True transcendence unites the masculine and the feminine in an integration that transforms its constituent elements. It ends their fragmentation into ‘females’ and ‘males,’ into the ‘me’ and the ‘not-me.’ The whole paradox of human destiny is to become onself by becoming something other. Man becomes a god according to grace, and the exterior is no longer distinguished from the interior.
Humility and Love (the Servant and Friend of the Bridegroom) are the single criterion of grace received — the radiant constellation of the ‘Perfect Dove’ from which no being is excluded. In this order which is to come and has already begun, ‘being oneself’ is to understand oneself as ‘the other’; in the ultimate transcendence, it means to tilt the entire material plane toward the Divine Other. The [Theotokos] Virgin and St John the Baptist witness to this. They effect such transcendence, the one through the other, and they integrate the human fulness in Christ. The Office of St John the Baptist makes this explicit: ‘Through the bonds of the communion of prayer you are one; Mother of the King of all and divine Forerunner, pray together.’
— Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World. trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994), 186.
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