ASCESIS

ASCESIS. A Greek word meaning “exercise,” in the Orthodox context the exercise in question signifies the “working out” of the believer’s salvation, especially through prayer (q.v.), fasting, and almsgiving.

Prayer: Taking seriously Paul’s admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Th 5:17), together with Christ’s warnings to stay awake and keep watch in prayer (e.g., Lk 21:36), the early Church, as evidenced in Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition (qq.v.), encouraged vigils and prayer from the earliest times. With the rise of monasticism (q.v.), prayer received the greatest attention as comprehending the whole effort of the monk to penetrate his or her own heart and to arrive at the conscious perception of the risen Christ. Thus, there is present in early monasticism the regular invocation of Christ’s name, Jesus, coupled with a petition for mercy.

The “Jesus prayer,” as it emerges in the 14th c. controversy over hesychasm (q.v.), is certainly the manifestation of an ancient tradition based upon the exaltation of the divine Name (Ex 3:14, Philp 2:9–11) coupled with faith in the indwelling presence of the Spirit of Christ (cf. 1Cor 6:19, Rom 8). Hesychia means “quiet” or “retreat,” and hesychast denoted simply and from earliest monasticism one who practices prayer in silence. The hesychasts of Mt. Athos-whom Gregory Palamas (qq.v.) defended and whose claims of a mysticism featuring direct encounter with Christ in his uncreated glory he sought to justify with his celebrated distinction between God’s essence and energies-were the continuation of a tradition with roots in early Christianity and the Hebrew Scriptures (q.v.). For the latter, as for the New Testament texts, the heart is the center of the human being. It is there that the discovery of the divine presence takes place. In order to clear a path for this meeting with Christ, who is already given in Baptism (q.v.), the Christian is, however, obliged to confront the obstacles within his or her being that block the encounter. Hence the exercise of:

Fasting: This term embraces the struggle of the monk, and of the believer generally, against the “passions,” i.e., those forces and habits of body and mind that result from, first, the conditions of fallen existence and, second, one’s own willing acquiescence to the same-in short, sin (q.v.). Through bodily exercises such as fasting, limitation of sleep, and sexual continence, the Christian ascetic strives to reach and influence the more subtle and deep-rooted diseases of mind and heart. Through the aid of divine grace (q.v.), both mind and body are brought into conformity with prayer-indeed, making one’s intellectual, emotional, and physical life one single act of the remembrance of Christ. In consonance with this integral devotion to the love of God, the ascetic is led to the imitation of-or better, participation in-the love that God has shown humanity in Christ. Hence:

Almsgiving: The expression of this third component of Orthodox asceticism includes, generally, love of one’s neighbor and, more specifically, practices that involve the ascetic’s physical and spiritual being. Of the former, “nonpossession” (aktemosyne), the principle that one is not to be an “owner,” is perhaps the most important and striking. In common-life monasticism, possessions are thus required to be divided up among the community according to need and made available to the larger society, one’s brothers and sisters in the “world,” upon request and at need. More subtly, all pretense of power and authority over one’s neighbor must be carefully eschewed. Classical Orthodox monasticism, for example, has for this reason always been cautious about ordination (q.v.) to the priesthood. Finally, the state of nonpossession, together with the virtues of humility and meekness to which it is intended to give rise, is believed to lead to a complete openness to others. This entails a readiness to respond with the freedom gained by deliverance from passionate attachment to one’s “property,” the latter term including both physical possessions and less tangible goods, such as reputation, status, dignity, etc.