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."