So, we unite with God through His uncreated energies, and not through His essence. This is the mystery of our Orthodox faith and life.Compare this to the following:Western heretics cannot accept this. Being rationalist, they do not discern between the essence and the energy of God, so, they say that God is only essence. And for this reason they cannot speak about man's deification (gr. theosis). Because, according to them, how could man be deified when they do not accept that the divine energies are uncreated, but regard them as created? And how could something created, i.e., something outside God, deify created man?
In order not to fall into pantheism, they do not speak at all about deification (gr. theosis).
In the Roman Rite the prayer during the Mass for the mixing of the water and wine:
O God, Who in creating the human nature didst marvelously enoble it, and hast still more marvelously renewed it: grant that by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His Divinity Who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.From the Catechism of the Council of Trent:
For the blessed always see God present and by this greatest and most exalted of gifts, being made partakers of the divine nature, they enjoy true and solid happiness.Again, St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Th. Ia IIae, Q. 111 Art 2):
And thus there is a twofold grace:—one whereby man himself is united to God, and this is called sanctifying grace…In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1999):
The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the word of sanctification.
With all due respect, P, I think you’ve made the geronda’s point.