Meditation: Reading with the Heart

Spiritual reading, for the Fathers, is never the mere acquisition of knowledge. It is communion. To take a holy book into one’s hands is to open a door to the Spirit who speaks through the saints, who have themselves been consumed by divine fire. The desert dwellers did not read to know about God, but to be drawn into Him, to have their hearts pierced, corrected, illumined, and set ablaze with longing.

Elder Aimilianos spoke with this same spirit when he said that apart from the Holy Scriptures he had only read three books: the Ladder, Abba Isaac, and the Evergetinos, yet he had striven never to turn a page without having fulfilled what was written there. In this single saying he gives us the essence of true spiritual reading. The word of God, whether from Scripture or from the Fathers, must descend from the mind into the heart and become life. Only then does reading become a ladder to heaven, a participation in the mystery of the Word made flesh.

The early monks understood this deeply. They read slowly, often aloud, repeating phrases until the words engraved themselves upon the heart. When Abba Poemen was asked why the brethren read so little, he replied, “They have no need to read much; they must put into practice what they hear.” For them, reading was never separate from tears, silence, or prayer. It was part of one movement of the soul toward God. The text became a mirror revealing one’s poverty, a sword dividing truth from falsehood, and a flame that tested the purity of one’s desire.

Saint Isaac the Syrian writes that divine words are like seeds cast into the soil of the heart. If the soil is dry or stony, they perish, but if the heart is watered by repentance and vigilance, even a single saying can bear fruit unto eternal life. To read rightly, then, is to prepare the ground, to still the passions, to approach with reverence, and to let the word enter and dwell.

Modern elders echo the same counsel. Saint Porphyrios urged that reading must always be done in the spirit of prayer and humility, not to acquire knowledge but to grow in love. Elder Sophrony said that one should read until a word strikes the heart, then close the book and pray over that word until it becomes one’s own. To read in this way is to listen with the heart’s ear, not the intellect’s curiosity.

Spiritual reading becomes a daily communion, a renewal of the covenant between the soul and God. The saints’ words are not history but living presences, vessels of the same Spirit that sanctified them. To read Saint John Climacus is to climb with him. To read Saint Isaac is to enter his cave of tears. To read the Evergetinos is to sit once more at the feet of the desert fathers.

We read not to move quickly but to remain long. Not to master the text but to be mastered by it. To let the word pierce, purify, and transform until our life itself becomes a living page in the same book of holiness.

May our reading become prayer.

May our prayer become life.

And may our life, by grace, become the continuation of the Gospel written in the hearts of the saints.

Reading the Philokalia: "Where do we begin?"

In reading about the Philokalia, I have come across a number of wonderful resources.  Among these have been a few articles by Kallistos Ware about the history of the development of the Philokalia.  The most recent article that I have read is entitled “St. Nikodimos and the Philokalia”, one of a series of papers presented at a conference at Cambridge in 2003 and compiled in a book called “Mount Athos, the Sacred Bridge: The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain.”  The aim of the conference was to draw attention to the historic importance, the spirituality, and the religious legacy of the Holy Mountain.  Much of the article is a very thoughtful exploration of the eighteenth century hesychast renaissance that produced the Philokalia and the key figures responsible for this compilation of the writings of the Fathers and those who influenced them.  Ware’s analysis of the overlap between Velichokovsky’s translation program and the contents of the Greek Philokalia is fascinating and alone makes the article worth reading.  Although I have already touched upon some of this history in previous posts, it would definitely be worthwhile to return to the subject in the future.  Beyond this, in the article Ware addresses issues of readership, the scope and content of the Philokalia and the ultimate goal in reading it.  

However, what I found most interesting for the moment was Ware’s response to the question: “In what order should the different treatises in the Philokalia be read?  Where should we begin?”   It is to this question I would like to turn before going back to a discussion of various themes found in the writings as a whole.  Ware states that it is probably not the best plan, so far as the Philokalia is concerned, to read the writings in chronological order from beginning to end.  Rather, he suggests the following sequence “which corresponds in part, although not entirely, to the reading list supplied in a dream to the Russian Pilgrim by his dead starets, and to a similar list given by Fr. Nikon to the English translators of the Philokalia.”  This list includes: (1) Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos, ‘Century’ (Philokalia 4, 197-295; ET Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, 164-270), (2) Hesychios, ‘On Watchfulness and Holiness’ (Philokalia 1, 141-73; ET 1, 162-98); (3) Evagrios, ‘On Prayer’ (Philokalia 1, 176-89; ET 1, 55-71); (4) ‘A Discourse on Abba Philimon’ (Philokalia 2, 241-52; ET 2, 344-57); (5) St. Symeon the New Theologian, ‘On Faith’ (Philokalia 5, 73-80; ET 4, 16-24); (6) Gregory of Sinai, ‘On the Signs of Grace and Delusion’; ‘On Stillness’; ‘On Prayer’ (Philokalia 4, 66-88; ET 4, 257-86).  Ware notes that Kadloubovsky and Palmer in their translation “Writings of the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, open with the same four authors as on the Pilgrim’s list in the same order and add texts from Gregory of Sinai and Symeon the New Theologian.  

Ware does not get into specifics about why this particular grouping may be significant but simply holds it forward as a starting point given the unique nature of the work and its central themes.  He does, however, offer us the following insights: “‘Not a book but a library’: so Kaisarios Daponte described the Philokalia.  It is, however, a library with a specific character and an all-embracing unity.  Although it has much to say about love for our fellow humans and practical compassion, its theme is not social and political action.  Equally its primary subject is not outward asceticism or liturgical prayer.  Its concern is rather with the ‘inner Kingdom’ of the heart, and it shows how this ‘inner Kingdom’ is to be explored through the acquisition of ‘nepsis’ and ‘hesychia’, and through the ceaseless invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus.  It sets before us, as our ultimate raison d’etre, the attainment of self-transcending ‘theosis’, through a union of love whereby we participate in God’s uncreated energies, although not in his essence.  In this way it proclaims both the otherness and the nearness of the eternal; God is beyond and above the entire creation, the greatest mystery of all mysteries, yet he is at the same time everywhere present and fills all things.  Although the Philokalia is neither exhaustive nor systematic, none the less these unifying master themes justify us in speaking of a distinctively ‘philokalic’ spirituality.  The work is indeed exactly what St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain claimed it to be: ‘a mystical school of noetic prayer’ (119). 

In the past, I have read the four volumes of the Philokalia and the “Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart” as they became available to me and from beginning to end.  Before moving ahead in my own study, I plan to reread the texts in the order suggested above - - keeping Ware’s insights and the historical realities he unpacks in mind and trusting the guidance given to the Russian Pilgrim.  Perhaps in doing so and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, a clearer understanding of the viewpoint of the late eighteenth century will emerge and the desire of St. Nikodimos, St. Makarios and others to revive the neptic-hesychastic spiritual tradition will be enlivened in my own heart.

In the Heart of the Desert: Continuing Reflections on How to Read the Fathers

Before looking at the writings of the desert Fathers or looking at specific themes that emerge in “philokalic” spirituality, I have thought it important to spend a great deal of time considering how to understand their lives more deeply and how to approach their writings.  Today I want to consider how NOT to read the Fathers.  Again, I am following the thought of Seraphim Rose, (August 13, 1934 - September 2, 1982), an American hieromonk of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia who co-founded the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in California.  His thought about the matter is challenging and direct - not only about the seriousness and sobriety that we must have in approaching the study of the Fathers but of the necessity of overcoming the habits of “light-mindedness”, of “not taking seriously enough even the most solemn subjects,” and of “playing with ideas”, into which we often fall. 

The first pitfall that Seraphim Rose speaks of is “dilettantism”; that is, having an interest in a subject but no real commitment to it.  This can be true of the spiritual life in general or of reading the desert Fathers.  We may be “dabblers” - engaging in a study, or in certain spiritual activities or ascetic practices, but having no serious intentions or experiential knowledge.  We do ourselves and others an injustice when we study or speak of the Fathers as if it can be separated from right faith and practice.  Studying the Fathers can become the latest intellectual fashion whereby we are trying to enrich our own and others “spirituality”.  It is a kind of corrupt spiritual attitude that we often fall into that believes we can study these writings while being removed from the experience of the living in the Church of Christ -  of lacking the reality to which the Fathers writings point.  One might approach the Fathers to broaden one’s mind but lack purity of faith and so fall into deception.  What I find striking about Rose’s thought here is that he sees the cause of this pathological attitude not simply relativism but rather something deeply rooted in “the whole personality and way of life of most ‘Christians’ today.  It is not just the ‘casualness’ of contemporary life, but “indicates a whole modern attitude toward the Church and her theology and practice.”  

The second pitfall that Seraphim Rose speaks of is doing “Theology with a Cigarette” - the tendency we have at times of mixing the sacred and the frivolous.  This is true in the spiritual life in general today.  In what way are we prepared to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, for example, if we are constantly celebrating in the spirit of the world and immersed in its frivolous entertainments - or worse yet immersed in those things that are contrary to spirit of the Gospel.  Rose states: “Such a person brings the worldly spirit with him, worldliness is the very air he breathes. . . .; If such a person were to begin reading the Fathers, which speak of a totally different way of life, he would either find them totally irrelevant to his own way of life, or else would be required to distort their teaching in order to make it applicable to his way of life.”  The loss of moral and spiritual authority in the Church today is “doubtless itself the product of the poverty, the lack of seriousness, of contemporary life.”  Priest, theologian, and faithful have become worldly.  The Fathers, Rose goes on to  say, are often studied and discussed in an “artificial hothouse atmosphere in which, no matter what might be said concerning exalted . . truth or experiences, by the very context in which it is said and by virtue of the worldly orientation of both speaker and listener, it cannot strike to the depths of the soul and produce the profound commitment” it should.  We often fail to examine our hearts in this fashion when approaching our faith and spiritual tradition and we also fail, according to Rose, to face squarely a painful but necessary truth: “a person who is is seriously reading the Holy Fathers and who is struggling according to his strength (even if on a very primitive level) to lead a . . spiritual life - must be out of step with the times, must be a stranger to the atmosphere of contemporary ‘religious’ movements and discussions, must be consciously striving to lead a life quite different from that reflected” in many spiritual books and conferences.  

The third and final pitfall Seraphim Rose describes using a quote from St. Paul - “zeal not according to knowledge” (Rom 10:2).  There are contemporary movements that, while catching a glimpse of the fire of truth faith, in their worldliness lead people into “something more like a feverish sectarianism.”  Beyond this, Rose describes a more subtle form of zeal not according to knowledge - high idealism.  This is inspired by the lives and asceticism of the desert Fathers but it is not “tempered by actual experience of the difficulties of the spiritual struggle, and by the humility born of this struggle if it is genuine.  Without this tempering it will lose contact with the reality of spiritual life and be made fruitless by an impossible dream of a perfect life pictured vividly and alluringly in his imagination.”  Developing with this is a “critical attitude applied to whatever does not measure up to the [person’s] impossibly high standard.”  In the end, this leads to disillusionment and a waning of one’s initial enthusiasm.  The one-sidedness of their approach to the Fathers and the spiritual life is revealed.  They lack an “emphasis or total awareness of the pain of heart which must accompany spiritual struggle.”  

All of these things, Seraphim Rose tells us, are “hints as to the many ways in which it is possible to approach the Holy Fathers wrongly.”  The study of the Fathers is not to be ‘undertaken lightly, according to any of the intellectual [or spiritual fashions] of our times. . .   .The reading of the Holy Fathers is, indeed, an indispensable thing for one who values his salvation and wishes to work it out with fear and trembling . . .”

***All quotes taken from an article by Seraphim Rose entitled: “How Not to Read the Fathers” and can be found online at orthodoxinfo.com.

The Desert Fathers as Living Icons of the Perfect and Selfless Love of the Kingdom

Today’s readings for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time stand out for me while thinking of the Desert Fathers. The readings converge at one clear point: all is vanity - all that we toil for in this world and seek to store up for ourselves.  St. Paul tells us to seek what is above where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father.  Put to death the parts of you that are earthly, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed (Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11).  We make ourselves “fools”, Christ tells us, when we seek to store up earthly treasures, for this day our life may be taken from us.

What a great error it would be for us to see the Desert Fathers as simply living in a degrading atmosphere.  Rather we must seek to penetrate the deeper motives of their souls - to see them iconographically.  The ascesis of the desert forms an image of unfailing significance and takes us to the heart of the Gospel.  Paul Evdokimov, in his work Struggle with God writes:  “The world finds its norm, its scale of comparison, in the extreme efforts of the ascetics; it perceives also the dreadful dullness and insipidity of the spirit of self-sufficiency.  In the face of the declaration of common sense, ‘God does not ask so much of us’, the ascesis of the desert proclaims the terrible jealousy of God, who after giving himself, ask all from men.  The desert Fathers have left us a picture of this total gift.  Its excessive features strike our attention and ask us what is the utmost each one of us can do.  The Christian type would not be what it is were it not for this ascesis, which from remote times has unconsciously made its purifying influence felt.

We can go deeper still.  The ascetics renounced culture in their seeking for the one thing necessary.  This desire had to become a passion for perfection: ‘Sell all that you have.’  Even more, ‘See all that you are.’  In the perfection of this attitude, all became a single act - the carrying of the cross. ‘Let him renounce himself and take up his cross.’  This is not liturgy, but is a preliminary to it, a compact and startling epitome of immolation.” (pp. 99-100)

Their very lives preach Christ crucified, the very power and the wisdom of God.  This is not something that is attractive to the world or even could be, but seen through the eyes of faith it radiates the perfect love of the kingdom.

"Men Intoxicated with God": Reading the Lives of the Desert Father Iconographically

In these early posts, I want to try to think through for myself as clearly as possible how to consider the lives and the writings of the Desert Fathers and how they and their remarkable efforts have played a key and decisive role in the destiny of Christianity.  Recently I have been reading Paul Evdokimov’s work called The Struggle with God.  It is a superb work and I will be following closely his chapter on the Desert Fathers.  He begins by telling us that “ ‘for those who love his coming’ (2 Tim 4:8) the Christian city that the Empire of Constantine undertook to build is profoundly ambiguous.”   “Time appears entirely relative to the return of Christ who will surprise us ‘as a thief in the night’.  Qualitatively, since the day of Pentecost, we live in the latter days, and the parousia that has begun despoils the centuries of their apparent stability.”  In many ways we can only understand the ascetic movement to the desert in light of this ambiguity.  There is a paradoxical movement or reversal that takes place at this moment.  “It is no longer the pagan world that fights and eliminates the martyr; it is the hermit who takes up the attack and eliminates the world from his being.  The Fathers brought back the atmosphere of fighting of the first centuries, finding the equivalent of the aggressive forms of persecution.  The arenas where the wild beasts had torn the martyrs apart were replaced by the immense desert where more fearful beasts rise up, and where the demoniacal powers cast their shadows.”(page 94)  

There is a great temptation for the reader of their lives and writings to think of their asceticism as a bizarre aberration or something comical - reducing the secret depths of their lives to the surface appearance.  But, Evdokimov, tells us, “they become normal for a nature that is on fire.”  Therefore, our reflection on their lives must in itself become contemplative - opening itself up to the deep mystery of their lives and what it reveals.  Again, Evdokimov insightfully captures what the nature of our approach to the Fathers must be:  

“When they discovered the powerlessness of words, they counseled veneration of the mystery by silence.  This is just what the icon does.  An icon of a saint tells us nothing of his physical appearance and gives no biographical, historical, or sociological detail.  It shows the radiating influence of the man beyond history.  A saint bears history within himself, but he shows it in a different manner; he reveals a new dimension of it, in which its meaning is made clear by its last end.  He constitutes a meta-historical synthesis.  We must read the lives of the desert Fathers iconographically, just as we contemplate an icon.” (page 98)  What this means we will consider in later posts. . . .  

Claiming Our Inheritance: The Relevance of the Philokalia Today

As Christians, we have received a great legacy through the Church and the Fathers - the grace of baptism, the Eucharist, the Scriptures, the privilege of prayer, the deposit of faith and the writings of the Fathers on the spiritual life.  Yet, how many have left the Church.  And among those who remain within it, how many have never claimed their inheritance or are even aware of it?  

The inheritance is not ours until we claim it and it is precisely through the Philokalia that we embrace these great treasures.  Anthony Coniaris writes that among the Orthodox Christians the influence of the Philokalia is second only to the Bible.  This is so, he tells us, because the Philokalia “is nothing more than a living out of the Bible.”  We have squandered our inheritance and the result is that we find ourselves living in a spiritual and moral vacuum.  The Philokalia seeks to show us how to develop our inner powers and wake from the illusion of sin, how to overcome inner fragmentation caused by our disordered passions and how to foster the privilege of prayer through inner stillness.  Through baptism we have received the grace of God for growth in the life of Christ and this ember must be fanned into the full flame of faith.  St. Nicodemus puts it this way: “Because, brethren, we have fallen into sins after baptism and consequently have buried the grace of the Holy Spirit which was given to us at our Baptism, it is necessary that we make every effort to recover that original grace which is found deeply buried underneath our passions, like an ember in ashes.  This ember of grace we must fan into a new flame in our hearts.  In order to do that, we must remove the passions from our hearts as ashes from a fireplace and replace them with the firewood of obedience in the life-giving commandments of the Lord.  We can blow upon the spark with heartfelt repentance of the mind and with the repetition of this prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son and Word of God, have mercy on me.”  When this prayer remains permanently in our heart, it cleanses us from the ashes of the passions, and finding the ember of grace within, it strikes up a wondrous and strange fire.  This fire, on the one hand, burns away the temptation of evil thoughts, and, on the other, it sweetens the whole inner person and enlightens the mind.”  The Philokalia,then, is not some relic from the past but “a living guide for contemporary Christians.”  It is meant to alter peoples lives and to have a supremely practical purpose. 

The Great Legacy to be Received from the Fathers of the Church

As was mentioned in earlier posts, the Philokalia must be read and taught about with great care (docility, humility) and not separated from the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church.  There is always a a great danger when one tries to popularize theology or the writings of the Fathers for example.  The coming into fashion of the profoundest spiritual or theological writings is not necessarily a good thing.  It doesn't mean that we stop reading these things, but all of us must approach these Fathers with fear of God, humility and with a great distrust of our own wisdom and judgment - things sadly lacking in our day. Even the most beautiful of works (like the Philokalia) can be studied in a self willed way and presented in vain minded and banal fashion which leads to subtle deception.  Indeed, it is even a struggle, to be sure, for the orthodox Catholic Christian living in our day of puffed up knowledge to escape some of the pitfalls lying in wait for those who wish to read such works in their full meaning and content. Yet, having said this, the writings are concerned with themes of universal importance for all of those who are seeking to live holy lives in accord with the teachings of the Gospel - - watchfulness of heart, stillness, unceasing prayer and the struggle with the passions.  These writings are not only for monks but for all those who are striving for union with God.  St. Tikhon, it has been said, called on all Christians to become “untonsured monks.”  Such a return to the sources of our spiritual tradition is meant to accomplish just that - to bring the spirituality of the Philokalia into our everyday living.  The desired result of such an endeavor is to live holy lives that will bring glory to God.    One of the most beautiful invitations to read the Philokalia comes from St. Nicodemus who complied these great writings. I can't think of a more wonderful invitation to read the Philokalia than these words of St. Nicodemus:

"Come, therefore, come and eat the bread of knowledge and wisdom, and drink the wine which spiritually delights the heart and dispels all the material and immaterial things because of deification - which is caused by the liberation of ourselves - and become inebriated with the truly alert inebriation. Come all you who seek to find the kingdom of God which is hidden in the field of your heart. And this is the sweet Christ. Thus being freed from the imprisonment of this world and the wandering of the mind, with our heart purified from the passions, with the awesome unceasing invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ together with the collaborating virtues, which this book teaches, you will be united among yourselves, and united this way, you will be united with God, according to the prayer of our Lord to his Father, who said, "So they may be one, as we are one."

How to Read the Holy Fathers

We often approach the study of the Holy Fathers of the Church in the way we approach the Scriptures - we lack the docility and humility to be truly led, nourished, challenged, or transformed. Indeed, to study, to "learn about" is not enough and those who teach must do so from a heart filled with love for Christ and His Church. How can we teach others to thirst for Christ, if we have no desire for His life and love in us - if we have not sought and struggled to walk the narrow path that leads to Life? Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina, a Russian Orthodox monk wrote about it in this way:

" . . . we must go to the Holy Fathers not merely to "learn about them"; if we do no more than this we are in no better state than the idle disputants of the dead academies of this perishing modern civilization, even when these academies are orthodox and the learned theologians in them neatly define and explain all about "sanctity" and "spirituality" . . . but have not the experience needed to speak straight to the heart of thirsting souls and wound them into desiring the path of spiritual struggle . . . .We must go to the Holy Fathers, rather, in order to become their disciples, to receive the teaching of true life, the soul's salvation, even while knowing that by doing this we shall lose the favor of this world and become outcasts from it. If we do this we shall find the way out of the confused swamp of modern thought, which is based precisely upon abandonment of the sacred teaching of the Fathers. We shall find true guidance from the Fathers, learning humility and distrust of our own vain worldly wisdom, which we have sucked in with the air of these pestilential times, by means of trusting those who have pleased God and not the world. We shall find in them true fathers, so lacking in our own day when the love of many has grown cold (Matt. 24:12)—fathers whose only aim is to lead us their children to God and His Heavenly Kingdom, where we shall walk and converse with these angelic men in unutterable joy forever."