Theological conceptions and mystical experience

[Ken McRae]

I'm trying to grasp the meaning and significance of the following words by Archimandrite Sophrony:-

"The realization from personal experience that any change in my intellectual conception of Divine Being inevitably affected my whole life showed me that every confession or form of mysticism has its own specific spirituality ... The life of each and every Christian confession is conditioned at all levels by its conception of the Holy Trinity. Differences in theological interpretation of the principle of the Person-Hypostasis in the Divine Being constitute a watershed, a demarcation line, not only between the various religions but between the sundry Christian confessions too. Unhappily, most contemporary theologians have not yet grasped this, though it is far and away the chief point that ought to be resolved." ( "Wisdom from Mount Athos", p. 15-16 )

Would anyone care to expound them for me in greater detail? For example, how does Catholic mystical experience, as conditioned by the "theological conception" of the Filioque, contrast with or compare to Orthodox experience?

[Janine Economides]

Hello. One aspect of Catholic mystical experience that I have read is=20 >quite different from that of mystical expeirence in Orthodoxy is=20 >stigmata. Stigmata reflects the emphasis of the suffering of Christ which= =20 >gained greater emphasis in the West, especially in Catholicism due to=20 >various ramifications and emphases arising from Atonement theory, whereas= =20 >for the Orthodox it was the victory of resurrection and the liberation of= =20 >Spirit or grace that tended to be emphasized -- hence, for example, the=20 >experience of Divine Light or uncreated energies. I think stigmata may=20 >be an example of how theology or theological orientation may give rise to= =20 >particular types of mystical experiences that differ when the emphasis is= =20 >not so strong on suffering (because the emphasis theologically is not on=20 >atonement or guilt).

Janine

[Janine Economides]

Sorry my email is making those weird symbols. I guess I have to post from the webpage instead.

[georgios]

I would like to have the acts of paul and thecla in their greek version. Is it possible to mail this text to me?

Jean Chrysostome names St Thecla an apostel, and now reading the acts i understand why. So please writte to me so that i can make known this text to other christians also
in Christ.

Georgios

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

While we are apt to say that any mistaken understanding of the Holy Trinity is 'western' it is probably more correct to say that any falling away from an illumined understanding guided by the Church results in a human understanding of the Trinity. Again we often say that this human understanding is based on 'rational understanding' rather than revelation; but again it might be more correct to say that outside of an illumined understanding of the Trinity from within the Church we fall into a human understanding of the Trinity be this guided by autonomous rationalisation or human emotions.

The fundamental starting point of revelation of the Holy Trinity to mankind is through the Persons of the Holy Trinity. It is through Christ by the Holy Spirit that we are led to the Father. And it is within this relationship between the Tri-Personal God & mankind that we understand that the Three Divine Persons are One in nature.

Human understanding however quails from before this understanding & humanly begins with the one Divine nature; ie it begins from the concept of Divine simplicity & sees Divine activity as emanating from this- it even somehow sees the Divine Persons as emanating from the Simplicity.

As has been constantly shown however to start from the concept of Divine simplicity creates a myriad of theological & spiritual problems concerning how one then believes God interacts with creation & indeed about 'Who God Is' in the first place.

The concept of Divine simplicity creates a scenario in which all Divine relationship is seen as a dialectic of opposition. It also creates a scenario of confusion. Thus for a "Trinitarian God" like this the One nature has pre-eminance over the Persons. One result is that the distinction between Father & Son is not a 'theological given' but rather the identity between them- so we have the filioque.

On the Divine-created level we also have a problem. If pre-eminance is given to Divine simplicity then on what basis is there a relationship between God & creation? "It can only be created grace to protect the concept of the Divine simplicity". On the other hand (we Orthodox often overlook this crucial side of non-Orthodox spirituality) the apparent divide between the Divine & created is bridged by "an ecstatic merging into the Divine".

It is of great help to us to read through how St Maximos explains cosmology. The relationship between God & cosmos is an icon of the personal relationships found within the Trinity. Following from this St Maximos then points to a cosmology in which there is a series of five distinctions that are held together in harmony.(The distinctions are written below) So what is distinct is not a sign of lack of priority on the Trinitarian side or a result of the Fall on the side of the created cosmos. Rather the sign of the Fall is that what God created distinct has now fallen into oppositional rather than harmonious relationships.

Following from this then we can say that salvation does not mean annihilating the distinctions but rather in restoring the harmonious way in which the distinctions are supposed to be in relation to each other.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

The five distinctions as outlined by St Maximos the Confessor: i)between the Uncreated & created; ii) between the intelligible & sensible; iii) between heaven & earth; iv) between paradise & the world of men; and v) between male & female.

[Janine]

Hi again, Father Raphael. You write:


"any falling away from an illumined understanding guided by the Church results in a human understanding of the Trinity. Again we often say that this human understanding is based on 'rational understanding' rather than revelation; but again it might be more correct to say that outside of an illumined understanding of the Trinity from within the Church we fall into a human understanding of the Trinity be this guided by autonomous rationalisation or human emotions. "

That makes sense to me -- it is why kenosis is of vital importance. Although I'd say the Spirit also guides us in kenosis: how do we know of ourselves what we need to 'give up' that keeps us from God? We can approach the relationship from wherever we begin, and Spirit will guide us in theosis and its life-long process so long as our intention for kenosis holds nothing back.

I have read, going back to stigmata, and I think this is relevant to the idea of the rational or individual human understanding that you were talking about above, that the experience of stigmata comes not necessarily from a kind of open offering of kenosis but rather from deliberate, rational, if you will, meditation on the suffering of Christ. So it's a kind of guided experience on the part of the one who experiences it. I don't know how true this is but I have simply read it in one article.

[Ken McRae]

Hello Janine ~

Thanks for the reply. Sorry about my delay in responding, but to tell the honest truth, I was'nt sure how to reply. You gave me pause to think and so I've been contemplating your words of late. Still, I am not quite sure of my response. Your connection between Atonement spirituality and the stigmata phenomena fascinates me, to say the least. The psychological explanation for stigmata as something consciously and willfully induced purely through psychic force is plausbile to some extent, I suppose, when considered from the standpoint of counterfeit experiences. The counterfeit however presupposes the existence of the genuine. The divine stigma of Christ is not without its empirical signs and proofs.

One potential problem with the view you present, I think, is the rarity of the stigmata phenomena. Anselmian atonement spirituality has been around for a whole millenia and millions upon millions of Catholics have spent their entire lives in deep and prolonged contemplation on the Passion of Christ, and yet only a tiny handful of stigmatists have ever been identified and approved of the Church. ( Here's a link to a list of all the approved stigmatists in the Church:- >> http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/define10.htm << ) One would think that hundreds if not thousands ( at the very least ) of stigmatists would have appeared in the Church if stigmata is merely psychologically induced through deep concentration and trance-like states.

The rarity of the phenomena argues, at the very least, that stigmata is not normative in Catholic experience, but extraordinary, despite a fully manifest, prevailing, and deeply rooted anselmian mysticism. Secondly, I'm not sure I agree that suffering receives a greater emphasis in Catholic spirituality than in Orthodox, even with a prounounced atonment spirituality. Surely Orthodoxy teaches that there is no participation in Christ without a full and impartial participation in His sufferings too!! How suffering therapy might receive a lesser emphasis in Orthodoxy completely escapes me. And thirdly, if stigmata phenomena can be psychologically manufactured, I see no reason why a counterfeit experience of the Uncreated Light cannot be similarly produced.

One thing puzzled me about Archimandrite Sophrony's statement. It appears to disregard or ignore the influence that mystical experience exerts over theological conceptions. A type of synergistic interplay exists between conception and experience, in the similtaneous emergence of spontaneous thought and action. The correlation between the Filioque and Christocentrism appears to hold validity, IME.

>> 01 - Stigmata reflects the emphasis of the suffering of Christ which gained greater emphasis in the West, especially in Catholicism due to various ramifications and emphases arising from Atonement theory, ... <<

>> 02 - ... whereas for the Orthodox it was the victory of resurrection and the liberation of Spirit or grace that tended to be emphasized -- hence, for example, the experience of Divine Light or uncreated energies. <<

>> 03 - I think stigmata may be an example of how theology or theological orientation may give rise to particular types of mystical experiences that differ when the emphasis is not so strong on suffering (because the emphasis theologically is not on atonement or guilt). <<

>> 04 - ... the experience of stigmata comes not necessarily from a kind of open offering of kenosis but rather from deliberate, rational, if you will, meditation on the suffering of Christ. So it's a kind of guided experience on the part of the one who experiences it. I don't know how true this is ... etc. <<

[Janine]

Hello Theophilus. I don't necessarily mean to imply that the experiences are not "real." Just that they may have something to do with theological orientation, as I understood the original question.

Also, I think I have read quite extensively that for the Orthodox the emphasis is on Christ's victory and resurrection, rather than suffering. This is seen, for example, in the practice of the Passion Play in the West. This got quite a bit of public discussion at the time of the release of the film, "The Passion of Christ" by Mel Gibson, including by many Orthodox clergy.
Here is the URL for an article which makes mention of the fact that many Orthodox criticized the movie as an unbalanced representation of the story of Christ on this basis:
Should Orthodox Christians See "The Passion of the Christ?" (http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/ManuelPassion.shtml)

Here's an article by Thomas Hopko expressing similar ideas (but without mentioning Atonement theory):
Insight and comments offered by Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko on movie "The Passion of the Christ" (http://www.orthodoxnews.netfirms.com/111/Insight%20and%20comments.htm)

[Byron Jack Gaist]

There is a thread concerning stigmata in this discussion list, called "the wounds of Christ". I agree with Janine that the emphasis in Orthodoxy is on the victory of the Resurrection rather than on our Lord´s Passion, but I think this does not mean that Orthodoxy places less emphasis on the value of suffering (though Janine probably wasn't implying that).

One important difference between Orthodox and Catholic theology is in the use of the apophatic and the cataphatic. Catholic theology, correct me if I´m mistaken Theophilus, is bolder in its embrace of the imagination in the spiritual life, and therefore also more susceptible to the psychosomatic phenomena which may accompany it. The Orthodox do not reach the vision of the Uncreated Light by imagining it or meditating or contemplating on it, but (and this is purely theoretical, coming from a novice and a junior at prayer), by stripping away the layers of images through noetic prayer.

Nevertheless, I hope the above does not cause any offence to our Catholic friends, since I also write from a relative ignorance of Catholic theology.

ICXC
Byron

[Ken McRae]

Janine originally posted :-

1 ) " ... going back to stigmata ... I think this is relevant to the idea of the rational or individual human understanding that you were talking about above, that the experience of stigmata comes not necessarily from a kind of open offering of kenosis but rather from deliberate, rational, if you will, meditation on the suffering of Christ. So it's a kind of guided experience on the part of the one who experiences it. I don't know how true this is but I have simply read it in one article."

2 ) "I don't necessarily mean to imply that the experiences are not "real." Just that they may have something to do with theological orientation, as I understood the original question."

Byron originally posted :-

3 ) "One important difference between Orthodox and Catholic theology is in the use of the apophatic and the cataphatic. Catholic theology, correct me if I´m mistaken Theophilus, is bolder in its embrace of the imagination in the spiritual life, and therefore also more susceptible to the psychosomatic phenomena which may accompany it. The Orthodox do not reach the vision of the Uncreated Light by imagining it or meditating or contemplating on it, but (and this is purely theoretical, coming from a novice and a junior at prayer), by stripping away the layers of images through noetic prayer." <<

Reply :-

As Lent is upon us, I thought it appropriate for me to revisit this thread. I apologize to all for my lapse, but I've been giving the topic some deeper thought. However, I still feel improperly equipped to offer a clear and definitive explanation of the place alotted to the faculty of "imagination" in Catholic spirituality, other than to say that I know it has its place. Despite my general lack of knowledge of the subject, I'm inclined to say that Byron's 'basic' description of Orthodox mysticism, as "stripping away the layers of images through noetic prayer," seems to apply to Catholic mysticism as well. Take this passage from a paper on the mysticism of St. John of the Cross, (who's honoured as the Mystical Doctor of the Church,) as a quick 'proof':-

The Ascent of Mt. Carmel (http://www.innerexplorations.com/catchspmys/from2.htm)

Contemplation does not come through the natural working of the faculties. St. John makes this clear in Chapter 12 in The Ascent of Mt. Carmel:

"For the farther the soul progresses in spirituality, the more it ceases from the operation of the faculties in particular acts, since it becomes more and more occupied in one act that is general and pure." (1)

Therefore we need to take up a special attitude towards this general act which is contemplation:

"The advice proper for these individuals is that they must learn to abide in that quietude with a loving attentiveness to God (con atención y advertencia amorosa en Dios en aquella quietud) and pay no heed to the imagination and its work. At this stage, as we said, the faculties are at rest, and do not work actively but passively, by receiving what God is effecting in them." (2)

This passage continues: "...and, if they work at times it is not with violence or with carefully elaborated meditation, but with sweetness of love moved less by the ability of the soul itself than by God as will be explained hereafter." (3)

It is worth noting that the first edition of St. John’s writings altered this final passage to read: "…and work not save in that simple and sweet loving attentiveness; and if at times they work more (than this) it is not with violence…" (4) What appears here as a perhaps unimportant shift in emphasis will take on a deeper meaning as our story unfolds.

In Chapter 13, John goes on to describe the three signs by which we can know whether this quietude or general and pure knowledge, or infused contemplation, is actually being given to us. "The first is the realization that one cannot make discursive meditation nor receive satisfaction from it as before." (5)

"The second sign is an awareness of a disinclination to fix the imagination or senses upon other objects exterior or interior." (6)

"The third and surest sign is that a person likes to remain alone in loving awareness of God (con atención amorosa a Dios) without particular considerations, in interior peace and quiet and repose, and without the acts and exercises (at least discursive, those in which one progresses from point to point) of the intellect, memory and will, and that he prefers to remain only in that general loving awareness and knowledge (con la atención y noticia general amorosa) we mentioned, without any particular knowledge or understanding." (7) [End of Passage]

The faculty of imagination, then, as far as I've understood the general question, is gradually disengaged, by degrees, at different stages of the soul's mystical ascent, until finally it is virtually fully disengaged in the highest stage of prayer. I am presently unprepared to post further proof texts, from other Catholic mystics, to support this, but will attempt to do so in the future when I am properly equipped. However, I do have a passage from St. John Climacus which I'd like to draw everyone's attention to. It comes from Step Seven of the Ladder, and expresses precisely, what I feel is, the place alotted to the faculty of "imagination" in Catholic spirituality :-

From the Ladder of Divine Ascent

01 - "Never stop imagining and examining the abyss of dark fire, its cruel minions, the merciless inexorable judge, the limitless chaos of subterranean flame, the narrow descents down to underground chambers and yawning gulfs, and other such images. Then lust in our souls may be checked by immense terror, by surrender to incorruptible chastity, and receive that non-material light which shines beyond all fire." ( CCWS, p. 137, Step 7 - On Mourning )

02 - "Blind tears are suitable only to irrational beings, and yet there are some people who try, when they weep, to stifle all thought. Tears are actually the product of thought, and the father of thought is a rational mind. Think of your lying in bed as an image of the lying in your grave; then you will not sleep so much. When you eat at table, remember the food of worms; then you will not live so highly. When you drink water, remember the thirst of the flames; then you will certainly do violence to your nature." ( CCWS, p. 138, Step 7 - On Mourning )

The exhortation of St. John to "never stop imagining" together with his rebuke to those who try to "stifle all thought" is of great interest to me. According to St. John's words here, then, thoughts are not to be stifled but "governed" and exercised in pious meditations that produce the purifying tears of heart-felt compunction. Thus, it would appear, then, according to the teaching of St. John of the Ladder that the faculty of "imagination" has a legitimate role to play in Orthodox spirituality.

Bishop Hilarion, of the Russian Orthodox Church, has much to say about this "apparent" disparity, in Orthodox spirituality, and I will post some passages from a paper of his, next.

Though I can't really comment on Byron's meaning when he speaks of a "bolder" use of imagination in Catholic spirituality, I would say that this may be true in the way Catholic theologians generally approach their field of research. What I mean is that the "cataphatic" approach seems more popular in Catholicism than Orthodoxy; but in my humble estimation it is pure falsification to say that the apophatic approach is universely neglected by Catholics.

St. John of the Cross is a pure expression, I feel, of the apophatic approach in Catholicism. Then you have others like Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, Henry Suso, John Van Ruysbroeck, the Unknown Author of the Cloud of Unknowing, Nicholas de Cusa, to name only a few, who all belong to the apophatic school, in my opinion.

With regard to the use of the term "real" as a description of "counterfeit" manifestations of stigmata, it is an interesting question whether or not the "counterfeit" can be accurately described as "real", in some sense. It certainly is'nt "real" in the sense of it being "the real deal", that is, the "genuine" article. If the experience is purely "psychosomatic", as has been suggested, can we still describe it as "real" in some sense? Perhaps the "counterfeit" experience is real, though, from a purely empirical standpoint, insofar as it constitutes a "genuine" phenomena of sorts. I'm afraid I'm out of my element here, but I will look into the matter further.

Incidentally, I am curious to know if anyone on these boards has ever taken the time to really delve into the stigmata phenomena, or have at least read a full-length bio of any, other than St. Francis of Assisi. I saw one essay comparing the spirituality of Sts. Francis of Assisi and Seraphim of Sarov, but was not impressed with it.

Humbly in the Lord,
Theophilus

(Message edited by theophilus on 17 February, 2005)

(Message edited by theophilus on 17 February, 2005)

[Ken McRae]

Janine originally posted :-

>> "Also, I think I have read quite extensively that for the Orthodox the emphasis is on Christ's victory and resurrection, rather than suffering. This is seen, for example, in the practice of the Passion Play in the West. This got quite a bit of public discussion at the time of the release of the film, "The Passion of Christ" by Mel Gibson, including by many Orthodox clergy. Here is the URL for an article which makes mention of the fact that many Orthodox criticized the movie as an unbalanced representation of the story of Christ on this basis." <<

Byron originally posted :-

>> "There is a thread concerning stigmata in this discussion list, called "the wounds of Christ". I agree with Janine that the emphasis in Orthodoxy is on the victory of the Resurrection rather than on our Lord´s Passion ... " <<

Reply :-

The following lengthy passage, which directly addresses the above popular viewpoint(s), is taken from the pamphlet entitled, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LORD: THE TEACHING OF ABBA ISAIAH OF SKETIS (http://stnectariospress.com/catalog/monastic.htm), translated by Pachomios Penkett & John Chryssavgis, both of whom are Orthodox :-

On the Way of the Cross :-

It is often believed that eastern theology and spirituality prefer to emphasize the resurrection of Christ rather than the way of the cross. While this may be true of many representatives of the eastern tradition, the monastic writers knew all too well the significance of ascetic struggle as the prelude to personal holiness and transformation. Abba Isaiah enjoys a unique prominence among those authors who emphasize the crucifixion of Christ as a model and pattern for the life of the monk, whose goal - like that of every Christian - is to follow in the footsteps of Christ. The early monastics felt that they were adhering literally to the words of Jesus Christ, who:-

"called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, 'If anyone wants to become my follower, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." ( Mk. 8:34-35 )

Abba Isaiah draws certain subtle distinctions in his development of a theology of a cross. However, the vision of the cross is always at the centre of his thought and teaching. For Abba Isaiah, the first stage along the way of holiness is ascesis which leads to the ascent of the cross:-

"for the cross of Jesus is abstinence from every passion, until [that passion] is cut off." [Discourse 16]

On the Redeeming Power of the Cross

In his twenty-seventh 'Discourse', Abba Isaiah twice draws attention to the redemptive power of Christ's Passion:-

"Attend diligently, knowing that the Lord, though rich, became poor for our sake and died. In dying for us, He bought us with his own blood, in order that you also may consider living no longer for yourself but for the Lord, being His perfect slave in everything, living always before God like a very gentle animal who does not answer back but is submissive to his master ... and not having a will or desire of his own but aspiring only to do the work of God.

Attend diligently, believing firmly that our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God, who possesses glory and ineffable majesty, has made Himself a model [typos] for us in order to follow His footsteps ... " [Discourse 25]

For Abba Isaiah, 'to follow in His footsteps' is to 'look for His traces' [Discourse 25], which in turn means - through the sacraments of baptism and repentance (i.e. confession? - Theo) - to reach the measure of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:13); this means turning toward and fixing our gaze upon the crucified Christ:-

"Try hard to fix your eyes on the bronze serpent which Moses made according to God's command. He placed this on the wood at the top of the mountain in order that anyone bitten by a serpent may gaze upon it and immediately recover. Our Lord Jesus on the cross resembled the bronze serpent ... Our Lord Jesus assumed this model [typos] in order to extinguish the venom that Adam had eaten from the serpent's mouth and in order to bring back nature - which had become contrary to nature - to conform once again to nature." [Discourse 25]

On the cross everything that Christ endured - the gall, the spitting, the crown of thorns, the beating, the nakedness, the suffering, the isolation, the entombment (this is the order in which these are presented by Abba Isaiah) - was in order to offer us a model; ' it is an exmaple for us' , as Abba Isaiah observes some sixteen times in just a single paragraph of Discourse 13.

The Stages of the Cross

Abba Isaiah's indebtedness to St. Paul is particularly evident in Discourse 13 where he develops his favourite notion of ' ascending the cross of Jesus'. It is a passionate devotion to, and contemplation of, the cross. ( See also Discourses 21, 25, and 27.) The cross becomes the way of holiness and the source of love:-

"The cross is the abolition of all sins and engenders love. For without love there is no cross." [Discourse 21]

However, while adhering to the Pauline model of holiness as being identified and crucified with Christ (cf. Galatians 2:20), Abba Isaiah introduces a new distinction between Martha and Mary, who symbolize 'practical endurance' and 'the state of mourning' ; and even beyond Lazarus bound and Lazarus risen, who symbolizes 'the intellect fettered' and 'the intellect carefree' [cf. Discourse 21], Abba Isaiah draws a further distinction between 'beholding the cross', which we have already considered [Discourse 25], 'bearing the cross' [Discourse 21], and simply 'being on the cross'. The last of these implies a higher stage of silence, while the second signifies the preparatory stage of struggle [cf. Discourse 8]. The follower of Christ is called to 'accompany the Lord to the cross' [Discourse 16] and subsequently to 'ascend the cross' [Discourse 17]:-

"We are to climb on the cross and to stay on the cross." [Discourse 13]

Indeed these two stages are different, and 'to wish to stay on the cross prematurely is to attract the wrath of God'. [Discourses 8 and 13] Nonetheless, the natural place [typos] of the soul is the cross. We are therefore called, writes Abba Isaiah, to render thanks to the Lord for enabling us to endure the cross [Discourse 17], and to renounce those who wish us to descend from it [Discourse 26]:-

"Blessed therefore is the person who is crucified, dead, buried, and risen in newness, when he sees himself in the natural condition of Jesus, following His holy footsteps which were made when He was incarnated for the sake of His holy saints. Thus it is to Him that belong [the virtues of] humility, baseness, poverty, detachment, forgiveness, peace, enduring reproach, not caring for the body, not fearing the conspiracies of evil people, and - the greatest of these - knowing everything before it occurs, and treating people with kindness. So one who has reached these and eliminated the condition that is contrary to nature, shows that he is truly from Christ, and is the son of God and brother of Jesus." [Discourse 18]

For Abba Isaiah, then, the words of St. Paul hold true for every monk, and by extension for every Christian:-

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." ( Gal. 2:19-20 )

=> End of Passage <=

Penkett and Chryssavgis conclude their little pamphlet with the following remarks:-

"Always held in high regard in the East, Abba Isaiah was seen as a patristic author of great significance also in the West, where, from the eighth century onwards, his teaching was preserved, albeit in a fragmentary and partial form ... etc."

From these words we may see clearly that Penkett and Chryssavgis root the Catholic emphasis of the Passion in the Patristic teaching of Abba Isaiah, generally speaking. According to them, the teaching of Abba Isaiah is not "imbalanced" by his emphasis upon the Passion. Rather, it is the apostolic tradition of St. Paul himself, as interpreted and applied by the holy father, in his own suffering Orthodoxy.

Finally, here's a link to a new Orthodox publication, entitled 'The Royal Way of the Cross of Our Lord Leading to Eternal Life' (http://www.monasterypress.com/wayofthecross.html), which is a full length treatment of the above subject. Firmly rooted in Patristic tradition, it is a work by St. John of Tobolsk, an early 18th century Russian Orthodox saint, and ancestor to St. John Maximovitch, of blessed memory.

Another excellent work that handles this subject is that entitled 'Journey to Heaven', composed by St. Tikhon of Zadonsk.

Humbly in the Lord ~
Theophilus


(Message edited by theophilus on 17 February, 2005)

[Ken McRae]

In the following paper, from which I've only posted a few select passages, Bishop Hilarion posits that contemporary Orthodoxy largely tends to have a very narrow view of its own Tradition. This problem he traces to the popular influence of Fr. Florovsky, who restricts it solely to Byzantinism, very narrowly equating the two. Bishop Hilarion disagrees with this viewpoint, counter-arguing that the Tradition is much broader, including many other elements or components, some of which are Latin in origin.

According to Bishop Hilarion's conclusions, this error leads to an imbalanced or distorted view of Orthodox Tradition. And it is this dynamic, I suspect, that underlyes the popular viewpoint that Orthodoxy emphasizes the Triumph of Christ over and above the Passion. While this viewpoint may be 'partially' true in some qualified sense, it is not the 'whole' truth, as clearly demonstrated in my previous post. Many great and notable monastics, like Abba Isaiah for example, have emphasized the Passion of Christ over His Triumph, for very good and practical reasons, as previously explained above.

The Patristic Heritage and Modernity (http://orthodoxia.org/hilarion/articles/patrherit.htm)

A Paper delivered at the 9th International Conference on Russian Monasticism and Spirituality, Bose Monastery (Italy), 20 September 2001

by Bishop Hilarion

01 - But why should faith be “patristic”? Might this imply that Orthodoxy must be necessarily styled as in the “patriarchal days of old”? Or is it that, as Christians, we should always be turned towards the past instead of living in the present or working for the future? Should perhaps some “golden age” in which the great Fathers of the church lived, the 4th century for instance, be our ideal, a bearing to guide us? Or, finally, could this imply that the formation of our theological and ecclesial tradition has been completed during the “patristic era”, and that, subsequently, nothing new may take place in Orthodox theology and Orthodox church life in general?

If this were so – there are many who think exactly this - it would mean that our principal task is to watch over what remains of the Byzantine and Russian heritage, and vigilantly guard Orthodoxy against the infectious trends of modern times. Some act in precisely this way: fearfully rejecting the challenges of modernity, they dedicate all their time to preserving what they perceive as the traditional teaching of the Orthodox Church, explaining that in the present times of “universal apostasy” no creative understanding of Tradition is needed, since everything already has been understood and demonstrated by the fathers centuries earlier. Such supporters of “protective Orthodoxy” like, as a rule, to refer to the “teachings of the holy fathers”. Yet in reality they do not know patristic doctrine: they make use of isolated patristic notions to justify their own theories and ideas without studying patristic theology in all its pluriformity and totality.

02 - I am also convinced that one should not apply criteria from one context to a patristic author belonging to a totally different context. One cannot, for instance, judge Syriac, Latin or Russian patristics from a Byzantine perspective. That is to say: such a judgment is possible, but it will be neither adequate nor fair. As an example one can mention Florovsky’s famous Ways of Russian Theology, which perceives the entire Russian theological tradition through the spectacles of Byzantinism; the result, characterised by Berdyaev as “The Waylessness of Russian Theology”[21] was a merciless critical analysis, razing the whole of Russian theological tradition to the ground. In appreciation of Florovsky’s monumental work, John Meyendorff wrote:-

"Disputing neither the mind nor the talent of individual authors... Fr Georges imposes the patristic or Byzantine standard on each and every one, the standard he adopted once and for all as the one truly Orthodox... An Orthodox theologian might wonder: isn’t Florovsky’s understanding of the patristic heritage too narrow? If Russian Orthodoxy may be criticized in the name of “Byzantinism”, should one not take a critical look at Byzantinism itself as well? Is it equivalent with holy Tradition as such?"[22]

Meyendorff raises a question of key significance here. To me, the reply seems quite obvious: holy Tradition is not equivalent with Byzantinism since, besides the Byzantine tradition, it includes Latin, Russian and many other traditions as well. Were indeed Byzantine criteria to be applied to Russian theology, one might conclude that before the 17th century nothing significant existed in our country since we did not “reach up” to the Byzantine and our entire literature was to a greater or lesser degree, imitative, and that after the 17th century our “Western captivity” began. When we apply Byzantine criteria to the Syriac tradition we will find numerous “deviations” as well. As for seeing the Latin tradition through the eyes of Byzantinism (and the Byzantine tradition through Latinism), here we have a vast experience of polemics, focusing on the same questions for over a thousand years, from the days of Patriarch Photius to our times, and reaching an ultimate dead end in the early 20th century, for talking in circles never reaches a goal. Only the shifts in positions among Eastern and Western theologians in the course of the twentieth century allow us to hope that a way out of this dead end may be found. I believe that such a way out may be sought precisely in the consistent use of the principle of the contextual reading of sources, which presumes the capacity of theologians to relativize their own context (though by no means breaking with it) and to examine another tradition from within with the desire to understand rather than to denounce or humiliate it.

03 - In my work on St Symeon I used the contextual method for the study of phenomena that fall within the Orthodox tradition. Let me now give an example of the possible use of the contextual method for examining something that falls outside this tradition; namely Catholic mysticism, which has lately been the object of fierce debate.

The opinion of St Ignatius Brianchaninov that all works by Catholic mystics after the great schism have been written in a state of spiritual “drunkenness” and delusion is well known. Since Bishop Ignatius has been canonized, some value his opinion as “patristic”. Yet we also know a different approach by other — equally canonized — church writers with a somewhat less cautious and categorical attitude towards Catholic spirituality.[31] Some Orthodox Fathers are known for the direct influence Catholic spirituality exercised upon them. St Dimitri of Rostov was under this influence for his entire life: his homilies as well as other works, including the Reading Compendium of Saint’s lives, based primarily on Latin sources,[32] have a distinctly “Westernizing” character; St Dimitri’s library held books by Bonaventure, Thomas a Kempis, Peter Canisius and other Catholic authors, and in his spirituality such elements as the devotion of the passions of Christ, the five wounds of Christ and the heart of Christ may be traced.[33] The influence of Catholic spirituality on St Tikhon of Zadonsk[34]can equally be sensed.

How can such different approaches towards Catholic spirituality and mysticism between St Ignatius on the one side, and St Dimitri of Rostov and St Tikhon of Zadonsk on the other, be explained? It seems to me that much is accounted for by the differences between the contexts in which each of them livee. St Ignatius lived at the time of Tsar Nicolas the First (second quarter of the 19th century), when a systematic struggle with Western mysticism was underway. The time of Alexander I (first quarter of the 19th century) had witnessed a nearly unanimous passion for “inner Christianity” among high society, the Russian aristocracy devoured the works of Thomas a Kempis, Francis de Sales and Fenelon, noblemen en masse joined Masonic lodges and the Jesuits opened their schools in many towns and villages; and a healthy reaction against these Western influences had set in during the reign of Tsar Nicholas. The same period witnessed the beginnings of the so-called “patristic revival”: the systematic work of translating and studying the Fathers of the church, something of no small significance for the gradual liberation of Russian theology from its “Western captivity”. As a child of his times, St Ignatius could not remain entirely a stranger to these processes.

St Dimitri and St Tikhon, however, lived in an altogether different historical context. Contrary to St Ignatius (who had never studied theology in an ecclesiastical school), both were graduates of Latin schools which had shaped their thought; both had been reading Western authors all their lives. The inevitable influence of the Catholic spirituality which St Dimitri and St Tikhon experienced in the 18th century did not, however, undermine their deep rootedness in the Orthodox tradition.

Of course, everything must not be reduced to context, to someone’s historical period, church-political circumstances or education. Differences between church writers’ taste, views or attitudes towards the same phenomenon can, and may, appear without being conditioned by education or the “spirit of the day”. St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain , who translated the work of a Latin Theatine monk, Invisible Warfare, into Greek, had not been educated in a Latin school and was by no means influenced by Catholic mysticism. The same can be said about K.P. Pobedonostsev, who translated Thomas a' Kempis’s 'Imitation of Christ' into Russian. All the same, both considered it profitable to familiarize Orthodox readers with certain works of Catholic authors (be it in a slightly adapted form, and brought into closer agreement with the Orthodox context).

The contextual method may help in studying Catholic mysticism itself as well. Not infrequently, Orthodox readers are shocked by recipes in books of Western Renaissance mystics prescribing the use of the human imagination to visualize the passions of Christ, or other events of the gospel. It is correct to point out that traditional Orthodox mysticism demands control of the imagination, and warns about the dangers of imaginative representations in prayer. But in considering Western Renaissance mysticism, the cultural specificity of the times cannot be ignored: mediaeval theocentric culture was being replaced by a totally different, anthropocentric culture where imagination was given a near-central role. The task facing spiritual teachers of the time, then, was not to force people to renounce their imagination altogether, but to teach them how to direct their imagination towards matters from which spiritual benefit could be gained, in particular towards the events of sacred history. It is evident that, were the criterion of Byzantine ascetic literature to be applied to such mysticism, it would not meet its requirements. But, to repeat John Meyendorff’s question, is the Byzantine criterion the only just criterion according to which non-Byzantine phenomena are to be judged, or are other approaches possible? I shall state once again my belief that the universal Orthodox tradition is wider than Byzantinism, that not all that lies outside is either heresy or spiritual delusion. Otherwise not only Western mystics should be declared to have fallen in spiritual delusion, but also Dimitri of Rostov, Tikhon of Zadonsk and many other pious Russian ascetics of the period of the “Western captivity” (that is, the 17th and 18th centuries) when access to the works of the Eastern Fathers was extremely difficult.

Please do not attempt to find in my words any effort to “justify” Catholic mysticism. I am by no means an “Eastern admirer of Western spirituality” and have no personal sympathy whatsoever for Catholic mysticism, since I have been raised on totally different examples: the writings of the Fathers of the Eastern church, in particular Greek and Syriac. I have not mentioned Catholic mysticism in order to debate its content, but to present and illustrate a method that, in my view, should be applied to any phenomena whatsoever, be in within or without the framework of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. [End of Excerpts]

Humbly in the Lord ~
Theophilus

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Theophilus,

Thank you for the above postings, which will require the detailed study which you doubtlessly engaged in yourself in composing them also from myself and Janine for a proper response . When I said I agree with Janine that the emphasis in Orthodoxy is on the victory of the Resurrection rather than on our Lord´s Passion, I added that I think this does not mean that Orthodoxy places less emphasis on the value of suffering (though Janine probably wasn't implying that either). You are, in my humble opinion, quite right to point out the enormous significance of the ascetic struggle in Orthodox (and presumably also in Catholic) spirituality. I certainly never meant to imply that the Orthodox Tradition makes light of our Lord´s suffering, or of the importance of our own participation in it.

I will be responding to the other important issues you raised, not the least of which is the role of the imagination in the spiritual life, as I read your posts more closely. It would interest me, being new to Roman Catholic spirituality, to hear more from you about this issue, and its relation to the use of the cataphatic approach. What do you think, for example, of the spirituality of a saint like Catherine Emmerich, who I understand influenced Mel Gibson in his account of the Passion?

ICXC
Byron

[Eugene]

Dear Theophilus,

Thanks a lot for your interesting posts. Just a few thoughts. It looks like there've been two branches in Catholic spirituality - may I call them "imaginative" (St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Margaret Mary of Alocoque, St. Julian of Norwich and many others) and "anti-imaginative" (St. John of the Cross, quietists - Madam Guyon, Fr. Fenelon and others) (this classification is over-simplification of course). The "imaginative" spirituality has probably been the mainstream, while "anti-imaginative" has been kind of underground (many quietists were anathemised). However "anti-imaginative" approach has been equally respected in Catholic church and has always been a part of their tradition.

Another interesting point on particular practical details. I'm not familiar with the works of St. John of the Cross that well, I just glanced at them quickly some time ago. I also red some works of quietists. Their approach, unlike Orthodox hesychasm, seems not to emphasize the use of repetitive short prayers as much as it is emphasized in hesychasm. Prayer method of quietisits even discards any use of words in spiritual prayer. In the Orthodox tradition it is recommended to use Jesus or other short prayer as a means to keep thoughts and mind under control and focus the attention of mind and heart on Christ until a person reaches a stage of spiritual prayer which is beyond words.

I would agree with what Bishop Hillarion said. I was recently reading some books on Syriac and Coptic spirituality ("The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and Spiritual Life" by S. Brock, and "Orthodox Prayer Life" by Fr. Matthew the Poor - fabulous books, highly recommended!) and couldn't help noticing the differences in the emphasis, context and approach comapred to Bysantine fathers. Sometimes a different perspective helps to clean our faith and practice from cultural, historical and contextual influences that are not essential to it.

In Christ,
Evgeny

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Theophilus has raised some very important questions concerning Orthodoxy & Roman Catholicism- what seperates them & how this manifests itself in differing sense of spirituality & asceticism. In connection with this he also raises the important question of whether some of these differences are more apparent than real.

Before diving into this question let me say that what I have to say comes from several years of reading but this was quite a few years ago. Also I certainly never read all of the Catholic writers & contemplatives Theophilus quotes from. So I will just offer some general points.

I think it is true that some of the alleged differences between Orthodox & Roman Catholic spirituality are really based on misunderstanding & even plain ignorance on our part. For example the famous "we are spiritual- they are legalistic" or "they stress the Passion while we stress the Resurrection." There are some insights here worth considering but we must bear in mind that the source of this way of thinking is really 19th century intellectuals (mostly from Russia) who were much influenced by the German idealists. Very briefly the German idealists held that there is a world spirit & each culture and nation has its own unique spirit. Of course we see here also the roots of Romanticism & modern nationalism. So it is no surprise to learn that the context of these 19th century intellectuals was the search for national & cultural identity in the face of the west. And Orthodoxy was seen as playing a central role in what made the east & in particular Russia distinct.

There is much that was positive in this especially concerning the question of distinct culture & Faith. Also in time writers such as Alexei Khomiakov brought in more Patristic ways of thinking not to mention a truly pious Orthodox life. But these thinkers also left an ambiguous legacy which still influences us especially in how we characterise "east & west". This is especially so when the alleged differences come down to differences of temperment or psychology rather than a different theological vision.

Any objective reading of Roman Catholic spirituality after the Schism should lead us to see that there is as much a mystical tradition in the west as in the east. For every scholastic there was a mystic & the two sources often fed on and influenced each other.

To understand the differences between Orthodox & Roman Catholic spirituality we must have a Patristic ie a theological mindset. It is not enough to just know that both pray or experience something "mystical". Follwoing from this we naturally think that both in fact are fundamentally the same after all.

What we must start with is to acknowledge that there was a Schism & that this ocurred for theological reasons. From here we must carefully & soberly assess how the Schism is manifested in the two spiritualities. To overlook this, to not recognise how fundamental theological differences lead to fundamental differences in spirituality is to imply that the Schism had no real deeper meaning and is of little consequence.

In our struggle to lead a spiritual life as our Holy Fathers guide us we notice two fundamental temptations that constantly assail us- that of mind & feeling. We cannot simply escape from this struggle since these two- mind & feeling- correspond to faculties God has created us with. But we are told that the whole man- and chiefly these two- must be purified ascetically in a correct spiritual life as guided & indicated by our Holy Fathers. Otherwise we slip off the track into a distorted spirituality.

Notice that when we fall or struggle we do not always go from "spiritual" to "not spiritual". We can also slide from what is spiritual into a distorted spirituality. Indeed in many ways this is more dangerous than falling into not being spiritual at all. And put into a larger picture this is a description of the Schism.

The Schism produces a different type of spirituality from that seen previously. It is not that people before prayed or were striving to lead a life in Christ & then stopped. Rather their understanding of what these things are- prayer & a life in Christ- began to gradually & fundamentally change. We can see this for example in the 11th century immediately after the Schism with the spirituality of the new monastic orders & the Crusades. And although there are of course many twists & turns in western spirituality from the Schism to our own times; still it is remarkable how much this spirituality has remained consistent over the centuries affecting even Protestant spirituality.

To understand what happened we do not have to go to the larger picture & becoming experts in the history of western spirituality. We can also start from the microcosm & understand through looking at ourselves (we are after all children of our western culture) what happens if we fall away from the tried & true Patristic ascetic way. We know that instead of our God given faculties being purified & becoming servants of our struggle to become deified- these faculties become our masters and they begin to set the agenda for what we think is a 'spiritual life'.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Eugene]

Thank you Fr. Raphael, I think you made very good point. It is important not just to know what the formal differences in teaching, dogmatic theology and spiritual practices are between Orthodoxy and other denominations, but also understand how these differnces affect the practical side of christian life - way of curing the soul and attaining salvation.

Metropolitan Hierotheos wrote in his book "Orthodox Psychoterapy":

"How then is the soul cured? First we must emphasise right faith. We Orthodox attach great importance to preserving the faith, just because we know that when faith is distorted, the cure is automatically distorted. We have previously emphasised that theology should be interpreted as medicine. Medical science has the healthy person in view when it tries to guide the sick person to health by various therapeutic methods. We can say the same thing about theology. Theology is the teaching of the Church about spiritual health, but also about the path which we sick must follow in order to be healed. That is why we Orthodox give great weight to keeping the doctrine intact, not only because we fear the impairment of a teaching, but because we could lose the possibility of a cure and therefore of salvation."

Of course it is not just erroneous theology that leads to distorted spirituality, there are many other factors affecting it (including the very fact of the lack of communion with the Orthodox church that keeps not only the letter of the teaching but very spirit of Christianity intact and alive). But in any case, we should be very careful when comparing the Orthodoxy with other denominations - it's not just a formal dogmatic statements of faith or particular technicalities of spiritual practice that needs to be considered here. It's the spirit of christianity, which is actually the Holy Spirit, that keeps the teaching and practice of the church intact, and it's the saints - spiritual leadrs of the church - who keep acquiring the Spirit and keeping the Spirit in the church life. When faith and practice starts to become distorted, people do not attain deification any more to the extent they did before, and eventually loose clear understanding of the theology and practice (because those can only be fully understood by a mind illuminated by the Spirit), and that inevitably leads to even more distortion of the teaching and spiritual practice.

In Christ,
Evgeny

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Fr Raphael,

You write:


" We know that instead of our God given faculties being purified & becoming servants of our struggle to become deified- these faculties become our masters and they begin to set the agenda for what we think is a 'spiritual life'."

I would very much like to hear more about the purification of our faculties. I presume that what you term "mind" includes thought, memory and imagination. My question is: how do these faculties function when purified by the life in Christ as the Fathers have taught it? Perhaps a related issue is what these functions did when God initially created us and prior to the Fall.

Thank you Fr Raphael for your above post, which helped clarify for me some of my misconceptions regarding the differences between Roman Catholic and Orthodox. I should nevertheless say that the idea, for example, that the Orthodox place greater emphasis on the Resurrection than the Passion, did not come to me spontaneously, but via the book "The Orthodox Church" by Bishop Kallistos.

I look forward with anticipation to your response to my above question.

ICXC
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,
You wrote:


I would very much like to hear more about the purification of our faculties. I presume that what you term "mind" includes thought, memory and imagination. My question is: how do these faculties function when purified by the life in Christ as the Fathers have taught it? Perhaps a related issue is what these functions did when God initially created us and prior to the Fall.

Yes by 'mind' I meant this in the most inclusive sense of thought, discursive reasoning, etc. I also just meant to make the general point of how all of what man is created with- all of his faculties- are illumined as he leads a life in Christ. What I also had in mind but didn't manage to fit into what I was writing was the theme of how if we do not know what an Orthodox spiritual life is and so are not pursuing this then inevitably autonomy of the faculties takes over & this begins to define what we think is a life in Christ.

In Christ these faculties assume their proper priority not tyranising us and making sinful slaves out of us; then they are 'servants'. In the sense of Paradise & the Fall perhaps we could say that Paradise is when the faculties find their life in Christ but the Fall is when we listen to the evil one saying how we can lead a life apart from God & still be deified.

About the Resurrection & Passion I don't think I expressed my self as clearly as I should have. Clearly this is a most important point & it really does correspond to an essential difference between Orthodox & Roman Catholic piety. What I was trying to say is that this difference arises from theological differences & not just cultural differences where they see ying & we see yang- you put the two together & you get a whole. The latter way of seeing this (which I don't believe Bishop Kallistos Ware intends) just relativises the differences between us.

Indeed as Theophilus has pointed out we also stress the Passion. But this is placed in its proper theological framework of the Resurrection & in turn what the Resurrection actually means.

In a discussion like this it is easy to slip from the theological into the psychological. For us 'theological' implies that reality is defined by the Word of God Who wishes to bring us to salvation. He is the Alpha & Omega of all things-all comes from & leads to Him. In Him is meaning found & outside of Him there is no meaning.

The psychological however tends to relativise meaning so that Christ is only one among many competing meanings. Or another version of this is that Christ Himself represents all meanings & in Him these conflicting meanings are reconcilied. In a sense this is the definition of the type of ecumenism that the Orthodox reject. We do not mean a rejection of charity in regards to other people but rather a rejection of falsehood posing as Truth of being told that charity means accepting that death is as 'valid a lifestyle' as Life.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Ken McRae]

Byron originally posted:-

1) "When I said ... that the emphasis in Orthodoxy is on the victory of the Resurrection rather than on our Lord´s Passion, I added that I think this does not mean that Orthodoxy places less emphasis on the value of suffering ... "

2) "What do you think, for example, of the spirituality of a saint like Catherine Emmerich, who I understand influenced Mel Gibson in his account of the Passion?"

Reply:-

Dear Byron,

Thanks for your reply. While Abba Isaiah clearly emphasized the mystery of the Passion as being central to the ascetic life, I hesitate to conclude from this that he placed "less value" on all the other aspects of the Divine Mystery. I apologize if it appeared as though I was implying that, and I don't think Penkett and Chryssavgis intended to imply that either.

I could be wrong, admittedly, but I think what Penkett and Chryssavgis try to communicate by their exposition of Abba Isaiah's life and tradition is that Orthodox Tradition is wide enough to accommodate both perspectives, and in fact does, as witnessed in the holy Abba, and by extension, the holy fathers from whom he descended, in mystical succession. And I think the same is equally true in Catholicism, that it is possible to find lengthy traditions of both perspectives.

With regard to the spirituality and visions of the Venerable Catherine Emmerich, (as that is the title given her by the CC,) I will address that in a subsequent post. What I'd like us to do first, though, is to examine a lenghty passage from Archimandrite Lazarus Moore's spiritual biography of St. Seraphim of Sarov (pp. 211-214); concerning a profound and incomprehensible *vision* granted to the servant of God, and spiritual son of St. Seraphim, N.A. Motovilov:-

N.A. Motovilov's Vision (http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx)s and Experience of the Three Torments of Gehenna

01 ) Motovilov was obliged to spend the night at one of the post-stations on the road from Kursk. As he was quite alone in the room for travellers, he took his manuscripts out of his suitcase and began to sort them out by the dim light of a single candle which scarcely lit up the spacious room. One of the first records he discovered contained a description of the cure of a possessed lady of notable parentage called Eropkin at the Shrine of St. Metrophan of Voronezh.

02 ) "I wondered," writes Motovilov, "how it could happen that an Orthodox Christian who partook of the most pure and life-giving Mysteries of the Lord could suddenly be possessed by a devil, and moreover, for such a long period as over thirty years. And I thought: Nonsense! It is impossible! I should like to see how the devil would dare to make his abode in me, especially when I frequently have recourse to the Sacrament of Holy Communion."

03 ) At that very moment he was surrounded by a horrible, cold, evil-smelling cloud which began to make its way into his mouth, while he made convulsive efforts to keep it tightly shut.

04 ) The unhappy Motovilov struggled desperately, trying to protect himself from the stench and icy cold of the cloud which was gradually creeping into him. In spite of all his efforts it got into him completely.

05 ) His hands became exactly as if they were paralyzed, and he could not make the Sign of the Cross; his mind became frozen with terror and he could not remember the saving name of Jesus. Something terrible and repulsive had happened, and Nikolas Alexandrovitch experienced a time of dreadful torture. A manuscript in his own handwriting gives us the following description of the torments he experienced:-

06 ) "The Lord granted me to experience in my own body, and not in a dream or apparition, the three torments of hell. The first was that of the fire which gives no light and which can be extinguished only by the grace of the Most Holy Spirit. This agony lasted for three days. I felt myself burning, yet I was not consumed. Ten or eleven times a day they had to scrape off the hellish soot which covered my whole body and was visible to all. This torture ceased only after Confession and Holy Communion, through the prayers of Archbishop Antony of Voronezh who ordered litanies to be said for the suffering servant of God Nikolas in the forty-seven Churches and Monasteries of his diocese.

07 ) "Then I was tormented for two days by the unbearable cold of Tartarus, so that fire could neither burn nor warm me. According to the wish of His Grace, Archbishop Antony of Voronezh, I held my hand over a candle for about half an hour, and though it was thickly coated with soot, it did not get warm in the least. I described this experiment on a whole sheet of paper and signed it by stamping it with my sooty hand. Both these torments were visible to all; yet with the help of Holy Communion I could partake of food, drink and sleep to some extent.

08 ) "But the third torment of Gehenna, though it was still shorter by half a day, for it lasted only a day and a half (possibly a little more), caused me the greatest terror and suffering as it was something indescribable and incomprehensible. It is a wonder that I remained alive! This torment also disappeared after Confession and Holy Communion. This time Archbishop Antony himself administered the Holy Sacrament to me with his own hands. This torment was the undying worm of Gehenna. The worm in this case was visible only to Archbishop Antony and myself. But my whole body was riddled with this pernicious worm which crawled through the whole of me and in an indescribably frightful manner gnawed at my vitals. Though it crawled out through my nose, mouth and ears, yet it went back in again. However, God gave me some power over it, and I could take it into my hands and stretch it like rubber.

09 ) "I feel myself compelled to make this declaration, for God did not grant me this *vision* for nothing. Let no one think that I dare take the Lord's name in vain. No! On the day of the Lord's awful judgement, He Himself - my God, my Helper and my Protector - will testify that I did not lie against Him, my Lord, and against the operation of His Divine Providence which was accomplished in me."

10 ) Soon after this terrible test which is beyond the experience of ordinary men, Motovilov had a *vision* of his patron St. Seraphim who comforted the sufferer with the promise that he would be cured at the exposition of the relics of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and that until that time (some thirty years later) the devil residing in him would not torment him so cruelly.

=>> End of Passage <<=

According to Motovilov's own words, then, he describes this event in his life as a "vision" (as opposed to a dream or apparition). First, then, how does Orthodxy view private revelations like that of Motovilov's *vision*; and secondly, does Orthodoxy teach, like Motovilov does, that there are "three torments" in Gehenna, precisely as depicted in Motovilov's vision(s)? When I have your reply, I will respond to your question on the Venerable Catherine Emmerich.

Humbly in Jesus,
Theophilus

(Message edited by theophilus on 19 February, 2005)

[Ken McRae]

Dear Byron ~

I had originally intended to include these links in my previous post, but as it was already quite long, due to the lenghty book quote, I thought to relegate them here, as an after-thought or
"appendix" of sorts. These are links to a standard early 20th century text on Catholic spirituality, composed by a very prolific monk of high reknown and veneration among "astute" Catholics:-

1 - The Active Purification of the Imagination and the Memory (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta37.htm)

2 - The Active Purification of the Intellect (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta38.htm)

3 - The Active Purification of the Will (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta39.htm)

As evident, the above deal with the ascetic labour of "active" purification, but Catholicism also teaches of another purification which is "passive" in nature. If you follow the links at the above website, you will find chapters that deal with that mystery as well. Some other chapters I'd recommend are these following:-

4 - The Transluminous Obscurity (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta87.htm)

5 - The Spiritual Age of the Perfect (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta91.htm)

6 - A Note on the Highest Degree of the Mystical Life (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta104.htm#bk5)

7 - On the Perfection of Love and Infused Contemplation (http://www.christianperfection.info/tta105.htm#bk1)

It is important to keep in mind that these are the thoughts of but one man, on the teachings of Catholic saints about the spiritual life and mystical experience. While they may present a fairly accurate and reliable picture of the Catholic mind and experience, they are by no means the "final" word on the subject; as there will be, and are those who do hold different opinions on various minor aspects which are subject to "interpretation".

Humbly in Jesus,
Theophilus

(Message edited by theophilus on 18 February, 2005)

[Eugene]

Dear Theophilus,

It looks like you are knowleageble about Catholic spirituality, may be you can clarify for me one confusion I have. Some time ago I came across an article on hesychasm in Catholic online Encyclopedia that speaks quite negatively about Orthodox hesychasm. I'm wondering if it represents a commonly accepted view on hesychasm in Catholic church, or if it's just an opinion of the athors of the article. I've heard that the attitude towards hesychasm in Catholic church changed since the Second Vatican Councl. The link is here http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07301a.htm

In Christ
Evgeny

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Fr Raphael,

Thank you for your response.


In Christ these faculties assume their proper priority not tyranising us and making sinful slaves out of us; then they are 'servants'. In the sense of Paradise & the Fall perhaps we could say that Paradise is when the faculties find their life in Christ but the Fall is when we listen to the evil one saying how we can lead a life apart from God & still be deified

This clarifies the purpose of our faculties, whether we are talking about thinking, memory, imagination, feeling, sensation, and most importantly for Christians, free will. However, it does not answer the question of how these faculties function when purified by an Orthodox spiritual life. Can you give me, for example, an instance of the purified use of the imagination in the life of an Orthodox saint?


He is the Alpha & Omega of all things-all comes from & leads to Him. In Him is meaning found & outside of Him there is no meaning. The psychological however tends to relativise meaning so that Christ is only one among many competing meanings. Or another version of this is that Christ Himself represents all meanings & in Him these conflicting meanings are reconcilied. In a sense this is the definition of the type of ecumenism that the Orthodox reject. We do not mean a rejection of charity in regards to other people but rather a rejection of falsehood posing as Truth of being told that charity means accepting that death is as 'valid a lifestyle' as Life.

As a psychologist, I do not subscribe to the simplistic pluralism which sees Christ as one amongst several equally valid options. Surely, however, there is some basis in Scripture and perhaps in some patristic thought, for seeing Christ as "all in all". Is anything outside His power and jurisdiction? One may not accept other religions or deviations from Orthodoxy as true or valid, and yet nevertheless humbly confess that the mystery of the Divine economy is unknown, and take consolation that all will be justly resolved according to the Wisdom of God in the End Times. I say this is as much in the manner of a further question to you, as one better versed in the Orthodox spiritual life than I am, as anything else.

Theophilus, thank you for your input and links. I must confess that their length prevents me from offering any capable responses in the brief time I can currently devote to this message board. However, they do seem relevant and interesting, and I will take a closer look at the first opportunity. Again, sorry about this unresponsiveness to what I´m sure are very important issues. Tempus fugit!

ICXC
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,
You wrote:


This clarifies the purpose of our faculties, whether we are talking about thinking, memory, imagination, feeling, sensation, and most importantly for Christians, free will. However, it does not answer the question of how these faculties function when purified by an Orthodox spiritual life. Can you give me, for example, an instance of the purified use of the imagination in the life of an Orthodox saint?

The Lives of the Saints are a marvellous example of how the total man with all of his faculties is being purified. But I would not want to do more than generalise about this as this varies so much according to the individual person. About imagination- as a monastic I have always been warned to be very careful about this. We know its dangers in prayer as well as letting it be a guide to our spiritual life. Is it really a faculty that God created us with? Or is it a fallen expression of one or more of these faculties? The Holy Frs use the expression "simplicity or limpidity (like a clear liquid) of mind." In any case we should not confuse imagination with consciousness, remembrance or reflection- which are clearly God-given faculties.

I think there is a good illustration of this in a writing of St Tikhon of Zadonsk called Confession & Thanksgiving to Christ, Son of God, the Saviour of the World." St. Tikhon is often said to have been influenced by Protestant Pietism in an accusatory way & this writing at first sight could be said to fit into this category. There is such a depth of feeling in it that one could say that it is close to a Protestant emotional response to Christ. But this I think is quite false. First of all, the themes which St Tikhon deals with in this writing are in fact very Patristic. And if you pay attention to how he writes you will see that his language is also quite Patristic. What is unique is how he expresses himself with such immediate love concerning our Lord's suffering for us. But the expression of love should not be confused with an over blown emotionality & then called Protestant Pietism.

Similarly St Tikhon writes, "But look, O my soul, and see how the King of Heaven was welcomed by His subjects, in what manner they honoured their God Incarnate." Is St Tikhon really using imagination here or is it reflection? There is a difference.

You also wrote:


As a psychologist, I do not subscribe to the simplistic pluralism which sees Christ as one amongst several equally valid options. Surely, however, there is some basis in Scripture and perhaps in some patristic thought, for seeing Christ as "all in all". Is anything outside His power and jurisdiction? One may not accept other religions or deviations from Orthodoxy as true or valid, and yet nevertheless humbly confess that the mystery of the Divine economy is unknown, and take consolation that all will be justly resolved according to the Wisdom of God in the End Times.

Yes I think this is the correct way to see how God's providence works. All that is good can only be fulfilled in Christ. In that sense pluralism should not be just thrown into the waste basket.

What I specifically was referring to is the popular idea that there are multiple "value systems" all of equal value; that life is like a shopping centre where you just pick and choose what value system you want. One person chooses Christ, another Mohammed- it's all the same. Certainly as you say you do not accept this.

There is something crucial here that refers back to the original theme of this thread- mysticism in Orthodoxy & elsewhere. Essentially Orthodox mysticism is the transformation of sin & death through our life in Christ; dying to sin we find our life in Christ.

The modern view spoken above however is quite different from this. It takes contradictory forces- life & death- & resolves them in Christ. Here we are no longer talking about man gaining the victory over death through Christ about "death being trampled down by death." Rather here death is of equal value to life & Christ's role is to reconcile opposing forces.

This vision is fundamentally dialectical. It glories in God's creation as does Orthodoxy- but then it contradicts itself by instinctively feeling that the primeval tragedy is that there is anything distinct from God. And the only salvation from this is to somehow resolve everything back into God. This in fact is what mysticism will always be outside of Orthodoxy for outside of the revelation of the Church our vision of God's creation will be fallen.

This fallen vision is dialectical because instead of defining or rather knowing that the fundamental tragedy is the attempt of man to find life outside of God- he begins to see the fundamental tragedy as being that there is anything distinct from God. To say it again- mysticism of this type means "melting back into God" or "the final resolution of all things". It does not really mean finding Life in Christ.

This mystical vision is at one with that of the filioque since the latter is also a result of making the same mistake of vision this time on the theological level. The filioque arises from the same perspective that distinction implies a fall. So in this case God is defined by simplicity rather than His being Three Persons One in essence. And the Three Persons are defined by their essential qualities rather than their Personal characteristics.

As amazing as it may seem there is a straight line from post-schism spirituality & the filioque to present day spirituality. Although the outward expression of the faith & piety may have greatly changed in the west there is still the same preoccupation with whether we find our life in Christ (as He defines it); or whether we lose our life in Christ.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Fr Raphael,

Thank you for your response, which offers me much food for thought and is filled with suggestions for further study.


About imagination- as a monastic I have always been warned to be very careful about this. We know its dangers in prayer as well as letting it be a guide to our spiritual life. Is it really a faculty that God created us with? Or is it a fallen expression of one or more of these faculties? The Holy Frs use the expression "simplicity or limpidity (like a clear liquid) of mind." In any case we should not confuse imagination with consciousness, remembrance or reflection- which are clearly God-given faculties.

I am aware of the caution with which the imagination is addressed in Orthodox spirituality, since it may lead to plani or prelest. However, here you seem to be suggesting, forgive me if I'm mistaken, that there is not even a good or holy use for this faculty. Yet my difficulty with this, if I understand you correctly, is that all creative endeavour relies on the use of the imagination. What would Dostoyevsky have written had he not used his imagination? And how shall we begin to grasp the Parables and the Gospel narratives without using our imagination? And in prayer itself, especially in the traditional prayers, such as that to our guardian angel for example, are there not some fundamental images employed to help us in reaching out to the spiritual realm? One may refrain from adding to or elaborating these images, but surely the imagination is put to good use in helping us picture the scene as it is described (and no further)? Of course, one could argue that during such prayer a combination of the other faculties you mention, namely consciousness, remembrance and reflection are being used, and not imagination; so that we are not imagining the spiritual realm, but in fact becoming conscious of it in remembrance and reflection. This notion, while appealing, seems initially even more dangerous to me, since it encourages the idea that the images we are experiencing are not products of our own imagination, but are in fact "discoveries" of the other world. Forgive me Fr Raphael, if I seem persistent in my defense of the imagination; I am only trying to come to a satisfactory resolution of this issue from an Orthodox standpoint (as Theophilus has suggested, the Western Church appears to already address this issue adequately, both in its negative and in its purified form).


St Tikhon writes, "But look, O my soul, and see how the King of Heaven was welcomed by His subjects, in what manner they honoured their God Incarnate." Is St Tikhon really using imagination here or is it reflection? There is a difference.

The example you offer from St Tikhon, about whom I know very little, is just such an example of what I'm trying to say above. If this is a reference to the events of Palm Sunday, how shall "reflection" on them ever come about without "imagination" preceding it?


This fallen vision is dialectical because instead of defining or rather knowing that the fundamental tragedy is the attempt of man to find life outside of God- he begins to see the fundamental tragedy as being that there is anything distinct from God. To say it again- mysticism of this type means "melting back into God" or "the final resolution of all things". It does not really mean finding Life in Christ.

This is really profound. You seem to be saying that there is an important difference between lamenting the ancestral decision to try to become God without God, and lamenting the very existence of creation, thereby blaspheming against God's good and wise act (dare I say "intention"?) to create in the first place. Have I understood this correctly? The former lament leads to an emphasis on ethical and ontological repentance, whereas the latter would lead to a sort of sufi-like longing to be destroyed and scattered to the four winds, as it were. And, needless to say, the former is the harder option from the point of view of the sheer effort involved. But again, surely there is also in all mystical experience the necessary element of passivity, however much nepsis needs to accompany it in our own Tradition?

There is enough in your last post to write several dissertations, I think. Thank you again, Fr Raphael.

ICXC
Byron

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Byron,

Please be assured that for the most part what I posted yesterday & also the following are just my thoughts on this topic. One difficulty is that what we are trying to deal with is quite subtle.

You wonder if the imagination is always used for example when understanding the Gospels or praying to a saint- to "picture the scene" as you say. It's a wonderful question actually. But I don't think the imagination is to be used in these actions.

First of all though of course we need to be using the word 'imagination' in the same sense. By imagination I mean the use of images in considering what is before us- I believe this is the Patristic definition. And that is why I was trying to distinguish this from conscious reflection which is something quite different.

My understanding of this is that conscious reflection although affected by our sinfulness is a God-given faculty. Imagination however (as distinguished from memory)is not a God-given faculty but is rather some sort of distortion of the faculty of self-consciousness.
I think when we pray the consciousness is to be as simple & free of images as possible. Thus for example when we pray to our guardian angel we are not supposed to imagine our guardian angel & then pray to this inner image. We just simply pray. So it is with prayer at the Church services. If we are singing texts concerning our Lord's Passion & Resurrection we are not to imagine the Passion & Resurrection. Just simply pray putting aside all images. Hopefully in the Holy Spirit we shall have a participation in these things that goes far beyond any images of our own.

I would also say that this is what St Tikhon of Zadonsk is describing. He is not describing an imagined experience. Rather he is speaking out of his experience of his life in Christ of the suffering of our Lord for us- and from this comes his beautiful writing of love for our Lord.

Again consciousness of our Lord's love for us & reflection on this does not necessitate any images at all. If we speak or consider Palm Sunday it does not mean we should imagining the Palm Sunday scene- then we would be back into the realm of imagination & we should be careful about this.

A lot of my poor understanding of the fall into dialectic comes from St Maximos the Confessor & also Dr Joseph Farrell. I think you raise an important point about the difference between Orthodox & non-Orthodox mysticism. Orthodox mysticism is grounded on the understanding that we are created as distinct creatures by God to find our life in Him. The fundamental tragedy is that we fell away from this life- & this defines what death & sin is.

The non-Orthodox definition either explicitly (as in Oriental mysticism) or implicitly (as in the west) sees the fundamental tragedy as being that there we are distinct from God in the first place. Dr Farrell I think used to explain that this arose in the west because having started with the fact of Divine Simplicity of the Holy Trinity (rather than the Divine Persons) the fundamental 'fact' of God is that He is Being rather than Life. This means that all outside of God (ie His creation) is to a greater or lesser degree defined as "not-Being". Although it would be most unjust to say that the west loses track completely of what sin means in the proper sense-from this time on it also partly redefines sin to mean the above "not-Being". Isn't this after all Anselm & Calvin's point?- we ARE sinful & this is an affront to the Dignity of God. So only a pure God (Christ) can satisfy the "justice of God."
Lastly you brought up the question of passivity. Nepsis is a real struggle as is everything involved in our life in Christ. As the Holy Fathers say, "No blood, no Spirit."

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

I think we have to understand that in the classical understanding of reality, our mind's eye perceives a material image of something based on the senses that is fundamentally distorted, thus creating in the imagination a false view of reality. This is consistent with, and frankly borrowed from Plato. Physical reality as we perceive it forms a false impression. Through a combination of factors, the senses can be retrained, and consciousness transformed, such that the veil over reality can be removed, (apocalypse) at least to a certain degree, so that we (or the saint) can see things that more closely approximate to what they truly are. Protestants of course call this asceticism works righteousness and have completely rejected this tradition. But the bias toward intellectualism in Latin Christianity creates the same result.

In our tradition, it is Pentacost that is, in a sense, the most important feast, because it was at Pentacost that the veil over reality was removed, and our senses were restored to their created state, at least paradigmatically. Prior to Pentacost, Christ was not "seen" for who he truly was. Even some who saw him in his resurrected state did not recognize him, until He chose to reveal himself as the Christ. This choosing by God resolves the issue of works righteousness for us, but, alas, try to explain that to someone fixated on that issue.

So imagination is really something that is largely perjorative in our ascetic tradition. It is the mind's response to false perception, false images. you can see a treatment of this in St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain's Spiritual Counsels. Now, one can arrive at a fundamentalist view of imagination quite easily, and therefore condemn any and all non-Christian art, literature, etc. But I think that misses the point.

One very poignant story on this issue is from the story of a Russian priest in the Gulag, Fr. Arseny which has become popular and has been going the rounds since its publication by SVS Press. In the story, the priest has a near-death experience. AFterwards, he can see the fire of each person's soul. Even in the most evil people among him he can see at least a dim flame. And some people who he had judged harshly give off a very bright flame. Now, we can take this literally or symbolically, or a bit of the two combined together, but in its essence it sums up the issue for the Orthodox. In the Latin Church, knowing is not like seeing. In Orthodoxy, it's all about seeing.

[Daniel Jeandet]

Why do we assume art is made in the imagination? Maybe real art happens when imagination is restrained. The Orthodox composer Arvo Part has written the most beautiful music for chanting St Johns Passion, and he used special formulas and mathematical processes to arrive at the notes, pauses etc. I believe he wanted to remove his own imagination from the artistic process. My opinion is that we have made an idol of human imagination.

[Eugene]

I think this commandment from Deuteronomy can be as well applied to our imagination - the images we create in our imagination easily become our idols that take the place of God in out heart. More general meaning of this commandment is rejection of any idol of human and wordly values we create - posessions, power, achievements, vainglory - these are all idols of our heart and mind. The way we get invloved in worshipping these idols is that we create an image of them in our mind (we usually create a dream or image of those values in our mind- dream/image of posessions, career or personal achievements etc.), and then we get attracted and addicted to it. This is why it is so important to reject imagination.

"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves--for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the LORD spoke unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire-- lest ye deal corruptly, and make you a graven image, even the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the heaven, the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth; and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath allotted unto all the peoples under the whole heaven." Deuter.4.15

"I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." Deuter.5.6.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

St. Maximos the Confessor says a number of things on the subject of imagination.


The intellect receives impassioned conceptual images in three ways: through the sense, through the body's condition and through the memory. It receives them through the sense when the senses themselves receive impressions from things in relation to which we have aquired passion, and when these things stir up impassioned thoughts in the intellect; through the body's condition when, as a result either of an undisciplined way of life, or of the activity of demons, or of some illness, the balance of elements in the body is disturbed and again the intellect is stirred to impassioned thoughts or to thoughts contrary to providence; through the memory when the memory recalls the conceptual images of things in relation to which we were once made passionate, and so stirs up impassioned thoughts in a similar way."


When the intellect gives attention to conceptual images of physical images of physical objects, it is assimilated to the configuration of each image. If it contemplates these objects spiritually, it is transformed in various ways according to which of them it contemplates. But once it is established in God, it loses form and configuration altogether, for by contemplating Him who is simple it becomes simple itself and wholly filled with spiritual radiance."

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Thank you Fr Raphael, for the above quotes from St Maximus. Wrt the first quote, it seems clear to me that impassioned conceptual images are impediments to spiritual growth. Such images (eg. impure thoughts, revenge fantasies etc.) can indeed come either directly via the senses; or through organic functional imbalance in the body caused by eg. overeating, lack of exercise and illness; or, they can be the direct result of the misanthropic activity of evil spirits. They can also come from memories of things we were impassioned about in the past, which are resisting our attempts to be rid of them by irritating our imaginations in this way.


If it contemplates these objects spiritually, it is transformed in various ways according to which of them it contemplates

All of this is very useful and, it seems to me, quite close to the real experience of praktiki. However, it is the second quote from St Maximus (above) which really focuses on a distinction I think is very important, and about which I would like to hear more from fellow monachosnet members. St Maximus seems to be saying, 1200 years before Feuerbach, that in terms of the faculty of the imagination, "you are what you eat". Would it be presumptuous to suggest that St Maximus might agree here that to imagine, let's say, a beautiful landscape, has a quite different effect on the soul than other, more destructive images would? It seems to me this would rescue great art from being consigned to the carnal and the psychological imagination, and go some way towards explaining the undoubtedly beneficial effect of eg. reading a good book or contemplating a beautiful painting. Daniel, I also love the music of Arvo Part, and it makes sense that such a spiritual artist would aspire to leave his imagination out of the process of composition. Although I know virtually nothing about iconography, I should imagine that the same aspiration exists there, to avoid man-made embellishments, and come as close to the Archetype as possible. But surely it is also in iconography, more clearly perhaps than anywhere else in the Church, where we clearly see the value and importance of (good) images. Granted, we are asked to perceive these images directly, through some special manner of pre-intellectual awareness, rather than ever being told to 'step into' the image and start imagining things; but St John of Damascus himself put paid to the Deuteronomical objections - which Evgeny rightly raises against the carnal imagination - to the holy images, in indicating the value of the Incarnation.


But once it is established in God, it loses form and configuration altogether, for by contemplating Him who is simple it becomes simple itself and wholly filled with spiritual radiance.

It also seems clear to me that St Maximus is saying that, however much the intellect is transformed by the contempation of images, there is a state of being beyond images, concepts, ideas etc., and it is to this formless abiding in God's presence that the spiritual seeker aspires. But again I would ask, in order to be able to let go of images, must we not have been able to hold on to them in the first place?

ICXC
Byron}

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Byron wrote:


Would it be presumptuous to suggest that St Maximus might agree here that to imagine, let's say, a beautiful landscape, has a quite different effect on the soul than other, more destructive images would? It seems to me this would rescue great art from being consigned to the carnal and the psychological imagination, and go some way towards explaining the undoubtedly beneficial effect of eg. reading a good book or contemplating a beautiful painting.

St. Maximos might agree that imagining a beautiful scene is more beneficial than imagining destructive images. But even beautiful scenes can be a temptation.

There is something about imagination in itself which can be fallen & harmful. Imagination is not a neutral faculty- it is not a mirror image of what we have seen or remember but rather a highly refracted image of what we remember.

Even the beautiful scene is only our impression of what we saw. And this impression can keep changing according to time & circumstance. Thus it is highly selective & more important- subjective. For the image is refracted through self & in this sense is not 'simple' as the Holy Fathers would define this.

This I think is where the subtle danger of imagination can creep in unnoticed for it is very easy for imagination to be self looking at self. Isn't this why after all this 'faculty' was so treasured by and even purposefully fired up by the Romantics and so has passed into our culture as an actual virtue of the 'natural man'?

Imagination takes faculties which are God created (consciousness, reflection, remembrance) & turns these into a way of self-absorbtion; of looking at our own images like a person admiring pictures at an art gallery. I think here we can see the danger of pride for we are dealing with something deeply connected to love of self. In a word imagination is us looking at our own version of reality and it is very difficult for us to not indulge in our own self-created images.

We are so used to living in this internal world as an inheritance of our modern world. But we must convert from this to attain to a simplicity of mind in Christ.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Ken McRae]

Dear Evgeny ~

I wish to thank you for your replies, and offer an apology for my bad manners in failing to reply to your posts. I have been preparing a reply but time has been a little tight for me of late, and a proper reply to your questions requires some free time to put together. I have been thinking about your questions daily, and wish you to know that I have read the article on Hesychasm, in the CE, which you asked about. I will provide a more complete answer later, but for now, I'd like to say that I thought the article poorly written and downright misleading at points. While it does represent a view or opinion held by some in the CC, I'm inclined to say it does not speak for the majority. As I say, I'll come back to it later with a more detailed reply.

At present, though, I'd like to point out the following books, as a partial demonstration of my claim, that there exists a tradition within Catholicsim very much akin to the spirit of Orthodox Hesychasm. Below you'll find four recommendations, but the last one is more of an essay than a full-length book. It can also be read online. I have posted here, as well, a considerable part of the last chapter of the first book, concerning the spirituality of the Jesus Prayer as practiced in the West. As you will see from the following, there is much in the Latin Church that is very similar, if not identical, to key aspects of Orthodox mysticism. For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that the spiritual writers of the Eastern Catholic Church would yield something even closer to home than the Latins.

I have prefaced this chapter, however, with one passages from Fr Lev Gillet's book, on 'The Jesus Prayer'; and another passage from Sergius Bolshakoff's 'Russian Mystics'. Once gain, Evgeny, I'm sorry for my tardiness, and will post again on your questions, as both the Lord and time permits.

Humbly in the Lord,
Theophilus


01) From 'On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus', by [Fr. Lev Gillet] the Monk from Mount Athos (http://www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2506):-

"Many seem to have built their whole spiritual life on the prayer of Jesus
... A certain bodily technique was practiced and recommended by the
masters of the prayer: immobility , regular breathing , fixing the eyes upon
' the heart ,' etc. ... These ' physical' exercises were allowed only to those who
had an experienced director to help them. All the Fathers emphasized , how -
ever , that such methods were only ' crutches' to support the body and soul
while one is gaining control of oneself. The aim was to purify the body and
make it an instrument of prayer ... The invocation was repeated vocally as
well as mentally ... To avoid mechanical repetition one modified words from
time to time , but not too often ... Some found it sufficient to call out: 'Jesu ,
Jesu' ...
"Is this a prayer for monks who alone can dedicate their whole time to
it ? The prayer of Jesus is in fact widely practiced by the lay people of the
Orthodox Church. So simple is it that no learning is required for remembering
it. It can rest on the lips of the sick too weak to say a Pater ... Many go about
their usual work repeating this prayer. Housework , ploughing , factory labor
are not incompatible with it , and in fact the drudgery of some forms of manu-
al work can be a help to concentration. It is possible , too, though more diffi-
cult , to join intellectual occupations with this continual prayer. It saves one
from many uncharitable , vain words or thoughts: it sanctifies one's daily toil
and relationships. The words become familiar; they seem after a time to flow
of themselves. More and more they bring one into the practice of the Presence
of God ... Gradually , the words may seem to disappear; a silent , speechless
vigil with a profound peace of heart and mind is sustained through the bustle
of daily life. But in cases of distraction , temptation , tiredness or aridity it is
useful to recur again to the vocal invocation: ... 'I sleep, but my heart waketh'
( Canticles 5:2 ) . The act of prayer has passed into a state of prayer.
"Like every spiritual way , this one needs fidelity , perseverance , courage.
But this continual memory of Jesus Christ deepens in us and throws a new light
on one's whole life. It becomes linked with the remembrance of Calvary and of
the Last Supper; our communion and the sacrifice of the altar penetrate the
heart , mind and will offered to the incessant invocation of the name of Jesus.
On the other hand , we can apply this name to people , books , flowers , to all
things we meet , see or think . The name of Jesus may become a mystical key
to the world , an instrument of the hidden offering of everything and everyone ,
setting the divine seal on the world. One might perhaps speak here of the priest-
hood of all believers. In union with our High Priest , we implore the Spirit: Make
my prayer into a sacrament ( Gorodetzky , N. The Prayer of Jesus in Blackfriars
XXIII , no. 263 , February 1942; quoted at length in The Jesus Prayer , by ' The
Monk of the Eastern Church;' N.B. Gorodetzky is also the author of St. Tikhon
Zadonsky , Inspirer of Dostoevsky . ) ."

02) From 'Russian Mystics', by Sergius Bolshakoff (http://www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2627):-

"Although St. Tikhon does not mention the Prayer of Jesus , his doctrine on
prayer is akin to Hesychasm. A prayer without the attention of heart and
mind is nothing , whether it is said vocally or mentally. The reading of the office
in the same way is useless. Prostrations and mortifications do not help if they are
divorced from true prayer.
"Higher prayer and indeed the only prayer is that of aspirations , when the
mind and heart , without words , even interior words , elevate themselves to God.
This is , of course , true contemplative prayer ... ( Bolshakoff , Russian Mystics ,
pp. 72-73 ) ."


03) The Name of Jesus (http://www.monasterygreetings.com/Products.asp?PCID=205) - By Irénée Hausherr, SJ - Cistercian Publications

"How did the Jesus Prayer evolve? This penetrating study examines the names used to address the Lord through 1500 years of Christian history and traces the method of continual prayer taught and practiced by Eastern ascetics. A hard-to-find, but beloved book." - Paperback - 358 pages

The following essay constitute the major portion of the concluding chapter in Irenee Hausherr's book on 'The Name of Jesus' (pp. 331-344):-

001 - In this concluding chapter it may be helpful to round out our
study by considering a few examples of saints and spiritual writers of the West who practised and taught secret meditation just as did the famous fathers of the East. The examples will be those that come to my mind most readily. Others could add to this list and I would hope that they will. The complete list might be surprisingly long.

002 - We may begin with the Carthusians, hesychasts of the West:

Among the Carthusians Hugh of Balma, writing towards
the end of the thirteenth century, probably before 1290 ( this
would make him a contemporary of Nicephorus the Solitary),
has left us a treatise 'De triplici via ad sapientiam'. This was
eventually attributed to St. Bonaventure and re-titled 'Theologia
Mystica'. It had an extensive influence ... serving as the point of
departure for a whole spirituality of aspirations which won
favour among authors of different schools such as Henry of
Heep, Alvarez de Paz , Cardinal Bona ... [ etc. ]

003 - What should be emphasized is the phrase 'point of departure'. The monk Nicephorus must also be called a point of departure but he is clearly in continuity with the tradition of the ancient fathers begun with St. Antony. Cardinal Bona was also conscious of being in a tradition. He quoted St. Antony, St. Augustine, Cassian and St. John Chrysostom before quoting Tertullian, William of St. Thierry, and St. Lawrence Justinian - all in favor of aspirations. From St. Augustine he cited the well-known passage in the 'Letter to Proba': "It is reported that the monks of Egypt say frequent , very short , quick prayers , like arrows , so that their attentiveness (which is so necessary in prayer) may not slacken or grow dull." In passing, it should be noted that this proves St. Augustine was aware of the practice of krypte melete among the Egyptian hermits and gave these short prayers the name 'ejaculations' (orationes iaculatas) by comparing them with the flight of an arrow.

004 - Cardinal Bona drew quotations from many other authorities,
beginning with Christ our Saviour himself who used short pryaers during the agony in the garden and on the cross. In the long list that follows there is no discernible order: Nehemiah, Judith, the holy ones in heaven who cry 'Holy, holy, holy' continually, day and night. Then St. Basil who advised the sinner to cry out with the Canaanite woman, 'Have mercy on me, Son of David'. And St Marcella who, as St. Jerome tells us, was constantly singing this verse from the Psalms: "I have hidden your words in my heart lest I sin against you." (119:10) Also St Malachy, quoted from St Bernard's biography, and Thais, the converted prostitute who was taught by St Paphnutius to repeat, "You have created me, now have mercy on me." Cassian is there, of course, with his Deus in adiutorium meum intende. Then there is a general reference to the "many examples in the Lives of the Fathers," especially Abba Isaiah, Abba Macarius, Moses the Ethiopian, Paul the Monk who regularly recited three hundred prayers, a virgin who recited seven hundred, Simon Stylites, and so on.

005 - It is clear that the Latins who, like Cardinal Bona, were
promoting the method of praying by aspirations could trace this method as far back in history as the Orientals could the Jesus Prayer. In fact, they traced it to the very same scriptural and monastic sources. Cardinal Bona stated his conclusion in these words:

I maintain, therefore, that the shortest way to God, to intimate
union with the Verbum, and to the heights of mystical theology,
is the way of anagogic movements or the practice of aspirations.
In support of this thesis I can quote the highest authorities. For
instance, the Carmelite, John of Jesus Mary, writes as follows :
'It is the unanimous opinion of everyone I have read that the soul
is elevated to the highest knowledge or experience of God by the
use of aspirations, so that if the soul prefers this angelic exercise
to all others and practises it diligently it will profit immensely.'

006 - On the following page, Bona quoted another Carmelite who was even more categorical. It was Thomas of Jesus:

According to the holy fathers, and other mystics who have
experienced it , there is no shorter or easier or nobler way to
ascend to God than that which is called in the language of the
mystics 'unitive wisdom' or 'unitive love'. This consists of
anagogic movements or aspirations by which the soul strives
to raise itself to God and adhere to Him by ardent longing.

007 - The Cardinal assures us that he could fill pages and pages with quotations in the same vein from the works of Bonaventure, Henry of Heep, John Gerson, Denys the Carthusian, Constantine of Barbanson, and others.

008 - That should be evidence enough to show the existence of a
spirituality of aspirations, at least on the speculative, theoretical level. The West was definitely familiar with the traditional doctrine of the usefulness of short and frequent prayers, as transmitted through Cassian and many others. And this form of spirituality was certainly practised by many in the West as well. Only a few indications of the fact will be given here, but anyone who cared to make a thorough-going study of the subject would be doing a great service to the cause of truth and the history of spirituality.

009 - We will begin with an early Jesuit text which is equal to anything in the Philokalia. It quotes from a homily of St Basil:

This is what our Holy Fathers desired of the members of our
Society ... that wherever they found themselves, and whatever
business they might be engaged in, they should fly mentally
to God by means of frequent aspirations and thus find God
present everywhere. They should consider this to be the very
best method of prayer since by it they refer themselves and all
their actions to the greater glory and honor of God ... If we truly
appreciated this practice of directing the mind to God above by
a prayer in which the soul consecrates itself to its Lord, we would
see that this alone deserves the name of true prayer. For St Basil
teaches that we ought to use every single moment for prayer by
thanking God constantly and by directing the eye of the mind
towards His supreme majesty. But you will manage to pray
truly and perfectly without ceasing only when every occupation
and activity of your life draws you into closer union with the
Divine Will, so that your life itself may be and may deserve to
be called a kind of continual and undivided prayer.

The author of this is Claudius Acquaviva, the fifth general of the Jesuits. This passage was taken from a letter he addressed to the fathers and brothers of the Society of Jesus, August 14th, 1599. The letter attempted to explain 'what is the custom in the Society concerning prayer and penance in accordance with our Rule'. In such a context, it is not surprising to see the high respect paid to the practice of frequent, short prayers.

010 - From the seventeenth century there is a six hundred forty-eight page book published at Lille by Antoine de Balinghem, a Jesuit from Saint-Omer, entitled De Orationibus Jaculatoriis. It was reprinted the following year at Antwerp. And there is a Thesaurus Orationum Jaculatoriarum dated 1626, with one hundred and sixty-four pages, published at Cologne. In 1684, Michel Boutauld of Paris published a book of one hunfred forty-one pages called Methode pour converser avec Dieu. This work went through numerous editions and alterations and was translated into German, English, Flemish, and Italian (one Italian version was done by St Alphonsus Liguori).

011 - Early in the eighteenth century, an Italian Jesuit, Pietro Francesco Orta, a native of Dolina in Istria, published a book on ejaculatory prayer which is worth examining in some detail. There is a list of one thousand ejaculations, each given in Latin followed by an Italian translation and a reference to the source and the names of holy persons who may have used that particular prayer. The names come from everywhere in Christendom, West and East; and include men and women, laymen and religious, ancients and contemporaries, the learned and the unlettered, Franciscans and Dominicans, hermits and missionaries. The author informs us that short prayers were in frequent use already in the Old Testament and that the saints of the New Testament all made use of them, to a greater or lesser degree. At times the author's references are vague, at least by our standards, but at other times they are quite precise. For instance, he writes:

It is recorded in the Short Chronicle of Mark of Lisbon,
Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 99, Number 302, how the
seraphic St Francis used to repeat frequently that familiar
saying of his, 'Blessed be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

All such aspirations have the same purpose as the Jesus Prayer - fulfillment of the gospel precept, 'Pray always and never lose heart' (Lk 18:1) and 'Stay awake and pray always' (Lk 22:46). But fidelity to ejaculatory prayer leads also to numerous other benefits which Pietro Orta has enumerated in a lengthy list. This series of enthusiastic promises is in the same tradition as Cassian speaking of the Deus in adiutorium or the Russian Pilgrim eulogizing the Jesus Prayer, Orta wrote:

The holy fathers and the masters of the spiritual life had
the greatest esteem for the practice of ejaculatory prayers.
They tell us that such prayers promote strong and solid
virtues which are prerequisite to the state of perfection.
Further, they help root out faults, especially those that are
the most habitual and engrained. They cool the heat of the
strongest passions of the heart, hatred and lust, so that these
passions are virtually extinguished. They provide consolation
in time of trial, counsel in time of doubt, and protection in
time of danger. They sound the alarm in occasions of sin
and help in recovering after a fall. They make the tongue
more prudent in speech and the heart more careful in
conversation. They inspire total confidence in God's
provident love. They revive a flagging faith, confirm a
wavering hope, enkindle a cooling charity.

012 - Although there are a thousand different aspirations listed in the book, the Jesus Prayer is not among them. The one closest to it is this: 'Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews, have mercy on me ' (no. 37). Something that is found much more frequently than in Eastern writings is the use of the name 'Jesus' without any title or with simply a modifier like 'most sweet Jesus' or 'good Jesus'. There are also a number of aspirations directed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

013 - Coming closer to our own time, we can give a few examples of Roman rite Christians who have practised secret meditation (krypte melete) with an intensity and freedom of spirit that easily rivals that of the Russian Pilgrim of interior prayer. This is not to suggest, of course, that there could ever be rivalry among men of God whose greatest wish is to share their riches with others.

014 - Between the two world wars there appeared the biography of Father William Doyle, SJ. His personal diary records his efforts to increase the number of aspirations per day from 10,000 to over 100,000. But Father Doyle was surpassed by Brother Mutien-Marie of the Brothers of Christian Schools, who is said to have made as many as 370,000 aspirations a day. Monsignor Picard, the biographer of Brother Mutien-Marie, compared the two men by saying:

Father Doyle exerted all his strength to say as many aspirations
as he could. In 1911 he wrote: 'I felt urged today to make an
effort to reach 10,000 aspirations each day ... This would mean
three and a half million acts in the year.' On July 26th, 1913, he
resolved to do 20,000. On January 1st, 1915, he raised the number
to 25,000 daily. He saw more and more clearly that to achieve this
quota he would generously and resolutely have to banish every
idle thought [recall here the doctrine of Diodochus of Photice on
the memory of God]. And he spoke of making his life 'a martyr-
dom of prayer', of that continual prayer which had become his
interior life. He resolved to make 50,000 aspirations daily
beginning May 1st, 1916. After this the pace accelerated. On
December 13th he wrote of reaching and trying to maintain
100,000 daily. Two months later, February 13th, 1917, he made
a bargain with the Lord to give him a soul 'for every thousand
aspirations made over the daily 100,000'. The final number
which we read in Father Doyle's notes, dated just a few days
before his death, is 120,000. Ten years before, in 1907, his
beginning efforts could scarcely accomplish one thousand
aspirations in a day.

Nevertheless Father Doyle fell far short of the record established
by Brother Mutien-Marie [Gabriel Wiaux 1895-1940]. Already
in 1920 or 1921 Brother was completing a daily quota of from
thirty to forty thousand aspirations. During his second novitiate
the number climbed to 100,000 and beyond. His diary claims
120,000 on certain days, which was the maximum reached by
Father Doyle. A few days of retreat in 1920 permitted Brother
Mutien-Marie to reach 200,000. In 1925 he attained 300,000.
The highest number he tells of saying is 370,000; this happened
on January 30th, 1935. During the last years of his life he
maintained and even accelerated this rhythm.

On the 3rd of March, 1936, Brother Mutien-Marie wrote the
following testimony:-

"A long time ago I needed to use many words
to pray, but now for many years the loving
thought of God has been enough for me. How-
ever, I still need to carry a chaplet in my hand
at all times. I have a special chaplet, without
cross or medal and with only one large bead
on it . It never leaves me; I use it as an external
aid to keep my mind and heart fixed on God. By
holding it in my hand I can finger it constantly
without being noticed. This is extremely helpful,
I assure you. In the midst of trials or pain or
headache or fever I am always touching it and
always loving the good Lord, our good Jesus,
and our good Mother in heaven. Vocal prayer
quickly wears me out and distracts me. My
habitual state for many years has been simple,
loving union. I do nothing but love. My particu-
lar, personal vocation is to love. I love on behalf
of those who labor."

015 - The last example will be a Bavarian Jesuit who was a
missionary in Brazil, Father Jean-Baptiste Reus (1886-1947).
His biography is being written by F. Baumann. Father Baumann also had an article in the periodical, Ewige Anbetung (July, 1958, pp. 97-106) in which he said:

Father Reus firmly believed that perfect love was impossible
without the continual practice of the memory of God. To
achieve this he chose as an ejaculatory prayer the names
'Jesus, Mary, Joseph'. He repeated these names with many
thoughts of faith and love and zeal all directed toward the
goal of perfect love.

Father Reus repeated these names with increasing frequency. He used a special chaplet which he held in his left hand; some thought that he was constantly praying the rosary, for he wrote:

'I would not dare to offer the holy Mother of God a rosary
which I did not say with as much recollection as possible;
so I say my daily rosary, fifteen decades, in the presence of
the Blessed Sacrament.'

But on the chaplet in his left hand he was saying his short prayer: 2,500 a day in November, 1917; 12,000 in 1935; and more than 20,000 a day in 1943, to make a yearly average of eight million. Numerically this is a figure far below the average attained by the Russian Pilgrim or by Brother Mutien-Marie. Father Reus said his prayers quite slowly, taking around six hours to say 12,000 invocations. In addition, he had his daily mass, breviary, meditation and rosary.

016 - The objection might be raised that aspirations like these are
indeed ejaculatory prayers but the Jesus Prayer is not an ejaculatory prayer. Personally I cannot see such distinctions. It is my conviction that except for the difference in words we have the same exercise of krypte ergasia with St Arsenius as with Father Doyle. The words have an entirely secondary importance - as all the authors maintained up to the time of pseudo-Chrysostom and Philemon. The formula used differs widely in the West, as it did among the earlier Eastern authors. There is no difference between East and West in the seriousness of their search for continual prayer or in the high esteem they have for effective means. The only difference is that in the Byzantine empire, krypte melete was taught primarily by monks, by hesychasts, so that the practice even came to be known as 'hesychasm', whereas in the West, especially in recent times, it seems to have been recommended and practised more by those in the active life who have made it the 'soul of their apostolate' and their own special means of sanctification. This difference may also explain something else. The hesychast tradition evolved naturally to the point where one single formula predominated because the life-style of the hesychast was pretty much the same everywhere and in every century. But the life-style of the apostolic laborer demands continual change and adaptation, and there is a corresponding multiplication and variation of prayer formulas. Someone in the active ministry has continually to confront new sources of distrction that present themselves as he goes about the daily duties of his apostolate. The hesychast need confront little more than the invisible enemy within himself; for that purpose Evagrius had collected a large number of scriptural formulas in his Antirrheticos, but subsequent tradition (St Barsanuphius) eliminated them as too cumbersome a system to operate.

017 - The same impractical, idealistic mentality that inspired the
Antirrheticos seems to lie also behind the efforts of some who have published books of collected aspirations. Cardinal Bona is a good example. He composed a 'little forest of aspirations' running to forty columns of small print which is, to say the least, too much to chose from. His Preface to Chapter Nine is very optimistic but it is not exactly a contagious optimism. Although admitting that it should not be hard for anyone to find in his own heart the makings of a suitable short prayer, he said:

Nevertheless, so that no ascetic may be left in dryness for
lack of words, and so that the mystic fire may never die
on the altar of the heart for lack of fuel, I have collected
from Scripture and the fathers a little forest of aspirations
for beginners, for the advanced, and for the perfect ... You
will find them all here, arranged in groups of ten for easy
memorization. Spend a few days learning them by heart.
For what good is it to have a multitude of aspirations
written in a book if they are not also written and engraved
in the memory so as to be ready for use at any hour and any
moment ?

Cardinal Bona must have had, or thought that his readers had, remarkable powers of memory. Today it would take some people several days to learn just one or two of these aspirations. Often they are five or six lines long.

018 - The Cardinal's 'little forest' is about as far removed from nature as an asphalt highway, but life and growth can triumph over many an obstacle. Father Doyle, Brother Mutien-Marie, Father Reus, and all who truly wish to live in God will not be bothered for long with artificialities however well-constructed. Each one will discover his own favorite aspiration and will stick to it or vary it according to the rhythm of his own spiritual development. It is also interesting, though not surprising, that these saintly men and women who may never have read John Climacus or any Estern author tend spontaneously to compare their practice of saying aspirations with the process of respiration. For example, Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, who never read any of the hesychast writers, could say, 'Aspirative prayer is to me almost as natural as breathing ... '

019 - The Jesus Prayer can even evolve into what may be called the Mary Prayer, and still produce the same effects. This has been shown in a deep and delightful little book by a Carmelite of Provence, Father John of Jesus-Mary, entitled Notre-Dame de la Montee du Carmel. The demonstration is all the more convincing because the author never says a word about the Jesus Prayer and may not even be familiar with it. He knows Cassian, however, and reprints part of the Latin text of 'Conference X ' in an appendix. It is a pleasure to read in Chapter Five 'Trois secrets de perfection' (pp.68-82) how the Carmelite summarizes and comments on 'the narrative of Abba Isaac'. He sounds at times like St Barsanuphius criticizing the complicated Evagrian Antirrhesis. Father John writes:

It is a waste of time and energy to search in the arsenal of
spiritual defences for a weapon that will be particularly
effective against this or that enemy. It is useless even to
know which enemy is attacking us. Besides it is often no
more than guesswork on our part when we try to analyze
the various movements and impulses that arise in our souls.

St Barsanuphius favored a simple invocation of the name 'Jesus'. Father John of Jesus-Mary, drawing on the tradition of St John of the Cross and St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, maintained that 'the invocation of the name of Mary has the same theological meaning as the verse Deus in adiutorium.' To prove his point he stressed the fact that all graces come to us through Mary. Consequently it should not be impossible that formulas such as the ancient Marian petition, 'We fly to thy patronage, most holy Mother of God', should lead one to the goal of all secret meditation, which is continual interior prayer. This seems also to have been the opinion of St Seraphim of Sarov, who gave the following advice:

In the afternoon, after resting, instead of saying the molitva
Iisusova, say "Most holy Mother of God, save me, a sinner."

020 - In a recent article, Dom Bede Winslow, OSB, expressed this wish: 'I would like to see the time when Orthodox monks might find Eastern Catholics imbued with the spirit of hesychasm and practising the Jesus Prayer.' I think it can be said that his wish is already fulfilled, if not to the letter at least as to what constitutes the spirit of the Jesus Prayer. As for the letter, it has been said often enough that the letter kills. The letter leads to rigidity, narrowness, exclusivity. The 'multiform wisdom' of God (Eph. 3:10) uses a variety of ways to lead all men to the same ultimate goal; the liberty of sons of the Father is a sign of the presence of the Spirit. There are indications even with the emergence of the Jesus Prayer that this liberty never completely disappeared from Eastern spirituality. Freedom has certainly diminished, however, in the course of centuries, according to ordinary psychological laws governing fashion and popularity, which are valid even for religious devotions.

021 - Bishop Palladius asked the question, 'How can the human mind be united to God without interruption?' The anchorite Diocles answered him, 'If the soul is concerned with a thought or action that is holy or devout, then it is with God.' What is needed today is a similar attitude of respect toward the freedom of interior prayer. There is no need to impose laws on the prayer life of other people or to make propaganda for particular methods of interior prayer, however marvellous they may seem to be. It is good, certainly, to make such methods known, but within the limits of humility and prudence, and without flaunting their superiority over other equally valid approaches.

022 - St Francis Xavier, we may be sure, knew nothing about hesychasm. And surely his father in God, St Ignatius, never commanded him to practise the Jesus Prayer. But Francis did so. Here is the account left to us by the Chinese youth who watched Francis die at the age of forty-six and apparently as completely alone as Christ had been on the cross:

With his eyes raised to heaven and with an expression and
a look full of joy he spoke at length in a loud voice with our
Lord, using the various language he knew. I heard him repeat
again and again, 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me; have
mercy on my sins'. He continued in this state until Monday,
November 28th, which was the eighth day of his illness. Then
he stopped speaking and for three days, until noon on Thursday,
he was not aware of anything and did not eat anything. Thursday
at noon he regained his senses and his speech. I heard him call
particularly on the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
which was always one of his greatest devotions. And also he was
saying these words under his breath: 'Jesus, Son of David, have
mercy on me! O virgin Mother of God, remember me!' With these
and similar words on his lips he continued until Friday evening.
A little before dawn on Saturday morning, seeing that he was
dying, I placed a candle in his hands. Then with the name of
Jesus on his lips he rendered his soul into the hands of his Lord
and Maker, in great peace and tranquility.

023 - Some might still maintain that St. Francis Xavier was not reciting the Jesus Prayer. He was not, perhaps, using the traditional formula. But surely, considering the spirit of his prayer, it would be true to say that not since the death of the good thief on the cross, of the death of Stephen the protomartyr, has the invocation of the Lord Jesus and his Blessed Mother known a more touching triumph.

=>> End of Passage <<=

04) The Invocation of the Name of Jesus: As Practiced in the Western Church (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1887752269/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-5513609-2744700#reader-link) - by Rama Coomaraswamy

"The method of prayer known as Hesychast or the Prayer of Jesus, as practiced in the Eastern Orthodox Church, has in the past few years become a central focus of Western Catholics and Christians in general who are interested in devotional or contemplative practices (such as the Centering Prayer movement). In this anthology of writings from the Fathers of the Roman Church, Rama Coomaraswamy shows that this interest is not just a recent phenomenon, but that the invocation of the Holy Name extends throughout the history of Catholicism, especially as "individual prayer (as opposed to canonical)" which "has as its aim…the purification of the soul" and "has the virtue (strength) of re-establishing equilibrium and restoring peace, in a word, of opening us up to grace." Coomaraswamy stresses that this renewal is especially necessary for contemporary individuals who have so often lost sight of both the purpose and method of prayer in their lives and no longer have any real connection with a traditional praxis that "makes the divine Logos present in man ... etc." (http://www.fonsvitae.com/namejes.html)

05) PRAYING THE NAME OF JESUS: THE ANCIENT WISDOM OF THE JESUS PRAYER (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764804960/qid=1109813158/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5513609-2744700?v=glance&s=books) - by Wilfrid Stinissen - Liguori Publications

"Profoundly rooted in the Scriptures and first practiced centuries ago by the great teachers of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Jesus Prayer, with its many variations, is among the world's most ancient forms of devotion. But how does it apply to today's world? Why does it remain so popular among men and women, lay and religious, from all over the world and in every Christian religious tradition? With an eye toward the issues facing contemporary Christians, Father Wilfrid Stinissen shows readers the underlying reason why the Jesus Prayer continues to hold universal appeal for Orthodox and Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants, and all kinds of Christians of both Eastern and Western traditions - it is a sign of hope in an age of anxiety, a beacon of light in a world of uncertainty. The prayer, in its simplicity and clarity, brings the new life granted by the Holy Spirit into vivid focus. Easily understood yet deeply profound, this book traces the evolution of the Jesus Prayer from its beginnings in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and the words of the Old and New Testaments through Christianity's expansion into the second millennium. In penetrating style, Father Stinissen demonstrates how the Jesus Prayer sums up the whole of the Gospel, bringing the body and the heart closer to Christ. Powerful and Praying the Name of Jesus includes the classic introduction to this prayer form written by Archimandrite Lev Gillet. A great way for Christians of all ages to begin the path to a deeper prayer life." (http://www.iconbook.org/Spirituality.html) - Paperback - 144pp

06) The Wonders of the Holy Name (http://olrl.org/pray/wonders.shtml) - by Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P.

holy,name/,"Few Catholics today know about the amazing power of the Holy Name of Jesus. Urges us to invoke the name of Jesus often. By reverent use of the Holy Name, we can glorify God, call on His aid, pay our spiritual debts, assist the Poor Souls, etc. Remarkable!" (http://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage/product_id/384/keywords/wonders)- TAN Books

(Message edited by theophilus on 03 March, 2005)

(Message edited by theophilus on 05 March, 2005)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Theophilus,

You have been posting to monachos long enough for us to see that you are a person of good heart who is seeking Christ's Truth. So I ask the following not in a polemical but rather in a fraternal spirit.

As you probably know by now there are many more groups calling themselves Orthodox than there are true Orthodox churches or jurisdictions. Now most or all of these so-called Orthodox groups not only read literature apparently similar to that of the Orthodox. In fact they read the very same books as we do and believe that the life of their group is in accord with what they read. Now, from your reading in Orthodoxy, what would you say is the problem with this? In other words why does the Orthodox Church teach that one must be a member of the Church in order to understand the witness of the Church & to live it in an Orthodox way?

If I could offer one comment that came to mind while writing this. In the writings of St Irenaeos of Lyons there is a famous section where he compares the way in which heretics misuse Scripture to someone who takes pieces from a mosaic or picture & then rearranges them in the wrong order. In other words the original is true but the understanding of this outside of the Church will never be true. Why would this be so?

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Eugene]

Dear Theophilius,

Thanks a lot for your post, this is very interesting. Those quotes you posted show that the practical side of continious reciting of short prayers is fairly close between Orthodox and Catholics. There is, however, a theological side, namely the hesychastic teachings of St. Gregory Palamas (Hagiorite Tomos, Triads) and Constantinopol Council of 1349. It seems like the article in CE opposes particulary the theological side of hesychasm, but not so much the practical side. Do you know if Catholic Church authorities have ever made any official statements concerning the teachings of St. Gregory and the 1349 Constantinopol Council? If I'm not mistaking, rejecting that teaching by Catholic Church has been one of the points of doctrinal divergence between the Orthodox and Catholic faith, in addition to Filioque, the authority of Pope and others.

In Christ,
Evgeny

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear Evgeny,

The Catholic Encyclopedia you have referenced seems to have some problems. If you do a search in the Catholic Encyclopedia on Saint John of the Cross you will find that the commentary about him is very good. Now from what I understand Saint John of the Cross was said to have studied or is referenced as a practitioner of hesycasm and very Eastern appearing in his writings. So there we have it denounce the "system" but honor the practitioner of "the wildest form of mystic extravagance" in fact Saint him, rather odd. St. Theresa of Avila is also often also brought up as being of an eastern disposition, however I agree with Father Raphael's mosaic comments. I think you are very correct to mention that there is a theological side and as Orthodox Christians we remain Catholic as the terms can not be separated even though they often are to indicate the differences between the Orthodox faith and the Latins or "Catholics". It is the aforementioned doctrinal and theological unity that is referenced in the letter of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp in the 1st century or so which Fr. Georges Florovsky explains;

"This is the first written use, which has come down to us of the term "Catholic" Church. The word "catholic" means in Greek "universal" but the conception of catholicity cannot be measured by its world-wide expansion — "universality" does not express the Greek meaning exactly. ÊáèïëéêÞ comes from êáè’ ïëïõ, which first of all means the inner wholeness, not only of communion and in any case not of a simple empirical communion. Êáè’ ïëïõ is not the same as êáôÜ ðáíôüò. It belongs not to the phenomenal and empirical, but to the nominal and ontological plane. It describes the very essence and not the external manifestations. If "catholic" also means "universal," it certainly is not an empirical universality but rather an ideal one: the communion of ideas, not of facts, is what is meant. St. Ignatius’ use of the word is precisely this. This word gives prominence to the orthodoxy of the Church, to the truth of the Church in contrast with the spirit of sectarian separatism and particularize. He is expressing the idea of integrity and purity."

This doctrinal unity is also clearly seen in Orthodox worship, as there is a relationship between doctrinal unity and liturgical unity. I think that the same faith of our Fathers can only be lived within the Orthodox Catholic Church. It seems to me that embracing the spirit of Papal supremacy and infallibility or accepting the definitions in the Catholic Encyclopedia of hesycasm as "the wildest form of mystic extravagance" could have something of a negating effect.

In Christ,

Matthew Panchisin

[Eugene]

You are right Matthew, there is a thrminological confusion. The Church is Orthodox and Catholic, as our Creed says. Althoug it's common to use the name "Catholic" for Roman Catholic Church, it would be more correct to use the name "Roman Catholic".