The Kingdom of the Heart

The Kingdom of the Heart

Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia

(Timothy Ware) is a member of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian, Patmos, Greece and one of the Assistant Bishops of the Orthodox Achdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain (under the Ecumenical Patiarchate of Constantinople).

In these talks, Bishop Kallistos speaks on the practice in the Eastern Church of the Jesus Prayer, a tradition that can be traced back to the Fathers and Mothers of the Egyptian Desert of the 4th centruy

"In Prayer," says Theophane the Recluse (1815-94) "the principal thing is to stand before God with the mind in the heart, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of your life. "Praying, defined thus, is no longer merely to ask for things, and can indeed exist without the need for words. It is not so much a momentary activity as a continuous state. To pray is to be in an immediate and personal relationship with God. It is to know at every level of our being that we are enfolded by the Divine."

Bishop Kallistos also illustrates the common roots of the Jesus Prayer tradition of the Eastern Church and the way of the mantra, as taught by John Main, in the Western Tradition.