THE MYSTERY OF DEIFICATION AND THE FLAME OF PRAYER IN THE VISION OF SAINT SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
THE MYSTERY OF DEIFICATION AND THE FLAME OF PRAYER IN THE VISION OF SAINT SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN

Summary/Abstract: Symeon the New Theologian, a “pneumatophore” experienced up to the sublime, lives around the great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, ordained as if by God to be “a pillar of fire at this tragic crossroad of history to illuminate the future meaning of Orthodoxy”. What stands out in Saint Symeon's thinking is the theology of light, most of his texts containing the leitmotif of “light” or “illumination”. However, from his doctrine it is not to be understood that by contemplating the light the final goal is exhausted, but, on the contrary, that it consists in meeting Christ. Another characteristic teaching of Symeonian theology is that of understanding the love of God. Prayer is also another defining component in the construction of the great Symeonian doctrinal edifice, invariably found in his texts. The purpose of prayer for the New Theologian is both enlightenment and union with God. Mystical experience, inseparable from the path to union, can only be acquired in prayer, by request. In the most general sense of the word, any presence of man before God is a prayer. The fruit of prayer is divine love, which is nothing, but the grace acquired within the being of the soul. Symeon remains a unique case of personal mysticism, but also as an important testimony regarding the inescapable tension between all forms of “encystation” and the freedom of the Holy Spirit. By deification or union with God in love is meant the total transfiguration of the human person, through divine grace, without the man becoming God in the literal sense, that is by essence and nature. A mystic of outstanding spiritual states, Symeon believes that the state and quality of a Christian is given by the acquisition of perfection, by the “passion/suffering of deification”. We cannot truly be Christians, the Holy Father teaches, without having had the experience of light, a conscious communion in God. His mysticism is one of sacramental kind, permeated however by the personal event, a mysticism in which personal experiences are integrated into ecclesial, communitarian life.

• Details
• Contents