Life
Saint Gregory Palamas is one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Orthodox Church, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, defender of hesychasm, and teacher of the Divine Energies. He was born around 1296 in Constantinople, in a distinguished family closely connected to the Byzantine imperial court. His father was a senator who received the monastic tonsure on his deathbed; his mother did likewise after her husband’s death — and Gregory himself, together with five brothers and sisters, embraced the monastic life in his early years, leaving behind every prospect of a brilliant court career.
The young Gregory set out for the Holy Mountain of Athos around 1316, resolved to find true spiritual teachers. On Athos he placed himself under the guidance of experienced hesychastic elders, surrendering himself to the labors of unceasing prayer, fasting, and vigil. He was especially formed by the encounter with the hesychastic tradition flowing from Paroria and Asia Minor onto Athos, and Gregory himself advanced so rapidly that he soon became a teacher himself. He lived in retirement, mainly in small hesychastic communities and solitary cells, before being compelled around 1326 to leave Athos due to Serbian raids on Macedonia.
The decisive moment of Gregory’s public activity came around 1337, when the monk Barlaam the Calabrian, a philosopher who had arrived from Italy, began to attack the hesychastic practice of prayer and the claim that monks in a state of deep prayer truly see the uncreated Divine Light — the very Light that on Mount Tabor had illumined the face of Christ before Peter, James, and John. Barlaam interpreted these claims as a Bogomil heresy or as the error of simple, uneducated monks, arguing philosophically that God is entirely unknowable and that all experience of God must be mediated through created symbols.
Gregory Palamas rose to defend the hesychastic tradition by elaborating a theology that is now forever associated with his name: the distinction between God’s essence (ousia) and God’s energies (energeiai). God’s essence remains absolutely unknowable and inaccessible to any creature — here Gregory is fully in agreement with apophatic theology. But God is not passive or distant: He acts in the world and in human hearts through His eternal, Divine Energies, which are truly and inseparably God, yet are not His essence. The created human being can genuinely participate in these uncreated Energies, be permeated with the Divine Light — and this is no metaphor, but a living spiritual experience attested by all ascetics. The Taborian Light was precisely this uncreated Energy, and the apostles truly saw it.
This theology was defended at two councils in Constantinople: 1341 and 1351. The councils confirmed the teaching of Gregory Palamas as authentically Orthodox and condemned Barlaam and his followers. Gregory was consecrated Archbishop of Thessaloniki in 1347, where he served pastorally, preached, and wrote until near his death. In 1354 he fell captive to the Turks, who held him hostage for a year; yet even in captivity he bore witness to Christ and debated the faith with Muslims. He reposed on November 14, 1359, leaving behind a rich legacy of theological works, sermons, and letters.
He was canonized in 1368 by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Church commemorates him twice: on the day of his repose, November 14, and especially on the second Sunday of Great Lent. The latter places him alongside the triumph of Orthodoxy celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent (the victory of the icon-veneration), suggesting that Palamas’s theology of the Energies is equally constitutive for the Orthodox faith as the faith in icons: both defend the reality of God’s presence in the material world. For this reason the Church calls him the “Pillar of Orthodoxy.”
Tropar (Tone 8)
O light and teacher of divine wisdom, and steadfast pillar of the Church, O Gregory the godly-minded, adornment of hierarchs, boast of theologians — intercede with Christ God to grant us great mercy.
Kontakion (Tone 8)
With wisdom thou didst overcome the senseless opposition of Barlaam and Akindynos, O Venerable Gregory the Theologian; thou didst confess the uncreated Taborian Light with faith and divine contemplation, and the councils confirmed thee, O saint. Pray for our salvation.
About the Feast
Saint Gregory Palamas is not widely observed as a patron feast in the Serbian people, but he receives special honor in monastic communities and theological circles — especially since the hesychastic spirituality flowing from the Sinaites, Palamites, and Romil of Ravanica is deeply rooted in Serbian monasticism.