Author: Rev. Prof. Sorin Cosma (Caransebeș Faculty of Orthodox Theology)
Keywords: prayer, Philokalia, pure heart, vigil, praxis, theoria, Hesychasm
Abstract:
The study “Aspects of Prayer in the Philocalic Tradition” underlines that prayer is an aprioristic trait of the human soul, since it is a part of every religion, for all the peoples of the world. Therefore, although sin has altered God’s image within man, each soul can lift his mind and heart and talk to God through prayer. This dialogue is possible because both God and man are persons, and one of the main traits for each person is its longing for communication and communion. God is love (agape) and He descends towards man, while the human soul rises towards God in a dialogue of love. Being raised to the highest levels of their spiritual life, prayer is everything for the philokalic Fathers: faith, faithful living, and redemption itself, since the Church fulfils its mission in the world through the spirit of prayer. But in order to spread and perfect the prayer and spirit and in truth, one must keep in mind that prayer is not exclusively humane, being perfected by the Holy Spirit. It is “the breath of the Spirit”, because the Spirit makes intercession for us (cf. Romans 8, 26) and He also brings our prayers to God the Father, through the intercession of the Son (cf. Romans 8, 34). Thus, the spiritual prayer takes a divine and human form, being fulfilled in two stages. The first stage is called “praxis” – the active initial stage or the working stage, while the following is called “theoria”, this being the contemplative stage, marked by the sight of trinitary light and glory and fulfilled as gift of God’s grace. During the stage of praxis, prayer is developed through the practice of asceticism, seen as an endeavour, a toil or a sustained effort to gain the spirit of prayer by exercising restraint. This can only be achieved with a pure mind and heart, because only the pure of heart can see God, as the Saviour says in the nine Blessings (cf. Matthew 5, 8). To gain a pure heart, in which the spiritual prayer can be fulfilled, one must be always watchful for the sinful thoughts, both those that come from outside and those that are inherent to the human nature, and keep them out of one’s mind and heart. Thus, the philokalic Fathers demonstrated the connecti on between watchfulness (prosohe) and prayer (proseuhe), strengthened by the virtue of wakefulness (nepsis), manifested by the permanent awareness of conscience during prayer. This brings forth dispassion (apatheia), which is the threshold for the love of God, for one’s neighbour and for the whole creation. Within the same framework of gaining and enriching the spirit of prayer by a constant resistance against the scattering of thoughts, the philokalic tradition favoured short prayers, that led to the Jesus Prayer, a specific feature of hesychasm, that leads to communion with the divine grace, with God’s glory, resembling the light seen by the Apostles of the Christ on Mount Tabor, at the Theophany. A specific feature of the spirituality of the Christi an East, hesychasm took shape within the philokalic tradition, lifting the human nature, through prayer and grace, to the “partaking of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1, 4).
Pages: 12-44