The Heart, That By Which We Come to Know God

“Everything must be explored through a method appropriate to the subject under investigation. If we, therefore, wish to explore and get to know God, it would be a gross error to do so through our senses or with telescopes, seeking Him out in outer space. That would be utterly naive, don’t you think?” [asked Father Maximos]. . . Father Maximos paused for a few seconds. “Christ Himself revealed to us the method. He told us that not only are we capable of exploring God but we can also live with Him, become one with Him. And the organ by which we can achieve that is neither our senses nor our logic but our hearts.” (Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence [Doubleday: 2001] p 43)

As is well-known, and as others have with far more insight and eloquence have written, the Enlightenment (modernism) suffered a strong backlash against its elevation of reason over all other human faculties in the Romantic movement. The Romantic movement sought to restore that which the Enlightenment had nearly destroyed, that human life is and ought to be centered in the heart. Unfortunately, the Romantic movement took for its starting point the Enlightenment paradigm of the bifurcation of reason and the senses and emotions, which meant that instead of restoring the proper balance in the soul, with the heart at the center, it merely elevated over reason the sensory and emotive, continuing the split in the human soul.

This has continued in our own day, and I, for one, have found myself subject to this imbalance. In my own case, I have, through my religious upbringing and academic training, elevated reason over the heart, in relative harmony with the modernist paradigm. The only exception is that instead of, with modernism, starting only with the senses as the sole or at least sole authoritative source for rational reflection, I have started with the premises of faith. In either case, whether basing rational reflection on empirical experience or on religious dogma, both starting presuppositions were fideistic to one degree or another. The difference is that in my case I could practice my faith in harmony with my reason.

However, such an experiential construct left me a divided soul, with the heart reduced to the level of the emotive or even ignored altogether. My life as a Protestant was lived within the paradigm of ensuring all my thoughts fit the proper intellectual grid. Even experience had to fit this mental grid, such that any experiences that did not so fit were either reflectively altered in one’s thought, or discounted altogether as “mere” emotion. This was even my initial approach to Orthodoxy and some of the lives of the saints. Since certain experiences of the saints did not fit my own internal dogmatic grid, such experiences were explained away or just simply ignored.

But as I moved closer and close to our chrismations, I began to realize that such a dichotomy of soul was not only unhealthy but potentially spiritually dangerous. I could, out of zeal for “right belief” end up ascribing to Satan the work of the Holy Spirit, which is, as I understand the Gospels, what blasphemy of the Holy Spirit entails. More to the point, the prayers of Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim helped me overcome some misunderstandings about the Jesus Prayer and the prayer of the heart, which misunderstandings were borne out of my modernist paradigm.

So that, on the day I was chrismated, having received absolution, the sealing of the Holy Spirit and the Most Precious and All-Holy Body and Blood of our Lord, I was at last ready to experience the difference. It is a difference that is not subject to rational classification and definition. But it is a difference in which I realized that this split between reason and the heart, and the dominance in me of reason over the heart, had at last come to an end. I was now in the process–and one that will consume the rest of my earthly life–of being healed. I have now come to an experience of the integration of my person within the heart.

I say these things knowing full well that I at this point have no real understanding of that about which I am attempting to make some comments. And even the truncated understanding which I might actually have reason to claim is one I doubt I can articulate in a helpful way.

At first I was concerned, and even somewhat apprehensive, that what I was experiencing and continue to experience intermittently, was “nothing more than” emotion, or self-delusion, or anything less that what I felt it to be. I knew enough from the Fathers to know that it was possible I was not in error, but I also know myself and how easily I can convince myself of that which I really want to be the case. So I spoke about my experience to a couple of trusted confidants, foremost of them, of course, being Father Patrick. It was good to be reassured that no only was my experience not unusual, but was, without denigration, actually quite common and pedestrian. At least for Orthodox.

This sense has become for me both a comforting presence, when I have the sense of it, and a blessed assurance. I have been reliably told that this sense will not always be with me (though of course the reality always abides), and that I may go long periods without it. But for now it is an unfailing and pervasive sense immediately upon reception of the sacraments (which the regular observance of confession and Holy Communion fosters and deepens), and one that from time to time accompanies my prayers, even and perhaps especially my prayers of repentance for various sins committed.

In this heart of mine I have now been given a center in which to collect and recollect the whole of who I am, mind, will, emotions, the senses–all of it, the blessed and the painful, the healthy and the diseased–so that it can be brought to Christ who dwells there to be healed and strengthened. All of life takes on a new dimension as the center of my being becomes the location for experiencing and moving through this life, all of it in union with the Christ who dwells in this center. Christ created the heart to be that center of our being. Just as moderns locate the mind, and with it the center of the person, in the organ of the brain, in Christian terms, the heart organ is the coterminus of the personal heart. The difference is that in Christian terms, the personal heart contains as well the personal intellect, the will and the force of ones existence. It is the inner fire of the person and as united to Christ is lit by and energized by the divine fire.

But I should cease speaking here. For in reality, I don’t know very much about which I am now discoursing. I only know that I have been given to find my center of being, precisely because God has given me a sense of his presence there, and leads me there and wills me to always be there, where he is.