One of the most important lines in all of Christian theology is this,
"What is not assumed is not healed."
That phrase comes from St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and it cuts straight to the heart of who Jesus is and why the Incarnation matters.
Here’s what it means.
If the Son of God did not truly take on our full humanity, then our humanity is not fully saved.
If He only appeared human, our bodies are not healed. If He lacked a human mind, our thoughts are not healed. If He did not assume a human will, our will remains broken.
But the Gospel tells us something more truthful.
"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
Not partially. Not symbolically. Fully.
Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. He has a real human body, a real human mind, a real human will. He hungered. He grew tired. He wept. He was tempted. He suffered. He died.
Why?
Because He came to heal every part of what we are.
Sin is not just bad behavior. It is corruption. It is death working its way through our nature. Christ does not stand at a distance and issue a legal decree. He enters into our condition, unites humanity to His divinity, and restores it from within. This is Theosis.
This is why Orthodoxy fights so hard to guard the truth about who Jesus is. Every early heresy chipped away at His humanity or His divinity in some way. And every time, the Church responded, because if you tamper with who Christ is, you tamper with salvation itself.
If He is not fully God, He cannot save. If He is not fully man, we are not healed.
"What is not assumed is not healed."
That includes your broken mind. Your disordered desires. Your wounded heart. Your mortality.
He assumed it all, without sin, so that all of it could be transformed.
This is not abstract theology. This is your hope.
Christ took on everything that is truly human, so that everything truly human could be restored in Him.
Glory to God ☦️

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«Русскому человеку лучше всего удаётся невозможное!»
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«Родиться русским – слишком мало… Им надо быть. Им надо стать!»
И. Северянин

The Church is a hospital, cutting out cancers and giving heart surgery offering people the uncomfortable therapy they need to find healing. It’s not a hospice where the priest merely does what’s possible to make you comfortable, offering you palliative care while you die spiritually.

"The memory of the righteous is a blessing..." (Proverbs 10:7)
Today, March 18th, marks the falling asleep of Father Thomas Hopko (1939-2015), whose memory is indeed a blessing. May he find rest and joy among the righteous in the New Jerusalem together with all those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life (Revelation 21: 2, 27)!

A quote from one of his many talks:
I know people who say, “Oh, yes Father Tom, we love to come to church because it makes us feel good, feel uplifted.” Well, okay, sometimes God consoles us in church in times of our affliction. Okay. But we go to church to get lacerated. I mean, if you see a church with a sign that says, “Come for soothing, upbeat, happy worship,” sue them for malpractice.
First you have to be brought through the fire. You have to just stand there in church and let God’s purifying fire burn through you. Don’t look around and think critical thoughts, judging people’s outfits or the priest’s liturgical purity or how good you think his sermon was. Let God burn you through, let the Word of God pierce and cut through you and scrub clean your filthy mind and heart. Say, “I am ready to change, O God.” Or better, pray like the publican, with his head bowed low as the Pharisee up front babbles on about all the mistakes of his flawed neighbors — “O God, thank you for not making me like these idiots.” Rather, pray: “O God have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Remember your baptism in the church was a plunge into Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, not into self-improvement and healing. For us healing means: die and rise. Our festal meal consists of a broken Body and spilled Blood. It’s a pledge, when we eat the Flesh and drink the Blood, a consent to the same dying and rising happening to us, giving us the chance to love God and our enemies. Give it all over, let it all go, renounce yourself and be ready to be hated by all for Him. Immerse yourself again and again and again into the Divine Liturgy which plants us firmly on Golgotha.

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«Русскому человеку лучше всего удаётся невозможное!»
***
«Родиться русским – слишком мало… Им надо быть. Им надо стать!»
И. Северянин