Prayerful Life

Unless we bear with patience the afflictions that come to us unsought, God will not bless those that we embrace deliberately. For our love for God is demonstrated above all by the way we endure trials and temptations.

First the soul has to surmount afflictions embraced willingly, thereby learning to spurn sensual pleasure and self-glory; and this in its turn will permit us readily to bear the afflictions that come unsought.

If for the sake of poverty of spirit you spurn such pleasure and self-glory, and also regard yourself as deserving the more drastic remedy of repentance, you will be ready to bear any affliction and will accept any temptation as your due, and you will rejoice when it comes, for you will see it as a cleansing-agent for your soul.

In addition, it will spur you to ardent and most efficacious prayer to God, and you will regard it as the source and protector of the soul’s health. Not only will you forgive those who afflict you, but you will be grateful to them and will pray for them as for your benefactors.

Thus you will not only receive forgiveness for your sins, as the Lord has promised (cf. Matthew 6:14), but you will also attain the kingdom of heaven and God’s benediction, for you will be blessed by the Lord for enduring with patience and a spirit of humility till the end.

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.312)

 

 

If you do not cut off the inner flow of evil thoughts by means of prayer and humility, but fight against them merely with the weapons of fasting and bodily hardship, you will labor in vain. But if through prayer and humility you sanctify the root, as we said, you will attain outward sanctity as well. This it seems to me is what St Paul counsels when he exhorts us to gird our loins with truth (cf. Ephesians 6:14).

One of the fathers has excellently interpreted this as signifying that when the contemplative faculty of the soul tightly girds the appetitive faculty it also girds the passions manifested through the loins and genitals. The body, nevertheless, is in need of hardship and moderate abstention from food, lest it become unruly and more powerful than the intelligence. Thus all the passions of the flesh are healed solely by bodily hardship and prayer issuing from a humble heart, which indeed is the poverty in spirit that the Lord called blessed.

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.310)

This same thing happens to those who practice virtue in order to be praised by others. While they are called to be citizens of heaven, they “degrade their glory to the dust” (Psalm 7:5), and make their dwelling there, thus drawing upon themselves the curse of the Psalmist. For their prayer does not rise to heaven, and their every endeavor falls to earth, since it is not supported by the wings of divine love that raise aloft the works we do upon the earth….

This passion is the subtlest of all the passions, and for this reason the person who fights against it must not merely be on guard against coupling with it or avoid assenting to it, but he must regard the very provocation as assent and must shield himself from it….

Yet even before this the passion for popularity brings such injury upon those it masters that it shipwrecks faith itself (cf. 1 Timothy 1:19). Our Lord confirms this when He says, “How can you have faith in Me when you receive honor from one another and do not seek for the honor that comes from the only God?” (cf. John 5:44).

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.308)

It is disbelief in God’s providence that makes it difficult for us to eradicate the passions that arise from our love of possessions, for such disbelief leads us to put our trust in material riches. “It is easier”, said the Lord, “for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). But if we trust in material riches, this means nothing to us; we long for worldly, perishable wealth, not for a kingdom that is heavenly and eternal.

And even when we fail to acquire that wealth, the mere desire for it is extremely pernicious….Yet when wealth comes, it proves itself to be nothing, since its possessors, unless they are brought to their senses by experience, still thirst after it as though they lacked it. This love that is no love does not come from need; rather the need arises from the love. The love itself arises from folly, the same folly that led Christ, the Master of all, justly to describe as foolish the man who pulled down his barns and built greater ones (cf. Luke 12:18-20).

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.305)

…the Lord blesses the opposite of what the world calls blessed, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens” (Matthew 5:3). In saying “Blessed are the poor”, why did He add “in spirit”? So as to show that He blesses and commends humility of soul. And why did He not say, “Blessed are those whose spirit is poor”, thus indicating the modesty of their manner of thinking, but “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? So as to teach us that poverty of body is also blessed and fosters the kingdom of heaven, but only when it is accomplished in accordance with the soul’s humility, when it is united to it and originates from it. By calling the poor in spirit blessed He wonderfully demonstrated what is the root, as it were, and mainspring of the outward poverty of the saints, namely, their humility of spirit. For from our spirit, once it has embraced the grace of the gospel teaching, flows a wellspring of poverty that ‘waters the whole face of the ground’ (cf. Genesis 2:6), I mean our outward self, transforming us into a paradise of virtues. Such, then, is the poverty that is called blessed by God.

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.303)

The Father, therefore, through the Son reconciles us to Himself, not taking into account our offenses (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:19); and He calls us, not in so far as we are engaged in unseemly works, but in so far as we are idle; although idleness is also a sin, since we shall give an account even for an idle word (cf. Matthew 12:36). But, as I said, God overlooks former sins and calls us again and again. And what does He call us to do? To work in the vineyard, that is, to work on behalf of the branches, on behalf of ourselves. And afterwards–O the incomparable grandeur of His compassion!–He promises and gives us a reward for toiling on our own behalf. “Come”, He says,”receive eternal life, which I bestow abundantly; and as though in your debt I reward you in full for the labor of your journey and even for your very desire to receive eternal life from Me.”

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, pp.299-300)

If, then, the time of this life is time for repentance, the very fact that a sinner still lives is a pledge that God will accept whoever desires to return to Him. Free will is always part and parcel of this present life. And it lies within the power of free will to choose or to reject the road of life or the road of death that we have described above; for it can pursue whichever it wishes.

Where, then, are the grounds for despair, since all of us can at all times lay hold of eternal life whenever we want to? Do you not perceive the grandeur of God’s compassion? When we are disobedient He does not immediately condemn us, but He is longsuffering and allows us time for conversion. Throughout this period of longsuffering He gives us power to gain divine sonship if we so wish. Yet why do I say ‘gain sonship’? He gives us power to be united with Him and to become one spirit with Him (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:17).

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p. 299)

Where did true death–the death that produces and induces in soul and body both temporal and eternal death–have its origin? Was it not in the realm of life? Thus was man, alas, at once banished from God’s paradise, for he had imbued his life with death and made it unfit for paradise.

Consequently true life–the life that confers immortality and true life on both soul and body–will have its origin here, in this place of death. If you do not strive here to gain this life in your soul, do not deceive yourself with vain hopes about receiving it hereafter, or about God then being compassionate towards you….

Woe to him who hereafter experiences the Lord’s wrath, who has not acquired in this life the fear of God and so come to know the might of His anger, who has not through his actions gained a foretaste of God’s compassion!

For the time to do all this is the present life. That is the reason why God has accorded us this present life, giving us a place for repentance. Were this not the case a person who sinned would at once be deprived of this life. For otherwise of what use would it be to him?

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, pp. 298-299)

And this life is not only the life of the soul, it is the life of the body. Through resurrection the body is also rendered immortal: it is delivered not merely from mortality, but also from that never-abating death of future chastisement. On it, too, is bestowed everlasting life in Christ, free of pain, sickness and sorrow, and truly immortal.

The death of the soul through transgression and sin is, then, followed by the death of the body and by its dissolution in the earth and its conversion into dust; and this bodily death is followed in its turn by the soul’s banishment to Hades. In the same way the resurrection of the soul–its return to God through obedience to the divine commandments–is followed by the body’s resurrection and its reunion with the soul.

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia vol.4, p.297)

Thus the violation of God’s commandment is the cause of all types of death, both of soul and body, whether in the present life of in that endless chastisement. And death, properly speaking, is this: for the soul to be unharnessed from divine grace and to be yoked to sin. This death, for those who have their wits, is truly dreadful and something to be avoided. This, for those who think aright, is more terrible than the chastisement of Gehenna.

…as the death of the soul is authentic death, so the life of the soul is authentic life. Life of the soul is union with God, as life of the body is its union with the soul. As the soul was separated from God and died in consequence of the violation of the commandment, so by obedience to the commandment it is again united to God and is quickened. This is why the Lord says in the Gospels, “The words I speak to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63)….but they are words of eternal life for those who obey them; for those who disobey, this commandment of life results in death (cf. Romans 7:10).

So it was that the apostles, being Christ’s fragrance, were to some the death-inducing odor of death, while to others they were the life-inducing odor of life (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:16).

~St Gregory Palamas (Philokalia, vol. 4, pp. 296-297)