Issue #11: Eastern Orthodoxy and Hesychastic Spirituality: The Way of the Heart
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If you have read any of the famous Russian novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, you encountered Russian Orthodoxy—one of several branches of Eastern Orthodoxy. Historical, cultural, linguistic, and administrative differences, rather than theology, distinguish the various branches.
Other branches include, for example, the Greek Orthodox Church, Serbian Orthodox Church, Romanian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Georgian Orthodox Church, Antiochian Orthodox Church, Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Albanian Orthodox Church, and more recently, the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).
Other expressions of Orthodox Christianity, not in communion with Eastern Orthodoxy, also exist. These include Oriental Orthodoxy (such as the Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Churches), the Church of the East (e.g., the Assyrian Church of the East), and Eastern Catholic Churches. In addition, several other Eastern Orthodox Churches exist.
Whether you are Protestant or Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodoxy may seem rather exotic. Yet, studying it fascinates many, probably because its worldview and theological framework differ so greatly. Here are some of the significant differences in Eastern Orthodoxy:
It does not hold to the universal jurisdiction or infallibility of the Pope.
It rejects the Filioque clause, “and the Son,” that the Western Church added to the Nicene Creed.
It embraces the doctrine of ancestral sin rather than original sin, emphasizing the healing of the image of God in human beings.
It allows married men to become ordained as priests.
It makes use of icon veneration in devotion and worship. Icons are not worshiped, though people venerate them. Believers hold that icons provide a window into heaven. Iconography is a fascinating subject worth further exploration.
It rejects the doctrine of purgatory.
It does not accept the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, defined in 1854, although it venerates Mary as all-holy and ever-virgin.
It was never shaped by Scholasticism or a reformation.
The Great Schism
The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church were initially in communion with one another until the Great Schism in 1054 AD. The Schism was not a one-time event; significant tensions had brewed for centuries, and the mutual excommunications merely symbolized the deep divide. Cultural and political differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires, along with linguistic barriers—Latin in the West and Greek in the East—contributed to the separation. Several theological and ecclesiastical disputes also played a major role, including issues of papal authority, liturgical practices, jurisdiction, and the Filioque clause. The Western Church gradually added the Filioque clause to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 and is now a part of the Nicene Creed of Western Christianity. This inclusion began in sixth-century Spain at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD, as a response to the Arianism of the Visigoths, who denied the full divinity of Christ.
The Eastern Church objected to the Filioque clause on theological grounds and resented its unilateral inclusion in the Creed. The East also noted that it had not participated in the Third Council of Toledo and regarded this as a breach of proper ecumenical procedure. However, since the council was regional and took place in Spain, the East was not expected to attend, and the exclusion was not deliberate. These tensions reflected deeper ecclesiastical rifts that had developed over centuries. One should keep in mind that the issues were far more complex than can be fully articulated here, and the division between East and West did not happen overnight.
Following the Great Schism, the Western and Eastern Churches developed distinct traditions, practices, and theological emphases—although many of these were already forming before the schism. In terms of Christian mysticism, the Western Church experienced a flourishing of mystical theology, particularly in the late Middle Ages. Meanwhile, Eastern Orthodox Christianity cultivated its own rich mystical tradition—namely, the Hesychastic tradition, which we will explore shortly.[1]
Theological Distinctives
In his excellent little book, The Orthodox Way, the prominent Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian, Kallistos Ware (Timothy Ware), offers “a brief account of the fundamental teachings of the Orthodox Church, approaching the faith as a way of life and a way of prayer.”[2] In Eastern Orthodox theology, “a God who is comprehensible is not God” is nothing more than an idol which we fashion into our own image.[3] God is infinitely transcendent and other, to the point where they talk of God being mysterium tremendum, that is, “a tremendous mystery.” Although Orthodoxy uses both negative and affirmative statements about God, its primary focus is on the negative, typically called apophatic theology (the affirmative approach is called cataphatic theology). They use the apophatic approach because all that we can say about who God is and what he is like falls far short of the truth, for his goodness and righteousness, for example, ought not be measured by our standards.[4] Ware further explains that “the ‘thick darkness’ into which we enter with Moses turns out to be a luminous or dazzling darkness. The apophatic way of ‘unknowing’ brings us not to emptiness but to fullness. Our negations are in reality super-affirmations.”[5] If you are beginning to sense the influence of Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses,[6] Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology, and parallels with The Cloud of Unknowing (from Western Christianity), you’re very perceptive.[7]
One already begins to appreciate that Eastern Orthodox theology is less rational and more mystical, which contrasts with the Roman Catholic and Protestant theology of the West influenced by scholastic theology developed primarily by theologians like Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas. This mystical emphasis in Orthodoxy centres on the personal experience of God.[8] As the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky explains, “The Eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries” and the theological teachings affirmed by the Church.[9] He continues, “There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism.”[10] Therefore, the theology of the Eastern Church is fundamentally mystical. Lossky explains it further as follows:
The term “mystical theology” denotes no more than a spirituality which expresses a doctrinal attitude. In a certain sense all theology is mystical, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation. On the other hand, mysticism is frequently opposed to theology as a realm inaccessible to understanding, as an unutterable mystery, a hidden depth, to be lived rather than known; yielding itself to a specific experience which surpasses our faculties of understanding rather than to any perception of sense or of intelligence.[11]
Ware articulates God’s relationship to us as two poles, “unknown yet well known, hidden yet revealed.”[12] This brings us to another Orthodox theological distinction, that of essence (οὐσία/ousia), and energies (ἐνέργειαι/energeiai). You can think of the essence as the nature or the inner being of God, that which cannot ever be known, and the energies as the “operations and acts of power,” that which can be known of God and can be experienced. The energies are the aspects of God that are revealed to us.[13]
God is a mystery far beyond our understanding, and so we will never come to know God in his essence, not in this life or in the age to come. As soon as we come to know the divine essence in some way, Ware explains, we would know God “as he knows himself; and this we cannot ever do, since he is Creator and we are created.” Yet even though God’s essence is inaccessible to you and me, “his energies, grace, life and power fill the whole universe, and are directly accessible to us.”[14]
When thinking of the essence and energies distinction, I always have in mind two illustrations, the first is my own. Think of calculus and its two axes, a vertical (y) and a horizontal (x) axis, with a curve in the top right quadrant, moving up from the x-axis towards the y-axis, and getting ever closer to the vertical axis, but will never touch it. God’s essence is represented by the y-axis, and the curve represents our growing apprehension or participation in the divine life (through prayer, grace, the sacraments, etc.) as we get ever closer to God’s essence without ever apprehending it. And so, the curve symbolises how we grow in theosis, which means our union with God through his energies. The curve never touches the y-axis because God’s essence remains inaccessible, even as we draw ever nearer. See the figure below.
The second illustration is more common, that of the sun and its rays. The sun itself is utterly inaccessible to you and me. If we tried to get too close to it, it would consume us. However, its energy, its light, and warmth are very much accessible to us. The sun represents God’s transcendent, unapproachable, and unknowable essence, and his energies are represented by the sun’s rays; they are the uncreated manifestations of God’s presence and activity whereby we may enjoy a very real participation in God through his grace, love, and divine light—his divine energies. Ware explains that when Orthodox Christians “speak of the divine energies, they do not mean by this an emanation from God, an ‘intermediary’ between God and man, or a ‘thing’ or ‘gift’ that God bestows. On the contrary, the energies are God himself in his activity and self-manifestation. When a man knows or participates in the divine energies, he truly knows or participates in God himself, so far as this is possible for a created being.”[15]
This leads to another theological distinction, often called divine simplicity, meaning that “the Godhead is simple and indivisible, and has no parts.”[16] This does not suggest “uniformity or absence of distinction,” says Lossky.[17] Whilst this is commonly taught in Western theology as well, Eastern Orthodoxy understands this in relation to the essence-energies distinction. The divine energies allow for humans to participate in God’s divine life without compromising his simplicity or indivisibility.
Eastern Orthodoxy develops its theology in a mystical and participatory manner, focusing on union with God as the Christian’s ultimate goal, through grace and the sacramental life, culminating in theosis (deification).[18] This is another theological distinction, although Roman Catholic and Protestant Theology have similar theological notions, for example, “union with Christ” in Reformed Theology. Ware offers a helpful explanation when he writes,
By virtue of this distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies, we are able to affirm the possibility of a direct or mystical union between man and God—what the Greek Fathers term the theosis of man, his “deification”—but at the same time we exclude any pantheistic identification between the two: for man participates in the energies of God, not in the essence. There is union, but not fusion or confusion. Although “oned” with the divine, man still remains man; he is not swallowed up or annihilated, but between him and God there continues always to exist an “I—Thou” relationship of person to person.[19]
Ware picks up on this later in his book and develops the idea further as follows:
The saints do not become God by essence nor one person with God, but they participate in the energies of God, that is to say, in his life, power, grace and glory. The energies are truly God himself—yet not God as he exists within himself, in his inner life, but God as he communicates himself in outgoing love. He who participates in God’s energies is therefore meeting God himself face to face, through a direct and personal union of love, in so far as a created being is capable of this. To say that man participates in the energies but not in the essence of God is to say that between man and God there is brought to pass union but not confusion.[20]
I have highlighted the following theological distinctives in Eastern Orthodoxy: Apophatic Theology; the Essence-Energies Distinction; Divine simplicity; and Theosis. There are other distinctions, but this will do as an introduction to Eastern Orthodox spirituality. One last comment, though, on Theosis, or union with God; this can never take place without prayer, because prayer is foundational to our relationship with God, says Lossky.[21] Eastern Orthodox spirituality is marked by “Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices.”[22]
At the very heart of Orthodox spirituality is the contemplative mystical tradition called Hesychasm, primarily practiced by monastics but available to clergy and laity alike. Not all Orthodox believers and monastics practice it, though, but it is a profoundly important spirituality within Orthodoxy. Now that we have an elementary foundation to Eastern Orthodoxy, let’s explore the fascinating world of Hesychastic Spirituality.
Hesychastic Spirituality
The word, Hesychasm, comes from the Greek word hesychia (ἡσυχία), meaning, “stillness,” “rest,” “quiet,” or “silence.” Originating from Mount Athos in the Middle Ages, this profound mystical tradition is about finding inner stillness, whether in the monastery or in a chaotic and fast-paced world. It’s a tried and tested method for a deep spiritual journey into the inner life of prayer and contemplation, emphasizing the experience of stillness and inner peace. which leads to a personal knowledge of God, where one finds rest in him.[23]
While the Jesus Prayer is used throughout Eastern Orthodox Christianity, it’s central to Hesychastic spirituality. There are variations to the Jesus Prayer with shorter versions; however, one of the common versions is, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The prayer is usually prayed with a prayer rope called a komboskini (in Greek) or chotki (in the Slavonic and Russian Orthodox tradition). The rope is usually made of knotted wool or silk, or glass beads, and is traditionally black, with 33, 50, 100, or more knots. Although I’m not Eastern Orthodox, I pray with a prayer rope with 50 glass beads from Mount Athos every day. More about Mount Athos later, but for now, it’s a bastion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Each knot is prayed with a repetition of the Jesus Prayer. The prayer is used to focus one’s heart and mind on God, which facilitates deep stillness and communion with God. The repetitive nature of the prayer helps quiet the mind, offering an unmediated experience of God’s presence. Some people—especially the monks on Mount Athos—pray it continuously throughout the day and night (even in their sleep!), often using specific breathing techniques and physical postures. It’s not recommended that beginners pray the Jesus Prayer for longer than 5 or 10 minutes except under the guidance of an experienced Spiritual Director. Along with this foundational prayer, the Hesychast, Ware says, enters into the prayer of stillness, using “other forms of prayer as well, sharing in corporate liturgical worship, reading Scripture, receiving the sacraments.”[24]
Together with the Jesus Prayer, Hesychastic spirituality is rooted in the practices of early Christian monasticism and the Desert Fathers and has had a profound influence on Eastern Orthodox spirituality and theology in general.
Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)
The most prominent theologian and defender of Hesychasm was Gregory Palamas. He formulated the Distinction Between God’s essence and energies and defended other theological distinctives mentioned earlier. You can read about this in his writings, The Triads (also called Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts), The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, and his countless homilies and letters, along with other works. McGucken introduces Gregory as,
[having been] born into a high aristocratic family in Constantinople in 1296. He studied in a curriculum shaped heavily by Aristotelian principles and governed by the formal disciplines of rhetoric, physics, and logic. But as a young adult Gregory turned his back on political life and took the habit of a monk, much impressed by the presence in Constantinople of monks from the great monastic colony of Mount Athos. He studied the spiritual theologians at the capital under the guidance of Theoleptos the Metropolitan of Philadelphia, and shortly afterwards, in 1316, decided to go to live on Athos himself. Here the young Gregory studied for three more years under the spiritual master Nikodemos while he himself lived the cenobitic (or community-based) monastic life at Vatopedi monastery. After that he spent three years at the Great Lavra monastery. In 1322, when Gregory was twenty-six years of age, he adopted a stricter monastic lifestyle of solitude, asceticism, and mystical prayer the lifestyle of a hesychast. In 1325 this existence was disrupted, however, by the increasing pirate raids on Athos that were harrying the smaller monasteries, and so Palamas left to study for a short time at Thessaloniki. … As a monk who spent much of his life withdrawn in solitude and rustic contemplation, his theological works are redolent with gracious light and divine illumination. Yet he was also one of the figures of the early fourteenth century around whom an endless stream of controversy flowed, like a river in torrent. His life focused on hesychasm (quiet retirement for prayer), but his career in court and palace involved him in all manner of intrigue.”[25]
Without going into all the historical details of the Hesychast controversy of the fourteenth-century in the Byzantine Empire, a major critic of the Hesychastic tradition was the scholar and monk, Barlaam of Calabria (Southern Italy). He challenged the Hesychasts, arguing that monks could not experience God’s divine light through contemplative practices like reciting the Jesus Prayer. He declared that because God is unknown in his essence, no theological term could describe him, and the experience of God is derived solely from sensory material. All knowledge of God is purely symbolic.[26] Gregory Palamas came to the defence of Hesychasm and formulated the distinction between God’s essence and energies. Arguing that the mystical experience of God’s light is an experience of his uncreated energies, not His essence.[27] According to McGuchin, Gregory, “Insisted that it is possible for a disciple to be graced with an authentic experience of God, not merely a symbolic or deficient experience.”[28]
Gregory Palamas continues to be a significant figure in Eastern Orthodoxy who bridges theology with spirituality.[29] One might say that Gregory Palamas is an Eastern equivalent to Thomas Aquinas in Western Christianity in the sense that both were towering theologians who systematized their theology, although Gregory Palamas likely knew nothing of the scholastic movement.
The Way of the Pilgrim and the Philokalia
There are two wonderful literary works in Hesychastic Spirituality, the first is The Way of the Pilgrim, perhaps best described as a mystical memoir and spiritual travel narrative. It’s very accessible, and it’s a delightful read. In many ways, it makes me think it’s the Eastern Orthodox version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and is similar in some ways to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Whether you are Orthodox or not, it’s a deeply edifying and devotional read and has inspired many to a deeper relationship with God. It’s a story of four tales about a simple, poor, and disabled Christian pilgrim (he has partial paralysis in his left arm). His journey is one of life and transformation as he wanders through nineteenth-century Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia. But it’s just as much a journey into his own heart towards God. On his pilgrim he meets many people and experiences many events which deepen his experience of prayer, and through his growth in his relationship with God, others, and creation, he becomes more virtuous and Christ-like.[30]
The story begins with the pilgrim wanting to learn to pray unceasingly, as the Apostle Paul taught in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. A spiritual elder eventually teaches him how to pray the Jesus Prayer, and is later introduce to the Philokalia, which are the collected writings of the spiritual masters of the Hesychastic tradition, and together with the Holy Bible, these become his prized possession, they become his guide during his pilgrim.[31] As Phillips rightly says of The Way of the Pilgrim, “For the lay Christian, it offers untold inspiration and hope. For the mystic, it presents a wise outline of hesychasm.”[32]
The Way of a Pilgrim is the perfect place to start when exploring Hesychastic spirituality because in it you will learn about the Jesus Prayer and how it works (although it’s not recommended that you start of as the Pilgrim did, as I mentioned earlier, start slow!), and then you are introduced to the second literary work in Hesychastic spirituality, the Philokalia and its contents which is an anthology of writings on the prayer of the heart.[33] The meaning of the Greek, Philokalia “means love of the beautiful, the exalted, the excellent, understood as the transcendent source of life and the revelation of Truth.”[34]
The introduction to the English translation of the Philokalia explains, “The Philokalia is a collection of texts written between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition. It was compiled in the eighteenth century by two Greek monks, St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain of Athos (1749–1809) and St Makarios of Corinth (1731–1805), and was first published at Venice in 1782.”[35] These texts were collected to guide the Hesycast towards purification, illumination, and perfection.[36]
It is important to bear in mind that the Philokalia was not written for everyone; it’s for those who are actively participating in “the sacramental and liturgical framework of the Orthodox Church,” or living in the “Orthodox monastic tradition.”[37] And ideally, those working under the guidance of a mature Spiritual Director in the same tradition.[38]
However, nothing stops anyone from enjoying The Way of the Pilgrim and reading the excellent abridged versions of the Philokalia (about 250 pages), and putting those principles into practice (the entire Philokalia spans five volumes, 1,246 pages in total!). Among the many contributors to the Philokalia, arguably the most prominent include Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, Evagrius Ponticus, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory of Sinai, John Cassian, Diadochos of Photiki, and Nikitas Stithatos, along with many others. I’ve included a very small sample of what you would find in the Philokalia:
Bodily fasting alone is not enough to bring about self-restraint and true purity; it must be accompanied by contrition of heart, intense prayer to God, frequent meditation on the Scriptures, toil, and manual labor. These are able to check the restless impulses of the soul and to recall it from its shameful fantasies. Humility of soul helps more than anything else, however, and without it no one can overcome unchastity or any other sin. In the first place, then, we must take the utmost care to guard the heart from base thoughts, for, according to the Lord, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adulteries, unchastity, and so on (Matthew 15:19).
ST. JOHN CASSIAN I,
ON THE EIGHT VICES[39]
Spiritual knowledge comes through prayer, deep stillness, and complete detachment, while wisdom comes through humble meditation on Holy Scripture and, above all, through grace given by God.
ST. DIADOCHOS OF PHOTIKII,
ON SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE, SEC. 9[40]
If, as St. Paul says, Christ dwells in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17), and all the treasures of wisdom and spiritual knowledge are hidden in him (Colossians 2:3), then all the treasures of wisdom and spiritual knowledge are hidden in our hearts. They are revealed to the heart in proportion to our purification by means of the commandments.
ST. MAXIMOS THE CONFESSOR
II, FOURTH CENTURY ON LOVE, SEC. 70[41]
A pure soul is one freed from passions and constantly delighted by divine love. A culpable passion is an impulse from the soul that is contrary to nature. Dispassion is a peaceful condition of the soul in which the soul is not easily moved to evil.
ST. MAXIMOS THE CONFESSOR
II, FIRST CENTURY ON LOVE, SEC. 34–36[42]
If, then, tested in the labors of virtue and purified by tears, we come forward and eat of this bread and drink of this cup, the divine-human Logos in his gentleness is commixed with our two natural faculties, with our soul and body; and as God incarnate one with us in essence with regard to our human nature he totally refashions us in himself, wholly deifying us through divine knowledge and uniting us with himself as his brothers, conformed to him who is God coessential with the Father.
NIKITAS STITHATOS
IV, ON THE INNER NATURE OF THINGS AND ON THE PURIFICATION OF THE INTELLECT, SEC. 95[43]
Task
Listen to the audio version of The Way of the Pilgrim as a devotional text, freely available here, and begin practising the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” for 5–10 minutes a day whilst cultivating hesychia (inner stillness) through silence and contemplation. Journal your thoughts on how the Jesus Prayer and the pilgrim’s encounters in The Way of the Pilgrim have shaped your prayer life. Try this for a month and see how it goes.
AI Disclaimer:
This blog has been edited for grammar, clarity, and readability using AI-assisted tools. The core content, theological insights, and personal reflections remain my original work.
[1] What Is Hesychasm? - Mystical Practice in Orthodox Christianity, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVxQDcOgU4I.
[2] Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 10.
[3] Ware, 13.
[4] Ware, 16.
[5] Ware, 17.
[6] Cf. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Wellington: Crux Press, 2023), 29.
[7] Cf. Lossky, 20.
[8] What Is Hesychasm?
[9] Lossky, Mystical Theology, 5.
[10] Lossky, 6.
[11] Lossky, 4.
[12] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 27.
[13] Ware, 27.
[14] Ware, 27; Cf. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 199.
[15] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 27–28.
[16] Ware, 28.
[17] Lossky, Mystical Theology, 69.
[18] What Is Hesychasm?; Lossky, Mystical Theology, 165.
[19] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 28.
[20] Ware, 168–69.
[21] Lossky, Mystical Theology, 187.
[22] Lossky, 178.
[23] Hesychasm - The Monastic Tradition of Orthodox Christianity, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiINgxCdmqM.
[24] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 136.
[25] John A. McGuckin, “GREGORY PALAMAS (1296–1359): Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts,” in Christian Spirituality: The Classics, ed. Arthur Holder (New York: Routledge, 2009), Ch. 12.
[26] McGuckin, Ch. 12.
[27] What Is Hesychasm?
[28] McGuckin, “Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts,” Ch. 12.
[29] McGuckin, Ch. 12.
[30] Suzette Philipps, “ANONYMOUS (Mid-Nineteenth Century) The Way of a Pilgrim,” in Christian Spirituality: The Classics, ed. Arthur Holder (New York: Routledge, 2009), Ch. 25.
[31] Philipps, Ch. 25.
[32] Philipps, Ch. 25.
[33] Philipps, Ch. 25.
[34] The Philokalia, vol. 1 (London: Faber & Faber, 1983), 13.
[35] The Philokalia, 1:11.
[36] The Philokalia, 1:13.
[37] The Philokalia, 1:15.
[38] The Philokalia, 1:16.
[39] The Philokalia (London: Faber & Faber, 1983–2024), (1) 76.
[40] The Philokalia (Vol. 1), 255.
[41] The Philokalia (Vol. 2), 109.
[42] The Philokalia (Vol. 2), 56.
[43] The Philokalia (Vol. 4), 76.
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