John Anthony McGuckin is a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Professor of Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary, and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University. In this edifying volume in Orbis's "Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series," he singles out the spiritual practice of beauty as central to any understanding or appreciation of the ancient and rich religious tradition of the Byzantine faith, known today as Eastern Orthodoxy. The beauty of God is present in liturgy, the sacraments, icons, prayer, and the process of theosis, or divinization brought on by the grace of the Holy One. McGuckin also suggests that Christianity needs to have a reconciliation of aesthetics and justice in the twenty-first century.
Two of the most interesting chapters deal with Evagrios Pontike's fourth century vision of prayer with his cataloguing of the psyche and the desert monks with their overview of the heart as "the centre of human spiritual awareness, and the arena of a disciple's obedience." Equally important is McGuckin's assessment of hesychia (spiritual stillness) where the mind was able to enter a state of spiritual acuity. The highest form of this is apatheia or dispassionateness: "a state of the soul when bodily temptations and distractions no longer have the force to turn away the human consciousness from God." This idea is very similar to the Buddhist practice of equanimity. Other chapters in Standing in God's Holy Fire cover poetry, saints and their hagiographies, and liturgy.
