Awakening of the eye of the heart purifies the heart with limpid clarity, clarifying awareness with luminous lucidity. A pure heart is an illumined heart, awakened by the Spirit to the luminous eye of wisdom, wisdom that abides in the luminous presence of uncreated glory in the midst. The Syrian Oriental Orthodox tradition speaks here of luminosity (shaphyuta), which Saint Ephraim… 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 »
“God became man so that man may become God.” In this pithy aphorism, Saint Athanasius is saying that deification (theosis) is grounded in incarnation (sarkosis), that our ascent (anabasis) to God is rooted in God’s descent (katabasis) in becoming human. God takes on our human nature so that we may partake in his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Grace is… Read more »
‘No confusion: no division,’ does not define the indefinable but indicates a healthy openness between unity and difference which Christ the Logos communicates in the desert. Wisdom neither asserts nor denies but leaves these two signs or indications, pointing the way to avoid the degeneration of union into confusion or the disintegration of communion into division. The ethos which the divine-human… Read more »
The hidden wisdom of Heraclitus lies concealed within the Logos that the desert welcomed home at the heart of its mortal, immortal life, dying its life and living its death in the paradoxes of the divine-human Logos. Gnomic wisdom tradition in the desert revered wisdom that hearkened to the Logos, not only because wisdom IS the Logos awakening the heart… Read more »
Heraclitus said that wisdom discerns the Logos that directs all through all (Heraclitus 34). Listening to the Logos, desert wisdom remembers the One in all, gathering all into remembrance of the One in everything. Truth, a-lethia, is un-forgetting that un-conceals the Logos of glory from scattering dissipation, recollecting what unites in whole remembrance, anamnesis. But like the Delphic Oracle, ‘Know Thyself,’ Heraclitus… Read more »
Restoration of glory is called glorification by desert Hesychasm and glorification begins and ends in glory, proceeding from the originating image of glory to eschatological likeness as glory. Glorification is initiated in purification, empowered by Baptism and it is sustained by illumination, empowered by Chrismation, but its ultimate fulfilment is revealed in glorification itself, empowered by the Holy Liturgy of the Eucharist…. 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 Holy Name of the Father reveals a realm of oneness which is shared with the Son by generation and with the Spirit by procession from the Father, oneness which is the Father’s uncreated presence always and everywhere. The Father is the source of oneness, being the origin of generation and of procession, but the Son and the Spirit share in this… Read more »