By Water & Blood

Chapter 18: How in the Son’s kingdom all who are counted worthy of that blessedness will become one

And this was the thrice-blessed end, in which, when our Saviour confirms the promised kingdom of the heavens to those worthy of it, the God who is over all and his Father, the highest Good of all, will give himself as a gift to those ruled under the Son, becoming “all in all.” This again our Saviour and Lord himself established when he sent up the great prayer for those who knew him “to God, even the Father,” in which he asks, saying, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.” This is the great intercession of our Saviour on our behalf: that we may be with him wherever he is; that we may behold his glory; that the Father may love us as he loved him; that what he bestowed on him he may give to us also, and the glory he gave him he may give to us also—making us all one, so that we may no longer be many, but all one, united to his Godhead and to the glory of the kingdom, not by a fusion into one essence (οὐσία), but by the perfecting of virtue to its height.

For this he taught by saying, “that they may be made perfect.” For so, having been made perfect by him in wisdom and understanding and righteousness and godliness and every virtue, we shall be joined to the ineffable light of the Father’s Godhead, becoming lights ourselves through our conjunction with him, and being made sons of God by participation in the communion of his only-begotten, through sharing in the radiant gleams of his Godhead.