The Orthodox Catholicity of Apostolic Hesychasm.

      Comments Off on The Orthodox Catholicity of Apostolic Hesychasm.

The Orthodox Catholicity of Apostolic Hesychasm springs from the uncreated grace of union, which is deifying participation in the union of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.  It is hidden with Christ in God until the mysteries of glorification are unveiled to wisdom.  It is unveiled when we turn and see God, through God, in God, Holy Trinity manifest in the light of glory revealed by Christ’s crucifixion, ascension and glorification.  Wisdom restores all creation to its pristine purity before the fall, healing all the pathologies that threaten to destroy mankind.  Apostolic Hesychasm communicates this Orthodox Christian wisdom in the open spiritual marketplace of the world, calling all to come, turn and see.  It administers healing wholeness to all by drawing out the liberating energies of Baptism, Chrismation and the Eucharist, imparting purification through Baptism, illumination through Chrismation and glorification through the Eucharist.

In a global world, the world’s wisdoms are all present in a global marketplace and yet wisdom cannot be bought or sold.  To the binary mind these wisdoms are in competition but to wisdom herself there is no competition.  Wisdom is one, as God is one, although expressed in different ways in different cultures.  Orthodox Christian wisdom spread east from Antioch to China, from Edessa to India, leaving a wisdom legacy of martyrdom as Sufism in the Middle East, as Dzogchen in Tibet, and as Taoism in China.  This legacy has been One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic in ways that the Greek East and the Latin West have lost or perhaps have never known.  But Apostolic Hesychasm remained faithful to the mysteries of glory at the heart of glorification and so open in principle to the mysteries of glory lived by the Apostolic Catholicity of Christ in the Oriental East.

Glorification in the Oriental East meant martyrdom, bearing witness like the Magdalene to Christ’s resurrection in many hidden yet radiant ways.  This witness was always a manifold wisdom, a rainbow radiance that lives resurrection as manifold glorification.  Sufism, Taoism and Dzogchen differ, as the cultures that were nourished by them differed, but Christly wisdom is free of self-interest and shines forth without reserve.  The Catholicity of Apostolic Hesychasm is mysterious in many ineffable ways, which causes no surprise, since the Orthodox mysteries of glory are ineffable.  It inhabits an openness that only wisdom knows, and a glory that is only experienced as God’s own God-centred glorification of God.  We should not expect this Apostolic Catholicity to be evident on conventional levels nor this holy oneness to be perceived by hardened, unseeing hearts.   But wisdom knows her own and welcomes home her own into her fold.  Christ is the Good Shepherd of wisdom everywhere and always, and holy stillness meets him face to face when wisdom discerns the glory of his Kingdom.  But this Holy of Holies is not open to the curious but to the poor in spirit whose purity of heart welcomes  wisdom home.