Close to a pilgrim’s road in southern Occitania, Santa Majestat has gazed down at weary pilgrims in the cool of Trinity Chapel for nigh on nine hundred years. As gentle radiance of Holy Trinity, his serene gaze has communicated his inexhaustible energies of kindly stillness without demanding from us what we were too tired to give. Instead, he just gives and… Read more »
Prophecy communicates the Word that unveils the revelatory Name, pointing out where God is to be found, so that prayer can assimilate the glory of the Name, which imparts uncreated harmony with consummate completeness. To keep the vision, wisdom turns and sees, letting harmony transfigure what glory completes. Curing confusion that separates us from God, ourselves and one another, the delusion of… Read more »
Solitude, silence and stillness are three ways in which the glory of the Holy Name reveals itself in the desert, three theophanies of wisdom in the sacred tradition of Orthodox Hesychasm. Solitude is outwardly a way of life in the desert called ihidaya, and inwardly a purification and simplification of the heart which humbles the soul. Silence is outwardly a characteristic… Read more »
Christly wisdom is a tree of life, whose truth is lived as way and whose way of life is union of spirit and truth. There is here a union of truth and way, lived as wisdom’s tree of timeless life. The Name is way, truth and life, divine life being the union of truth, discerned in theoria, and way, lived as praxis of turning, metanoia. Glory… Read more »
Glorification springs from recognition, as when the disciples recognised Christ at the Eucharist in Emmaus and their hearts burned within them when he opened to them the mysteries of glory in the Scriptures, unveiling the glory at the heart of his suffering (Luke 24:13-25) Hearts burn when recognition of the Name sees Christ at centre in the midst. Deep turning… Read more »
The glory of Hesychast Ortho-doxology is ineffable glorification and the uncreated grace of purification, illumination and glorification that understands it or stands under it. Hesychast wisdom discerns love’s glory at the heart of the Eternal Gospel, a love that seeks not its own, a love that embraces all mankind, leaving none shut out, abandoned outside in outer darkness. The temporal gospels tell… Read more »
The Eye of the Needle, a gaping hole in the Devil’s Chair on the Stiperstones, points to remembrance of God, opening the eye of the heart to bright stillness. Holy Hesychia is the stillness that finds the narrow way, the eye of the needle that opens to God’s glory through God in God. It is with holy attention that the heart… Read more »
Orthodoxy canonised Hesychasm during the Palamite Councils of Constantinople in 1341, 1347 and 1351, because it recognised Orthodox right-glorification at the heart of love of enemies and prayer for the whole world. Saint Silouan the Athonite taught that love of enemies was the criterion of Holy Orthodoxy and that such love prays for the whole world. Orthodox Hesychasts, inspired by… Read more »
Hesychia, stillness, empties us of all that is not God so that the Holy Name of God can unite us to God. The Hesycahast turns to see and sees to be the union that wisdom discerns when the eye of the heart is awake. Hesychast elders transmit this prayer of the Spirit in the heart, which the Apostle… Read more »
The Stiperstones Rose is a perennial symbol of renewing wisdom. The Apostles transmitted living wisdom to elders, unveiling hidden depths of glory to the saints. Their living witness grounded glorification in a living and unbroken tradition, founded on two injunctions, to turn and to see: to turn from darkness into light and to see light through light. Turning opens… Read more »
