Hesychast spirituality into a modern Western world

A number of Orthodox monasteries have come into being, both in western Europe and in America, where the hesychast way of life can be practiced more intensely.Thus, into a modern Western world dominated for centuries by an activist time - bound mentality that is antimetaphysical,anticontemplative, and antisymbolic, has been squarely placed the alternative of a contemplative knowledge of human destiny rooted in a way of life in wich theory and practice, wisdom and the method , are inextricably interlocked and whose fulfillment requires a surpasing of all worldly categories, social, political, economic - in short, of that whole realm of the temporal to wich the frenetic activity of modern humanity is confined. Assuredly , behind this antithesis lies another- namely, that between opposed theological and consequently between opposed anthropological orientations. For at the origin of the activist bias of the modern world lies a system of thought wich turns God into a transcendent and unknowable essence that, although responsible for setting the cosmic process in motion, does not interiorly penetrate creation in all its aspects, invisible and visible, incorporeal and corporeal, intelligible and material, but leaves it to follow its own course as though it were a self-subsistent autonomous reality. The corollary of such a conception is that the human mind, equated now with its purely rational function, is itself regarded as something sovereign, cut off from the divine and capable of resolving and determining human destiny on earth independently of revelation and grace.

In radically condemning such a system of thought, hesychasm affirms what one might call the bipolarity of the divine; for it is continues to mantain the idea of God's transcendence, it no less insists on his total and ineradicable presence in humanity and in every other form of created existence. In other words, it affirms that God breaks through the wall of his transcendence in order to make himself both the active source and the true existential subject of everything created, down to the least particle of matter itself: a source and subject who not only can be known by human beings but who must be known by human beings as a condition of humans themselves possesing anything more than a distorted knowledge of their own being and of the world in wich they live. Such distorted knowledge , of course, is quite inadequate to serve as a guide to any truly constructive action, whatever the goodwill or humanitarian feeling that may lie behind it.

In this respect hesychasm not only rejects the profane humanism wich divinizes the human being as an autonomous being, as well as all those concomitant ideological structures whose aim is is to establish the just society in terms of this-wordly categories alone; it also rejects the belief, now so common among Christians themselves, that the Christian life can be reduced to love and service to one's fellow beings, especially in some collective form. This is to say that of Christ's two commandments, love of God and love of neighbor, it gives priority to the first and affirms that the love or service of humanity, or indeed any desirable activity on the level of this world, can be effective, both as a means of salvation and as a truly constructive expression of charity and compassion, only if it springs from a prior love of God actualized in the most literal sense of the word. To act in ignorance of this love and apart from its existential actualization is to divorce what one tries to do from its empowering source and so to fall into a kind of idolatry - the idolatry that consists precisely in valuing things apart from God as if they were self-created and self-subsistent.

Hesychasm

One of the most significant events in the intellectual life of the modern Western world has been without doubt the discovery of the whole contemplative tradition of the Orthodox church that goes by the name hesychasm. This discovery itself has passed through two major stages. It may be said to have taken its starts in the rediscovery over the last century of the writings of the Greek fathers or of the Greek patristic tradition. More specifically it may be traced back to the publication and exploration in the first decades of this century of patristic texts relating more or less directly to hesychasm and the hesychast way of life.
Hesychasm by no means scorns or undervalues human love and service. It is emphatically not "otherworldly" as this term is usually understood. On the contrary it insists, as we have seen, that the whole of creation in impregnated with God's own life and being and that consequently there can be no true love of God that does not embrace every aspect of creation, however humble and limited. Its purpose is not to abandon the world to annihilation and self-destruction, but to redeem it.

It is to redeem it by transfiguring it. But for the hesychast this transfiguration presupposes the transformation of human consciousness itself, so that it becomes capable of perceiving the divinity that lies at the heart of every created form, giving each such form its divine purpose and determining its intrinsic vocation and beauty. In other words, hesychasts will consider that the way for them, as for any other person, best to serve, at least initially, fellow humans and all other created beings, will be to bring the love and knowledge of God to birth within themselves.

Now we will focus , on the Romanian world and the figure of a remarkable " elder", or staretz, Paisii Velichkovskii ( 1722-1794). St. Paisii was born in Ukraine and become a monk at the early age. After serving his spiritual apprenticeship in a hermitage situated on the borders of Moldavia, he departed for Athos, to deepen his knowledge and experience of the hesychast way of life. After sixteen years on the Holy Mountain he returned to Moldavia, first as Abbot of the monastery Dragomirna, then of that of Seculu and finaly of that of Neamtzu. It was at the last monastery that he accomplished the great work of his life, a work that in many ways parallels that of Nicodemus of the Holly Mountain (1749 - 1809). He reestabilished the monastic rule, corrected the church office, organized a printing press, and began to translate and publish the works of the Greek fathers. But above all it was while at Neamtzu that he translated a selection of the texts of the Greek Philokalia into Slavonic.

Staretz Paisii considered that the practice of the prayer of the heart could also be entrusted to lay people and that even the higher forms of contemplation were not incompatible with a live lived in the world and in the context of a certain degree of cultural activity. Yet perhaps the main feature of his teaching was his emphasis on the idea and practice of spiritual paternity. His purpose here was to safeguard the personalization of the spiritual life, to protect this life from the vagaries of individual interpretation and dispozition, and to prevent its dissociation from the liturgical life of the church.

By definition the hesychast lives the eschatological mystery of the church, something that presupposes a transcendence of the forms of civilization,and even of the time itself. As a hesychast aphorism puts it, his purpose is to circumscribe the incorporeal within the house of his body.

In Romania, the work of Paisii was continued by his disciples, in whom he had instilled a love of the ascetic fathers and a desire to see their writings made available in Romanian. Indeed, the first half of the nineteenth century saw the creation of a veritable patristic library on Romanian soil. It was as if Romania stood on the brink of an integral patristic and hesychast revival or, what amounts to the same thing, as if the Orthodox church in Romania was about to manifest the plenitude of its spiritual tradition. If it is possible to say that such a revival and the manifestation of the spiritual plenitude of the Orthodox church amount to the same thing, this is because a condition of the church's being what it is lies in its fidelity to the fathers, whose living heritage does indeed constitute the texture of this church, with all its strengths and weaknesses. In this sense the fathers are always contemporary to the life of the church, integrated to it above all through that magnificent instrument of creative contemplation, the Orthodox liturgy, as well as through its auxiliary forms, the iconography and the hymnography.

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk ( 1724 - 1783)

The historian Georges Florovsky has employed the term pseudomorphosis to describe the transformation of Orthodox theology under the impact of influences from the West, particulary in the eighteenth century. In his opinion, these influences served to distord Orthodoxy and obscure its true character. Moreover, some of them became imprinted in Orthodoxy, displacing authentic elements.

There is certainly a measure of thruth in his severe judgment. But must it also be qualified? For if on the one hand servile imitation and lack of discernment led to a real alienation, above all in the realm of theology as taught in the Orthodox schools and manuals, on the other it must be said that Orthodoxy's encounter with Western spirituality was not without some stimulating effects. This was particulary true in Russia , and in Greece as well.

Tikhon of Zadonsk, whose personality fascinated Dostoevsky, was a typical man of eighteenth-century Russia. This was a Russia traumatized by a brutal westernization imposed from above, wich, at the same time, having been awakened by this shock, was begining to have an awareness of itself and its own vocation in the modern world. A man of a new age, open to Western influences wich he was able to assimilate creatively, St. Tikhon remained firmly rooted in the faith of the Orthodox church and the tradition of the fathers.

In this respect he points to a syntetis wich appears to be the historic task of the Orthodox church today.

Tirelessly preaching in his cathedral and in the churches he visited, he addressed the whole people of God. All persons, all Christians, are called to have a sense of their own dignity as well as that of the least of their brothers. All are bearers of the image of God. Together they are members of the Body of Christ, wich is the church. Following the apostle Paul and John Chrysostom, St. Tikhon insisted on the implication of the vision of the church as the Body of Christ for personal and social ethics : " All men are our brothers because they are created in the image of God, purchased by the blood of Christ, they are called to eternal salvation as members of the one Church."

" When you hear the Gospel it is Christ who speaks to you there, it is you who speak to him."

St. Tikhon sensed divine guidance in the incidents of daily life, in the words of interlocutors, in chance encounters, and above all in his contacts with the poor.

He was to die in absolute poverty, " leaving nothing behind", as his will said- nothing but the testimony of the action of grace and a life painfully fulfilled in doxology:

" Glory be to God for everything ! Glory be to God for having created me in his image and likeness ! Glory be to God for having redeemed me, the fallen ! Glory be to God for having extended his solicitude to me, the unworthy! Glory be to God for having led me, the sinner, to repentance ! Glory be to God for having offered me His holly words, like a lamp in a dark place, thus setting me on the path of righteousness ! Glory be to God for having illumined the eyes of my heart ! Glory be to God for having made known to me His holy name ! Glory be to God for having washed away my sins through the bath of baptism ! Glory be to God for showing me the way to eternal bliss ! The way is Jesus Christ, Son of God, who says of Himself : I am the way and the truth and the life."

Symeon The New Theologian (949 - 1022 )

Extract from Symeon's Discourse : " You drew me out of a fetid swamp; when I reached firm ground, You entrusted me to Your servant and Your disciple bidding him to cleanse me from all stain. He led me by the hands as one leads a blind man to the fountain head, to the holy Scripturea and to Your divine commandments... One day when I was hurring to plunge myself in my daily bath, You met me on the road, You who had already drawn me out of the mire. Then for the first time the pure light of Your divine Face shone before my weak eyes... From that day on, You returned often at the fountain source, You would plunge my head into the water, letting me see the splendour of Your light ; then suddenly you would disappear, You would become invisible, and I still did not understand who You were...

Finally You deigned to reveal the dread mystery: one day when it seemed as though You were plunging me over and over again in the lustral waters, lightning flashes surrounded me. I saw the rays from Your face merge with the waters; washed by these radiand waters , I was carried out of myself and ravished in ecstasy.
For some time I lived in this state. Then by Your grace , I was granted to contemplate a still more awesome mystery. I saw You take me with Yourself, and rise to heaven; I knew not wether I was still in my body or not - You alone know, You who alone created me.

On coming back to myself, I wept in sorrowful surprise at my abandoned state. But soon You deigned to reveal Your face to me, like the sun shining in the open heavens, without form, without appearance, still not revealing who You were. How could I have known, unless You told me, for You vanished at once from my weak sight?...

Still weeping I went in search of You, the Unknown One. Crushed by sorrow and affliction, I completely forgot the world and all that is in the world, nothing of the senses remained in my mind. Then You appeared, You the Invisible one, the Unattainable, the Intangible. I felt that You

were purifying my intelligence, opening the eyes of my soul, allowing me to contemplate Your glory more fully, that You Yourself were growing in light... It seemed to me, O Lord, that You , the Immovable One, were moving, You the unchanging One , were changing. You the Faceless one , were taking features... You shone beyond all measure, You appeard to me wholly in all things, and I saw You clearly. Then I dared to ask You saying: " Who are You , O Lord?"

For the first time You allowed me, a vile sinner, to hear the sweetness of Your voice. You spoke so tenderly that I trembled and was amazed , wondering how and why I had been granted your gifts. You said to me : " I am the God who became man for love of you. You have desired me and sought me with your whole soul, therefore henceforth you shall be my brother, my friend, the co-heir of my glory..."

You said this and then were silent. Slowly You departed from me, O lovable and gentle Master, O my Lord Jesus Christ !

Diadochus bishop of Photice in Epir

Chapters :

" We are the image of God through the intelligent movement of the soul that dwells in the body. But when in consequence of Adam's sin, not only were the traits of this image-likeness defiled, but even our body fell little by little into corruption, then the holy Word of God became incarnate and, being God, communicated to us the water of salvation by the rebirth of baptism. We then are regenerated through water by the action of the holy and life-giving Spirit, so that we are made pure both in soul and body - those at least who go to God with their whole will - for the Holy Spirit makes his abode in us and drives out sin...

St. Macarius of Egipt

For Macarius, man's only deliverance comes by baptism. Prayer and the whole spiritual life are only means of stimulating the growth of the seed sown in the " bath of regeneration".

" By the analogy of faith, the Divine Spirit, our Advocate, who was sent to the apostles and through them drawn down upon the only true Church of God at the moment of baptism, this Spirit in various manifold ways accompanies every man who comes to baptism in faith.

Christians belong to another world, they are sons of the Heavenly Adam , a new people, children of the Holy Spirit, radiant brothers of Christ, like unto their Father: the spiritual and radiant Adam.

Thus it is possible to taste in Christianity the grace of God : Taste and see that the Lord is sweet ( Ps. 34.9). This tasting is the dynamic power of the Spirit manifesting itself in full certitude in the heart. The sons of light, ministers of the New Convenant in the Holy Spirit, have nothing to learn from men; they are taught by God. Grace itself engraves the laws of the Spirit on theirs hearts... In fact the heart is master and king of the whole bodily organism, and when grace takes possesion of the pasture-land of the heart, it rules over all its members and all its thoughts; for it is in the heart that the intelligence dwell all the soul's thoughts; it finds all its good in the heart. That is why grace penetrates all the members of the body".

Evagrius of Pontus ( + 399) - Some of his Chapters

- Stand resolute, fully intent on your prayer. Pay no heed to the concerns and thoughts that might arise the while. They do nothing better than disturb and upset you so as to dissolve the fixity of your purpose.

- When the devils see that you are really fervent in your prayer they suggest certain matters to your mind, giving you the impression that there are pressing concerns demanding attention. In a little while they stir up your memory of these matters and move your mind to search into them.

- Prayer is the fruit of joy and of thanksgiving...

- Do not pray by outward gestures only, but bend your mind as well to the perception of spiritual prayer with great fear.

- Prayer is an ascent of the mind to God...

- Happy is the mind that becomes free of all matter and is stripped of all at the time of prayer.

- When you give yourself to prayer, rise above every other joy - then you will find true prayer.