where we are planted and have been given the power to grow and bear fruit in the loving embrace of the Holy Spirit. The beatitudes proclaimed by our Lord Jesus are not distant, beautiful stars on the firmament of God’s kingdom. They are us, every Christian disciple, fruit-bearing branches animated by the power of God’s breath and nourished by the Holy Spirit.
Christian faith is not an abstract intellectual exercise. It surpasses all human intellect and comprehension because it is life itself—energetic, animated with hope, and vibrant with love. This upright and authentic faith is effective because it does not originate from human understanding or preaching; it is faith the size of a mustard seed carrying the power of the Apostolic preaching: the kingdom of our Father has arrived!
The words of our Lord Christ clearly state that the Father’s kingdom is characterized by peace. This peace is not generated solely from forgiveness but also from the remission of our sins, which leads to a life of conversion.
Saint Gregory of Narek exemplified radical simplicity in his life of conversion and provides us with a roadmap for this path. Gregory describes Christian conversion as the act of breathing, which sustains us. By exhaling our human breath and inhaling the divine breath of God, the Holy Spirit, we can generate divine life within ourselves (Prayer 21.3).
Impress this image in your mind, as given by Gregory. With every breath, keep alive your human and earthly life by exhaling what is earthly and ephemeral, and inhale the Holy Spirit of God. This will allow the image of God, our original and true self, to shine brightly in our deeds. As a result, we will not only forgive all iniquities committed against us, but we will also remit the wages of sin through the power of our Lord’s sacrifice.
May peace be with you at all times.
