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 »
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 »
Saint Antony the Great, in his Letters from the desert, teaches that he who knows himself, in the Holy Spirit, knows God (Chitty, Letter 4 SLG p 12), for to know oneself without confusion is to know God without division. We are all members, one of another, in the Spirit, praying ‘Abba, Father,’ in Christ, because the Spirit proceeds from… Read more »
Christ’s way of the Name is ineffable, transcending all names and ways that are means to an end, liberating temporal incompleteness into timeless completeness. The Spirit communicates the mysteries of Christ as quintessential truth, imparting glorification as wisdom’s timeless way of life. Dazzling darkness opens heaven on earth, piercing the heart, communicating the incommunicable, revealing what was veiled without destroying the… Read more »
Wisdom makes all things new, always beginning again anew; indeed, the glory of wisdom’s grace is always doing something new, beginning anew, trustworthy and true, creating new heavens and a new earth (Rev 21:5; Isaiah 43:19 & 66:17). This is who Christ is, wisdom renewing creation in glory, sending the Spirit to impart wisdom, restoring the abundant completeness of ineffable… Read more »
Uncreated light is not like created lights that come and go, nor is it the product of conditioned ways and means, but like uncreated grace, enlightens all who turn and see God’s uncreated presence in the midst. Uncreated awareness shines with the uncreated light of uncreated presence, beyond conditioned thoughts and oblivious perception, quieting compulsive agitation in pure stillness. Inherently ineffable,… Read more »
Christ’s great high priestly prayer is for the inner circle of his disciples to be kept safe in God’s holy Name, that they may be one with God and one another as he is one with the Father and God’s children in his Name (John 17:11). Love’s great glory is Christ’s sacrifice of the Cross, the mystery of the Lamb slaughtered from the… Read more »
The blood of red martyrdom is the life-blood of Holy Orthodoxy, the costly glorification that gives life to the tradition in the light of the Name. The blood of white martyrdom, on the other hand, is the life-blood of Hesychast solitude, the life of desert silence, the beauty of hidden stillness. Both martyrdoms bear witness to Christ in the Spirit of the… Read more »
Wisdom’s Eternal Gospel reveals that the Holy Name unveils God to the whole of creation, invisible and visible, not just to the human world (Rev 14:6). For wisdom’s gospel, the invisible creation includes the angelic worlds of bodiless powers who are created in the timeless Logos, just as humanity is, including all beings of awareness and presence. Angels are created… Read more »