Saint Gregory Palamas transmits his Athonite vision of transfiguration as the decisive paradigm of every experience of uncreated grace which illumines and glorifies the saints. Transfiguring light (phos), according to Hesychast tradition, is neither an intelligible nor a sensible light, but is uncreated light, although, of course, it illumines the intelligence and the senses from within. The Tome of Mount… Read more »
Desert wisdom looks to the transfiguration for its paradigm of revelation in uncreated light and uncreated glory. The Exodus theophany of the Name on Mount Sinai was the foundational paradigm, developed theologically by Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Denys, but the transfiguration theophany on Mount Tabor was for Saint Maximus and Saint Gregory Palamas the prism that gave the desert… Read more »
The Book of Revelation opens the mysteries of Christ’s glorification in a series of visions which reveal mysteries of purification in the Lamb, illumination as the Bride of the Lamb and glorification in the Holy City, New Jerusalem, initially unveiling Christ in the midst of the Spirit’s seven lamps (Rev 1: 12-20), his revelatory vision of God the creator (Rev 4:1-11)… Read more »
Desert wisdom beholds the glory of grace which sustains the incomprehensible mysteries of revelation. It understands the dogmas of the Church to be mysteries of grace which wisdom embraces as glory without confusion or division, beyond delusion and separation. The way of doxological negation does not fixate on itself as destructive nihilism but negates negation and so releases nihilism as well… Read more »
The Eternal Gospel (Rev 14:6), is unveiled in the desert as the hidden gospel concealed from before the foundation of the world, the primordial gospel unveiling the most ancient of days, the timeless Day of the revealed Name, awareness of wisdom and presence of glory. The Eternal Gospel unveils ‘I AM’ in the midst, inspiring glad tidings that are timeless,… Read more »
The desert interprets the experience of purification and illumination as mystical ascent, completed by glorification, the experience of mystical descent. Ascent purifies the heart by dissolving confusion and burning up impurity, crystallising what is dissolved into translucent clarity. Descent gathers everything into the divine embrace of love, leaving nothing outside the scope of glorification. Seers often liken illumination to a crystalline… Read more »
The Book of Revelation is the mysterious manifestation of the revelatory imagination, rooted in the living flame of glorification in the Name. The function of the revelatory imagination is to communicate the uncreated energies of light and glory, opening the heart to glorification. For the Johannine tradition, the Name is a door into heaven, the mystery of the Name… Read more »
When the Elder Sophrony was asked what constitutes the living heart of Christian Orthodoxy, he answered healthy glorification, explaining that Orthodoxy means right-glorification. Saint Sophrony the Hesychast pointed out that the living heart of Orthodoxy is God’s God-centred right-glorification of God or the glorification of God in Holy Trinity. For Saint Sophrony, the Spirit’s witness to Christ’s glorification of the Father… Read more »
Ineffable release abides at centre in Christ as it rests in peace in this life and in the world to come. Death is release when timeless awareness abides in pure presence on both sides of the great divide. The transition called death is not the catastrophic loss that fear dreads but is rather an ineffable release into love’s blessed consummation…. Read more »
The ineffable oneness of uncreated awareness and uncreated presence here at the heart of the Name is an ecstatic union of wisdom and glory in the Holy of Holies. It is axial union at centre, uncreated light of ineffable oneness of Godhead in Holy Trinity, shared by the Father with the Son and the Spirit in Trinitarian co-inherence. It is the ineffable… Read more »