When pride arose, Saint Silouan the Athonite was given self-condemnation to hell without despair, initiating Saint Sophrony the Hesychast into holy self-hatred with trust in the grace of the Name to save. From the perspective of negative asceticism, wisdom appears to be pride and is condemned together with pride. Whilst pride is arising, wisdom is indeed providentially hidden and so are… Read more »
Standing back from the incompleteness of life’s strains and stresses, wisdom turns and sees the glory of timeless freedom in the hallowed realms of union and communion. Anxiety resists hallowing communion but dissolves when union weds time with timeless wisdom, releasing illumination into glorification. Prophecy regenerates the imagination with new ways of telling old stories, whilst prayer of the… Read more »
The wisdom of Christ holds everything together, including the paradox of time and the timeless. Christ is divine-human, so his wisdom is uncreated yet also created, curing confusion whilst healing division. Gathering what was scattered, wisdom discerns the glory of grace, integrating apparently exclusive opposites. The story is dialectical when it discerns the unfolding of divine-human coherence in time, but paradoxical… Read more »
The prayer of stillness anchored childhood and adolescence in a revelation of love and peace which was newly inspired, in the summer of 1965, by a meeting with Saint Sophrony the Hesychast, prior to a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, at the age of twenty, in the company of my father. Saint Sophrony introduced me to the practice of Hesychast wisdom by communicating… Read more »
From childhood, at my mother’s knee, the prayer of stillness lay at the heart of daily prayer: ‘Be still and know that I AM God.’ ‘Seek ye my Face; Thy Face, Lord will I seek.’ Still, still, very still, hands are folded, very still. Keep our minds and bodies still, for a moment, deep and still. Now I am ready for hearing God,… Read more »
The Hagioritic Tome (1340) of Saint Gregory Palamas bears witness to the experience of purification, illumination and glorification that inspires Hesychast saints, insisting that the light of purifying illumination and glorification is uncreated because God’s energies of light and glory are uncreated. The noetic awareness of the heart is transfigured with uncreated light and deifying glory, opening hearts to the… Read more »
Orthodox Hesychast wisdom was, from time to time, accused of the heresy of Gnosticism by those who thought they were its enemies, but Orthodox Hesychast wisdom has no real enemies except demonic hatred of God. Hesychast prophecy was occasionally accused of heretical Montanism by those who saw themselves as its enemy, but the only enemy of holy prophecy is Antichrist…. Read more »