Second Sunday of the Great Fast – St. Gregory of Palamas

The theme of the Second Sunday of the Great Fast concerns St. Gregory Palamas: his defense of hesychast prayer, and his synthesizing the Patristic Fathers’ thoughts by articulating the distinction between God’s essence and energies. 

Main theological themes: 

Distinction between Godʼs essence and energies: God remains transcendent in His essence yet truly communicates Himself in His uncreated energies (grace, light). 

Experiential knowledge of God: We can never know about God’s inner essence, it remains beyond all of our knowledge. We don’t speculate about what we can never know. However we can know of God personally through His uncreated energies, not merely intellectually, but by real participation in his grace and life.  Some concrete examples of this participation is through prayer, the the Divine Liturgy, sacraments, and the right care of others. 

The call to inner stillness and prayer of the heart, this is what is known as hesychast prayer, and ascetic struggle as the path to deification (theosis). 

An example of hesychastic prayer in action can be observed during the Priest’s and Deacon’s reception of the Gifts before communion to the People of God.  The clergy are quietly repeating a form of the Jesus Prayer while keeping the prosphora (the leavened communion bread) fully covered in their hands and not seeing it with their eyes, but with their hearts. They are uniting the mind to the heart while outwardly fulfilling the liturgical rites, so that their reception of the Gifts is accompanied by interior stillness and continual invocation of the Lord.

The Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner! The hesychasts aim is for it to become a continuous inner prayer throughout the day.

In the Gospel for this Sunday, faith is portrayed in Mark 2:1-12 as active and communal. Jesus saw the active faith of the paralytic and his friends, who were intent on overcoming barriers. The faith is collective—”their faith”—highlights how the friends’ belief can benefit another, bringing the paralyzed man to Jesus for forgiveness and healing. With Jesus, they participated in the Divine energies, synergizing human initiative with God’s grace. This uncreated energy, as the Patristic Fathers and St. Gregory teach, flows through an obedient faith, first forgiving sins and then restoring the body, revealing Christ’s authority as the Son of Man who bridges heaven and earth.

Peace and Grace, Tim