Self-emptying glorification is grounded in the Name that reveals God in the midst, emptying confusion with the created from vision of God at centre, purifying the heart with turning (metanoia), illumining the heart with seeing (theoria), emptying all that usurps God in the heart in self-emptying deification (theosis). Elders point out where God is to be found when they introduce the mystery of the Name, so that hearts awaken to God in the midst, releasing all reifications of God. Reifications confuse the uncreated with the created by objectifying what self-emptying glorification liberates, so it is through the praxis of theoria, sustaining turning and seeing, that wisdom cuts through confusion and leaps over division, curing reifications that confuse or divide. Elders pray the Spirit’s ineffable prayer that hallows the Name of Jesus, opening saints to the radiant realm of the Father, awakening hearts to the unceasing prayer of the Spirit, praying ‘Abba, Father,’ in the midst, where the Name unveils the union of the Father and the Son. The Spirit’s unceasing prayer hallows the Name so the Kingdom comes, fulfilling the will of God as in the Lord’s Prayer. Purification and illumination in the Name mature as self-emptying glorification when the created empties into the uncreated and the uncreated into the created, without confusion or division. There is no trace of the created at centre and so no confusion, but the created is arising off-centre in God without division. Wisdom sees God in everything and everything in God without confusion and without division.
In the Holiest of Holy Holies in the midst, as Bridegroom, the uncreated empties into the created, whilst as Bride, the created empties into the uncreated, conjoining as Holy Union in the Bridal Chamber in the midst of the heart. This Christly Chrism of Holy Union unites the uncreated and the created, so that within the created, the intelligible and the sensible are wedded, within the sensible, heaven and earth are conjoined, so that within earth, paradise unites with the inhabited earth, within which male and female unite as the fifth of Saint Maximus’ Christly mediations. All five hallowing unifications co-incide in the Bridal Chamber where the uncreated and created conjoin. This Holiest of Holy Holies in the midst gives rise to chrismating chrisms and charisms in the spheres of all five mediations, generating treasures of wisdom and glory that empty the uncreated into the created and the created into the uncreated in countless icons of manifold grace. Treasures of wisdom give rise to mysteries of glory that remain hidden until their moment of revelation arises, like the Gospel of Thomas, hidden for sixteen hundred years in a cave in Egypt, until an age arises that might be prepared to assimilate its wisdom. When Hesychasm rises into the fulness of its stature as Orthodox Christian wisdom, it is free to include what was excluded when the tradition was confined by imperial constriction, transfiguring what it includes as it self-empties into glorification.
It is not the cleverness of elders but the brilliance of the Name that releases old constrictions and cures old confusions and divisions. Elders do not point to themselves but to Christ in the midst when they impart the Name, transmitting self-emptying wisdom, embracing self-emptying glory. The Gospel of Thomas was Christ’s wisdom Gospel, whose realised eschatology corresponds to the timeless wisdom of glorification. It remained hidden when few were prepared to rise from illumination to self-emptying glorification. It is not that we are special but that our times desperately need new (old) break-throughs to wisdom. Wisdom’s praxis of theoria turns and sees God self-emptying into God in Holy Trinity, in light of which the uncreated self-empties into the created and the created self-empties into the uncreated with every perception. Deification (theosis) is a mystery that empties us of what obstructs union by emptying us of what usurps union with confusion, emptying division into indivisible communion of the uncreated and the created. The way of the Name lives the truth of the Name as the timeless life of God in the Name. Deification is what arises when wisdom discerns the glory of the Name, repeatedly turning and returning into God in the midst, without fixation or reification. Our times are ‘end times’ in the sense that the end makes present the glory that wisdom discerns. With the passing of heteronomous Christendom, autonomous Christianity and anarchic christianness, Christian wisdom grows out of old reified identities, into renewing, theonomous ineffability. God-centred, self-emptying glorification, when practiced as way, truth and life, becomes a new centre of gravity, where it was once a rarity, when participation in the image of divine self-emptying, which was persecuted and martyred, unceasingly resurrects in the midst as light and glory.