Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394) from Homily V in "On the Canticle of Canticles"
An essential feature of Christianity (as indeed any real tradition) is that it is an organic development, not a procession from point to point. And it's certainly not something which requires perfection before one even begins.
No-one is perfect, a saint can sin in a moment, and in another moment be sanctified ... there is no measure, no technique, to attain virtue, just humility and hard work, patience and prudence.
Every journey begins with the first small step — and Heaven delights, without judgement or distinction, in the first small step at the beginning as it does with the final step at the end. Only humans make such artificial and quantitative distinctions ... there is no qualitative difference between the first step and the last ... a step is a step.
St Gregory of Nyssa was one of the first to introduce the Threefold Way of Purgation-illumination-Union into Christian thinking — but the point too often missed is that all three run concurrently, sometimes this one in the ascendant, sometimes that; sometimes two rotating round the third like a binary star; sometimes all three in a dizzying dance ... but the idea of having to work through one, from start to finish, then the other, then the next is mechanistic and, I would suggest, erroneous.
Whether one is bound in the cave, or free, depends entirely upon whether one chooses to open ones eyes.
Thomas
