When the Apostle speaks of the wisdom, revelation and knowledge of God, he speaks in his Epistle to the Ephesians of the awakening of the eye of the heart (Eph 1:17-18). Without this hallowing awakening of the eye of the heart, there can be faith understood as conventional belief, but not trust in wisdom and revelation that yields true knowledge of God…. Read more »
The invocation, Hallelu Yah, springs from the union of wisdom and glory in the Spirit’s unceasing prayer in the inmost heart, crying ‘Abba, Father,’ ascribing all illumination and insight to the Father through the Son, whose wisdom and glory are trustworthy and true. Christ’s kiss of grace inspires heart and mind with ineffable love, anointing the soul with hallowing fragrance. The Name… Read more »
Chalcedonian Christian wisdom lives and abides within Christ’s own unconfused indivisibility, the unconfused indivisibility of his divine-humanity, the unconfused indivisibility of his union with the Father as the Son, the unconfused indivisibility of the Spirit’s witness to the unconfused union and indivisible communion of the Father and the Son. This is the ineffable wisdom of the Song of Songs, the… Read more »
The Lord’s Prayer bequeaths to desert ascetics the prayer of Name-hallowing, God’s God-centred glorification of God in Holy Trinity, lived as the self-emptying of God through God in God and as the self-emptying of the created into the uncreated in deification. This Name-hallowing is the desert’s ascetical, reciprocating response to God’s self-emptying of the uncreated into the created in his… Read more »
Cherubic wisdom embraces Seraphic glory in the midst, enthroning the hallowed Name which gives birth to the Kingdom of glory. In the Gospel of Thomas, Yeshua says: ‘When you give birth to that which is within yourself, what you bring forth will save you. If you possess nothing within you, that absence will destroy you (Logion 70 Bauman 2002, 2008,… Read more »
Christ embraces his Beloved in stillness, wedding his Beloved Bride, the Church, whose apostles testify to his resurrection, whose prophets unveil the Name and whose saints bear witness to glory in God’s God-centred glorification of God. Christ in our midst sings his Song of Songs that glorifies his Beloved in our midst. Desert wisdom is not a loveless exclusion but a passionate… Read more »
Jesus said: The light of the body is the eye. If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light (Mt 6: 22). Desert elders interpreted this saying in the light of Jesus’ teaching on turning, metanoia, and the practice of seeing, the praxis of theoria. The single eye is the eye of wisdom, of wholeness and sound… 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 »
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… Read more »
Saint Symeon the New Theologian profoundly influenced desert Hesychasm, bearing witness in the Spirit to uncreated light of glory in the midst, wisdom revealing Holy Trinity in uncreated light. Uncreated wisdom and uncreated glory unite in uncreated light. Uncreated awareness of uncreated presence is uncreated light. In the glory of grace, pure awareness unites with pure presence, transfiguring everything in ineffable,… Read more »