SEEING GOD WITH OUR HEARTS – the Prayer of the Heart - For the Sunday of ST. GREGORY PALAMAS - “Let Your Light shine upon us!”

SEEING GOD WITH OUR HEARTS – the Prayer of the Heart - For the Sunday of ST. GREGORY PALAMAS - “Let Your Light shine upon us!” 

Built – literally – on the roots of the Burning Bush where God revealed the knowledge of His name in fire as "I am The Being", the Sinai basilica ceaselessly serves humanity – ever since its construction by the builder of the Great Church of the Wisdom of God, Hagia Sophia – as the repository the knowledge of that which cannot be revealed.

Ceaselessly functioning since at least the third century, the Sinai brotherhood remains the living expression of humanity’s response to that revelation. Why then did Justinian’s skilled and theologically informed artists place the Transfiguration above the altar on Mount Sinai?...

As the apse over the altar of an Orthodox basilica represents eternity, portrayals of Christ there typically evoke the Second Coming: What could more powerfully remind those gathered underneath not only why we are present in church – but on this earth?...

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"One day one of the brothers visited the holy and righteous ascetic Joseph of Raitho with a question about a thought. When he knocked, he got no answer. Peering in through the entrance he saw him standing entirely from head to toe like a flame of fire. Filled with fear and trembling, his body went weak, and he collapsed on the ground like dead for an hour. Then he stood up again and sat down at the door. The saintly old man was still occupied with his vision and did not know what had happened. 

Five full hours passed before he appeared to be human once more. Then he opened the door and let the brother inside. After they sat down he said to the brother, ‘When did you come?’ He replied to the old man, ‘It has been four or five hours ago since I came by, but I did not knock till now, so as not to disturb you.’

The old man realized that the brother was aware of what had happened to him, yet he said nothing about it. Instead he answered all the questions he was asked and cured the brother of his thought, then released him in peace. Afterwards he disappeared because he feared receiving fame among humans.

… Six years later someone knocked on the door of the cell. The elder’s disciple Gelasius went to the door was amazed to see his abba standing outside. Having said a prayer, Gelasius received him with joy and they embraced each other with a holy kiss. 

‘Venerable Father, why did you separate yourself from your community, leaving me an orphan?’ asked the disciple. The old man said to him, ‘God knows the reason I did not appear. And yet, to this day I have never been away from this place, nor has a single Lord’s Day passed that I have not shared with all of you in the holy, life-giving Mysteries of Christ.’ 

The brother was amazed … The old man then said, ‘Today I am migrating to the Lord from this wretched body.’ After conversing with the brother about the soul and the good things to come, he fell asleep in peace, delivering his venerable, holy soul to the hands of the living God.

Brother Gelasius ran off to assemble us all. With psalm-singing and palm leaves we went and conveyed him to the Lord’s house. His face was brighter than the sun. We laid him to rest with the holy fathers who had fallen asleep before him.”

For this reason, said Elder Pavlos, the desert ascetic united to Christ in purity of soul remains closer to the problems of those in the world than would be possible if he lived amongst them.

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If the elder was asked one question more than another during his tours of American universities and theological schools, and he was, it was, “How can I retain inner peace amidst the pressures of this world?”

It was a good question, a profound one, for, as the inquirers well knew, there is no peace without the inner Presence of God. Many things masquerade as peace or happiness, but all that glitters is not gold. Were they real, would they vanish so precipitously, between one blink of an eye and the next? Father Pavlos broached the matter in the classic video filmed at St. Catherine’s many years ago by Lydia Carras, “Where God Walked on Earth.”

“In the garden the monk is not losing that simplicity and peace which is dear to him because the trees, although each one of them can be seen as an entire factory, have been created by God to work secretly as man works within his own heart. When a monk is tending to the garden, he can pray at the same time and feel God very close to him, and not lose that peace of soul. It’s physically tiring of course, but then, a monk too should get tired.

“Saint John Klimakos stressed that one's breath should be united with the thought of Christ. The fathers devised a short form of prayer, the well-known Jesus Prayer, the prayer of the heart, as we call it. ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me the sinner.’ 

What can one say about the power of this prayer, the joy it instills into the heart ... Man in this world is often tired and under pressure. The Jesus Prayer fills him with a sense of peace." ...

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And, at the intersection of heaven and earth, Christ’s Transfiguration discloses the icon of our own. For, as the God-bearing fathers and mothers say, the Second Coming lies perpetually before each soul in that no one knows the hour of his exodus from this fallen life. The hour when, released from the ever-shifting shadows of its fears and uncertainties, His true servants will depart them all, as the Israelites from Egypt, to meet the Savior Christ upon the clouds of His glory …

From the Article “On the Holy Summit of Transfiguration” by Sr. Joanna in the FMSM New Blog: https://www.mountsinaimonastery.org/news-blog/on-the-holy-summit-of-transfiguration