The Gift of Tears

The goal of our spiritual journey is basically the same as that which is expressed in the following saying about the Desert Fathers and Mothers: “What the fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ.

Metanoia

‘Metanoia’ is a state linked with the ‘gift of tears’ and ‘repentance’ and flows out of these virtues. The two Greek words at its origin are ‘meta’ and ‘nous’. The pre-fix ‘meta’ means going beyond and also implies change and ‘nous’ is the ‘Intellect’, not rational intelligence but intuitive intelligence.

Apatheia and agape

The virtue of repentance helps us to become aware of our ego-centric emotions and it leads to humility, as we become more and more aware of our need of God and that without Christ we can’t do anything.

Communion or True Union

Meister Eckhart goes further than the early Christians by expressing the thought, that we can have true knowledge of God, even, in fact, achieve perfect union with God already in this life: “Similarly I have often said that there is something in the soul that is closely related to God that is one with him and not just united

Purifying the Emotions

We have seen the importance of the virtues of repentance and humility for our spiritual growth. But there are strong ego-centric emotions that can block any progress.

Set Your Mind on God's Kingdom

Over the past five weeks we have been looking at the importance of focussing on our true self, the spark of the Divine within us and the importance of repentance, humility and purifying our self-centred emotions:

Roots of Christian mysticism

Over the last few weeks we have been looking at some the essential aspects of meditation. All of them were based on the teaching of the early Church and especially the teaching of Evagrius, the teacher of Cassian, and one of the most influential Desert Fathers.

Eastern and Western Christianity

This significant flowering of Christian contemplative prayer lasted about two centuries in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. It was Cassian, who brought it to the West in the early 5th century. He founded two monasteries in Marseilles in 415, one for women and one for men.

Different types of prayer

In John Cassian’s ‘Conference 9’ Abba Isaac, one of the Desert Fathers, starts to teach Cassian and his friend Germanus about prayer. He first emphasizes that there are different ways of praying: “The apostle [St Paul] notes four types of prayer.

What is mysticism?

The background to this series of letters is the teaching coming out of the mystical tradition. We have already heard some of the wisdom from the Desert and we will continue to look in subsequent letters at the teaching of the mystics throughout the centuries up to our time.