In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Beloved in Christ, today on this Second Sunday of Great Lent, the Church sets before us the memory of St. Gregory Palamas, that great hesychast father who defended the possibility of direct experience of God’s uncreated light. This is not a mere historical commemoration but rather touches the very heart of our Lenten journey.
St. Symeon the New Theologian tells us: “If you have not discerned that the eye of your mind has been opened, and that it has seen the light; if you have not perceived the sweetness of the Godhead; if you have not been personally enlightened by the Holy Spirit… if you have not sensed that your heart has been cleansed and has shone with luminous reflections; if, contrary to all expectation, you have not discovered the Christ within yourself; if you have not been stupefied, at the recollection of the resurrection, by the sight of the Lord’s face – then tell me: what do you possess if you call yourself a Christian?”
Let me share a profound story from the northern monasteries. There was a young monk named Philip who struggled intensely with prayer. “How can we really know God?” he would ask. His elder gave him a curious task – to tend a garden in complete darkness, only at night. For months, Philip worked blindly, his hands learning to know each plant by touch, his ears discerning the whispers of growth. Then one dawn, his elder brought him to see what his hands had known in darkness. The garden was more beautiful than any he had seen in daylight. “So it is with prayer,” the elder said. “First we labour in the darkness of faith, then God grants us to see what we have touched.”
This story illuminates the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the reality that humans can truly experience God. As he writes: “The pure in heart see God… not in an imaginary way, but in a true and real sense.” This is why the Church places his commemoration during the Fast – because Lent is not merely about external observances but about this very purification that leads to divine vision.
St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain explains: “The goal of physical fasting is to make our bodies lighter, more responsive to the movements of grace. But the greater fast is that of the mind from all thoughts that would separate us from the remembrance of God.” This dual fast – of body and mind – prepares us for what St. Gregory called theoptia, the vision of God.
Consider the paralytic in today’s Gospel, lowered through the roof to Christ. St. Gregory Palamas sees in this a profound image: “The four men represent the four cardinal virtues – courage, wisdom, righteousness, and temperance – by which we lift the paralysed mind to Christ.” Notice that the Lord first pronounces forgiveness of sins before healing the body. As St. John Chrysostom observes: “The soul’s disease is healed first, for where the master is present, the servant’s concerns are secondary.”
The Church’s wisdom in placing this commemoration here is profound. After the Sunday of Orthodoxy affirmed the possibility of depicting Christ in icons, we now affirm something even more radical – the possibility of becoming living icons, illumined by the same uncreated light that shone on Mount Tabor. St. Gregory teaches: “This light is not a created thing but the very energy of God, in which we are called to participate.”
This is no mere theological abstraction. St. Silouan the Athonite testifies: “Both Christ and the Holy Spirit are known through uncreated light. When God appears in great light, the soul recognizes without doubt that this is the Lord.” This experience is offered not just to monastics but to all Christians who undertake the purification of heart that our Lenten labours represent.
The hesychast method that St. Gregory defended – of focusing the mind in the heart through the Jesus Prayer – is given to us as a practical path toward this divine illumination. As St. Theophan the Recluse counsels: “Descend with your mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present and all-seeing within you.”
Let us therefore embrace our Lenten struggle with renewed understanding. We fast not merely from food but from all that would dull our spiritual senses. We pray not merely with lips but with the deep heart. We seek not merely the forgiveness of sins but that divine light which transforms the human person into a dwelling place of God.
For as St. Gregory boldly proclaims: “The kingdom of God is not only above, but within you. Whoever tastes this kingdom, knows what they speak of; but whoever has not tasted it, knows not what the true theologian speaks about.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Copyright © 2025 The Rev. Adrian Augustus. The Russian Orthodox Church of the Archangel Michael, Blacktown, NSW
