“…He descended with a cloud under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew, and soared on the wings of the wind” (Psalm 17:10)

God has come down, bowed the heavens, and come to reveal Himself to us. But the psalm notes another fact, that after God comes down to us (revealing), He flies and flutters on the wings of the wind, as if we receive Him but do not grasp Him.

The divine revelation, both natural and supernatural, has been very powerful, but not to the point of eliminating human freedom. Divine revelation has never been and will never be an imposition or a compulsory applied truth on the human mind. God willed His revelation to be great because it is great, and because at the same time it respects human freedom, it remains a human discovery as well. God’s revelation of Himself in history and its events comes with both delicacy and power, which guarantee its clarity on the one hand and the freedom to accept it on the other.

The knowledge of God has two parts: the first, which is the greatest, is “divine revelation,” and the second, which is as important as the first, is human discovery. Therefore, the knowledge of God is a kind of “dialogue” movement between God and man that takes place in the daily living relationship of being, in mind and action. God’s gift to man and His revelation of Himself to him is not a compulsory religion, because the most precious thing that God has in His creation, man, is the latter’s freedom. God does not want those who love Him by force, but by choice. God has adorned man with reason and spirit so that he may choose and not be forced. There is no meaning to virtue when it is achieved by force. Free and rational beings who have their own personality are bound by free relationships. And this freedom is the basis of that relationship, which is between God and man. This is how God wanted man to be free and this is how He treats him. Just as there is God who comes to us, there is man who receives Him, and just as God speaks, there is man who wants or does not want to hear Him. God descends to us when we set up that divine ladder towards heaven (Jacob’s ladder, Gen 28:12). 

However, when a person accepts the presence of God, his freedom does not end there, because God comes with that tenderness but also on “clouds” as the psalm says. When we know Him, we realize how much we do not know Him. When He comes to our limitations, He explodes our capabilities towards the absolute. He descends to us to fly again.

We see him descending and then riding on the winds for us to run after him. Here begins the second and most important stage of the human freedom choice. This is what is called in the language of theology “the divine cloud.”

There are two conditions for knowing God in truth and depth. The first is His descent to us, because He is a person and we cannot know Him except to the extent that He reveals Himself to us, as we mentioned earlier. But this extent is determined by human freedom after His descent to us. He reveals to us to the extent that we ask for, and this is the law of freedom that He has given us and adorned us with. God comes revealed and veiled, He descends, but under His feet are clouds. We receive from Him signs of His presence, of the fullness of His grace, and “flashes” of His light. This cloud is called by the saint (the Areopagite) “the cloud of light”, for it is light and cloud, revelation and veiling, discovery and miracle! This is from the nature of the relationship between the finite - man and the infinite - God. Therefore, the choice of human freedom to accept the divine presence (revelation) is the beginning of the dialogue with God, not its end. It is more than a reception, it is a departure with God flying on the wings of the wind. It is a change of course and direction of life. It is an exciting relationship filled with love in satiation without satisfaction. If the beauty of God were not absolute and endless, God would be boring to the saints and interesting only to beginners. But the opposite is true because the presence of God is a “cloud of light” and the more we enter into it, the more enlightened we become and the more our knowledge of our lack of knowledge increases. This is why the Apostle Paul had to remain silent about the experiences he had when he was caught up to the third heaven, and he could only describe them as “what no eye has seen and no ear of man has heard, the things which God has prepared for his elect (lovers).”

 The more we love God, the more our longing does not diminish, unlike human feelings, which the more we quench them, the less our longings diminish. The more we love God, the more our longing for Him inflames. Divine love is a power, not a pleasure. Therefore, the more we possess it, the more our ability to proceed in it increases. The relationship with God is an entrance into the light, the more we pass through it, the more His greatness appears as an unfathomable cloud. God is more loving than we know, and the more we know His love, the more we realize that we are loved.

This is the second condition of human freedom, that it should strive with steps that are not lazy, and God is generous and loving. Isaac the Syrian cried out to Him: “Calm the waves of your mercy for me,” and the most beautiful words that we sing to the Lord on the occasion of the feast of his birth and presence are those that the human soul cries out through the words of the Song of Songs: “Draw me after you, and we will run” (1:4).

Amen