clipped from www.vic.com

Hesychia is regarded as an antiquated method, as a life of inactivity, and not suited to our day, which is an age of action. Unfortunately these conceptions prevail even among people who wish to live in the Orthodox tradition. Our time is a time of action. "The contemporary world is not a world of recollection and stillness but one of action and struggle" (43). In an age like ours, which is hedonistic and self-gratifying, hesychasm cannot find an echo. It is happening as St. John of the Ladder said: "A fish turns swiftly from the hook. The passionate soul turns from solitude" (44). A pleasure-loving age is very anti-hesychastic. A nun said to me that in our time a "hot anti-hesychastic wind" is blowing which is burning everything. And I think that this judgement is absolutely true. This is the contemporary reality. The atmosphere prevailing today is rather the atmosphere of Barlaam and not that of St. Gregory Palamas.