Met. Serafim Joanta: Finding our Heart
How do you bring your mind down into your heart?! Is this a figure of speech, a metaphor? Yes, yet a metaphor that expresses a great reality.
It is important for us today, when the external world exercises an incredible power over our senses, scattering them in things outside ourselves, to try to interiorize ourselves, to gather our scattered mind in order to help it descend into the heart. How do you bring your mind down into your heart?! Is this a figure of speech, a metaphor? Yes, yet a metaphor that expresses a great reality. The mind, as the ascetic Fathers teach us, is an energy of the heart; it has its base in the heart. A person is concentrated in his heart, he recapitulates himself, with all his being, in the heart. But not only our being, but also all creation, the entrie Universe is concentrated in the heart. When, through prayer, we manage to penetrate the heart, then we live the feeling that we no longer are separate from anyone or anything, that everything lives within us, that we are one with creation.
The Holy Fathers speak about “the human being as a microcosm.” Each person is a small Cosmos. All of the Cosmos, all humanity, is recapitulated, like a magnifying glass, in each one’s heart. But we are not aware of this great, mystical reality except to the degree that the mind ceases to be scattered in outside things and rests in the heart. This is accomplished gradually throughout one’s life, in the Church through the grace of the Holy Sacraments, as well as through prayer and asceticism, through bearing trials and acquiring virtues, which help us to gradually loosen our heart from material things in order to concentrate on spiritual ones. In this sense, similarly, reading Holy Scripture and spiritual books is of great benefit, even though their understanding, in the beginning, may be more intellectual than existential, because we have not reached the spiritual level of understanding. If, however, we strive to practice what we read, increasing prayer and asceticism or ascetic struggle, being obedient to a spiritual father and those around us, renouncing our self-will, we progress, little by little, from an intellectual understanding to an existential one. In this way, theoretical knowledge descends into the heart and engages us existentially. In the beginning, things appear beautiful in themselves, but somewhat foreign, far from reality, because we have not experienced them.
In the Philokalia, the Fathers do not speak about abstract things imagined by them, but from their life experience of warfare with evil spirits and passions, so that those who read these teachings may benefit. However, any internal, mystical reality is so profound that it can only be partially grasped in words. Words are too few and too weak to convey a mystical reality! The mystery of God’s presence in the heart cannot be expressed in words, but only cooed, as children who cannot yet speak clearly coo. We are not able to penetrate the mysteries of spiritual life until we try them out by experience. Progress in spiritual understanding is accomplished with baby steps throughout an entire life, to the degree that we pray more and more, especially seeking quality in prayer.
Source:
Mitropolitul Serafim Joanta, Rugul Aprins Al Inimii Noastre: Convorbiri Cu Tinerii [The Burning Bush of Our Heart: Dialogue with Young People] (Iasi: Doxologia, 2018), 15-16.
This is the simplest and the best explanation of the heart for all of us, thank you, Ioan , for translating it!