09 — The Prayer in the Modern World

The twentieth century and after: St. Silouan’s prayer for the whole Adam and St. Sophrony’s Essex, where the Jesus Prayer became a multilingual community’s common liturgy; St. Joseph the Hesychast’s lineage and the repopulation of Athos; Porphyrios and Paisios; the Western reception from the Pilgrim and Salinger to the Philokalia in English; the centering-prayer comparison handled respectfully and clearly; the prayer as Orthodoxy’s universal gift.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (20th-century renewal and reception)

This section closes the collection by showing the tradition alive: the modern Athonite witnesses (all now glorified, their full portraits deferred to their own collections) and the prayer’s unprecedented reach beyond Orthodoxy — with the boundary questions (mantra, centering prayer, technique-extraction) answered per §4.1: accurate to the other side, clear about the difference.

Files in This Section

File Description
silouan-sophrony-and-the-athonite-revival.md Silouan’s gift of the prayer and the whole Adam; Sophrony and the communal Jesus Prayer at Essex; Joseph the Hesychast’s lineage and the renewal of Athos; Porphyrios and Paisios on the prayer.
the-prayer-and-the-modern-west.md The vectors of Western reception (French’s Pilgrim, Salinger, the English Philokalia, Gillet and Ware); the centering-prayer comparison in both traditions’ own terms; the terms on which the prayer is offered to all; the universal gift.

See Also