Christ personally reveals himself in uncreated light, restoring glory to the Father, communicating wisdom in the Holy Spirit, renewing Orthodox Hesychasm in the stillness of the Holy Trinity. The wisdom of the Cross cannot be reduced to verbal repetition or external conformity, although worldly powers love to reduce wisdom to external conformity. Stillness is often persecuted for cleaving to the Holy Name, but although Saint Sophrony the Hesychast suffered persecution, prophecy was not quenched nor prayer extinguished. Archbishop Kallistos was side-lined by bishops in league with worldly powers, but his witness to living Hesychasm was never extinguished. Persecution of Optina elders in Russia spread Hesychasm by displacing saints into forests far and wide, paradoxically ensuring the regeneration it was designed to suppress.
Christ himself was persecuted, then crucified, but the Cross disempowered persecutory powers, overcoming death with resurrection and vainglory with glorification. Stillness is silent in solitude but that silence speaks louder than words, serenely communicating the communion of saints. Wonder listens as wisdom speaks, communicating the prophecy of prayer. Name-cleaving has always been Christ-centred just as Name-hallowing is God-centred, restoring glory to the Father in the Holy Spirit. When worldly power throws its weight around, glory disempowers power, restoring glory to God. Radical stillness cleaves to God in Holy Trinity, hallowing the Name, whereas ruling powers cleave to power, subjecting it to worldly control, reducing sacred tradition to worldly ideology.
Stillness was always persecuted because it counters worldly culture, subjecting power to glory. Saint Sophrony the Hesychast refused to collude with ecclesial powers in league with worldly power, revealing the contemporary Orthodox answer to the Patriarch of Moscow, who blesses Putin’s war in Ukraine. The Staretz was Russian but totally free of Russian heresies that replace God with ‘Holy Russia,’ bearing witness to genuine Russian Hesychasm, purifying Holy Orthodoxy from seductive inversions and ethnic heresies. Christ-centred cleaving to God’s saving Name sustains glorification by purifying Orthodoxy from ethnocentric heresies and illumining saints in uncreated light. Orthodox Hesychasm bears witness to the Spirit’s redemptive counter-inversion in Christ, cleaving to Christ in the Name of God, restoring God-centred glorification of God, through God in Holy Trinity.