What is the contemplation of God?

The contemplation of God does not belong to the realm of emotions, neither to the visual sense, but it is the existential unity and contact of the created creature with the uncreated “Being”- not with His essence or His substance but with His divine energies, in accordance to the measure of the person who “participates” in the contemplation. When Moses requested to see God as he imagined he could, he heard from Him that this was impossible and would only admire His “back view”, which means His divine energies or attributes. Whoever finds himself in the contemplation of God, testifies that there is no similarity between the created world and the uncreated Being and that “it is impossible to interpret God, but more impossible to comprehend Him” (Saint Gregory the Theologian).

Translated from the Greek: Γέροντος Ιωσήφ Βατοπαιδινού, Συζητήσεις στον Άθωνα, Ψυχοφελή Βατοπαιδινά 13, Ιερά Μεγίστη Μονή Βατοπαιδίου, Έκδοσις Α’, Άγιον Όρος 2003, by Olga Konari Kokkinou