Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki
Archbishop of Thessaloniki, defender of the hesychasts
- Feast day
- November 14
- Lived
- 1296–1359
- Patronage
- Those who practise the Jesus Prayer; the second Sunday of Great Lent
Saint Gregory Palamas gave the Church its definitive teaching on the uncreated light of Tabor and the distinction between God's unknowable essence and His energies, in which man truly participates.
Life
Born in Constantinople to a senatorial family, Gregory left the court for Mount Athos at twenty, living as a hesychast in solitude near Great Lavra and Berrhoea. When the Calabrian philosopher Barlaam mocked the Athonite monks for claiming to see the divine light, Gregory answered him in the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts.
The councils of Constantinople in 1341, 1347 and 1351 vindicated his teaching against repeated attacks. He was made archbishop of Thessaloniki, spent a year in captivity among the Turks — where he debated Islam calmly and at length — and died in 1359.
Essence and energies
God in His essence is utterly beyond creaturely knowledge; God in His energies is genuinely present and knowable, and the light seen by the apostles on Tabor is that uncreated energy, not a created symbol. This teaching underpins the entire Orthodox understanding of deification.
The Second Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to him, as a continuation of the Triumph of Orthodoxy kept the Sunday before.