Hesychasm
[7] John Climacus, in his influential Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes several stages of contemplative or hesychast practice, culminating in agape.
[8] Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), who transmitted Evagrius Ponticus's ascetical teachings to the West, forming the basis of much of the spirituality of the Order of Saint Benedict and the subsequent western mystical tradition, presents as the formula used in Egypt for repetitive prayer "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me.
"[web 2][note 1] St. Nicephorus the Hesychast (13th century), a Roman Catholic who converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith and became a monk at Mount Athos, advised monks to bend their heads toward the chest, "attach the prayer to their breathing" while controlling the rhythm of their breath, and "to fix their eyes during prayer on the 'middle of the body'", concentrating the mind within the heart in order to practice nepsis (watchfulness).
[11][note 2] In the early 14th century, Gregory Sinaita (1260s–1346) learned a form of disciplined mental prayer from Arsenius of Crete, rooted in the tradition of John Climacus.
[web 3] The terms Hesychasm and Hesychast were used by the monks on Mount Athos to refer to the practice and to the practitioner of a method of mental ascesis that involves the use of the Jesus Prayer assisted by certain psychophysical techniques.
About the year 1337, hesychasm attracted the attention of Barlaam of Seminara, a Calabrian monk who at that time held the office of abbot in the Monastery of St. Saviour in Constantinople and who visited Mount Athos.
Mount Athos was then at the height of its fame and influence, under the reign of Andronicus III Palaeologus and under the leadership of the Protos Symeon.
[13] On Mount Athos, Barlaam encountered hesychasts and heard descriptions of their practices, also reading the writings of the teacher in hesychasm of St. Gregory Palamas, himself an Athonite monk.
As a private teacher of theology in the Western Scholastic mode, Barlaam propounded a more intellectual and propositional approach to the knowledge of God than the hesychasts taught.
[16][17] On the hesychast side, the controversy was taken up by St. Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica,[13] who was asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend hesychasm from the attacks of Barlaam.
[citation needed] The hesychast interprets Jesus's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to "go into your closet to pray" to mean that one should ignore the senses and withdraw inward.
According to the standard ascetic formulation of this process, there are three stages: Sobriety contributes to this mental ascesis that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention.
St. John of Sinai describes hesychast practice as follows: Take up your seat on a high place and watch, if only you know how, and then you will see in what manner, when, whence, how many and what kind of thieves come to enter and steal your clusters of grapes.
This emphasis on the actual, real invocation of Jesus Christ mirrors an Eastern understanding of mantra in that physical action/voice and meaning are utterly inseparable.
St. Theophan the Recluse once remarked that bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his youth, since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only "in ruining their lungs".
This state of spiritual delusion is in a superficial, egotistical way pleasurable, but can lead to madness and suicide, and, according to the hesychast fathers, makes salvation impossible.
[citation needed] Some Coptic Orthodox clerics are "wary of the hesychastic practices of the Jesus Prayer that developed later in the Eastern churches".
[citation needed] Western theologians have tended to reject the idea that the distinction between essence and energies is real rather than, albeit with a foundation in reality, notional (in the mind).
[25] According to Fortescue, the Scholastic theory that God is pure actuality prevented Palamism from having much influence in the West, and it was from Western Scholasticism that hesychasm's philosophical opponents in the East borrowed their weapons.
[26][27][28] The Catholic Church has never expressed any condemnation of Palamism, and uses in its liturgy readings from the work of Nicholas Kabasilas, a supporter of Palamas in the controversy that took place in the East.
Its Liturgy of the Hours includes extracts from Kabasilas's Life in Christ on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter in Year II of the two-year cycle for the Office of Readings.
[29] The later 20th century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized.
