From the Introduction to Saint Gregory of Sinai by Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Philokalia, vol. 4, pp. 207-208

ORTHODOX mystical theology in the mid-fourteenth century possesses as its crowning glory the two Gregories: St Gregory of Sinai and St Gregory Palamas. Although they were on the Holy Mountain of Athos at the same time, it is uncertain how far they were in personal contact.  Gregory of Sinai was born, probably around 1265 (but the date is uncertain), near Klazomenai, on the western shores of Asia Minor. Taken prisoner as a young man in a Turkish raid, after being ransomed he went to Cyprus, where he entered the first grade of the monastic life, becoming a rasophore.

Next he travelled to Sinai, where he received full monastic profession. From here he went to Crete, where - according to his disciple and biographer Patriarch Kallistos I - he learnt from a monk called Arsenios about the ‘guarding of the intellect, true watchfulness and pure prayer’: in other words, he was initiated into that tradition of inner prayer - including the Jesus Prayer - to which the writings in The Philokalia bear witness.

After this St Gregory moved to Mount Athos, perhaps around the turn of the century, where he remained for the next twenty-five years. Like Nikiphoros the Monk,  he chose to live not in one of the large cenobia but in a secluded hermitage, settling in the skete of Magoula, not far from the monastery of Philotheou. Turkish incursions forced him to leave Athos around 1328, although he returned there briefly during the 1330s.

     He played no direct part in the hesychast dispute which broke out around 1335, and in which his namesake St Gregory Palamas was deeply involved; probably it was by deliberate choice that  he avoided controversy and polemics. But there can be no doubt that his own theological standpoint, although less explicitly developed, agrees fundamentally with that of Palamas on all essential points. This is confirmed by the Discourse on the Transfiguration, recently edited by David Balfour, in which the Sinaite clearly speaks of the light of Tabor as divine and uncreated. The last years of his life were spent in the remote wilderness of Paroria, in the Strandzha Mountains on the border between the Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria, where he enjoyed the patronage of John Alexander, Tsar of Bulgaria. Here he gathered round him a large group of disciples, both Greeks and Slavs, and here he died on 27 November 1346. ‘

THE immediate influence of Nicephorus seems to have been limited. At any rate, when St Gregory of Sinai (d. 1346) came to Mount Athos in the early years of the fourteenth century, less than a generation after Nicephorus’ death, it was only after long searching that he found anyone experienced in hesuchia and inner prayer; according to Gregory’s biographer Patriarch Kallistos -- who is perhaps exaggerating a little -virtually all the monks of the Holy Mountain at that time devoted their efforts exclusively to fasting and other forms of ascetic effort. Gregory himself had learnt about inner prayer while in Crete, prior to reaching Athos. He left the Holy Mountain around 1335, taking no direct part in the subsequent Hesychast controversy at Constantinople, but spending his last years at Paroria, on the borders between the Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria. His disciples were instrumental in propagating Hesychast teaching throughout Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia, and Gregory forms in this way an important connecting link between the Greek and Slav worlds.

In his spiritual teaching Gregory of Sinai assigns a central place to the Jesus Prayer. He recited it in the standard form, ‘ Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me’; his biographer Kallistos tells us that he used also to add at the end the words ‘a sinner’, a practice widespread in modern Orthodoxy. Gregory also suggests the use of shorter forms: one may alternate between ‘ Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ and ‘Son of God, have mercy on me’. But he issues a warning against changing the form of words too often: ‘Trees that are constantly transplanted do not bear fruit’ (PG 150. 1316B).

Gregory recommends the physical technique, as found in Nicephorus: ‘Sit down on a low stool . . . compress your intellect, forcing it down from your brain into your heart, and retain it there within the heart. Laboriously bow yourself down, feeling sharp pain in your chest, shoulders and neck . . . Control the drawing-in of your breath . . . So far as possible, hold back its expulsion, enclosing your intellect in the heart’ (1316AB). It is interesting that Gregory says ‘feeling sharp pain’: he acknowledges that the posture recommended will prove highly uncomfortable. Control of the breathing helps to control the thoughts: ‘The retention of the breath, with the mouth kept tightly closed, controls the intellect, but only partially, for it becomes dispersed once more’ (1332B). Here, as in Nicephorus and Ps.-Symeon, the physical technique is a way of keeping guard over the heart. But the purely physical aspect, so Gregory insists, is not to be unduly emphasized. The aim is always the concentration of the mind: ‘Closing the mouth a little, control the respiration of the intellect and not that of the nostrils, as the uninstructed do’ (1344B).

Following earlier tradition, Gregory urges that the use of the Jesus Prayer should be so far as possible continuous. Like Diadochus and Hesychius, he sees it as a way of attaining image-free, non-discursive prayer: ‘Always keep your intellect free from images, naked of concepts and thoughts’, he says (1341D). The imagination or phantasia is to be restrained; otherwise one may find that one has become ‘not a Hesychast but a phantast’ (1284A). But, while images and thoughts are to be excluded, not all feelings should be rejected. Rightly practised, the Jesus Prayer leads to a sense of joyful sorrow (charmolupē) -- here Gregory draws upon Climacus -- and to a feeling of warmth (thermē) that is not physical but spiritual: ‘The true beginning of prayer is a feeling of warmth in the heart’ (1324AB). From these feelings of compunction and warmth the aspirant ascends to the ‘contemplation of the divine light’ that was manifested to the three disciples at the transfiguration on Tabor (1300C) (see Plate 1). Although Gregory does not discuss in detail the theological meaning of this light, it is clear that he has in view, not just a vision of the created light or intrinsic luminosity of the intellect, as in Ps.Symeon, but a vision of the uncreated light of the Godhead, as in Palamas.

Gregory of Sinai sets the Jesus Prayer firmly in a sacramental context. Prayer, he says, is ‘the revelation of baptism’ (1277D), and this is true in particular of the Jesus Prayer. It is in no sense an alternative to the normal sacramental life of the Church, but precisely the means whereby sacramental grace takes fire within us. As Christians we have all received the Holy Spirit ‘secretly’ at our baptism, but most of us are unconscious of his presence; the Jesus Prayer enables us to become aware of this ‘secret’ baptismal indwelling in an active and conscious manner. With his appeal to the feeling of warmth, to the conscious experience of baptismal grace, Gregory of Sinai takes his place in the ‘affective’ tradition of Eastern spirituality, extending back through Symeon the New Theologian to Diadochus and the Macarian Homilies.

 How to Master the Intellect in Prayer

 3. .No one can master the intellect unless he himself is mastered by the Spirit. For the intellect is uncontrollable, not because it is by nature ever-active, but because through our continual remissness it has been given over to distraction and has become used to that. When we violated the commandments of Him who in baptism regenerates us we separated ourselves from God and lost our conscious awareness of Him and our union with Him. Sundered from that union and estranged from God, the intellect is led captive everywhere; and it cannot regain its stability unless it submits to God and is stilled by Him, joyfully uniting with Him through unceasing and diligent prayer and through noetrcally confessing all our lapses to Him each day. God immediately forgives everything to those who ask forgiveness in a spirit of humility and contrition and who ceaselessly invoke His holy name. As the Psalmist says, ‘Confess to the Lord and call upon His holy name’ (cf Ps. 105: 1). Holding the breath also helps to stabilize the intellect, but only temporarily, for after a little it lapses into distraction again. But when prayer is activated, then it really does keep the intellect in its presence, and it gladdens it and frees it from captivity. But it may sometimes happen that the intellect, rooted in the heart, is praying, yet the mind wanders and gives its attention to other things; for the mind is brought under control only in those who have been made perfect by the Holy Spirit and who have attained a state of total concentration upon Christ Jesus.

 How to Expel Thoughts

 4. In the case of a beginner in the art of spiritual warfare. God alone can expel thoughts, for it is only those strong in such warfare who are in a position to wrestle with them and banish them. Yet even they do not achieve this by themselves, but they fight against them with God’s assistance, clothed in the armor of His grace. So when thoughts invade you, in place of weapons call on the Lord Jesus frequently and persistently and then they will retreat; for they cannot bear the warmth produced in the heart by prayer and they flee as if scorched by fire. St John Klimakos tells us, ‘Lash your enemies with the name of Jesus’, because God is a fire the cauterizes wickedness (cf. Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). The Lord is prompt to help, and will speedily come to the defense of those who wholeheartedly call on Him day and night (cf Luke 18:7). But if prayer is not yet activated in you, you can put these thoughts to flight in another manner, by imitating Moses (cf. Exod. 17:11-12); rise up, lift hands and eyes to heaven, and God will rout them. Then sit down again and begin to pray resolutely. This is what you should do if you have not yet acquired the power of prayer. Yet even if prayer is activated in you and you are attacked by the more obdurate and grievous of the bodily passions - namely, listlessness and lust - you should sometimes rise up and lift your hands for help against them. But you should do this only seldom, and then sit down again, for there is a danger of the enemy deluding you by showing you some illusory form of the truth. For only in those who are pure and perfect does God keep the intellect steadfast and intact wherever it is, whether above or below, or in the heart.

 How to Psalmodize

 5. Some say that we should psalmodize seldom, others often, others not at all. You for your part should not psalmodize often, for that induces unrest, nor yet not at all, for that induces indolence and negligence. Instead you should follow the example of those who psalmodize from time to time, for moderation in all things is best, as the ancient Greeks tell us. To psalmodize often is appropriate for novices in the ascetic life, because of the toil it involves and the spiritual knowledge it confers. It is not appropriate for hesychasts, since they concentrate wholly upon praying to God with travail of heart, eschewing all conceptual images. For according to St John Klimakos, ‘Stillness is the shedding of thoughts’, whether of sensible or of intelligible realities. Moreover, if we expend all our energy in reciting many psalms, our intellect will grow slack and will not be able to pray firmly and resolutely. Again according to St John Klimakos, ‘Devote-most of the night to prayer and only a little of it to psalmody.’

 You, too, should do the same. If you are seated and you see that prayer is continuously active in your heart, do not abandon it and get up to psalmodize until in God’s good time it leaves you of its own accord. Otherwise, abandoning the interior presence of God, you will address yourself to Him from without, thus passing from a higher to a lower state, provoking unrest and disrupting the intellect’s serenity. Stillness, in accordance with its name, is maintained by means of peace and serenity; for God is peace (cf. Eph. 2:14) beyond all unrest and clamor. Our psalmody, too, should accord with our mode of life, and be angelic, not unspiritual and secular. For to psalmodize with clamor and a loud voice is a sign of inner turbulence. Psalmody has been given to us because of our grossness and indolence, so that we may be led back to our true state.

 As for those not yet initiated into prayer - this prayer which, according to St John Klimakos, is the source of the virtues’ and which waters, as plants, the faculties of the soul - they should psalmodize frequently, without measure, reciting a great variety of psalms; and they should not desist from such assiduous practice until they have attained the state of contemplation and find that noetic prayer is activated within them. For the practice of stillness is one thing and that of community life is another. ‘Let each persist in that to which he is called’ (1 Cor. 7:24) and he will be saved. It was on account of this that I hesitated to write to you, for I know that you live among those still weak. If someone’s experience of praying derives from hearsay or reading; he will lose his way, for he lacks a guide. According to the fathers, once you have tasted grace you should psalmodize sparingly, giving most of your time to prayer. But if you find yourself growing indolent you should psalmodize or read patristic texts. A ship has no need of oars when a fair wind swells the sails and drives it lightly across the salt sea of the passions. But when it is becalmed it has to be propelled by oars or towed by another boat.

 To gainsay this, some point to the holy fathers, or to certain living persons, saying that they kept all-night watches psalmodizmg the whole time. But, as we learn from Scripture, not all things can be accomplished by everyone, for some lack diligence and strength. As St John Klimakos says, ‘Small things may not always seem so to the great, and great things may not seem altogether perfect to the small ‘ Everything is easy for the perfect; and not everyone, either now or in former times, remains always a probationer, nor does everyone travel along the same road or pursue it to the end. Many have passed from the life of ascetic labor to the life of contemplation, laying aside outward practices, keeping the Sabbath according to the spiritual law, and delighting in God alone. They are replete with divine fare, and the grace that fills them does not permit them to psalmodize or to meditate on anything else; for the time being they are in a state of ecstasy, having attained, if only in part and as a foretaste, the ultimate desire of all desires. Others have been saved through pursuing the life of ascetic labor until their death, awaiting their reward in the life to come. Some have received conscious assurance of salvation at their death, or else after death they have given off a fragrant odor as testimony to their salvation. Like all other Christians they had received the grace of baptism, but because of the distraught and ignorant state of their intellects they did not participate in it mystically while still alive. Others excel in both psalmody and prayer and spend their lives in this manner, richly endowed with ever-active grace and not impeded by anything. Yet others, being unlettered and restricting themselves solely to prayer, have persevered in stillness until the end of their lives; and in doing this they have done well, uniting themselves as single individuals with God alone. To the perfect, as we said, all things are possible through Christ who is their strength (cf. Phil. 4:13).

See also on Delusion

Mindfulness of God, or noetic prayer, is superior to all other activities. Indeed, being love for God, it is the chief virtue.

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