ΤΗΕ ROLE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
Before
we go on with our main issue, I believe it would make us better
understand, if I say a few words about Hesychasm, a spiritual
tradition endorsed by St. Gregory the Palamas (15th
century), and collected by Demetrios Tselengidis, Professor of
Dogmatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Hesychastic
life is the highest form of ascetic life, through which man can
achieve the highest spiritual experience, théosis or theoria
(deification).
According
to St. Gregory Palamas, hesychia (stillness, “quietness”), par
excellence an ascetic term, is of existential and experiential
content. Hesychia implies the state of peace settling inside the
inner man, when we (permitted by God) see, detest and get rid of our
ugly mask, which was established due to the wandering activity of our
nous. Hesychia is indispensably connected with the nepsis
(watchfulness) of our nous, with the spiritual wakefulness and the
experience of all the conditions being realized during nepsis in a
spiritual and inexpressible manner.
Consequently,
the work of an hesychast (person practicing hesychia) is the guarding
of the heart by lovingly keeping God’s commandments, maintaining
his (or her) spiritual purity and by partaking of the Mysteries of
our Church (leading an active liturgical life). By observing God’s
commandments, an hesychast expels the low of sin and replaces it with
the supervision of his nous. His senses are being controlled by
self-restraint (abstinence), while the pathetikon (emotional) part of
the soul is ruled by love, and the logistikon (logical) by
watchfulness (nepsis). Hesychastic life allows for the Devine Grace
to operate in our inner existence and “repair” us, mold us into
our original version, and give us our “flourished” ancient and
indescribable beauty.
A
hesychast lives without worries, as much as possible free from any
relation with distraction. By ceaseless praying, he or she unites
their nous with God, and, by totally concentrating to themselves,
they find a new and secret uplifting to the heavens. There, with
their concentrated nous, they taste an inexpressible pleasure, a
perfect and sweetest serenity, a true quietness and silence. And,
this way, being totally surrendered to God, one beholds the Glory of
God and observes the Devine Light.
The
ultimate purpose of hesychastic life is to make man one with Triune
God, in accordance with Christ's archpriest prayer “let them all
become one” and with our cooperation, which means, the way He came
into communion and unity with the human nature without departing from
His own Triune Unity.
It
is after 1821 (the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Occupation)
when a vicious persecution of the Orthodox Tradition started; by
whom? By the Neo-Greeks, followers of the Enlightenment movement, who
joined forces with the protestant Bavarians planted in Greece to
govern our newly established State. Those people (Farmakidis and
Koraïs and others) were very much eroded by the protestant spirit,
by the European Enlightenment movement (which, due to atheism, was a
total darkness) and by the theology of the West. That’s why they
started a war against Hesychasm, the roots of our Orthodox Tradition.
Right
after we gained our freedom from the Turkish occupation, those people
passed a legislation (three laws of the Greek State, of an orthodox
State, if you please!) and closed down 400 monasteries!!! It is
unbelievable, but, yes, WE did it, the supposedly orthodox Greeks!...
Surprisingly, not the Turks… During the Turkish Occupation there
were 600 monasteries, and, as soon as WE (the so-called Orthodox
Christians) arrived and claimed to be the legitimate rulers of this
nation, we closed down 400 of them! The reason for this absurd move
was the spirit of Koraïs and Maurer, established in the souls of all
those who came to rule and were raised up in and fed by the West.
f. Savvas Agioreitis
To be continued...
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