When men search for God with their bodily eyes they find Him nowhere, for He is invisible. But for those who ponder in the Spirit He is present everywhere. He is in all, yet beyond all.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that God cannot be perceived through physical senses and can only be understood spiritually.
Symeon The New Theologian emphasizes that the search for God through physical means is futile, as God is fundamentally invisible and can only be experienced through spiritual contemplation. This understanding implies that the divine is omnipresent and exists beyond material existence, accessible to those who seek deeper wisdom and connection with the spiritual essence of life.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of faith and divine presence.
Through repentance the filth of our foul actions is washed away. After this, we participate in the Holy Spirit, not automatically, but according to the faith, humility and inner disposition of the repentance in which our soul is engaged. For this reason it is good to repent each day as the act of repentance is unending.
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .
I and this mystery, here we stand.
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.
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