The word Hesychia, as has been seen, has different levels of meaning. It was first related to the desert as an external place, then to the cell of a monk, and finally to the heart of each person. A true Hesychast is a person who keeps guard over his heart and preserves inner silence or stillness, no matter where or in what circumstance he finds himself. The inner silence or inner stillness of the heart can be attained only through watchful vigilance and constant remembrance of God. In the Hesychast tradition, constant remembrance of God or unceasing prayer gradually became synonymous with the Jesus Prayer. Just as Hesychia ultimately signifies stillness of the heart, so the Jesus Prayer is also

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called Prayer of the Heart. The heart has a central significance in the Orthodox spirituality, which can rightly be termed the Way of the Heart. The idea of Prayer of the Heart can somehow be traced back to the instruction on prayer given by Jesus himself. Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, Matthew 6. The words of Jesus are also regarded as a call to the individual to enter into the inner chamber of the heart and there to shut out all evil thoughts and distractions so as to be able to pray to God in the silence of the heart. Commenting on this text, John Klimakus, our friend, speaks of the closing of the door

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in three ways. Close the door of your cell to the body, the door of your lips for words to conversation, and the inner room of your heart to evil spirits. In the West, in the Latin West, we often come across the controversy regarding the proper faculty of prayer and contemplation. Is it the intellect or the will? Two different approaches can be distinguished. The intellectualist school holds that contemplation is primarily the work of the mind or intellect which acquires the knowledge of God. The voluntary school, on the other hand, insists on the specific role of the will and the primacy of desire and affection in contemplative prayer.

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In the Orthodox tradition, however, this dichotomy between the intellect and the will is overcome through the concept of the heart in the Semitic biblical sense of the word. The heart means much more than affectivity or emotion. The heart is the unifying center of intellect, will, and affectivity before their differentiation into distinct faculties. And the heart also continues to hold them together in unity. The hominids of pseudo-materials developed the idea of the heart, presenting it as the spiritual center of the whole person. Quote, the heart governs and reigns over the whole bodily organism, and when grace possesses

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the heart, it rules over all the members and the thought. For there in the heart is the intellect and all the thoughts of the soul and its expectations. And in this way, grace penetrates also to all the members of the body. End quote. Here in Mercurius, there is no head-heart dichotomy, for the intellect is said to be in the heart. The heart is also the meeting point between soul, body, and its various members. When the Orthodox writers speak of the heart, they mean, among other things, the carnal part, an organ of flesh and blood, which is the natural symbol for the deep heart of the person. In the same hominid, Mercurius continues to say, within the heart are unfathomable depths.

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There are reception rooms and inner chambers in it. In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. In it is death. In it is life. Mercurius looks on the heart as the moral and spiritual center of the human person. To understand better the meaning of the heart, we should look at St. Paul's view of the human person. In addition to body and soul, Paul also mentions the spirit in humans. Rather than a third constituent of the human being, the spirit is a new dimension which qualifies the whole person, body and soul. Whereas the soul gives life to our bodies and makes us rational beings, the spirit brings

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us into contact with the order of divine realities. It enables us to enter into communion with God. As such, the human spirit is closely linked with the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God. If the heart is related to our body and soul as their meeting point, it is above all linked with our spirit. Thus, Theophanes of Hercules states, the heart is the innermost person, our spirit. Here are located one's conscience, the idea of God, and of one's complete dependence on him. The Hesychast writers are fond of quoting the psalm, The inner person and the heart are very deep. This deep heart is equivalent to the human spirit.

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It signifies the core or apex of our being, or what the Rhineland and Flemish mystics termed the ground of the soul. It is here in the deep heart that a person comes face to face with God in a direct encounter. When a person enters into his heart, he discovers his own spirit and at the same time the divine spirit who continuously awakens and enlivens our spirit. In the heart, therefore, we find the same door, one and the same door that opens to our inner self and to God. Theophanes, the Hercules, gave the classic definition to prayer. To pray is to stand before God with the mind in the heart.

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This expression, with the mind in the heart, is the key to prayer according to the Orthodox spirituality. So long as you pray with the mind in your head, you will still be working solely with human resources. You will not attain to an immediate encounter with God. You will at best know about God, but will not know God in the biblical sense of entering into an intimate, personal relationship with someone. True knowledge of God implies a deep love that comes from the core of the person, from the heart. For this reason, it is necessary to descend from the mind to the heart, or even better, to descend, as Theophanes insists, to descend with the mind into the heart. For the mind should not be separated from the heart, which is its native abode.

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Any form of prayer that is offered by the heart, in the above sense, can be termed prayer of the heart, or prayer of the mind in the heart. But according to the Orthodox tradition, prayer of the heart is practically synonymous with the Jesus Prayer, which is considered to be preeminently effective in keeping the mind in the heart. The standard formula of the Jesus Prayer, as we know, reads, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. In practice, a variety of forms is being used. For example, the designation of sinner may be added to the ending, have mercy on me, a sinner. Likewise, the invocation, have mercy on me, may be expressed in the plural, namely, have mercy on us.

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Some omit the title, Son of God. Or the prayer can simply be shortened to the following invocation, Lord Jesus, have mercy. The Jesus Prayer has a biblical foundation. It is based on the combination of two prayers in the Gospel, that of the blind man in Jericho, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, Luke 18, 38, and that of the publican, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, Luke 18, 13. The title, Son of David, in the first prayer is changed into Son of God, and the title, Lord, is added to the name Jesus. Western Christians have become familiar with the Jesus Prayer above all through the way of the pilgrim,

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the story of an anonymous Russian pilgrim who lived in the middle of the 19th century. But the prayer itself is far more ancient. As will be seen presently, its origins can be traced back to the 4th and 5th centuries. In the practice of the Jesus Prayer, four constituent elements may be distinguished. First, the invocation of the name Jesus. Second, the appeal for God's mercy, accompanied by a sense of penthos, or sorrow for sin. Third, the discipline of frequent or continual repetition of a short formula. Fourth, the aim to attain non-discursive or pure prayer. The second and the third of these elements, penthos and frequent repetition of a short prayer,

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are found already in the desert spirituality of the 4th century Egypt. The practice of frequent repetition of a short prayer among Egyptian monks is witnessed to by St. Augustine in his letter to Prover. He says, The brethren in Egypt are said to have offered frequent prayers, but those very brief and the style of quick ejaculations, lest their vigilance, alert concentration, very necessary for one who is praying, might be weakened and blunted if too long drawn out. The Desert Fathers recommended constant remembrance of God as the best means of guarding the mind and the heart, and of fulfilling the precepts of praying without ceasing, which they took quite literally.

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The monks were ordinarily engaged in simple manual labor, which allowed them to be occupied with some pious thought or reflection other than the work they had in hand. Normally, they would accompany their work with the recitation of some verses of the Psalms or some texts from other parts of Scripture. Initially, a variety of formulas were used for frequent repetition. Very soon, a certain preference was given to penitential texts, such as the first verse of Psalm 51, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your great mercy. Or, a preference was also given to the prayer of Republicans, which we have seen before. As an example, we have the well-known prayer formulated by Abba Apollo, As man I have sinned, as God forgive.

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The short invocation, Lord have mercy, became commonly used by the monks from the earliest time. In these instances, the sentiment of penthos, namely compunction or sorrow for sin, is strongly present. In fact, penthos was at the heart of desert spirituality. But at the same time, other formulas were also being used. Macarius the Great, for instance, recommended the very brief prayer, Lord help. And in one of his conferences, John Cassian recorded the famous prayer taught by Abba Isaac, O God, come to my aid, O Lord, make haste to help me. This, the opening verse of Psalm 70, was to be repeated throughout the day in all circumstances

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as a secret means of attaining and seizing inner prayer. This practice of reiterating a short phrase or formula was later described by John Klimakus as monologic prayer, namely, prayer consisting of a single logos or phrase, monologic. Through such monologic prayer, the monks were enabled to combine with the outer work of their manual labor, the so-called inner work of prayer, and so to fulfill the precept of praying without ceasing. Thus, early Egyptian monasticism provided the second and the third elements of the Jesus prayer, penthos and the repetition of a monologic prayer. As for the fourth element, non-discursive prayer,

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this was taught in 4th century Egypt by Evagrius Ponticus. When Evagrius was defining prayer as laying a sign of God, he was inspired by Origen and the Cappadocian fathers rather than by the Coptic monks, who for the most part were simple and educated peasants, cherishing an anthropomorphic view of God. They took the text of Genesis literally, that God created human beings in his own image. They were enabled to pray to God without visualizing a human face of God. The idea of non-iconic or imageless prayer was foreign to them. By defining prayer as laying a sign of thoughts,

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Evagrius not only meant the shedding of evil thoughts, but of any kind of thoughts, mental images, words and concepts, so that what he called pure prayer may be practiced by the naked mind. Unfortunately, Evagrius did not propose a concrete means to achieve the practice of pure prayer. Although on one occasion he mentioned use a brief but intense prayer, he makes no connection between this advice and the shedding of thoughts. So the teaching on non-discursive prayer was not originally related to the practice of repetition of a short formula. Now, regarding the first element, the invocation of the Holy Name, although in the sayings of Desert Fathers

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there are a few prayers that include the name of Jesus, no priority is assigned to this invocation yet. For the name of Jesus to become the focus of devotion, we must wait till the following, namely the 5th century, when a Jesus-centered spirituality began to emerge. The continual remembrance or invocation of the name of Jesus occupying a central place in the teaching of Diadochus Fonticus. He linked together three of the four elements of the Jesus Prayer. The invocation of the name, the constant repetition of a short phrase, and the practice of non-discursive prayer. He did so by presenting the frequent invocation of the name of Jesus as the means of achieving non-discursive prayer.

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But he gave no special prominence to the second element of penthos or compunction in his teaching. Diadochus was concerned with collecting our dispersed and fragmented memory to one pointiness and with bringing our mind from restlessness to stillness, from multiplicity to unity. This is his teaching. Quote, When we have blocked all its outlets by means of the remembrance of God, the mind or intellect requires of us imperatively some task which will satisfy its need for activity. For the complete fulfillment of its purpose, we should give it nothing but the prayer, Lord Jesus. Let the intellect continually concentrate on this phrase

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within its inner shrine with such intensity that it is not turned aside to any mental imagery. End quote. The Jesus Prayer was proposed by Diadochus as a way of keeping guard over the mind and of achieving imageless, non-discursive prayer. He made a decisive advance beyond evaluations by suggesting a practical method for the attainment of such prayer. The advice given by Diadochus is very wise. The human mind is always active. Thoughts keep moving restlessly and aimlessly in the mind like the buzzing of flies or the capricious leaping of monkeys from branch to branch. It is of little use to say to ourselves,

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Stop thinking. We might as well say, Stop breathing. It's the same thing. The rational mind cannot remain completely idle. But while it lies beyond our power to make the continual chattering of the thoughts disappear, what we can do is to detach ourselves from it gently but persistently. The word detaching is important. In order to let go the multiplicity of thoughts, we must, as Diadochus recommends, give the mind some task which will satisfy its need for activity, namely, something which will keep it sufficiently occupied without at the same time allowing it to be too active. That's the secret of the Jesus Prayer. For the same purpose, Theophan teaches that

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to stop the continual jostling of your thoughts, you must bind the mind with one thought or the thoughts of one only. Famous saying of Theophan. And this strategy is fully in keeping with the Chinese saying which forms the basic rule on one-pointedness necessary for any sitting meditation, namely, to replace the 10,000 thoughts with one single thought. To replace the 10,000 thoughts which keep coming and going with one single thought. By holding to one single thought, we avoid the dispersion of the mind with 10,000 thoughts. In our case, this one single thought or the thought of one only is the holy name of Jesus. The Jesus Prayer is thus a way of keeping God over the mind and the heart.

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Although it is a prayer in words, the invocation of the name of Jesus, because of its brevity and simplicity, is capable of leading us beyond the world into the eternal silence of God. The Jesus Prayer is not just a kind of mantra devised for inducing people into quiet and stillness. According to the biblical tradition, the name stands for the person. The name Jesus was announced by an angel to indicate his saving mission. During his ministry on earth, saving power constantly came forth from his person to heal the sick and deliver the possessed from the dominion of evil spirits. The invocation of the holy name of Jesus has a quasi-sacramental effect

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that renders the Savior present to us, enabling us to experience his power over the evil spirit. Jesus' parable of the strong man and the stronger one is relevant here. He says, When a strong man fully armed guards his castle, his property is safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divines his plunder. Luke 11, 21-22 The strong man is the evil spirit, and the stronger one is Jesus, our Savior. By invoking the name of Jesus with faith, we are inviting him to come to us to drive away the evil spirit

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and to take possession of our hearts. Jesus concludes the parable saying, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. So long as our mind is not gathered with Jesus by constantly remembering his holy name, it is scattered or dispersed. The idea of presence is essential to the Jesus prayer. However, it deals with a non-iconic or imageless presence of the Lord. The Jesus prayer is distinguished from methods of discursive meditation on the episodes in the life of Jesus. Following the teaching of Evagrius, Saint Gregory of Sinai gives this instruction to those who practice the Jesus prayer. Keep your intellect free from colors,

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images, and forms. Our awareness of the presence of Jesus must not be accompanied by any visual concept, but must be confined to a simple conviction or feeling. Saint Teresa of Avila gives testimony to the fact that it is possible to have experience of the nearness of Jesus without forming mental pictures of the Lord. Through the invocation of the name, we are united with Jesus in a direct, unmediated encounter, namely, without any intermediary concept or image. We feel his nearness with our spiritual senses, much as we feel the warmth with our bodily senses on entering a heated room. We don't have to imagine the heat,

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we simply feel it. While insisting that the Jesus prayer must be free from images and thoughts, Theophan and other Hesychast writers emphasize that prayer of the heart, as distinct from prayer of the intellect, is a prayer of feeling. Among the feelings which normally accompany the Jesus prayer, these writers mention the sentiment of tenderness for the Lord and a sense of spiritual warmth, which they call the burning of the Spirit within us, or the flame of grace kindled in the heart. Together with the sense of spiritual warmth, they also speak of a vision of spiritual light. This evening, we shall dedicate some time to discuss the nature of this spiritual warmth

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and light. While the Hesychast writers are uncompromising in rejecting images or thoughts in their prayer, they are less rigorous with regard to feelings. As Calisphorus Ware says, the Jesus prayer should be seen not so much as prayer emptied of thoughts, but as prayer filled with the Beloved. So emptiness is not the real object of the prayer. We try to empty our mind in order to be filled with the presence of Jesus, an imageless presence. He believes that the Jesus prayer should be, in the richest sense of the word, a prayer of affection, although not of self-induced emotional excitement. He also testifies that over the centuries,

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most Eastern Christians have used the prayer simply as an expression of their tender, loving devotion to Jesus, the Divine Friend and Companion. The Jesus prayer is not only a powerful means of unification, it is also a journey of inwardness, moving to the heart, the inmost center of the person. One can usually distinguish three levels or degrees of prayer, prayer of the lips, oral prayer, prayer of the mind, mental prayer, and prayer of the heart, or better, of the mind in the heart. The Jesus prayer includes all these different levels. The invocation of the name begins as an oral prayer in which the words are spoken by the tongue. The first degree of prayer develops naturally into the second.

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As Theophanes insists, we must confine our mind within the words of prayer, otherwise there is no prayer at all. As our prayer grows more inward, the participation of the mind becomes more intense and spontaneous, while the sounds uttered by the tongue become less important. At times, the name is invoked inwardly by the mind alone, without any movement of the lips. When this occurs, we have passed, by God's grace, from the first level to the second. So long as prayer remains in the mind or in the head, it is incomplete. It is necessary to descend from the head to the heart, to find the place of the heart. This means also searching for the physical heart

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as a symbol and abode of the deep personal heart. To be more exact, we must descend with the mind to the heart, to bring down, as Theophanes says, to bring down the mind into the heart. Our aim is prayer of the mind in the heart. Just as fish must remain in the water, so the mind finds its natural home in the heart. As a consequence of original sin, the mind is divorced from the heart and remains alienated and restless. The reintegration of mind and heart signifies the restoration of our fallen nature and a return to the paradise. It is the special power of the Jesus Prayer to accomplish the union of the mind and the heart.

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In order to bring the mind into the heart, our heart must first be awakened. As Christians, we have received the Holy Spirit at our baptism. As the Holy Spirit dwells in the sanctuary of our heart and is unceasingly praying in us, we ourselves carry within us a constant prayer. But most of us are unconscious of His presence and the prayer which continuously goes on in us. Our heart lies asleep and needs to be awakened to this inner reality. The Jesus Prayer is a powerful means for awakening our heart, enabling us to become aware of the secret indwelling of the Spirit in a conscious manner. For too long, our heart lies dormant within us

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like the seed lying beneath the winter snow. Finally, spring comes, snow melts away under the warmth of the sun, and a little seed begins to sprout forth with its latent energy. In the same way, the name of Jesus, which radiates His power and energy, warms up and awakens our heart from its winter lethargy. Once awakened, the heart opens its door to welcome the mind. There, in the inner chamber, the mind and the heart celebrate their weeping feast, sealed by the bond of the name of Jesus. This union of mind and heart is a special gift of God which many ascetics attribute to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin.

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In Luke's Gospel, we read that Martha welcomed Jesus into her home. She was easying herself with many things while her sister Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet. Listening attentively to His words, the two sisters, Martha and Mary, are like the mind and the heart. Separated from Mary, Martha finds herself worried and distracted by many things, for only the heart can attain to the one thing necessary. So the two sisters, Martha and Mary, the mind and the heart, must be united. It is only by being united with her sister Mary that Martha can remain at the feet of Jesus throughout the day, even when she is occupied with various tasks

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that demand her attention. But in order to achieve this goal, Martha must actually spend some time daily sitting at Jesus' feet, side by side with Mary, doing nothing else but listening to Him. The heart is the inner core of our person, where we come into contact with our true inner self. It is also the inner sanctuary, the place where we encounter God. The ground of our being. Following the teaching of St. Paul, Materius calls the heart the temple of the Holy Spirit, who unceasingly prays in us with groanings too deep for words. Romans 8, 26. The Jesus prayer begins as what Theophan terms

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strenuous prayer, a prayer which demands our effort. But when the prayer enters into the heart, it becomes self-acting prayer, namely, prayer that offers itself spontaneously. Prayer of the heart signifies my prayer becoming identified with the action of another in me. In the words of St. Isaac the Assyrian, when the Spirit takes its dwelling place in a person, he, that person, does not cease to pray because the Spirit will constantly pray in him. In the story of the pilgrim, we are told that the pilgrim began by saying the Jesus prayer a certain number of times every day, increasing from several hundred

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to several thousand times a day with unremitting effort. Then, to his surprise, as he tells us, early one morning, the prayer woke me up, as it were. Ever since then, he found the prayer repeating itself constantly in keeping with the rhythm of each heartbeat. It was as though he were carrying a small murmuring stream flowing unceasingly in his heart. Prayer in such a person is no longer a series of acts but a permanent state. As Paul Hebdochimov says, it is not enough to possess prayer. We must become prayer, prayer incarnate. At this point, the Jesus prayer

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is no longer a prayer offered to Jesus, addressed to Jesus, but the prayer of Jesus himself, who unceasingly lives and prays in me. So the Jesus prayer becomes the prayer of Jesus himself. In this way, the Jesus prayer is transformed from being something we do into something freely given by God. But Calisphus Ware warns the readers of the Pilgrim against gaining the wrong impression that this passage from strenuous prayer to self-acting prayer is easily attained. Nothing is easy. The rapid achievement of the Pilgrim is something altogether exceptional, More usually,

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prayer of the heart comes only after a lifetime of ascetic practice. The Hesychast teachers emphasize the importance of concentrating full attention upon the recitation of the actual word. Thus, Calisthus quotes the wise advice given by contemporary spiritual father of Mount Athos, Jerome Joseph of New Cape. The work of inner prayer consists in forcing yourself to say the prayer with your mouth continually without ceasing. Attend only to the words, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. All your efforts must be centered on the tongue until you start to grow accustomed to the prayer. Something must be said about the method

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accompanying the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, such as external posture, control of the breathing, use of a prayer rope, etc. When reciting the prayer, it is usual to sit on a low stool with the eyes closed. One should breathe more slowly, coordinating one's breathing with the rhythm of the prayer. Often, the first part, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, is said while breathing in, and the second part, have mercy on me while breathing out. A prayer rope made of knotted wool is commonly used to help concentration rather than for counting the number of prayers. While these external physical techniques are based on the psalm's theological principle that the human person forms a psychosomatic unity

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and that the whole person, body and soul, must be involved in prayer, most Orthodox writers would consider these techniques as no more than an aid and hence as something secondary, not indispensable. More will be said about the psychophysiological method this evening. The most important thing is to start saying the prayer, the Jesus Prayer, and keep saying it regularly every day. After all, it is the Holy Spirit who will teach us how to pray, like a mother teaching her child to call its father. Let me conclude with the words of Diadochus. The soul now has grace itself to share its meditation and to repeat with it the words, Lord Jesus, just as a mother teaches her child

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to repeat with her the word, Father, until she has formed in him the habit of calling for his father even in his sleep. I sleep, but my heart is awake. Welcome to this weekend's Preach the Retreat. Our topic is on hesychia, inner silence, and the Jesus Prayer. During this first talk, I am going to speak about silence, watchfulness, and purity of heart. In the book written by Herodotus Flachos, entitled A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain, Discussion with the Hermit on the Jesus Prayer, there is a beautiful description of the sunset on Mount Athos.

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Quote, The sun was sinking in the west. Mornings on Mount Athos are fragrant, charming. The darkness of the night is dispersed, while the monks are at the main church of the holy monasteries, singing glory to thee who showed us light. One could say that the sweet melodious voices, the sweet ringing gongs, and the warm rhythm of the talenter drive the darkness away. But also, the evenings on Athos are peaceful. A day of struggle has passed, and night is spreading its veil now. The monk will hide within it many battles, abundant tears, and a lot of spiritual exercises.

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The sun falls, but the sun which exists in the hearts of the ascetics is not extinguished. A ceaseless luminous day exists in their all-pure hearts, without the clouds of their passions. Oh, the sunsets of Athos, sunsets full of charm, full of grace, wrapped up in silence. End quote. I wish that all of you may enjoy the sunrise and sunset and the silence here on this holy mountain of the Hermitage in Big Sur. I dare not compare our small hermitage, founded only in 1958, to the holy mountain, Mount Athos, with its 1,000-year glorious history

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of holiness and renown. But I am convinced that you can find here on this humble mountain the same natural beauty, solitude, silence, and especially the presence of God and of his holy grace. Speaking about silence, Herodotus Platos says that the holy mountain is a place of mystery where silence speaks strongly. The monks do not speak much there. They live the mysteries of God in silence. Their silence is the most eloquent sermon. At this point, I am almost tempted to stop here and leave you in silence for the rest of the retreat. But then the author continues

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to tell us that people also come to the holy mountain asking for words from the monks, just as the author himself was coming to Mount Athos to meet with a hermit to converse with him on the Jesus Prayer. He likens the word coming forth from the silence of the heart of a hermit to Christ, the Word of God, born of the eternal silence of the Father. In my talks during this retreat, I am hoping to transmit the wisdom and the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox spiritual tradition, especially based on such precious sources as the Philokalia, the writings of Theophanes the Recluse of the 19th century Russia, and of the well-known contemporary Orthodox

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spiritual writer, Callistos Ware. At the same time, I shall also attempt a dialogue between this tradition and other spiritual traditions, both East and West. This dialogue will take place probably tomorrow evening and Sunday morning during the last two talks. In some way, I am hoping to speak from the silence of Mount Athos Hopefully, the Holy Spirit will also speak in the silence of the hearts of each one of us during this retreat. Our topic is on Hesychia, which means stillness or silence. Let me read for you the inspiring description of Hesychia given by Herodotus Flachos.

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External quietness is helpful so that humans can reach the inner hesychia. A hesychast is one who struggles to achieve the returning of the mind back into the heart following a specific method. End quote. It is important to note, among other things, the author distinguishes between external quietness and inner hesychia. Since its early beginning, the monastic tradition has attached a great significance to hesychia, so much so, Saint Nihilus of Ancyra insists, it is impossible to become a monk without hesychia. The importance of silence is brought forth by one of the stories in the sayings of the Desert Fathers, which describes a visit

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by Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, to the monks of Ctes. Anxious to impress their distinguished guest, the assembled brethren appealed to Abba Pambo to say something to the Archbishop that he might be edified. The old man replied, If he isn't edified by my silence, then he won't be edified by my words. Hesychia, however, means more than refraining from speech. It is a term that can be interpreted at different levels. According to Kallistos Well, it contains at least the three main senses, moving from the more external to the more inward. First, Hesychia and solitude. In the earliest sources,

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the term hesychast usually denotes a monk living in solitude, a hermit as opposed to the member of a synobium or a monk living in a community. This sense is found already in Evagrius Ponticus. It occurs also in the sayings of the Desert Fathers. On this level, Hesychia refers primarily to a person's relationship in space with other people, living in a desert away from other people. This is the most external of the various senses. Then secondly, Hesychia and the spirituality of the cell. Hesychia says Abba Rufus is to sit in your cell with fear and in the knowledge of God,

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abstaining entirely from rancor and vainglory. Such Hesychia is the mother of all the virtues and guards the monk from the fiery arrows of the enemy. Here, Hesychia is linked to the cell of a monk. The Hesychast is one who obeys the teaching of Abba Moses. Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. The link between Hesychia and the cell is also explicitly stated in a famous saying of St. Anthony the Great, father of monks. Fish die if they carry on dry land. And in the same way, monks, if they linger outside their cell, lose the pitch of their Hesychia. And the monk who remains

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within his cell is like the string of a well-tuned instrument. But Hesychia is not guaranteed by simply remaining in one's cell. To the statement, Hesychia is to sit in your cell, Abba Rufus adds the following advice. Be vigilant over your own soul. Sitting in the cell is closely associated with another key term in the desert tradition, that is nefsis, vigilance or watchfulness. I shall speak more of it in a minute. In addition to the link with vigilance, the cell of a hesychast is envisaged above all as a workshop of unceasing prayer. The monk's chief activity, while remaining still

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and silent within his cell, is the constant remembrance of God, accompanied by a sense of compunction and repentance. The remembrance of God is maintained especially by keeping in mind the words of the publican, God be merciful to me, a sinner. For the hesychast, then, the cell is a house of prayer, a sanctuary, a place of meeting with God. So we are moving from the external to the inward sense of hesychia. Interpreted in terms of the spirituality of the cell, the word signifies not only an external and physical condition, but a state of soul. A hesychast is one who remains in his cell in watchful vigilance and unceasing prayer.

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In this sense, a hesychast need not always be a hermit, but can as well be a monk living in a community with other monks under the same roof. In the third place, we have hesychia and inner silence, or return into oneself. This more inward understanding of hesychia is emphasized in the classic definition given by St. John Climacus. Climacus actually means ladder. The definition is given in his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent. The hesychast is one who strives to confine his incorporeal or spiritual being within his bodily house, that is, keeping his mind within his body. This is the curious definition

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given by Climacus to hesychia, to confine one's incorporeal or spiritual being within the bodily house, that is, keeping the mind within the body. Mindfulness. The hesychast, according to this inward sense, is not someone who has journeyed outwardly into the desert, but someone who has started the journey inward into his own heart, someone who returns into himself, shutting the door of his mind to distractions. He came to himself. This is the beginning of the conversion and homecoming of the prodigal son. The return into oneself is beautifully described

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by St. Basil the Great. When the mind is no longer dissipated amidst external things, nor dispersed across the world through the senses, it returns to itself. And by remaining in the self, it ascends to the thought of God. For there is but one single entry to the two. When one enters into oneself, one discovers God. So far we have seen the different levels of meaning of hesychia. The three levels of meaning are indicated in an episode of Abba Arsenius. While still tutor to the imperial children in the palace, Arsenius prayed earnestly to God, Show me how to be saved.

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A voice came to him, Arsenius, flee from people and you will be saved. He withdrew into the desert and became a solitary. And then he prayed in the same words. This time the voice said, Arsenius, flee, keep silent and be still. For these are the roots of sinlessness. So we have the three words, famous words, Fuge, Tache, Guieshe. Fuge, flee from the crowd. Tache, keep silent. Guieshe, be still. Such are the three degrees of hesychia. The first is spatial, fleeing into the desert. The second is still external,

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to refrain from outward speech. Neither of these things can by itself make a person into a real hesychast. For he may be living in solitude and keeping his mouth closed and yet inwardly he may be full of restlessness and agitation. To achieve true stillness, it is necessary to pass from the second level to the third, from external to interior hesychia, from the mere absence of speech to inner silence. This distinction between the different levels of hesychia has important implications. A person may flee into the desert and yet in his heart still remains in the midst of the city. Conversely, a person may live in the city

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and yet be a true hesychast in his heart. I remember an episode about a contemplative of our time, brother Carlo Caretto, a little brother of Charles de Foucault. In his letters from the desert, he shared the profound experience of God which he had when he was living in solitude in the Sahara Desert. Later, in a journey to the forest, he visited also Hong Kong. During a meeting with a group of young people there, I was not there by that time. During a meeting with a group of young people, he was confronted with the question whether and how they were able to have similar experience of God while they were living in a busy city like Hong Kong.

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Brother Carlo was quite taken by surprise. After he went back to Italy, he reflected on the question and wrote another book entitled A Desert in the City. The title of this book reminds me of a recent visit I took together with brother Casson to a monastery of Chinese Buddhist nuns in San Francisco next to Chinatown, right on the second floor of the Bank of America there. What a combination. There, we found the nuns chanting their prayer, their midday or afternoon prayer in this urban temple with edifying recollection and devotion. They were sort of saying

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the Jesus prayer in a Buddhist way, I guess. There are stories in the sayings of the Desert Fathers where lay people fully committed to a life of active service in the society are compared with hermits and solitaries. A doctor in Alexandria, for instance, is regarded as the spiritual equal of St. Anthony the Great himself. And during his time, St. Gregory of Sinai decided to send one of his disciples, a certain Isidore, back from Mount Athos to Thessalonica to act as exemplar and guide to a circle of lay people. Gregory could scarcely have done so had he regarded the vocation of an urban Hesychast

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as something impossible. His contemporary, St. Gregory Palamas, insisted that the command of St. Paul pray without ceasing applies to all Christians without exception. St. Simeon the New Theologian maintained that the grace of contemplation is given to people in the middle of cities as well as in mountains and cells. Married people, so he believed, with secular jobs and children burdened with the concerns and anxieties of a large household may equally ascend to the heights of contemplation. The ultimate criterion is not the external situation but the inward reality, even though the external

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may be of great help, as you can notice while spending a few days here. Reinterpreting our original definition of the Hesychast as a solitary living in the desert, we may say that solitude is a state of soul rather than an external physical place and that the real desert lies within the heart. In a metaphorical sense, we can have a desert in the city by cultivating the inner cell of the heart, the cellar god is. The second meaning of Hesychia, as you remember, is related to the spirituality of the cell, which hinges on the two basic practices of watchful vigilance

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and constant prayer. If we wish to replace the physical cell with the cell of the heart, then spirituality of the cell would mean guarding over our heart with watchfulness and with constant prayer. While I shall deal with constant prayer tomorrow, let me say something about watchful vigilance at this point. The close connection between the cell and vigilance is also expressed in the brief rule of Saint Romuald, Sit in your cell as in paradise. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The metaphor of fisherman is probably borrowed from John Climacus. In the chapter on watchfulness of his book,

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The Ladder, we read, The vigilant monk is a fisher of thoughts, and in the quiet of the night he can easily observe and catch them. While Evagrius defines prayer as laying aside of thoughts or shedding of thoughts, John Climacus applies the same definition to Hesychia, saying that Hesychia is the laying aside of thoughts. To attain inner stillness, one must put aside thoughts. Thus thoughts, logismoi, or evil thoughts better, are the proper objects of our watchfulness and vigilance. To be vigilant or watchful means keeping guard against evil thoughts at the entrance of our hearts

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so that they may not enter and disturb our inner stillness. For a better understanding of thoughts, we have to turn to Evagrius, their classical exponent. Following the ancient tradition, Evagrius distinguishes the spiritual life into three stages, the active life and the contemplative life. And the contemplative life is further distinguished into natural contemplation and the contemplation of God. So altogether, we have three stages. But this distinction of the active and contemplative life is different from the distinction that developed later, which denotes two different styles of life. According to the later definition, people who dedicate themselves

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to the active service of the Church and of their neighbors are said to lead an active life, while those dedicated primarily to a life of prayer and contemplation are said to lead a contemplative life. However, according to the more ancient usage as adopted by Evagrius, the active and contemplative life indicate two different stages in the spiritual life of the same person. The active life, in this sense, begins with repentance, metametanoia, understood not merely as sorrow for sin, but as a change of mind, a radical conversion. The ascetic strives, with God's help, to overcome the deep-rooted passions that distort human nature.

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In Evagrius and most Greek writers, the term passion, pathos, signifies a disordered impulse, such as jealousy, lust, anger, which violently dominates the soul. Thus, passions are seen as something evil. But there exists also a more positive view, according to which the passion is a natural tendency or power given by God. It is not the passion as such, but its misuse that is sinful. Hence, our aim is the redirection or reintegration of the passions, not their suppression or modification. The Christian is called to struggle not only against the passions, but also against the thoughts.

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As soon as they emerge in consciousness, before they have issued in outward actions or taken root as passions. Evagrius formulated a list of eight basic evil thoughts, which, with some modification, became the seven capital sins current in the West. The list of Evagrius runs this way. Gluttony, lust, avarice, dejection, anger, despondency, or listlessness, the so-called Assyria, vainglory, and pride. We have a classic description of the eight thoughts in his book Praktikos, where Evagrius made an original contribution by applying his profound psychological insights to the description of each evil thought. From the beginning

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of the monastic tradition, as is seen in the life of Saint Anthony, the spiritual life was presented as a combat against the demonic forces. Following this tradition, Evagrius envisages a close connection between the demons and the evil thoughts. He actually calls them evil spirits or demons, such as the demon of gluttony, of anger, of vainglory, and so forth. His idea of these various demons is that they are each specialists in their particular field. These demons assault us by presenting mental images to our mind. If we do not resist them at their uprising, they enter into our hearts, incite our passions

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towards evil, and rob our inner stillness or hesychia. So the secret is to watch for them and to expel them right from the beginning. The narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve in paradise is a classic example. The Book of Genesis depicts Satan as a serpent more crafty than any other animal that God had made. The serpent initiated a seductive conversation with Eve. She lingered to converse with him. As a consequence of this dialogue, her inner passion was aroused. She saw that the tree was good for food and that the fruit was a delight to the eyes and was to be desired to make one wise. Finally, following the movement

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of the inner passion, the external action took place. She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. It was Eve's lingering in conversation with the serpent that led to the fall. The failure in watching over and driving away evil thoughts from its inception reminds me of a story about a novice who fell prey to the demon of vainglory. By the way, I heard this story when I was a novice myself. One day, when this novice was sweeping the floor, the novice was seized by daydreaming. He said to himself out loud, Very soon, after my religious profession, I shall study theology

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and be ordained a priest. Then, with my exemplary life and extraordinary capacity, I shall be made, no doubt, superior of the community. After some time, my fame as a successful superior will spread. Rome will come to realize that the particular religious community of which I am in charge is too small for my administering ability and will make me a bishop, and later, who knows, a cardinal. Then, if the Pope dies, there will be a papal election. Very likely, as one of the most popular candidates, I shall be elected the next Pope. Now, which name shall I take for myself? Pius XIII?

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No. Thirteen is an unlucky number. What about Paul VII or John Paul III? All this time he was thinking aloud, he did not realize that his novice master was right behind him and had heard all the nonsense of his wild daydreaming. Just at that moment, the novice heard a voice saying, I think you should name yourself Dumbass I. It's a famous story. It's a famous story.

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Along with unceasing prayer, watchfulness of guarding the mind is the topic which occurs most frequently in the Philokalia. In reality, the two themes are closely related. Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation. The Hesychast writers, as I have said, use the metaphor of a fisherman watching for fish to describe this ascetic watching for thoughts. In this regard, John Klimakus also employs the image of a watchman guarding over a vineyard. He says, sit in a high place and keep watch if you can and you will see the thieves come and you will discover how they come, when and from where,

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how many and what kind they are as they steal your clusters of grapes. The various methods of watchfulness or vigilance can be summarized under two headings. Watching over our thoughts and a constant remembrance of God. So, Hesychius of Sinai writes on watchfulness. One type of watchfulness consists in closely scrutinizing every mental image or provocation. For only by means of a mental image can Satan fabricate an evil thought and insinuate this into the intellect in order to lead it astray. In order to be able to discover

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the thoughts that they are rising, one must be constantly present to oneself, mindful of the present moment. One must be fully present to the here and now, paying full attention to what one is doing at each moment. It is only when one is trained in the discipline of mindfulness that one can be a good fisher of thoughts. The second type of watchfulness recommended by the ascetic fathers is through constant remembrance of God. This is a more positive tactic. Instead of trying to empty our mind of what is evil, we fill it with the thoughts of what is good, namely with the remembrance of God. For this purpose, various practices are recommended

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by the hesychast writers, such as constant remembrance of one's death, frequent recitation of some verses from scriptures, especially from the Psalms, and frequent repetition of some short, ejaculatory prayers. It is in this connection that we find a special recommendation for the Jesus Prayer. Watchfulness over thoughts is an indispensable task for all ascetics. But there are two different ways of combating thoughts once they are discovered. The first method is for the strong. They confront their thoughts face to face and repel them in direct battle. However, as Callistos Ware observes, direct confrontation often serves merely to give greater strength

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to our imagination. If violently suppressed, our fantasies tend to return with increased force. Instead of fighting our thoughts directly, the second, or indirect method, teaches that it is wiser to turn aside and fix our attention elsewhere. Rather than gazing downward into our turbulent imagination and concentrating on how to oppose our thoughts, we should look upward to the Lord Jesus by invoking his holy name. The grace that acts through his name will overcome the thoughts we cannot expel by our own strength. This is the teaching especially given by Hesychius of Sinai, who repeatedly connects watchfulness

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with continually and humbly calling upon the Lord Jesus Christ for help, proposing the invocation of the holy name as the most powerful weapon against the evil spirits. In a similar vein, John Climacus urges the ascetics to flock the enemy with the holy name of Jesus. For Evagrius, the aim of vigilance, or of the active life in general, is to achieve apatheia, that is, dispassion, or freedom from passion. This term, taken over from the Stoic philosophers, was employed by Clement of Alexandria in his ascetical theology.

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It is not apathy in the modern sense of the word, which means insensitivity. Following Clement of Alexandria, Evagrius understood apatheia or dispassion not negatively, but positively. It does not signify the extinction of passions, but an ordered control over them. It is a state of reintegration and spiritual freedom, not the absence of all feeling. To bring forth its positive meaning, Evagrius linked dispassion closely with love. Thus he states, Agape, or divine love, is the offspring of apatheia. For him, dispassion and genuine love are but two aspects

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of a single reality. This is so because all disordered passions have self-love at their root. Once dispassion or reintegration of disordered passions is attained, our self-love will be transformed into true love of God and of neighbor. That's why apatheia or dispassion and love are two sides of the same coin. Transmitting Evagrius' teaching to the Latin West, John Cassian rendered apatheia as purity of heart. Cassian proposes as the aim of the ascetic life the achievement of purity of heart, which, as in Evagrius,

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is identified with love. Thus Cassian writes, We must practice fasting, vigils, withdrawal, and meditation of scripture as activities which are subordinate to our objective, namely purity of heart, that is to say, love. We may say that purity of heart and love are the negative and positive poles of a single field of force. Being liberated from disordered passion, one is free to love. Dispassion or purity of heart also means an inner state of unperturbable calm, which is the distinctive mark

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of hesychia. I have presented the different levels of meaning of hesychia. In its external sense, hesychia denotes a solitary or hermit living in the desert. Moving towards a more inward sense, it is associated with the spirituality of the self. A hesychast is a monk who stays in his cell with watchfulness and constant prayer. Finally, in the most inward sense, hesychia means returning to oneself, achieving inner stillness or purity of heart. The first two conditions, desert and the material self, can be of great help for attaining the third level of hesychia,

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namely inner stillness. But the connection is not absolute. One can become an urban hesychast by cultivating a desert in the city. Moreover, while not everyone is called to live in a cell in a monastery, all are called to guard the inner cell of the heart. The indispensable, essential quality of a true hesychast is to maintain inner stillness of the heart or purity of heart through watchful vigilance and constant prayer, so as to be able at all times to love God and others.

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