Saint Gregory Palamas: the monk who defended the experience of God

The post commemorates Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, on November 14. Born in Constantinople in 1296 to an aristocratic family, he was educated in philosophy and classical studies at the imperial court before choosing monasticism at about twenty years of age. He went to Mount Athos, where he gave himself to asceticism, silence, and the ancient prayer traditions of the Eastern Christian monks.

Gregory became the leading defender of Hesychasm, the tradition of continuous inner prayer aimed at union with God. When Barlaam of Calabria mocked the monks' practices and claimed that God was entirely unknowable to human experience, Gregory defended them. He argued that God's inner essence remains transcendent and inaccessible, but humans can genuinely experience God through His uncreated energies and divine grace.

His most famous work, The Triads, explains how body and soul can participate together in the transformative light of God, like the light the apostles saw at Christ's Transfiguration. His writings sparked the Hesychast controversy, a theological and political dispute that divided the Byzantine Empire for decades. Gregory faced imprisonment and temporary excommunication from his opponents but remained steadfast, and his teachings were vindicated by Church councils in Constantinople between 1341 and 1351.