Going Further

If you are seeking additional material for the studies, it is assumed that you are also prepared to do a litle extra work. This section, together with the other resources are just that. Resources. The additional books and material are extensive and will take some time to digest. Your needs will be different from another group running this study, even in your own parish.

We at Grassroots Resources suggest you may like to highlight part of what follows and simply ask the group to comment or you could develop your own additonal questions.

We thank Bishop Philip for this extensive material, and we are always be grateful for any feed back as to how you used it or at all.

Don't forget we are also offering a special opportunity to post your comments on our site or to ask Bishop philip a question.

Father Max Bowers

WEEKS ONE TO FIVE

The theme of these studies is “loving God and each other”.

Our publisher “Grass Roots Resources” wants to ensure there are extra resources on the net for those who want to go further with matters raised. To this end some brief paragraphs have been written to link one week to the next, especially when parish groups have a common newsletter. Additionally, some book reviews are included for additional study. The books themselves include reference material for deeper study. One particular feature of these studies is the place of the Jesus Prayer each week.

It is the author’s faithful expectation that as people practice the Jesus Prayer within a clearer understanding of ascetical theology, their understanding of what it is to “love God and each other” will be enhanced. To this end, it is important that the net material include extra information about the Jesus Prayer.

The following notes on the Jesus Prayer should be helpful as the Lenten weeks go by. A personal note is included so it is a little clearer why the author places such store on ‘prayer of the heart’.

Jesus Prayer
Introduction
The Jesus Prayer is a form of contemplative prayer based on repetition of Jesus’ name.
I have been practising the Jesus Prayer now for more than 25 years.
My spiritual quest became more conscious during my mid-twenties. Attuned to the era in which we were living, my first source of enquiry was in Eastern Religions. Though I had been raised in the Anglican Church, during adolescence the connection dissipated. As I look back it had never really been internalised. My involvement in the church through to adolescence had largely been an external involvement.

As a consequence of explorations in Eastern Religions I made contact with the movement inspired by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called “Transcendental Meditation:. I was initiated into this form of meditation.

It brought immediate benefits in terms of enabling some ordering of my thinking and some technique to better rest and relax. When I look back, I see I had a need for this as a consequence of the restless searching that was my reality. Subsequently, I studied in Switzerland and Spain in order to be initiated as a teacher of transcendental meditation. The training was in an international community mostly of young Americans and Europeans. Many with a hippy background. Whilst the Maharishi taught that people should stay within their own religion there were nevertheless some aspects of the training program with a general orientation towards Vedic culture.

I returned to Australia as a teacher of transcendental meditation one Easter Sunday. For the first time in my conscious memory I found deep meaning in the Easter liturgy. Something had been awoken in me through the meditation.

For several years I taught transcendental meditation in Northern New South Wales alongside of my work as a Teaching Fellow in Economics and Sociology at the University of New England. I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the cultist aspects of the organisation and the way in which it was managed.

However, more significantly for this study, as time went by, I became aware of an inner yearning and hunger in me which this technique of meditation was not satisfying. Saint Augustine says wisely in prayer “our hearts are restless, O God until they rest in thee.” (Confessions Chapter 1).

Whilst I didn’t have St. Augustine’s words in my awareness at that time, they do interpret that sense of not yet being home. Accordingly, the restlessness which I had known in myself long back, was with me once again. In life’s coincidences amongst those I had taught TM was a Roman Catholic nun. She was one of the first in her generation, after the second Vatican Council, to seek new life in a renewed and reformed Catholic Church through broader university studies.

Through her I read a book by the Anglican theologian C.H. Dodd, Founder of Christianity, about the gospel story of Jesus. After reading that book I had such questions in relation to the facts about Jesus’ life and death that, reluctantly, I felt unable, at an intellectual level, to make a return to Christianity and the Church. However, in the midst of these intellectual conclusions, one night I received a very vivid and unquestionable experience of the risen Christ, still bearing the wounds of crucifixion in his body. It was the kind of experience that I knew must be honoured.

Like many before me, time was needed in order to make sense of this experience and to re-orientate emotionally and intellectually. In particular, being educated in social sciences, I had to develop my thinking to incorporate this transcendental experience.

In retrospect what I tried to do was to stay close to Jesus by regularly attending Holy Communion, particularly the Catholic Mass. However the questing and intellectual activity continued without much framework until I started to study theology.

Of particular interest was the fact that after this experience of the risen Christ I was physically unable to teach TM to anyone else nor even to practice it myself. It was removed from me and definitely not something with which I was to persist. It was over.

Several years later in my spiritual quest, through the study of Christian theology I discovered the Jesus prayer tradition within the spirituality of the Orthodox Church. The Jesus Prayer tradition enabled me to make reconnection with the good things about the transcendental meditation technique but now in a christocentric frame. I was able to add the Jesus Prayer to my essential spirituality, along with the Eucharist, a Bible study and as a way of staying close to the Saviour and trying to grow in grace.

As noted as the beginning of this chapter, I have practised this Jesus Prayer now consistently over many years, albeit with some periods of greater focus and concentration than others.

Of most relevance at this point is to note the continuing benefits of the Jesus Prayer to my personal and Christian life. It helps me to stay more centred and attentive; better able to deal with the negative passions which can otherwise fill our thinking and dictate our behaviour. I have found this simple technique focussed on the name of Jesus profoundly helpful in my own personal and Christian life. The Jesus Prayer has helped me to grow in awareness of Christ’s presence in my daily life.

Over the years periodically I have taught the Jesus Prayer to individuals whom I felt might gain benefit. Sometimes this has been to Christian couples having trouble in their relationships. Sometimes it has been for folk who are carrying great burdens and are over-stressed. Sometime it has been for restless seekers looking for their way home.

Since becoming a Bishop I have had to think more deeply about what is the most helpful Christian spirituality for busy contemporary people; for those with damaged relationships and those who carry unbearable levels of stress and anxiety. Accordingly my encouragement in these studies about the potential benefits of the Jesus Prayer to contemporary people of faith, arises out of concerns that are at the heart of my work as a Bishop.

“To pronounce the name of Jesus in a holy way is an all- sufficient and surpassing aim for any human life … we are to call to mind Jesus Christ until the name of the Lord penetrates our heart, descends to its very depths. The name of Jesus, once it has become the centre of our life, brings everything together.”

These are the words of an advanced practitioner of the Jesus Prayer, gathered in a foreword to a re-issue of his book by Kallistos Ware who is a very fine interpreter of Orthodox Spirituality to a wider audience.

The essential claim being made for the repetitive use of Jesus’ name in the technique called the “Jesus Prayer”, is that through this technique the practitioner is able to enjoy the benefits which Christian belief promises its adherents. In the New Testament Jesus is claimed to be the one in whom “all things were created; things visible and invisible … all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things in him and all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17.

What is suggested by practitioners of the Jesus Prayer is that it is a means by which Christians can experience the truth of this scriptural description of Jesus as the one in whom “all things hold together. Our relationship with Jesus is somehow developed by the pronouncement of his name. Everything about our unique life is “brought together” as the prayer is practised, to paraphrase “A Monk of the Eastern Church.

In other words, the practitioner experiences the immediate nature of a relationship with Jesus as Saviour. For what is it to be save if not to find everything about our life is holding together now, and we anticipate, for all eternity?The linkage between a relationship with Jesus and our salvation is already given in the meaning of Jesus’ name. It has the sense of Saviour; as the angel said to Christ’s foster-father St. Joseph : “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21).

To further elaborate, ‘the name Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Jeshua” (Jesus) which is itself identical with “Yehoshua” (Joshua) the first of these two Hebrew words is a contraction of the second, intended to avoid the sequence of the vowels “o” and “u” which was repugnant to Jewish ears. The meaning of the name “Jeshua” while clear in a general sense is difficult to establish with any strict precision. The translator “saviour” is more or less correct, more exactly the name signifies “salvation” of Yahweh or “Yahweh in salvation”. Hence the ancient adage “nomen est omen” – the name expresses in a certain way the person and his destiny – applies to the angels Annunciation concerning the name of the child.”

The claim is that repetition of Jesus name draws our lives together, both individually and corporately. Whilst individuals may have their own experience of this, their personal experience is interwoven with God’s saving plan as it unfolds in human history and has its consequence for every human being.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit … and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

What is being suggested is that there is a close relation between the name of Jesus and the persons of Jesus, mysteriously present in holy spirit, as scripture records was his promise. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

According to some, the name of Jesus is used in the New Testament as a synonym for Jesus Himself, denoting His character and authority. The disciples perform miracles and exorcisms “in the name of Jesus”, i.e. by His power (Mark 9.30 ff Acts 4:30) and regularly baptise in it (Acts 2, 38, 8.16) and St. Paul especially insists on its efficacy for our justification (1 Cor. 6.11) and the obligation of Christians to venerate it above all other names. (Phil. 2:9).

Whilst the Jesus Prayer has its roots in the New Testament, as “A Monk of the Eastern Church” notes, “it is derived from the attitude which the Hebrew Bible adopts towards God’s name. For the Hebrews the name Yahweh, in common with his word, was a kind of entity detachable from the divine person, a greatness existing in itself, alongside this person. Thus the angel is considered as the bearer of the name (Ex. 23:21) and the prophet sees this name coming from afar (Is. 30:27). If the divine name is invoked upon a country or a person, it belongs henceforth to Yahweh; it becomes strictly his and enters into intimate relationships with him (Gn. 48:16; Dt. 28:10; Am. 9:12). The name resides in the temple (1 Kgs 8:29). The name is a guide in a man’s life and in his service of God (Mi. 4.5). Throughout the Psalms, the divine name appears as a refuge, a power that comes to our aid, an object of worship.

It should be noted that use of the divine name is not seen as a form of magic, “an arbitrary formula used to produce certain effects: Rather, use of the divine name corresponds to an evolving relationship with God. In the New Testament this is particularly vivid in the Acts of Apostles, as the first disciples and apostles do many things in the name of Jesus, apply their faith that He who once walked with them, but was murdered on the Cross, has truly risen from the dead, ascended into heaven and sent his own holy spirit to be with them and respond to that which is asked in his name.

“In the name of Jesus, the good news is preached, converts believe, baptism is conferred, cures and other ‘signs’ are accomplished, lives are risked and given. What is involved in this insistence on the name of Jesus is not just the employment of a magical formula, for on one can use this name effectively if he does not have an inner relationship with Jesus himself.”

From that day to this disciples pray his name, trusting to the reality of his spiritual presence and his readiness to respond in love and truth.
Given the scriptural and theological connection between the name and person of Jesus Christ, it is not surprising that a form of prayer shaped early in Christian history based around the Saviour’s name. The traditional form of the Jesus Prayer is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.” (Sometimes, “a sinner” is added.)
The full text of the Jesus Prayer is first found in a work of the 6th – 7th century, the Life of the Abba Philemon; Greek Spiritual writers of earlier date, such as Diadochus of Photike and Nilus the Ascetic, speak of the invocation of ‘remembrance’ of the Name of Jesus, without specifying exactly what form this invocation took.” Diadochus was Bishop of Photike after 451. Nilus the Ascetic died around 430.
As the full text of the Jesus Prayer became established, so a technique for its practise began to evolve. Hesychasm (from the Greek word for ‘quietness’) is the title for this tradition of technique and spiritual reflection.

“Hesychasm gives expression to the method of enlightenment which has been in use in Christian monasteries in the East almost from Apostolic times. It was given final expression by St. Gregory Palamas sometime in the fourteenth century.’

Whilst particular attention will shortly be given to the work of St. Gregory of Palamas, it should be noted that “Hesychasm” is a spiritual tradition extending from the 5th to the 18th century. The word “hesychia” was well established as a technical term in the first half of the 7th century when St. John Climacus denoted a chapter to it in his treatise The ladder(18) as the last spokesman of historical Hesychasm.”

St. Gregory Palamas was born in 1296 and grew up in Constantinople. At around 20 he chose a monastic life and, according to legend, walked from Constantinople to the monasteries of Mt. Athos, the “Holy Mountain” on a peninsula near Thessalonika in Greece.

St. Gregory Palamas is credited with integrating “Hesychasm”, “Eastern Christianity’s ancient tradition of contemplative monasticism, in a doctrinal synthesis.”

Accordingly, in continuing appreciation the Orthodox Church remembers St. Gregory in the liturgy every second Sunday of Lent. In particular, St. Gregory’s response to the writings of the Calabrian philosopher Barlaam, “provided the Orthodox Church with the occasion of making explicit, through a spokesman in whom it recognised itself, the place of hesychasm in relation to its central dogmas of sin, the Incarnation, Redemption and the grace of the sacraments.”

Additionally, as will be elaborated, in response to Barlaam’s reproach that the Athos monks claimed to “see the divine essence with the eyes of the body,” the Bysantine Councils of the fourteenth century adopted the palamite distinction between the divine essence and energies.”

The distinction between the divine essence and energies is profoundly important in terms of defining the limits to what the Jesus Prayer can help us achieve in our spiritual life.

The distinction expresses “the two poles of God’s relationship to us – unknown yet well known, hidden, yet revealed.

“He is outside all things according to his essence” writes St. Athanasius, “but he is in all things through his acts of power.” We know the essence through the energy, “St. Basil affirms. “No one has ever seen the essence of God, but we believe ion the essence because we experience the energy.” By the essence of God is meant his otherness, by the energies his nearness. Because God is a mystery beyond our understanding, we shall never know his essence or inner being either in this life or in the Age to come. If we knew the divine essence, it would follow that we knew God in the same way as he knows himself: and this we cannot ever do, since he his Creator and we are created. But, while God’s inner essence is forever beyond our comprehension, his energies, grace, life and power fill the whole universe, and are direction accessible to us.

“The essence, then, signifies the radical transcendence of God; the energies, his immanence and omni presence. 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 “theos is” of man, his deification – but at the same time we exclude and 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.”
The theological clarification provided by St. Gregory Palamas on Mt. Athos flowed into subsequent theology as this helpful distinction about our possible knowledge of God “unknowable in his essence, yet known in his energies; beyond and above all that we can think or express, yet closer to us than our own heart.”

This theological clarification about what is possible for a human being seeking divine knowledge renewed the purpose of those monks on Mt. Athos who were practitioners of the Jesus Prayer, and many who have followed them. Through our prayer, and our Christian life it is possible to experience, through the divine energies, God’s immediate presence in each person and thing … In the words of John Scotus Eringena, “Every visible or invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God.”

More specifically, in our Christian life, and with the aid of the Jesus Prayer, it is possible to reach the state described by Paul : “it is no longer I that live but Christ that lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). This mystical state, being our unique self and yet being indwelt by Christ’s spirit, is mysterious and very attractive as it opens up new worlds to our awareness. One is finding oneself within the body of Christ which is transcendent of time and space, yet intensely present in both
…
A few words now on the developed thinking about the technique of practising the Prayer and what experiences practitioners can expect.Much of this work also took place at Mt. Athos and, in particular, was gathered in the fundamental work entitled the Philokalia.

“All the ascetic writings on the Jesus Prayer are founded on religious instructions contained in the Philokalia (a Greek word meaning love of Beauty or love of God). The five volumes of this book, which have been preserved in the monasteries of Mt. Athos contain a collection of precepts and other writings of Christian Fathers from the fourth to the fourteenth century.”

The next stage then is to summarise the teaching about the Jesus Prayer which is contained in various writings including the Philokalia, recognising that the love of beauty which it gathers is spiritual beauty.
My own teaching of the Jesus Prayer endeavours to bring together what I have learned from these spiritual writings.

All practice assumes that the devotee is a disciple of Jesus and is fully involved in the sacramental and corporate life of the church. The ordinariness of local church life is a necessary grounding for this interior work. The Church’s rhythm of prayer, Eucharistic worship; the joys and complexities of being disciples amidst people of different temperaments and idiosyncrasies is all part of the necessary grounding for this work. The fellowship of other Christian members too of Christ’s Body is comfort amidst the solitariness of this journey; protection too against all the temptations to self-inflation, spiritual arrogance rather than humility. The practitioner can and should be there at the Parish Fete!

Another preliminary condition for the practitioner is a measure of personal stability, although one can’t be categoric about this. Who is sufficiently stable to explore the mysteries of God; and who, in their human condition of brokenness is beyond the benefit of a Saviour’s grace?

However, the name of Jesus is powerful. The one who prays in Jesus’ Name is going to experience what the ancients describe as the “terrible thing of falling in the hands of the living God.”

The way one travels is described in Ascetical Theology as the three stages of Purgation, Illumination and final unity in God. The journey involves facing the truth about oneself; the darkness and light; the good and bad. The Jesus Prayer brings home the truth of the ancient prayer to the One before whom “all hearts are open, all desires known”.

It is hoped that these extra notes on the Jesus Prayer, in the context of the various book references to the framework of ascetical theology, give thoughtful readers enough to continue their current journey.

Perhaps one cautionary note may also be helpful. This relates to the issue raised in ascetical theology about the matter of “double will”.
This is to say, we may be increasingly desiring and intending to will the will of God but at the same time we are powerfully attracted by attachments which yet remain unmodified. Sometimes the competition between self will and the will of God, which was once seen in large and obvious matters, now is more in matters of minor selfishness and motive.

Quite secondary matters can absorb us as the journey to self mastery and God centredness continues. That is to say, habits and attachments which separate us from others, rather than nurture deeper communion: These are different things to idiosyncrasies that foster a rather benign eccentricity. If we look at what makes us grumpy or greedy, we may see what remains unmodified even within a deeply consecrated life.

Aspects of the ‘purgative stage’ may remain with us, even after many years of spiritual practice. This sobering reality helps explain why the Letter to the Romans has had such a strong effect on diverse Christian leaders.

Romans 5:1-5 “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

The art of loving God and one another is entirely absorbing. As St. Iranaeus said in the2): “God will always have more to teach us and we will always have more we can learn from God.”

‘Love’, as we know is not a static concept. Love is relational, dynamic, always evolving. Just when we think we know about love, we may find we have much to learn!

I sat recently with an old man. His wife, also in her 90’s, had recently died. He said to me with resignation and a certain twinkle: “You know, she was always a bit of a mystery to me!”

Near the end of his life, the great student of humankind, Carl Jung, wrote that the older be became, the more of a mystery he’d become to himself.

If this is the case with one another and ourselves, as in these brief stories, is it not even more true about knowing and loving God?

Conclusion
In association with the sermon, other notes and references which are already on the net, I hope these extra reflections are helpful for those who have bought multiple copies of “loving God and one another”.
I apologise that extra commitments in early 2004, including my new work as Bishop of Northern Region in the Diocese of Melbourne, delayed this until Week Two of the studies. Please recall that our publisher does also make it possible for something of a dialogue to develop between groups and the author, insofar as this might help the quest to “love God and one another” more fully.

With every blessing as Lent draws us towards Easter.
+ Bishop Philip Huggins