Orthodox Christian Monasticism Hesychasm - Religion - http://maxpages.com/democracy/Orthodox

The Hesychasm is an orientation of the Eastern monasticism that search for the Christian
perfection in union with God through continual prayer. Together with prayer, considered
sometimes herself the goal, the end of perfection and "good side" or the "only thing
necessary" (Luke 10:24), the Hesychasm put the accent on hesychia (silence, inner
concentration) and the guarding of the mind as means to arrive to pure prayer and union with
God. The monks dedicated to this way of life pass through all other levels of monastic life,
beginning with the accomplishment of divine commandments through a life of obedience and
submission in a community.

The Hesychasm is addressed to everybody. Saint John Chrysostome says: "When Christ says
to follow the narrow path he address every man. The monk as well as the lay person can attain
the same spiritual heights." Much more, the Eastern Tradition do not separate the monks
from the hesychasts, one of the most remarkable traits of the Eastern monasticism being even the
inner unity over time and space. This unity is explained through the fact that monasticism before
all is a tradition that is a transmission of living reality and the persons that are linked organically
with the integral Tradition of the Church.
Thus the Hesychasm is part of the Tradition of the Church and not as a separate tradition, as the
heart is the most inner body of the body. The hesychast dimension with the experience of seeing
the Thaboric Light and the prayer of the heart must be integrated in the spiritual "Catholic"
tradition of Orthodoxy. Outside of it the Hesychasm becomes sterile and dry out.

The history of Hesychasm begins with the IV-V century as a real movement of spiritual and
theological renewal, through the introduction of the Jesus Prayer as method that produce a state
of concentration and inner peace, in which the soul listens and opens to God. Hesychia was
practices at the beginning by the desert fathers, that had as source of inspiration Philocalia and
who have acquired as discipline for the development of the inner life, the continual invocation of
the Name of Jesus. The Prayer of the Heart known as well as the Jesus Prayer or pure prayer
consist of the words: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.", and
is based on the text from Luke 17:21: "The Kingdom of God is within you.", and on the
recommendation of Saint Peter: "Pray without ceasing" and "Continue in
prayer" (Col. 4:2). The Apophtegmata of the desert Fathers let understood, what later
Evagrius Pontus and Makarios the Great, Diadoch of Photice and especially Saint John of the
Ladder will define as way of union with God through hesychia, guarding of the mind or heart and
continual prayer. The actual founder of Hesychasm is Saint John Climakos (+649), the author of
the spiritual "The Ladder of Paradise", in which recommends the monologic prayer, that
is the prayer reduced to a single word: Jesus.

The Byzantine Church was familiar with the hesychastic form of monasticism, continuing to
exist in the Orthodox Church today. The great monasteries produced mystics capable of
practising the purest forms of Hesychasm. Hesychasm flourished in the Stoudios, in the tenth an
eleventh centuries, in the person of Saint Simeon the Pious and Saint Simeon the New
Theologian. A movement that was organized at Mount Athos in the XII-XIVth centuries, the
Hesychasm could not be separated from the theology of the 'uncreated character of the Thaboric
light,' and from the direct experience of the glory of God. From Athos was spread in the
following centuries in the monasteries from Serbia, Russia and Romania, influencing not only a
monastic life, also the liturgic. As method for contemplative life, the Hesychasm is not separated
from the liturgical or sacramental spirituality. Indeed the hesychast texts has been written for the
monks and they are applied best in conditions of retreat and solitude of the monasteries. Athos,
that collected the writing of the Philocalia, will say that the Prayer of the heart pertains to
everybody, to the monks as well as to the lay people; this is why there are not two systems of
Orthodox spirituality. One of the fundamental ideas of the Hesychasm is that the spiritual life,
under monastic or liturgic form, is not arbitrary, but needs a 'spiritual father.'

For the hesychast fathers the theory and practice of the Prayer of Jesus, the silent meditation over
the nae of Jesus and the state of peace that this produce are not a goal in themselves. Saint
Simeon the New Theologian, talks about conscience and the feeling of grace, and Saint Gregory
Palamas about the direct contemplation of glory of God through the uncreated divine energies, as
essential elements of hesychast spirituality. If for the Hesychasm practised by Evagrius is the
intellectual contemplation and the monological prayer of the mind, or the invocation of the Name
of Jesus, other Hesychast orientations, as for example that proposed by Saint Makarios the
Egyptian (sec. V), returns to a biblical anthropology, insisting over the guarding of the heart.
Although in Orthodox spirituality, the heart (kardia), is not the physical organ, but the
spiritual centre of man, created after the image of God, the most inner and truthful ego, the inner
altar in which one enters in the state of kenosis and sacrifice and in which takes place the union
with Christ. The heart gives the unity of the human person. Therefore the 'Prayer of the Heart'
creates a state of existence of unity and integrity of the person.

About the way that the prayer should be said

From the Fathers, some say all the phrase: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me, others the half: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, that is easier for the
inability of the mind, because she cannot say in an intimate way, alone from itself: Lord
Jesus, in purity and perfectly, only by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). Otherwise will do that
bubbling and as a child not being able to say it articulate. He should not change often the words
of the prayer from neglect, but with delay, without interruption.

Other Fathers teach to make the prayer with the mouth, others with the mind. I say with both.
That sometimes the mind weaken to say, becoming lazy, and other times the mouth. This is why
we have to pray with the mouth and mind. But we have to say calmly and without noise, that the
voice may not disturb the feeling and the attention of the mind and to disturb it. That until the
mind, becoming accustomed with the work, will advance in it and will take strength from the
Spirit, to pray completely and with strength. Then it is no more necessary to say with the mouth,
that it cannot be anymore. Then it is possible to make all the work only with the mind." (
Saint Gregory the Sinaite, About Prayer).

The word hesychastai current in Orient form the Vth century characterised the
monks that lived isolated or in small groups in comparison with the great monastic communities.
They were also called hesychast monks that were leading a life of solitude or contemplative even
in the midst of a coenobitic monastery. The word hesychia designates the state of calm,
peace, rest, of silence, resulted from the ceasing of exterior causes of disturbance (noise, affairs,
wars) as from the absence of the inner agitation of the soul, that has found the hierarchical
equilibrium of his faculties. In monastic vocabulary, hesychia is the peace of union of the soul
with God, the 'science of sciences' and the 'art of arts.' Is before all an inner hesychia understood
as a 'departure form the world,' need emphasised constantly be the Apophthegms of the desert
Fathers. But herself alone is not sough. The exterior hesychia must be accompanied by
amerimnia or the lack of worries, nepsis, attention or the
guarding of the mind, unceasing prayer to gain the true union of peace with
God. Hesychia creates rather a state in which are practiced the virtues, among which the most
important are the purity of heart (apatheia), repentance (metanoia), and especially
sobriety, awakening or the watchfulness of the heart (nepsis).

Of the lack of worries for the earthly things speak often the Holy Gospel as well as the Fathers of
the monastic tradition. The great teacher of the 'amerimnia' is Saint John of the Ladder, that in
short formulations, synthesize it in a memorable way:

"The good precursor of tranquillity is the lack of all worries necessary or unnecessary.
Because he who opens the doors to the first will fall immediately in the second."

"A hair bother the eye; a small worry chasten the tranquillity. Because the tranquillity is the
detachment of all the thoughts and the renunciation to all worries, even justified."

Evagrius the Pontic in his De Oratione, identifies even the effort of elimination of
thoughts with prayer:

"You will not be able to pray purely as far as you are entangled with the material things and
disturbed with unceasing worries."

But the teaching of Evagrius is in reality a synthesis of older elements that of the ascetical
teaching of the desert Fathers and of the philosophic and mystical wisdom of the alexandrinians
especially Origen, what determines a whole tradition in this direction.

The way through which is done the invisible fight against thoughts bears to the hesychast the
classical name of nepsis (from where the expression of neptic Fathers) that is translated
with attention, vigilance, sobriety, the guarding of the mind or the heart. The teaching about
nepsis, profound evangelical, is also a central idea of monastic spirituality, as being the essential
condition of the pure prayer. She comes again as a motif in all the ascetical writings,
beginning with the desert Fathers. For them, the guarding of the mind is necessary to any man if
he wants not to work in vain. Origen talks about a real 'battle of thoughts' to which we have to
stand, and the only way not to fall under the attacks of demons is the guarding of heart or mind.
The analysis of the psychologic mechanism of the temptation with its stages: suggestion, the
inner dialogue with the evil thought and the guilty consent that leads to passion and captivity,
made in evidence the importance of guarding the mind as the 'guardian' at the door of the heart:
not to allow the conversation with the sinful suggestion but to reject it from the first apparition.
"Be the guardian of your heart and of any thought that is presented put him this question:
'Are you from ours or from our enemies"(Joshua 5:13) . "Look why Saint Makarios the
Great say that all the fight of man take place in thought.", and Hesychios the Sinaite can to
reduce all the ascesis to nepsis defined by his as "a spiritual method...that, with the help of
God and through a sustained and firm effort, freed completely the man from thoughts and
passionate thoughts, as well as of evil deeds.".

This rigorous discipline imposed to the heart and mind, accompanied by bodily asceticism not
less severe, with which together form the praxis or the first of the ascetical life, do not follow
only the avoidance of sin, also she prepare the interior climate for pure prayer the alone unites
with God. But as greater the ideal of the pure prayer is, more difficult its realization is, because of
the sin that destroyed the harmony psycho-somatic of man and weakened the power of
concentration of attention in the heart. After the ancestral sin, the inner unity of man, ensured by
the heart as center and source of active faculties of the mind and will, was destroyed. Thus the
mind (nous), deprived of his centre is dispersed in a world that becomes to him from now
on exterior. This is why the diversity of the thoughts (logismoi), and the forgiveness of
continual remembrance of God. The hesychast observed early that the remedy for the liberation
of mind form the pernicious captivity of thoughts is that later one of them will call: " the
return to the original simplicity" through the perseverant and ceaseless invocation of God in
prayer."

We arrive thus to the need of the unceasing prayer, that in the hesychast language was called
"The Prater of the Heart" or "The prayer of the Mind," fixe with the time in the
"Jesus Prayer." Even if this name was renown after the hesychast movement of
the XIVth century, the Jesus Prayer, has a very ancient genesis, his origins ascending to the first
monks. They knew already short prayers (monologismos), and emissive (ejected from the
heart), for the invocation of the Name of God. For Saint Makarios the Great the spiritual life
founded integrally on the Incarnation of the Word of God. He develops in his Homilies the
teaching about the divine grace and prayer on the basis of an anthropology profound biblical. For
him the centre of the human person is not the mind but the heart.

The heart master and governs over the body. When the grace takes over the heart, becomes
master over all the members and over all the thoughts. Because there in the heart is the mind and
all the thoughts of the soul and his confidence."

Abba Philemon also said this: "Thoughts about vain things are sickness of an idle and
sluggish soul. We must, then as Scripture enjoins, guard our intellect diligently (Prov 4:23),
chanting undistractedly and with understanding, and praying with a pure intellect. God wants us
to show our zeal for Him, first by our outward asceticism, and then by our love and unceasing
prayer; and He provides the path of salvation. The only path leading to heaven is that of complete
stillness, the avoidance of all evil, the acquisition of blessings, perfect love towards God and
communion with Him in holiness and righteousness. If a man has attained these things he will
soon ascend to a divine realm. Yet the person who aspire to this realm must first mortify the
earthly aspects (Col. 3:5). For when our soul rejoices in the contemplation of true goodness, it
does not return to any of the passions energized by sensual or bodily pleasure receives the
manifestation of God with pure and undefiled mind. It is only after we have guarded ourselves
rigorously, endured bodily suffering and purified the soul, that God comes to dwell in our hearts,
making it possible for us to fulfil His commandments without going astray. He Himself will then
teach us how to hold fast to His laws, sending forth His own energies, like rays of the sun,
through the grace of the Spirit implanted in us. By way of trials and sufferings we must purify
the divine image in us in accordance with which we possess intelligence and are able to receive
understanding and likeness of God; for it is by reforging our senses in the furnace of our trials
that we free them from all defilement and assume our royal dignity." (Philokalia, Vol
II, Faber and Faber, London, 1990, pp. 349-50).

When the mind arrives to see itself, she became transparent, looking through herself God. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, commenting the Sixth Beatitude, says that the cleaned heart see God, not an opposit person, but she see Him mirrored in herself. The heart or the "Inner man" reflects trough her nature God. But the sin, covering it, had covered too He who is mirrored in her. As soon as we clean the heart, we see the immage in which is reflected the model. He who cleans himself, seeing himself, sees in himself God as some see the sun in the miror, without to turn towards Him to see Him in his Hypostasis.

But in what nature is this transparence, on the basis which the mind, contemplating her, contemplate in the same time God? The mind gathered in its intimacy, in the heart, finds their God. Because our intimacy or our heart, when is found, is not found empty, but in her indefinite bounderies is reflected the presence of Christ. There is Christ, that has entered as foreruner at the baptism, there is the Kingdom of God, found in us, there is the house of Christ, where do not enter the things of this world and who advances deeper in the heart and comes closer to God. Introduceing the mind in his heart, through the renounciation of all thoughts, he finds Christ who enhabits her.

The ceasing of the activity of mind, that the descent in the sould of the divine work rewuire, does not make superfluous the efforts of the mind, that she was sharpened and enalrged in comprehension more delicate and more comprehensive. Because the exclusive work of God, which is inaugurated in the moments of extasis of the present life and will remain alone in the future life, is proportional with the stage which the mind has attained through her efforts, therefore is a function of the purification of passions, without which the mind could not have been apt to be lifted to the ecstatic love of God.

It is prayer that makes the mind to return from all things, from all ideas. The self-transparence is gained by the mind during prayer. The mental prayer searching in the beginning, with the name of Jesus, the place of the heart, or the central point of the subject, show us that the mind, even if is preocupied mainly with God, she search God through intimacy with the object himself. Thus the prayer searches in the heart or in the heart Jesus and as much as enters and establish in the heart more fully, as much is more dominated of the certitude that she has found Jesus, that she is in front of Him. Through the mental prayer, the amazing depths that pierce through the mind after the discarding of all the contents form her and after her return over herself, are revealed as depth of the supreme subject different from us, in from of which we are humble. The humbleness of prayer grows from the simultaneous knowledge of our subject and of the Supreme subject, different one of another, but in connection and reciprocal penetration. In prayer, we feel around us and in us with an absolute certitude the presence of the overhelming Supreme Subject. This experience is as much truthful, more full of certitude, as much as we feel that the presence of reality, which surround us is an infinity, before which we are nothing but little, and a supremacy, of which we depend completely. This infinity and absolute supremacy overcomes us, that the heart feel surrounded or filled completely by her, realizing a perfect union, the heart swalowing the Lord and the Lord the heart, both becoming one.

STEFAN CRISBASAN

webmaster@stefanc.findhere.com

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