This book is the second in a series on the mystagogy of the Church
Fathers produced by the Netherlands Centre for Patristic Research. The
first volume, Seeing through the Eyes of Faith: New Approaches to the
Mystagogy of the Church Fathers (LAHR, 11), initiated the
study of the Church Fathers as mystagogues, since this approach does
more justice to the Fathers' own intention in writing a work or a sermon
than does regarding them as theologians avant la lettre. Early
Christian writers did not primarily seek to offer rational reflection on
the faith as an objective in its own right, but their works were rather
aimed at an existential transformation in their audience.
The
present volume focuses on how the Church Fathers conceived prayer as an
aspect of such a process of progressive transformation, and as a means
to achieve an awareness of God as Mystery, with whom one could,
paradoxically, communicate in prayer. In the essays collected here many
aspects and dimensions of the mystagogy of early Christian prayer are
examined: different kinds of prayer, their antecedents and their
development over time; their historical, theoretical, and ritual
contexts and meanings; and their noetic, imaginative, and physical
strategies.