Solitude was always persecuted by those who lived in terror of silence and martyred by those who distrust stillness. The original symphony of verbal prayers and stillness was lost when stillness was crucified. Desert seers understand why persecution of stillness was always a martyrdom of silent solitude but also know that glorification of God precedes and succeeds the Cross of loving stillness…. Read more »
The Way of the Name transcends ordinary thought and imagination, communicating the wisdom of uncreated awareness and the glory of uncreated presence to all who turn and see. Turning, metanoia, awakens seeing, theoria, that together awaken the uncreated awareness of wisdom to the uncreated presence of glory by turning the light of awareness round so that it beholds the presence of… Read more »
Prophecy imparts holy images, inspiring imageless prayer of the Holy Spirit in the heart, the Spirit’s unceasing intercession for all in the hidden heart of Christ. Prophecy has nothing to do with self-centred fantasy or self-obsessed day dreams, but with the purified imagination regenerated in the heart by the glory of grace, prophecy working together with imageless prayer to deify… Read more »
Saint Sophrony the Hesychast is sometimes called Saint Sophrony the Athonite because he was a monk on Most Athos between 1926 and !947 and sometimes Saint Sophrony of Essex since he was the revered elder of his monastery in Essex between 1959 and his death in 1993. Both titles reflect important periods of his life on Mount Athos and in… Read more »
Is Christmas a dangerous blasphemy? Those who shouted for Christ to be crucified thought it was. Was Christ’s incarnation a disastrous idolatry? Many monotheists thought so, but they were confused by what they saw as his confusion. Was his crucifixion proof that he was a Jewish heretic? In which case, what did his resurrection prove? Was his ascension really his disappearance… Read more »
Wisdom abides at the heart of glory, delighting in the beauty of her glory’s holiness, rejoicing in the limpid purity of her uncreated energy. She does not neglect those she loves, but embraces them with her in-seeing gaze, seeing through the hardened surfaces of external form to the formless translucence of God’s Holy Name. To love her is to die… Read more »
The wisdom hermitage is redundant in monasteries that have forgotten what they are for, although in the desert, Orthodox monasticism began with hermit cells and on the Holy Mountain, the hermitage still survives between the monasteries. The wisdom round cell becomes a place to store whatever has nowhere else to go, when once it had been the place of stillness at the… Read more »
Prophecy and prayer co-inhere without confusion or division because prophecy is the way of the affirmation of images and prayer is the way of the negation of images, both of which are fundamental and indispensable in Holy Orthodoxy. Pure prayer transcends images but the prophecy of prayer employs images, as the Book of Revelation proves. Imageless prayer is union with the uncreated… Read more »
Gnomic Odes were known in Antioch and Edessa that were remembered by some in Nisibis and Tibet as the Odes of Prester John. They were also known as Odes of Solomon, because they were Christian wisdom’s Song of Songs that were also psalms of peace. They were loved and remembered in the Oriental Eastern churches that had no empire to defend… Read more »
The Threefold Co-inherence of the Triune Godhead is not confused with Christophanic Co-inherence, which is the divine-human co-inherence of Christ’s deiform Personhood, but the love they both inspire beholds both interpenetrate within coalescing Co-inherence. Love is not ignited by abstractions but by love, earthly loves and the Spirit’s love of the Son, the Son’s love of the Father and their fierce and gentle love shared… Read more »