Saint Gregory Palamas: Defender of Hesychasm and Theosis

The post commemorates Saint Gregory Palamas on his feast day, November 14. Born in Constantinople in 1296, he received an imperial education but left court life for monasticism on Mount Athos, where he practiced Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer. In the 14th century he defended the Orthodox teaching that God's essence is inaccessible while His energies are uncreated and communicable to humanity.

This controversy arose against Barlaam of Calabria, who challenged the hesychast claim that the light of Christ's Transfiguration on Mount Tabor is divine and uncreated. Palamas articulated that through grace human beings truly participate in God's life, the doctrine of theosis, without becoming God by essence. He suffered persecution and imprisonment for this teaching. In 1347 he became Archbishop of Thessalonica, and in 1351 a council solemnly affirmed his theology.

He died in 1359 and is also commemorated on the Second Sunday of Great Lent. The post includes numerous quotations from his homilies, treatises, and the Philokalia on faith and works, the true nature of fasting, the Filioque, the authority of the saints, spiritual struggle against passions, unceasing prayer for all Christians, human culpability beyond Adam, the illumination of the purified heart, and the necessity of repentance for sexual sins.