Lilian Ciachir

Abstract

“A good conscience is found through prayer and pure prayer through the conscience. Each by nature needs the other”, says St Mark the Ascetic (1977, 123). This interdependence between conscience and prayer shows the divine origin and source of Christian ethics or morality. Following this affirmation, we may say that a prayerful person is one who will grow in ethical or moral consciousness and vice versa; and in all this work, the source is the Holy Trinity – an everlasting source of the uncreated divine energies that are shared with us through the Holy Sacraments. Guroian Vigen says in this sense: “It is through the liturgical actions and sacraments of the Church that Christ, Who is the Life, enters the person and takes the person into His Life” (Guroian 1981, 231). According to St John Chrysostom’s third discourse on the rich man and Lazarus, monks “philosophize at leisure”, and those acquainted with monastic life understand that this word is not used by the Fathers in its modern sense. The “Philosophy” as understood by the Church Fathers regards the way of fulfilling Christian life. According to this understanding, the true “philosophers” are the saints, people who have become friends of God, who have attained deification (Theosis). This article deals with the analysis of ethics from the philosophical point of view compared to the perspective of the Philocalic Fathers and the possible convergence between the two approaches.