THE WAY BACK TO THE FATHER’S HOUSE, PRODIGAL SON PART 2. FINDING THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE HEART ACCORDING TO SAINT GREGORY PALAMAS.

Previously, I posted his understanding of the prodigal son,  stating that we can draw parallels to the spiritual life and indeed refer to a, “prodigal  mind.”  The mind  has wandered out of the Father’s house,  the heart.  The movement of the mind to the heart is circular per Saint Dionysios.  That is to say,  the mind reflexes,  returns back, to the essence, which is the heart. To use orthodox metaphysics,  the heart is the essence and the mind is the energy.

The way back to the heart is difficult. How does Saint Gregory advise us to find the heart?

I want to give an except from the second discourse.  This is the apophatic way,  the way of denial.  What is it not.

1.  There must be a ceasing of intellectual operations which do not seek after God.

For they assert no one is able to participate in perfection and holiness, not having found the true glory concerning created existences, further, it is not possible for this (i.e.  holiness trans.) to exist or have it without disjunctive thought and syllogism and analysis. Triads.1.3.84

This is not obscurantism.  Rather,  the true  telos,  or end,  of the intellect’s motion  is to  see God.  If we are not directed to that, then  we have failed.  Mental  operations are such that the intellect perceives an idea – joins or divides from it – then  makes a syllogism.  In other words, proposition A is true,  proposition B, therefore C. The syllogism has reached it’s συμπερασμα, or conclusion.

These mental acts do not give αισθεσις or perception, of spiritual  truth.  These acts pertain  to νους, or intellect.  The knowledge of God  is beyond mind.  The mind  must cease to rationalize and simply seek  the feeling of God’s presence , an αισθεσις.  This  feeling or perception comes only by the illumination  of God’s grace. As Saint Gregory is fond to  quote,

καρδία ὀρθὴ ζητεῖ αἴσθησιν στόμα δὲ ἀπαιδεύτων γνώσεται κακά Prov.15:15  A right heart seeks perception, but the mouth of the untaught seeks mischief.

The ceasing of the intellect is called keeping the Sabbath  by Saint Gregory. To celebrate the rest, the Israelites had to stop working.  It is also  the same as Golgotha. At Golgotha,  the place of a skull, the Logos was slain.  At our own  personal Golgotha before our personal  descent to Hades (see St.  Silouan  on this), the depths of our inner sin, we must have our logos slain.  Reason must stop  to arrive at the Truth beyond reason.

2.  The attention  is actually directed toward the heart.

This is not metaphorical.  The attention  is actually directed to the interior, to the heart. Having directed our mind there, we still do not see the Light according to Saint Gregory. There is a veil over the heart, impeding the light from being perceived. So the veil on the heart then we must cast aside, by self examination, the open and hidden sins of the heart. This veil, καλλυμα, according to Saint Paul (2 Cor.4:1-6)  is the covering of νοηματα, thoughts.  The thoughts cast aside, the veil  is in effect removed and we are then δεχτικος, capable to receive the grace of God.  The actual process of removing the veil,  the painful process of repentance,  is what permits us to see the Lord.  However,  seemingly contradictory, It is a pure gift to perceive God’s grace.  Some saints struggled for years, so how should we expect an instant renewal?  God does grant it at a moment many times- He did to Cornelius in Acts 10.

3. Practically,  Saint Gregory enjoins  repeating the Name of the Lord  upon every breath, while sending the intellect to the heart.

For there is quietude by this entering in and going out, the spirit upon every ingoing thought, but especially in the case of those practicing stillness in body and reasoning.

For those who spiritually sabbatize are these who also  resting from all their proper works, because it is attainable, on the one hand, everything discursive and produced by discursive reasoning and which has been elaborately reasoned about knowledge of the powers of the soul they completely strip away, namely,  work and all the aesthetic helps, and quite simply every bodily activity,  which is in our power, yet on the other hand,   what is not in our power -the end just as respiration, so long as it is in our power, this does not cease.

But all these identical things follow painlessly and without much care for those who make progress hesychastically, for by the same entrance of the soul to itself, of necessity, perfectly automatically all things occur. Triads 1.2.51-53

Now,  why is it that this is commanded, and why might this take so long?  Because the practice engenders love within the soul. And love is ultimately what tethers us to the Lord, as it alone will exist in the eschaton. This will not come easy.  The practice should be enjoined at the very least until  we have entered into communion with Him.

 But for those who are beginners, not one of what things said would you know without hard word accompanying.

And as it follows then with love being patient (“for love bears all things,”  we then instruct in order to establish patience in life, as through this we arrive at love).

And what further is necessary to say about these things?

Since nothing more can be said,  I trust the Saint.  The next section describes how the invocation  of the Lord’s Name removes the seven  evil  thoughts, spirits,  and replaces them with the Seven Spirits of God. I invite the reader to  look at how the tree of knowledge of good and evil relates to this.

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Second Peter.1:1-2 Salutations, The Faith of Jesus Christ  saves. Transcription of an informal study

Saint  Peter, prior to his departure from this world,  penned his last pastoral address to his struggling Christian communities in Asia.

He was fulfilling the pointed charge given to him by Christ, “feed my sheep.”  Indeed ,as a good shepherd,  he would soon be laying down his life for his sheep,  being crucified,  tradition  says,  for his belief in Christ.

What particularly occupied him  was that  after his departure wolves would enter into the Christian  community and disrupt them by bringing in  heresy, that is false teaching,  encouraging loose living, thereby causing Christians to fall  from grace,  denying Christ and therefore bringing judgment upon themselves and a multitude of many other errors which we will look at.  In a short letter of three chapters of 61 verses  he attempts then  to establish  his flock  one more time before his departure.

And so, the Apostle  begins following the standard epistle greeting desiring  God’s blessing  upon the readers.

“Simon Peter  a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ,  to them that have obtained like precious faith  with  us by the righteousness of God and Jesus our Savior.  According as his divine power has given unto us  all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”

His readers  have  been  given the gift of faith , a faith he notes which is given  by  God’s righteousness. 

  “En dikaiosune  tou Theou”  Faith  finds it’s source in  God’s righteousness.  Righteousness is a term misunderstood.  Dikaiosune is the greek  word usually translated as righteousness.  In  the Septuagint,  the Greek version of the OT,  it’s the equivalent of God’s steadfastness to fulfill His promises. For instance. David cries in Ps. 142:11 En th  dikaiosunh  sou  eisakouson mou.  In your righteousness hear me.

The Hebrew text  says in your  steadfastness,  b-amunah(the same root  for the word amen), hear me.

God’s  righteousness is His steadfast faithfulness.

Peter is saying then that we have  faith,  we trust God,  because  God   has been faithful  in  manifesting His love to  us.  We love Him because He first loved us (I Jn).  We believe because  He is faithful  to us,  and desires us to enter into  covenant with Him,  to enter into communion.  

Now st Paul  mentions this several times in his epistles. The famous verse on justification.

“Now the just shall live by  faith”  quoted in Romans 1:17.  This is a quote from  Habbakuk  2:4.  I want you  to notice the precise septuagint rendering.

“O de dikaios ek pistews  mou  zhsetai”

The righteous  are delivered,  they  live  from  God’s faith.  Ek  pistews  mou.

We are saved by God’s faith, more accurately, His faithfulness.  I am saved because God  faithfully intervenes and grants  deliverance.  Not because I in myself (note  the key phrase in myself) perform  anything.  What is from  flesh  is flesh,  what is born  of Spirit is Spirit.

This  was Paul’s argument in the epistle to the Romans. 3:3-5

God’s promise was that Israel  would be saved. Yet the ethnic  Jews did not believe. They were blinded.  So how is God faithful then?  Notice this quip.

“What then?  If  some did not believe,  shall their  unbelief  make the faith  of God without  effect? God forbid let God but true and every man a liar.”

We are saved by God’s faithfulness not our own. Although, I will address synergy in another post seeing Peter does abundantly here as well.

This underscores a truth  Peter is making  which  he will state later in this opening.    The idea that this faith  comes from  God’s energy or activity.  

Notice Peter says, “God has given  unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness through  the knowledge of Him that called us  through  glory and virtue.”

Faith  is a manifestation (phanerosis) of His divine energy.

Paul  argues it this way  in his letter to the Corinthians.12:5-10

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. 6And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. 7But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 8For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9To another faith by the same Spirit;...11But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will”  After all, faith is a fruit of the Spirit.

Faith  is specifically  said to be an  energy of God, a manifestation of His presence and work  within us. 

But while  faith  is a manifestation  of God’s Spirit this gift, like all others,  is dependent upon our  synergy,  our cooperation  with God (Which  we will address later).

Faith is a fruit of God’s Sprit.  It is something  uncreated. We must reach  out and take of the tree of life, of Jesus Christ, and taste this grace.

We may object and say  reaching out is the act of faith.

Did the Master say  in vain to seek gifts?  And yet faith is a one of the three main  gifts given (and told to be sought after)-  faith , hope and love being preeminent.  When  we touch  Christ we can  share in His faith  love and hope  and go beyond ourselves.  Men  in this world  have a belief-  devils  even believe and tremble.  But they do not have the faith of Christ.  That is proper to the Lord Himself  and He will  grant it when  we seek  Him.

Is our  faith weak?  There  is a remedy.  There is a balm in Gilead to  assuage us. 

Christ has promised, “ask and you will receive.”  Let us  remember that St.  Paul  tells us,”Covet the best gifts.”  We can  desire the gift of faith,  we can  by grace take the kingdom  of heaven  by violence and beg the Master for the crumbs from His table.

Is our faith  wavering? Let us not abandon  our first hope. And let us fear of not entering His kingdom.  For  “with many of them -the Jews who did not believe-  God was not well pleased, but overthrew them in the wilderness.”

Above all, let us fear of not pleasing the Master.

“For without faith  it is impossible to please Him.”  There is not greater loss than  the grace of His glance,  His satisfaction  expressed to  us.

May the Lord God strengthen the holy and pure faith of devout Orthodox Christians, and of His Holy Church, this city and parish, from all ages to all ages. Amen.