† PhD Irineu Popa, Metropolitan of Oltenia, Mystical Experiences of the Oriental Parents

Publishing House Mitropolia Olteniei, Craiova, 2012, ISBN 978-973-1794-55-6

Mystical experience of the saints is basically completely inexpressible and ineffable. It contains in itself a direct contact between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit, beyond what could be conceived as a sign or word. When ascetic is overwhelmed by the grace, though spiritual experience of the saints is deeply mysterious and hidden, nevertheless the Church Fathers left us in complete ignorance but have tried to describe it in some way to communicate it to other lovers of spiritual life. That following these revelations, it is true, have lost a lot of living mystical depths, precisely because they tried to put into words what is the definition of unspeakable. Obviously, the revelation of the Fathers lived were made within their culture with words and pictures that they have acquired through their education and experience. God’s grace in everything he feels can not be contained in words. Parents presented in this paper do not need to be discovered, their experience is present in Orthodox theological tradition. Their attention is our attempt to rediscover the great prospects that they exposed their experience and their teaching. In this spirit the main purpose of these presentations is to make them talk about their experience in Saviour Christ in the same way they addressed to their contemporaries. Life and experience these plates of God, rooted in the tradition of the Church, lead us to the knowledge of the One and Indivisible Trinity to the personal consciousness of God, One in Three glow.