Friday, April 19, 2024

Report of an Apparition of Mary to Gregory Palamas in "The Life of Gregory Palamas" (1368)

  

Once the divine Gregory was praying for himself and his companions. His prayer was addressed to the Virgin and Theotokos, the ordinary guide and agent of salvation, that she might make their journey and ascent to God free from obstacles and make the provision of what was necessary to satisfy their bodily needs easy and free from anxiety, so that they should not be constrained for the lack of such things to spend time seeing to them and leave off spiritual and more necessary tasks. That was what the prayer was about. Now the Mistress of all things, anticipating , so to speak, the prayer itself out of the abundance of her providential case, quickly appeared before him—he was fully awake—dressed in a sober and virginal fashion just as she is represented by us in our carefully executed icons. And turning to those who followed her, most of whom seemed to be distinguished personages, she said: ‘Henceforth you are to be the administrators and distributors for Greogry and his companions of everything appropriate to their needs.’ And having thus in a few words answered the holy prayer and granted her gift, she returned to herself. ‘From that time,’ the holy Gregory used to tell us, ‘all our physical needs were satisfied without effort, wherever we happened to be living.’ (Philotheos Kokkinos, “The Life of Gregory Palamas” (1368), in Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam Documents Relating to Gregory Palamas [trans. Normal Russell; Translated Texts for Byzantinists 8; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022], 90)