Key Aspects of Biblical and Patristic Spirituality

Abstract

Biblical and patristic spirituality is primarily experiential, as it conveys the spiritual experience of the hagiographers and the Fathers themselves. The latter were either bishops or simple monks: in both their homilies and the treatises they wrote, they shared their personal experience—that is, their personal relationship of prayer with God that transformed their lives. To speak of the spirituality of the Fathers or of their love for the imperishable and eternal beauty recorded in the Philokalia means to share in the experience of those who “fear God, who believe in the incarnation of His Son, and who, through faith, receive the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, and therefore deserve to be called spiritual fathers.”