Hesychasm and the Holy Mountain

Athos is the heartland of hesychasm — the Orthodox tradition of inner stillness, unceasing prayer (above all the Jesus Prayer), and the experience of the Uncreated Light. The first file treats Athos as the home of that tradition: the roots in the desert, the fourteenth-century flowering under St. Gregory Palamas, and the Philokalic revival, deferring the theology of Palamas to his own collection. The second treats the Mountain’s mid-twentieth-century decline and its remarkable renewal from the 1970s, deferring the modern hesychast saints — St. Joseph the Hesychast and St. Silouan — to theirs.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Athonite)

This section treats the spiritual heart of the Mountain. The first file, the-home-of-hesychasm.md, traces hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer from the desert through the fourteenth-century Athonite flowering to the eighteenth-century Philokalia, deferring St. Gregory Palamas and linking the Jesus Prayer hub. The second file, the-twentieth-century-revival.md, treats the mid-century decline and the renewal, deferring St. Joseph the Hesychast and St. Silouan the Athonite to their own collections.

Contents

File Description
the-home-of-hesychasm.md Athos as the heartland of hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer; the 14th-c. flowering (St. Gregory Palamas deferred); the Philokalic tradition
the-twentieth-century-revival.md The mid-century decline and the renewal from the 1970s (St. Joseph the Hesychast and St. Silouan deferred)

See Also