In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
On the second Sunday of Lent, which we approach with our small spiritual victories or temptations, the Church especially celebrates the memory of St. Gregory Palamas. He grew up in a very wealthy family, his father was a man close to the Emperor; nevertheless, the future St. Gregory devoted all his faculties, opportunities, and his whole life, every minute, to knowing God and teaching people how to communicate with Him properly, finding the right paths to communion with God. The saint had to polemicize extensively: it was a time when different opinions and new heresies were appearing in the Church. And St. Gregory denounced heresiarchs—people who taught wrongly about both spiritual life and the nature of God.
Of course, for us modern Christians such an ideal as St. Gregory Palamas is virtually unattainable. When we take his works, translated into modern English, and start reading them, then even we clergy will have difficulty understanding half of them. It does not always reach our hearts, especially because we are all mired in vanity, in unnecessary information that clutters our souls and plunges them into darkness. But St. Gregory is known for speaking a great deal about Divine energies, the grace of God, prayer, and a special practice. He wrote about the holy Hesychasts. People are called to do this by experience. All Christians are called to this, regardless of our education, our position, or our intellectual and physical abilities. We are all called to this work, and most importantly, to the knowledge of God, which is actually open to all of us.
When Lent begins, there is plenty of talk, first of all about what we will eat and what we won’t, and this worries people very much—they come with these questions already on the eve of Lent. All the information platforms are filled with endless recipes for various foods that do not contain butter, but at the same time are very tasty. In general, very much attention is given to all this “without butter” or “with butter”. But unfortunately, our life is such that we have spoiled the nature around us. Human activity has poisoned everything around us, and there are very many weak people among us. Indeed medicine has made huge strides forward, but still, there are lots of sick, feeble people who are unable to fast physically, and they have to compromise on something. Even if their father-confessor has blessed them and the doctors have explained that they should eat dairy products for health reasons, their Christian conscience denounces them anyway. People are saddened by the fact that they cannot perform this feat. But what solace can we find for them and for ourselves?
Perhaps the Lord expects people who, due to physical sickness (and not just indulging their weaknesses) cannot fast in full according to the Typicon, to pray more. It sounds so simple, but if we look at our lives, at how we spend our time, we will realize that we have had plenty of time to pray in the depths of our hearts; but we don’t do it. And if we cannot observe the bodily fast, then let us at least intensify our prayer rule. This is exactly what St. Gregory Palamas preached.
He even had an argument with his friend and companion, also a monk, who prayed and struggled hard. St. Gregory began to tell him that everybody was called to the special labor of the prayer of the heart, not only clergy and monastics. Perhaps to some extent laypeople are called to this first of all. Because if we look at church life, a priest can celebrate the Divine Liturgy, a memorial service, but a layman doesn’t have such an opportunity. And women cannot do it at all. In this sense, laypeople can pray even more than clergymen. Sometimes it happens that priestly service becomes routine, and a layman may pray so hard that all his acquaintances come to him and ask for his prayers. And indeed it happens that even a simple layman can acquire the gift of prayer.
St. Gregory taught that everyone should perform the prayer of the heart and always repeat this prayer in the depths of their hearts: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Holy Fathers compared the prayer of the heart to fragrant oil or myrrh, which is sealed in an earthen vessel. And the better it is sealed, like prayer in the depths of the heart, the more the vessel is saturated with fragrance. Indeed, it is so. Similarly, our hearts and our whole lives are saturated with the grace of the Holy Spirit when we pray unceasingly.
Let us not forget about this: the great power of inner prayer. St. Gregory wrote whole treatises on the holy Hesychasts who acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit in contemplation of God’s creation and in inner prayer. This is great knowledge and experience, which we acquire in an effective way. There is academic theology, there are conferences, as a result of which publications are produced and sometimes even very intense disputes begin… But there is also such an effective theology—of the prayer of the heart, which is open to everyone. And even someone who is not enlightened by sublime dogmatic knowledge can attain special grace in this realm.
In the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, there is an episode when the elders fall before the Lamb (that is, before God, Christ) and offer Him golden bowls with fragrant incense, which are identified as “the prayers of the saints”. Our inner prayer is the incense that we offer to God, the chain that binds us to Him, and the path that opens the knowledge of God to us, thanks to which we always remain with Him irrespective of our external circumstances.
And the Holy Fathers say that you can work and go about your business, but at the same time always perform the prayer of the heart. Especially during the days of Lent, and not least in this modern hustle and bustle, which often does not allow us to attend Church services. Nevertheless, as long as a person is alive, he can do as St. Gregory Palamas taught: A Christian should call on the name of the Lord more often than he breathes.
This is the wonderful teaching that this saint offers us today, calling us to the knowledge of God by experience through inner prayer, through the purification of our hearts and partaking of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
