Book of Mystical Chapters : Meditations on the Souls Ascent, from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives

Random House Inc, July 2003. Paper Back. New. A beautiful instruction. Simple, and at the same time difficult, each page a poetry to live through. Every line given (and subsequently written) by a desert father to his fellow monks with the intention of it being ''learned by heart and meditated on over and over again for a day or even a week until the paragraph [has] broken like a fruit on the tongue... and revealed its inner flavor to the searching mind.'' Patristic scholar John McGuckin has edited and translated these sayings into three ''centuries,'' or books - Praktikos, Theoretikos and Gnostikos - following the tradition of monastic spiritual ascent. Praktikos involves the training of the soul to understand its own need for a disciplined inner attention - a holy psychology that maps the self to better understand God's mysterious presence there. Theoretikos serves to resolve the difficulties which Praktikos reveals. A place to struggle and work things out. Gnostikos is traditionally the most controversial chapter (because of its highly personal nature, i.e. the way a particular soul experiences God), focusing on the state of knowing or understanding God Himself. While this book has a very particular structure, its truth transcends intent, igniting in any careful reader the quiet, consuming love of God.