Sunday, March 8

Medieval · 1296–1359

St Gregory Palamas

Archbishop of Thessalonica, theologian of hesychasm

Gregory was raised at the imperial court of Constantinople, where his father was a senator, but at about twenty he left for Mount Athos and gave himself to hesychia — the life of inner stillness and unceasing prayer of the heart. When the philosopher Barlaam of Calabria ridiculed the hesychast monks and denied that man can truly experience God, Gregory answered in his Triads, articulating the Church's distinction between God's unknowable essence and His uncreated energies, by which He is genuinely known and shared — the light the apostles saw at the Transfiguration. Councils in Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351 vindicated his teaching. Consecrated Archbishop of Thessalonica, he shepherded his flock through civil war and spent a year as a captive of the Turks, conversing peaceably with his captors about the faith. He reposed in 1359 and is also honored on the Second Sunday of Great Lent.

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