Orthodox Christian Monasticism - Hesychasm


© Stefan Crisbasan

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

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