The Spiritual Heart
Structures and history serve an inner reality: the transformation of the human person into God by grace. This section treats the two things that lie at the spiritual heart of the monastic life — the relationship of the elder and the disciple, through which the tradition is handed on and the passions are healed, and the ascetic struggle itself, ordered through stillness toward deification, the goal of the whole endeavor.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
Overview
The Elder and the Disciple treats spiritual fatherhood and motherhood — the geron / starets, the disclosure of thoughts, obedience, and discernment — the personal, charismatic transmission by which the monastic tradition is actually carried from one generation to the next, linking the hub essay on spiritual direction and the Optina eldership. Ascesis, Hesychia, and Theosis treats the goal that gives the whole life its meaning: the ascetic struggle (ascesis) against the passions, the stillness (hesychia) in which the heart is purified, and deification (theosis), real union with God by grace, as the end toward which everything — desert, rule, tonsure, prayer — is ordered.
Files
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-elder-and-the-disciple.md | Spiritual fatherhood/motherhood, obedience, and the disclosure of thoughts |
| ascesis-hesychia-and-theosis.md | The ascetic struggle, stillness, and deification as the goal |
See Also
- Orthodoxy: Spiritual Direction — the elder–disciple relation in the wider Church
- Orthodoxy: Theosis — deification, the goal of the ascetic life
- The Optina Elders — the great Russian eldership
- Hesychasm and the Prayer of the Heart — the prayer that these serve