In stillness, wisdom inspires the heart to turn and see, awakening to God in his Name, for as the Psalm says, ‘Be still and know that ‘I AM’ God, for I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth (Psalm 46:10). In stillness, compulsive striving, straining and stressing release as the heart opens to God’s Holy Name,… Read more »
In his Spiritual Testament, delivered to us in community on the Feast of Saint Antony January 17th 1991, Saint Sophrony the Hesychast shared his vision of monastic life as the unity for which Christ prayed, that we may be one as the Father and the Son are one, that we may be one in the image and likeness of God the… 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 »
Desert stillness testifies to the Kingdom of glory present in the hallowed Name, whose radiant wisdom hallows the Name in heart and forehead, crowning with glory all who turn with profound metanoia, all who see as they are seen, all whose hearts are sanctuaries of the indwelling Name, temples of the Spirit’s unceasing prayer, ‘Abba, Father,’ witness to the union… 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 »
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 »
The wisdom of stillness is the wisdom of God for whom there is no sin, no fall from glory, no fall from grace. It is the Gospel of wisdom that God’s grace announces to sinners whose glory is to forgive sin. Sin comes into existence when delusion seduces false gods to usurp God and icons of God to degenerate into… Read more »
The origins of the renewal of Neopatristic Hesychasm in modern times lie back in the publication of the Greek Philokalia by Saint Macarius and Saint Nicodemos in 1782, but the Orthodox tradition of Patristic Hesychasm itself goes back at least fifteen hundred years before that, to the Desert Fathers of Syria in the second and third centuries and of Egypt in the… Read more »
Christ, for Orthodox Hesychasm, is the wisdom of God, all-embracing in his expansive openness but utterly specific in his rooted human transfigurement (1 Cor 1:24 & 30). Desert wisdom is intrinsically mystical theology because prophecy and prayer belong in the midst of the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. Prophecy in the desert communicates Christ’s witness to the Name, expressing the wholeness… Read more »
The experience of ineffable Oneness is the Father’s secret shared with the Son and the Spirit, shared with us as the Name unveiled, as light of wisdom and glory. Saint Denys’ little treatise, ‘Mystikes Theologias,’or ‘Theologia Mystica,’ is not a rational theological discourse concerning the mysteries of God, but a God-centred glorification of God’s mystery of ineffable Oneness, radiant Oneness of Godhead… Read more »