Monthly Osuna: Letter D
Guarding the Heart
This is a monthly series on Francisco de Osuna’s The Third Spiritual Alphabet.1 In each post, we reflect on one letter from his Alphabet. The Alphabet was written as an aid to recollection. Recollection (being recollected in God) is both a form of prayer and a way of being in the world. This month’s letter is D.
Letter D
Which Speaks of Safeguarding the Heart, Saying: Empty Your Heart and Pour Out All Created Things (SA 113). Desembaraza el corazón y vacía todo lo críado.
This letter is concerned with the ancient practice of guarding the heart or, as it is termed in Orthodox traditions, “watchfulness.” Our “heart” is the spiritual core of our being out of which our deepest desires and intentions arise. This spiritual core is created to be inhabited by God. As Osuna says, “Act like this: Enter the refuge of your heart where you will encounter God” (SA 518).
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.” (Prov. 4:23 NRSV)
“The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:5b-7)
Osuna gives several interpretations of this letter, but his remarks specifically related to guarding the heart and the practice of recollection cover familiar ideas.
“Therefore, it (the interpretation of this letter) says we are to disencumber our hearts and drain them so everything created is emptied out and thrown away in order for the Lord alone to dwell there.” (SA 131)
“The Peace of God, which exceeds all understanding, guards our hearts and minds when the Lord’s quietude lifts us above all corporeal sense to greater things and when our hearts cease to reflect on creation and the intelligence is occupied solely in God, neither admitting nor giving room to anything other than God.” (SA 132)
“The wise man simply tells us to guard the heart with all vigilance, allowing no thoughts at all to enter, for as I have explained, they hinder the good life, which is God, from issuing forth its source in the heart.” (SA 132)
Hopefully, what Osuna is saying is familiar from the previous Christian contemplatives we have encountered (see here, here, and here). The heart that seeks God and is emptied of “creatures” will be filled with God. The primary gateway to the heart is the mind because the thoughts to which we attend affect our spiritual core and influence our desires and intentions.
When it comes to guarding the heart (watchfulness), I have found Orthodox contemplatives and the tradition of hesychasm to be particularly insightful.
Hesychasm
“Because every thought enters the heart in the form of a mental image of some sensible object, the blessed light of divinity will illumine the heart only when the heart is completely empty of everything and so free from all form. Indeed, this light reveals itself to the pure intellect in the measure to which the intellect is purged of all concepts.” Hesychius of Jerusalem (PK 41)2
“A pure heart is one that offers the mind to God free of all image and form, and ready to be imprinted only with his own archetypes, by which God himself is made manifest.” Maximus the Confessor (PK 51)
We guard our heart by not allowing our mind to indulge in distracting thoughts, especially during the time of prayer. The Orthodox contemplatives (Hesychasts) use a form of the Jesus Prayer (e.g., “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy.”) as a way of guarding the heart. By attentively repeating the prayer, the mind stays free of mental traffic and the heart remains empty.
“Watchfulness and the Jesus Prayer, as I have said, mutually reinforce one another, for close attentiveness goes with constant prayer, while prayer goes with close watchfulness and attentiveness of intellect.” (Hesychius of Jerusalem PK 107)
The Orthodox heyschasts pray the Jesus Prayer continually (silently and/or aloud) both as a way to fulfill the scriptural injunction to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) and as a way to prepare the heart for divine indwelling and illumination.
“Smoke from wood kindling a fire troubles the eyes; but then the fire gives them light and gladdens them. Similarly, unceasing attentiveness is irksome; but when, invoked in prayer, Jesus draws near, he illumines the heart, for remembrance of him confers on us spiritual enlightenment and the highest of all blessings.” (Philotheos of Sinai PK 115)
Guarding the Heart by Being Attentive in the Moment
We can guard our hearts by letting go of thoughts that distract us from the moments we are given. Our hearts do not always differentiate between what is happening now and what we are simply thinking. And, if we give our full attention to a thought, that thought will find a place in our heart. Let’s suppose I am sitting at work and begin to think about a hurtful thing somebody said to me two weeks earlier. If I attend to that thought, my heart will accept it as reality, and I will begin to experience desires and intentions similar to those I experienced two weeks ago. But, of course, it is a mental construct that I have chosen to indulge while the reality of the present moment passes by unattended. The empty heart inhabits the present moment; God inhabits the present moment.
There is no hard and fast rule for guarding the heart. The hesychasts use the Jesus Prayer to keep them focused as they continually invoke and attend to the name of Christ. The Cloud of Unknowing suggests using a single word like “God” or “Love” to bring us back into the moment. Whatever works for you, works well enough. But our hearts are created for the moment where God and others are present. A heart that is empty in anticipation of God cannot help but experience the fullness that each moment presents. This is true both for our prayer and for our everyday living.
“And the heart is the rainbow of friendship with God set in a cloud of tears to remind us how much he loves us; it is a small city of God gladdened by the influx of grace; the book of life where you are to be judged; the holy tomb for Christ’s body; the altar on which we sacrifice our desires to God; the paradise where God and his friends commune and take pleasure; the golden brazier of God’s temple, the clean, spacious receptacle for his holy favors. All this, your heart is, if it is pure and unburdened as it should be and according to our advice, guarded with all vigilance.” Francisco de Osuna (SA 135)
Francisco de Osuna The Third Spiritual Alphabet (Trans. Mary E. Giles; Preface Kieran Kavanaugh; Paulist Press, 1981)
Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts (Annotation by Allyne Smith; Trans. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrad, and Bishop Kallistos Ware; Kylight Paths Publishing, 2010)