Apostleship of Prayer Spirituality
 
 

    Evagrius Ponticus

THEOLOGIA

In the third stage, the soul returns to its original state of being without a body. All were given bodies, which was not to be considered a punishment but a means of healing.  Thus the whole of Evagrius' stages of spirituality is directed to restoring the union that the souls had originally with God. Thus the Christian no longer approaches the Creator through the works of creation, but meets God directly, face to face, in a union of love.   Contemplation is simple, absolutely imageless.  The mind is what contemplates in THEOLOGIA: thus the human mind has to rise above concepts, words, images -- above the level of discursive thinking, thus apprehending God intuitively through simple "gazing".

Prayer is a communing of the mind with God and is effected by God's own condescension to the soul.  Thus the awareness of the subject-object differentiation disappears, and in its place there is only a sense of all-embracing unity.  Cassian, a disciple of Evagrius expressed it as: " A monk's prayer is not perfect if in the course of it he is aware of himself or of the fact that he is praying." (Conferences 9.31)  Evagrius never loses sight of the basic difference between man and God, even when the monk is in the deepest possible contemplation; For God is God by essence, men become deified by grace and this is totally the work of God.   Prayer of the lower stages is a possibility for man but of this highest stage it is always a gift of God alone.

This contemplation is a converse of the mind or intellect with God in which the intellect is completely free of any concept or idea but is filled with a "formless light".
"Blessed is the intellect that during prayer is free from materiality and stripped of all possessions."

For Evagrius ecstasy is not the highest form of prayer.   The mind does the work of emptying itself of all its contents and contemplates God.   Then the mind returns to its first pure immaterial stage; it becomes pure intellect and is free from the body and the soul.  This doctrine of emptying the intellect has had a profound influence on the mysticism in the Eastern Church especially in the Hesychasm movement.

EVAGRIUS' ACHIEVEMENT.
1) He was the first to construct a framework that was subtle and penetrating in its understanding the growth of mystical prayer;
2) His approach was an intellectual one because he saw the goal of prayer as the supreme activity of the mind or the intellect; he rejects any union with God in ecstasy for the mind does not go out of itself but reaches the heights in contemplating and knowing God.  His was rather mystical philosophy, not mystical theology; this was the side condemned by the Council.
3) In all of his writings there is an intense practical concern for those on the way.
 
 

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