Some Advice for Reading the Philokalia

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When I was first introduced to the Philokalia I didn’t get it. I just thought it was a book of spiritual fathers and their wisdom. However, I eventually discovered it was much more. Imagine if you would a medical journal on a specific disease.  In this journal there are various doctors who explain the origin of the disease and how to cure it. This is basically how the Philokalia is set up. The editors and compilers of the Philokalia, Sts. Nicodemus and Macarius, created a detailed spiritual journal about the illness and cure of the soul. This journal is made up of various church fathers who speak about what makes us spiritual sick and they tell us how to cure the sickness.

If I was offered the chance to rename the Philokalia I would call it “How to Have More of God”. The reason for this is that each “spiritual doctor” of this many volume “journal” offers in some way how to deal with our fallen condition so that we can have more of God in this life. Being that it is written in this way, you will find a lot of diversity on the common subjects that are discussed. Its important to keep in mind that there is a context for how these “spiritual doctors” present their teachings. Some will obviously not work for everyone and some will not be valid for the way we might live in our time. For instance, you might hear something strange like we shouldn’t take baths. There is a principle of course behind this thinking but it has a specific context that it is given in. Just like in a modern medical journal you might find some ideas that seem more reasonable over others or that might have worked better in the past as opposed to today.

The Philokalia should not be read like a book with a succession of ideas. In fact, some fathers might offer a completely different opinion as opposed to others. Rather, I would suggest reading through and asking, “what teachings work best for me”, with the goal of having more of God in your life. As your looking through, look at what the fathers are saying as forms of therapy.  We all struggle with our weaknesses and the fathers in the Philokalia offer their wisdom on how to understand our conditions therapeutically. As I said, I would suggest using the therapy that works best for you. Also, keep the goal of having more of God in mind as you seek your healing. The fathers of the Philokalia are not offering dead wisdom in order to make us feel spiritual. They are offering the living tradition of the Church to us, so that we can fulfill our destiny as sons and daughters of God.

There are some common themes that I thought would be helpful to mention when reading the Philokalia. A word you will commonly find is the “passions”. An easy way to understand a passion is that it is an emotion that controls us, which can never be satisfied, like sexual desire, anger, hunger, or fear. In speaking about the passions, the fathers seek to heal their source in order to redirect the energy we give them back to God. Another theme is the Heart, the center of what we are. The Heart has been described as the source of the passions and it is also the place where we encounter God. In regard to the Heart, I want to mention another theme, that of watchfulness. Watchfulness is commonly understood in the Philokalia as a means to guard the Heart. Mixed with prayer it offers a way to keep us from entering an impassioned state and allows our hearts to be centered on God.

What I am offering here is by no means expert wisdom. I just thought I could offer some brief advice for a neglected gift in the Church. I believe this to be a gift that’s especially vital for those of the Byzantine tradition. We have our prayer ropes and we say the Jesus Prayer but often out the full context in which we have received these gifts. I also believe the Philokalia should be in some respects, for the modern Byzantine Christian, treated like a second bible. The spirituality in the Philokalia is in some ways the basis for the origin of the modern Byzantine typicon. Just as it was when it was compiled and edited it represents in many ways the fullness of the spiritual fruit found in Byzantine Liturgical life.

The Byzantine Pope

     In speaking once about the Church, the Great Melkite Patriarch, of Blessed Memory, Maximos IV made the criticism that Roman Catholics tend to, “limit their vision to the Latin discipline and Church, as if the Eastern discipline and Church were exceptions”. In my experience, I could say that this has also been a problem for a great many of Eastern Catholics. It seems that there is a prevailing confusion on just what Catholic means. So much so, that Pope Francis recently had to stress that being Catholic does not mean that we are all the same. The difficulty here, for many Byzantine Catholics, is the fear of fully accepting the differences found in our spiritual patrimony. For some, accepting the differences means that they will no longer be Catholic because they will accepting something that’s different from the Latin tradition. What they don’t realize is that they are working against what the very essence of Catholicism by maintaining such a position. As Pope Benedict XVI once said, “the union they have already achieved with the Church of Rome must not cause the Eastern Catholic Churches to lose an awareness of their own authenticity and originality”.
     When it comes to the differences, in our Catholic traditions, Eastern Catholics find themselves in an important place.In this regard, His Beatitude Patriarch Gregory III of the Melkite Catholic church says that Eastern Catholics, “have to speak up, to discover the real Eastern ecclesiology and to develop it, and help the Western mentality to mature in that regard”. This Western mentality that he speaks of came into existence by the many divisions that the Roman church experienced in the last 1000yrs. Consequently, being the central church of history it went on to identify itself as the only true one, which in turn led to Roman Catholics  understanding their tradition as superior to all others. As a result, those Eastern churches that wished to continue or reestablish their communion with Rome were pressured into becoming  like the Roman church. It is this very pressure or mentality that prevails to this day. To this end, Eastern Catholics need to bring healing to this mentality. This is done by being 100% faithful to our traditions and at the same time fully committed to our communion with the Roman church.
     On this topic, the biggest issue that I have experienced is how some of the Eastern Churches understand the ministry of the pope. In the Byzantine Catholic tradition our communion with the Pope of Rome is based on the tradition that he is the First amongst Equals. For example, His Beatitude Patriarch Gregory III teaches the following about the papacy, “With all respect for the Petrine office, the patriarchal office is equal to it”. This position of course is not acceptable to the  Western mentality that I mentioned. In fact, my own priest has been accused of heresy when sharing this position with Roman Catholics. The truth is, the ministry of Pope is something that can receive further development and such development is not isolated to the Latin tradition. Blessed John Paul the Great himself said to the Patriarch of Constantinople that there was a need to seek together the way in which the Petrine ministry could serve all. Based on this, its justifiable to say that the Latin tradition does not have exclusive rights in developing this ministry that belongs to the whole Church. As the Melkite bishops at the Vatican II council said, concerning the dogma of papal primacy-infallibility, ”the overriding duty of encouraging the unity of the Church must, on the contrary, impel us to want an Eastern formulation of this dogma”.
     So is a Byzantine understanding of the ministry of the Pope acceptable? The last few popes were open to further development, so we need not be afraid of what our tradition has to offer. I have the firm conviction that if we remain faithful to our traditions we will eventually see the ministry of the pope healing the divisions that we see today. By saying this, I can’t emphasize more just how important it is for us to be faithful to what makes us Byzantine. As Pope Francis said, "We are not all the same and we shouldn't all be the same, .... Each person has his or her own gifts, qualities and character, which is one of the beauties of the church -- everyone brings what God has given him or her to enrich the others." What God has given our Byzantine tradition is for the mutual enrichment  of the whole Church and there is no part of the Church that is closed to such enrichment, not even the papacy.