Silence and Purity of Heart
The disciples of Abba Pachomius learned that silence is not simply the absence of sound. It is a unique form of human consciousness. In the silence of their teacher they were drawn beyond themselves into a transpersonal form of listening, seeing and learning. They witnessed the presence of God in Pachomius in such a way that the judgments of their egos were released. They were lured beyond the boundaries of seeing him as “pagan” and “sinner.” As they let go of the limits imposed by the duality of self/other they saw Pachomius as a person whose heart was pure. In that moment they knew that the transformation that had taken place in Pachomius’s life could also be their own. This gave them joy and hope, without a word being spoken.
The Silent Power of the Heart
“Abba Poemen also said, ‘Teach your heart to guard that which your tongue teaches.”’38 The desert elders valued silence because they knew the power of words. They did not want to let words and careless speech have unnecessary control over their attention, thoughts and actions. Their attitude was: guard your use of words so that their use or absence will enable you to live a pure life. The abbas and ammas learned from experience that the heart is the source of both words and actions. A person must listen with the “ear of the heart” if his or her words and behavior are to bring salvation. A pure life begins with a pure heart. What did the desert elders mean by the word “heart”?
Pseudo-Marcarius said:
For the heart directs and governs all the other organs of the body. And when grace pastures the heart, it rules over all the members and the thoughts. For there, in the heart, the mind abides as well as all of the thoughts of the soul and all its hopes. This is how grace penetrates throughout all parts of the body.39
These words were written in the fourth century. Greek Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware is one of the twenty-first century’s finest Eastern Orthodox scholars of the desert and hesychast traditions. He points out that at the time of the desert elders people did not think of the heart as the muscular pump of the cardio-vascular system, “but they viewed it as a container or empty vessel, full of space and air.”40 They perceived the heart as a bodily organ that dominates all the other organs and is the physical center of the body that relies on it for life to continue. The heart is also the psychic and spiritual center of the human being. When it is open to God’s grace it “pastures” (shepherds) body, mind and hope (expectations and intuition). Bishop Kallistos concludes that people at the time of the desert elders considered the heart to be the “axial” organ that centers the physical, psychic and spiritual dimensions of human life. It is the seat of “reasoning,” “intuitive insight and mystical vision,” as well as “the place of wisdom and spiritual knowledge” and “the meeting place between the Divine and the human.”41
In the silence of Abba Pachomius’ activities his three disciples could see the presence of God in his life with “the eyes of their hearts.” In the silence of their cells the desert elders could listen to God with “the ears of their hearts.” By limiting their activities through stillness and their conversations through silence, the desert monks made space within their hearts for the grace (the creative energy) of God to “pasture” their lives. By extending the boundaries imposed by their unrestrained egos, the abbas and ammas became open to an expansion of the heart that made space for God’s grace to unite their physical, psychic and spiritual faculties into a transformed and authentic human being. Their speech, behavior, thoughts, intuition and desires were united with God’s desires for them and their neighbor. They could see and love the world in a different way. They were not perfect and still considered themselves to be sinners and “beginners,” but their hearts were authentic. This is what John Cassian called “purity of heart,” birthed by grace in the praxis of stillness and silence. It is what Evagrius meant by apatheia.
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
38 Ward, Sayings, Poemen 188, 193.
39 Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homlies and the Great Letter, trans. George A. Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) 116.
40 James S. Cutsinger, ed., Paths to the Heart. Sufism and the Christian East (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2002) Kallistos Ware, “How Do We Enter The Heart,”12-13.
41 Ibid., 12-14.
