The much-anticipated fifth volume of an English translation of the Philokalia (more fully known as “The Philokalia of the Neptic Saints gathered from our Holy Theophanic Father through which, by means of the Philosophy of Ascetic Practice and Contemplation, the Intellect is Purified, Illumined and Made Perfect”) is the final volume of a collection of writings originally compiled in the 18th century by St Makarios of Corinth and St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain, but subsequently edited in the latter part of the 20th century by GEH Palmer and his friends Philip Sherrard and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Sadly, they are now all dead.
The Philokalia is a spiritual manual for monks of the Eastern Orthodox Church. A Church Slavonic translation of the Philokalia, known as the Dobrotolublye, had a huge influence on Russia’s intelligentsia when it was published in the 19th century, not least because Dostoevsky had been a disciple of St Ambrose of Optina – who became the inspiration for Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. The spiritual insights Dostoevsky gained from his study of the ancient texts contained in the Dobrotolublye inspired much of his work and explain, perhaps, why Oswald Spengler declared: “The next thousand years will belong to Dostoevsky’s Christianity.”
Philokalia means “love of the beautiful”. It is through the quest for the Beautiful, rather than the use of reason and concepts, that the Orthodox monk hopes to attain to living experience of the Divine. As Fr Pavel Florensky, eventually martyred in a Russian gulag in the 1930s, put it: “The life of the Church is assimilated and known only through life – not in the abstract, nor in a rational way… What is the criterion of the rightness of this life? Beauty. Yes, there is a special beauty of the spirit, and, ungraspable by logical formulas, it is at the same time the only true path.”
The Philokalia first appeared in an English translation after the politician and scholar GEH Palmer – who held Winchester for the Conservatives between 1935 and 1945 – visited Mount Athos. During his stay there, a Russian hermit, Fr Nikon (a godson of Tsar Alexander II, and a former big-game hunter turned monk) gave Palmer a copy of the Dobrotolublye, which he took to the publishing house Faber. TS Eliot, who was then one of Faber’s directors, immediately recognised its potential – and Palmer set about translating it into English.
Nikon is believed to have written the introduction to that early translation, saying that the Philokalia “shows the way to awaken attention and consciousness, and to develop them; it provides the means of acquiring the quickest and most effective conditions for training in what the Fathers, who have reached the highest levels, called the art of arts and the science of sciences, leading a man towards the highest perfection open to him”.
The texts of the Philokalia bear witness to a living tradition of prayer, understood as an ascetic and mystical exercise through which the nous, the Eye of the Heart, is purified, illumined and brought to a state of contemplation in which it becomes possible to participate in the Divine Energies. This fifth and final volume explores the central themes of the contemplative theological tradition, as well as its life of stillness, practice of the Jesus Prayer and the contemplation and experience of God.
In the introductory notes about St Kallistos and St Ignatios Xanthopoulos, whose writings on the monastic state and the life of stillness appear at the start of the volume, we read how St Symeon of Thessaolonika recounted that these two saints had themselves experienced a vision of divine light: the light that shone from the face of Christ when He was transfigured on Mount Tabor.
“They received the first fruits of the divine light even in this present life, purified as they were through their contemplation and their actions, and they were granted the divine illumination revealed on Mount Tabor, just as the Apostles were. This was clearly witnessed by many persons for their faces were seen to shine like Stephen’s (Acts 6:15), since grace was poured out not only in their hearts but in their visible appearance.”
This last volume of the Philokalia, edited by Metropolitan Kallistos, who died last August, concludes with the exhortation to all Christians to comply with St Paul’s injunction to “pray without ceasing” and to following the divine call in the Psalms to “be still and know that I am God”.
Mark Jenkins is a writer and consultant. He has travelled extensively in Russia, and to Mount Athos.
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