Orthodox Christian Monasticism - Hesychasm

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

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