#divine grace

The article analyses goodness as a divine attribute and a moral category, demonstrating that it is not an innate or passive quality, but a free act of the will, peculiar to personal beings. Drawing on Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Father Dumitru Stăniloae and the words of the Saviour in Luke 18: 19, the author shows that true goodness has God as its sole source and is realised only through man’s conscious communion with Him.

Holiness is analysed as a universal vocation of humankind and as a gift from God, springing from the Holy Trinity and shared through the grace of the Holy Spirit within the Church. Drawing upon Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers — including Dumitru Stăniloae, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor and Nectarius of Aegina — the article demonstrates that holiness entails purification, virtue and spiritual experience, culminating in the deification of humankind and the sanctification of all creation.

Saint Symeon the New Theologian’s theology of the Holy Spirit is presented in close connection with the Father and the Son, emphasising the unity and inseparability of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Through images such as the key in Catechesis 33, the wine in Catechesis 23 and the divine seed, Saint Symeon demonstrates that the grace of the Holy Spirit is essential for purification, deification and the conscious perception of the divine presence in the human soul.