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Gregory Palamas Archbishop of Thessalonica (1347-1359) taught through his own experience that man is capable to achieving such heights of contemplation and direct experience with the energies of Christ. Palamas and his followers known as the Hesychasts (silence) practice a form of prayer that featured unending recitation of the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have Mercy on Me a Sinner.” He debated against the much learned monk Barlaam of Calabria in Italy who argued that man could not have direct experience of God. In the Christian West it was believed that it was impossible to know the essence of God. In time Palamas was shown to be correct that through prayer, man could know the energies and essence of God. Many Hesychasts even experienced the uncreated light of Mt. Tabor as we celebrate in the Transfiguration of Christ.

While you and I are not likely to become Hesyshasts we can through a lifetime of prayer, fasting and repentance can become transformed creatures of Christ. Prayer is our natural mode of existence in this world. To not pray is to say something a kin to not breathing or stopping our heart beat. Our prayer needs to be as natural as our breathing and our heart beat – after all prayer and communion with God is what precisely make us human. God created us to be in compete communion with Him. How most of us live now is completely alien to the life we were created to have with God. Never, never miss a day of not standing in prayer, in fervent supplication before God. Listen to those who before us achieved such great feats and showed us what man can look like in this world.

St. Gregory performed many miracles in the three years before his death, healing those afflicted with illness. On the eve of his repose, St. John Chrysostom appeared to him in a vision with the words “To the heights! To the heights!” Saint Gregory Palamas fell asleep in the Lord on November 14, 1359. He was canonized in 1368 in Constantinople. This Second Sunday of the Great Lent later became known as Sunday of Gregory Palamas, the Second Triumph of Orthodoxy. The truth of who man is and who God is prevailed against all western Christian arguments to the contrary.