The practice of spiritual vision, which Orthodox Hesychast Tradition calls the ‘praxis of theoria,’ is the methodical activity that turns and sees what the Name reveals, purifying and illumining the awakened heart, opening mysteries of grace to hallowing glorification. Elders explain this conceptually in order to point the saints beyond conceptuality to direct, non-conceptual awareness. It is the practice of seeing in the Spirit that keeps… Read more »
Wisdom discerns Christ restore glory to the Father in the Spirit, discerning Christ glorified ascribing glory to the Father in seven eyes of the Spirit which deploy the glory of the single eye of the heart to every centre of awareness and presence of deified human being, well-being and timeless being. Wisdom beholds God’s God-centred glorification of God curing all seven spiritual eyes of… Read more »
The seven spirits before the throne bear witness to the completeness of wisdom and glory that embraces temporal incompleteness with the timeless wholeness of hallowing glorification (Rev 1:4; 3:1; 4:5 and 5:6). Desert wisdom never forgot the Menorah, or sevenfold lamp that stood before the temple throne, symbol of the fullness of divine wisdom embracing heaven and earth. The sevenfold… Read more »
Elders do not trust themselves but in wisdom’s recognition of God present and aware in his Name. The Holiest of Holy Unions at centre in the midst cannot be grasped conceptually or analysed logically without degenerating into reifications which seduce the unconfused into confusion and the indivisible into division. Seers live from the mysteries of this union but do not presume to… Read more »
Saint Isaac the Syrian was witness in the Spirit to the Spirit’s prayer of stillness and wonder which lies at the heart of Orthodox Christian Hesychasm to this day. He gives the name ‘spiritual prayer’ to the prayer of the Holy Spirit in the heart, a stillness of heart which plunges the heart into awestruck wonder, an experience of the… Read more »
Grace reveals the glory of Christ in his unveiled Face in the light of the Holy Spirit, restoring glory to the Father which restores the vainglory of warring nationalistic hells to the true glory of hallowed, harmonious heavens on earth. The glory of this grace is wisdom’s joy, not the wisdom of a speculative sophiological Sophia, such as we find in… Read more »
The prayer of the Spirit in the heart is unceasing but unnoticed until wisdom discerns glory in enlightened vision (theoria). The Jesus prayer contains two divine Names, Lord (YHWH) and Jesus (YAH shuah), but the third revelatory Name, ‘I AM,’ (EHYEH), is implicit, because when it is God who speaks, the two third person Names, YHWH and YAH, are both revelations… Read more »
Saint Sophrony the Hesychast, canonised by the Patriarch of Constantinople on November 27th 2019, completes what he calls his Confession and Spiritual Autobiography (‘We shall see him as he is.’ 1988) with witness to the Name ‘I AM.’ “Now, O my Christ, in Thee and by Thee…Now – I am” (‘We shall see him’ p 234). This witness cost him… Read more »
The revelation of the Name in us purifies the heart with the presence of glory, the glory of the Son that precedes the foundation of the world. This is purification in the primordial glory of the beginning, the archeological glory out of which creation arises, the original glory of paradise before all falls. God’s Name glorifies the Son in us,… Read more »
Saint Paul speaks scathingly of the conventional wisdom of reigning, worldly powers, only to insist that he imparts hidden wisdom that discerns the glory of grace, wisdom that glorifies God, glory that glorifies those who awaken to its hallowing glory (1 Cor 1: 2-10). Scholars sometimes speak of the Apostle’s irony at this point but the Apostle’s hidden wisdom is not… Read more »