06 — The Prayer of Gethsemane
The heart of St. Sophrony’s spiritual theology: the conviction, learned in eight years of discipleship under St. Silouan, that the measure of Christlike love is to “pray for the whole world” — for the “whole Adam,” the total man — and that the model of such all-human, hypostatic prayer is Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39–46; John 17). This section treats that prayer for the whole Adam, and the dialectic of kenosis, God-forsakenness (Mark 15:34), and the vision of the Uncreated Light through which Sophrony understood the descent that precedes deification. Per the repository methodology, the visionary and confessional claims are pinned to Sophrony’s own writings as his testimony.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (20th-c. elder; disciple of St Silouan)
For Sophrony, the “prayer of Gethsemane” is not one devotion among others but the name for prayer at its furthest reach — the point at which a person, drawn into the love of Christ, begins to carry the whole of humanity within his own prayer as Christ carried it in the Garden (Sophrony, His Life Is Mine, 1977, ch. on the Gethsemane prayer; We Shall See Him as He Is, 1988). Two convictions stand behind this. The first is what Sophrony received from St. Silouan: that the sign of grace, and the commandment of Christ, is love for enemies and prayer for the whole world, “for the whole Adam” — for all human nature as one (Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, 1991, the “Writings” of Silouan, esp. “Adam’s Lament” and the chapters on love for enemies). The second is Sophrony’s own theological development of this into an account of hypostatic prayer: the human person, made in the image of the personal God, is most fully himself not when closed within his own individuality but when he opens to contain all, as Christ the one Person of the incarnate Word contained and bore all Adam (Sophrony, We Shall See Him as He Is, 1988; Sakharov, I Love, Therefore I Am, 2002, ch. 5–6).
The two files of this section take up the two faces of this single theme. The first follows the positive movement — the prayer for the whole Adam as the form of perfect love, anchored in the Garden of Gethsemane and in Silouan’s prayer for the world. The second follows the negative or apophatic movement — kenosis and the experience of God-forsakenness (Mark 15:34) as the purifying descent that, for Sophrony, conditions the fullness of theosis and the vision of the Uncreated Light, in the key Silouan gave him: “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not.” The two belong together: the one who would bear the whole Adam must first descend with Christ into the abandonment of the Cross.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| bearing-the-whole-adam.md | The all-human prayer: “praying for the whole world” / “the whole Adam” as the measure of Christlike love; the Gethsemane prayer (Luke 22:39–46; John 17) as the model of hypostatic prayer bearing all humanity; “Adam” as the total man. |
| godforsakenness-and-the-uncreated-light.md | Kenosis and the experience of God-forsakenness (Mark 15:34); the abandonment as a necessary purifying descent before the fullness of theosis; the dialectic of God-forsakenness and the vision of the Uncreated Light; “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not.” |
See Also
- The Search for the Absolute — the early repentance and vision of the Light that prepared Sophrony for what he learned from Silouan
- Disciple of Saint Silouan — the eight years under Silouan in which the prayer for the whole Adam was received
- The Book That Revealed Silouan — “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not,” and Silouan’s prayer for the world
- The Community and the Jesus Prayer — the liturgical and hesychast setting in which this prayer was lived at Essex
- Theosis — deification and the Uncreated Light in Orthodox theology
References
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. His Life Is Mine. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. London: Mowbray; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977. (The Gethsemane prayer and the prayer for the whole Adam.)
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. We Shall See Him as He Is. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Tolleshunt Knights / Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1988. (Hypostatic prayer; God-forsakenness; the Uncreated Light.)
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. Saint Silouan the Athonite. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991. (Silouan’s “Writings,” “Adam’s Lament,” love for enemies, prayer for the whole world.)
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. On Prayer. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996.
- Sakharov, Nicholas V. I Love, Therefore I Am: The Theological Legacy of Archimandrite Sophrony. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002. (Ch. 5–6 on the universal/hypostatic prayer and God-forsakenness.)
- Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015.