www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Any Early Western Hesychasts?

I am new to the board and hope I am not repeating a question that has already been covered in the past. Using or not using one's imagination (contrasting Western meditation and Eastern hesychasm) appears to be a major fault line between East and West. I have seen references to Eastern Fathers in respect to hesychasm, and St. Gregory Palamas is said to have taught only what was found in the Fathers, but did any of the Latin Fathers teach hesychasm, whether they used the word or not?

What Western meditation style is fundamentally based on using one's imagination? And, most importantly, who claims that such and such a style is based on using imagination?

[I am just curious. Forgive me if the wording sounds a bit harsh]

Ignatian Prayer is typically characterised by use of one's imagination. However, Lectio Divina not so much and Teresa of Avila's recollection certainly not.

INXC
Myles

Dear Silas,

The devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus was and is immensely popular in the West.

St Peter Julian Eymard promoted the daily recitation of the Holy Name 1,000 times ("My Jesus,mercy!"). There is the beautiful Litany of the Name of Jesus and the Jesus Psalter, popular throughout the Recusant Period in particular.

The structure of the Western "Hail Mary" introduced the Holy Name and a number of writers commented on how this was to be used much like the Eastern Jesus Prayer etc.

The West, until recent times, has tended to regard the Hesychast movement as "Quietist" and so any spiritual sharing in this regard would have been nixed . . .

Alex

Marc and all:

I meant �imagination� to refer to bringing an image to mind, not to creating works of fantasy. Imagination in this sense includes bringing visual images to mind from memory as well as making up a scene in the mind. It is not the exclusive faculty used in meditation, but I wanted to focus on the faculty that seems to be most opposed to the Eastern emphasis on emptying the nous of any images in order to reach the divine.

I had in mind a methodical approach such as that described by St. Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life. He counseled the following for meditation: a preparatory phase, in which one collects oneself and also, depending on the subject of the meditation, imagines oneself to be a spectator in the presence of an event of Jesus� life; a second phase he calls �consideration,� in which one reads a short passage from Scripture or from the writing of a saint and raises one�s mind to God about it; the resolutions phase, in which one makes a definite resolution for an act or behavior that one can carry out during the day to promote a virtue or a personal lesson that one has gained from the meditation; and finally, the thanksgiving phase, in which prayers of thanks, praise, and devotion are made to the Lord. (Introduction to the Devout Life, Second Part, chapters II through VII.) I have seen similar but not identical formulations elsewhere, but the element of visualizing oneself at the scene of an event in the life of the Lord or our Lady is usually described an important part of the process.

In contrast is what I understand about hesychasm, in which one of the most important principles, if I have understood correctly, appears to be to avoid bringing images to mind. In fact, one must work to banish images from both mind and heart. The invocation of the Holy Name is accompanied by an emptying of the mental faculties. (Thus, it is not the repetition itself that is important, it is what is done during the repetition. That distinguishes the Prayer of the Heart from, say, the Rosary.) The Eastern writers seem to believe that when it comes to prayer, it is not just �idle thoughts� that �are the devil�s playground,� but **all** thoughts. The devil makes use of mental images to mislead and confuse humans. It appears that Eastern hesychasts consider it spiritual madness for one to invoke images in the way that Western spiritual writers encourage as part of formal meditation.

Thus, it seems to me that one of the chief differences between East and West lies in the attitude toward the faculty of imagination in connection with prayer and the spiritual life. As Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos has written,

"Barlaam had in view the monasticism of the West, which had abandoned the hesychastic method and was busy with a social activity. In the Middle Ages, through the influence of scholastic theology, action (praxis), which in patristic theology is purification of the heart, is interpreted as mission, and vision, which in the theology of the holy Fathers, is noetic prayer and vision of the uncreated Light, is interpreted as mental conjecture about God.

"Indeed, inhaling and exhaling, as well as other methods, are psychotechnical methods by which the attempt is made to free the nous from enslavement to the environment and reasoning, and for it to enter the heart, where its real place is, its natural state, and from there to rise to the vision of God. The basic thing is to be able, through the grace of God and one's own effort, to concentrate the nous in the heart. This is what is called hesychasm and the hesychastic movement. It is the so-called noetic hesychia, about which so many holy Fathers wrote. By this method the nous is freed from logic and acquires its natural and supranatural way. Then it is in its natural state. "
[http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b12.en.the_mind_of_the_orthodox_church.09.htm]

I have seen links to these or similar writings of Metropolitan Hierotheos on Eastern Catholic web sites, such as the home page of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg, so the above thoughts seem to be in the mainstream of Eastern thought. Perhaps not--if that is the case, then I need help on that point as well.

When St. Gregory championed the cause of hesychasm, he claimed not to be teaching anything other than the teachings of the Fathers of the Church. There is much justice in that claim when it comes to Eastern Fathers. What I have not found (and do not have the spare time for a really thorough search) is any support among the Latin Fathers for the principle that a person must empty the mind and heart of images in order to allow the Lord to communicate directly through the nous.

That is why I asked whether anyone who knows the subject can point me to Latin Fathers who teach such emptying (and not just repetition of the Holy Name) as part of the spiritual life. Perhaps the Latin Fathers did not teach anything along the lines of what the Greeks were teaching about self-emptying of the mind as one of the steps along the road to deification. That is what I am hoping to find out with the help of the good folks on this board.

Silas