Heart and Mind

“The most important thing in prayer is when we focus our attention on the words we say so that our mind shouldn’t be distracted by something else, but should descend into the heart. Every prayer of ours must become a prayer of the heart, because the center of our being is concentrated there. In fact, all energies that permeate us, our physical and psychological forces, are renewed in the heart. The mind itself is the energy of the heart. The mind will not find peace unless it descends into the heart, where its proper place is. The grace of the Holy Spirit, received by us in Baptism, dwells in the heart. If prayer remains at the level of the intellect, it does not touch the heart, remains purely intellectual, formal and fruitless. Such prayer does not bring joy and peace to the soul, but, on the contrary, causes fatigue and boredom. Our mind must descend into the heart, and with it prayer. We should pray with great attention, reverence and humility, being always mindful of our sinful state. We must also ask God to give us the gift of prayer. Because genuine prayer is a gift from God.” (Metropolitan Seraphim Joanta) 

“Freud identified the core vulnerability of the Enlightenment: the fact that reason itself turns out to be reliant on non-rational forces. In Christian terms, we would say that without the heart and personal communion, the mind cannot even preserve the basic presuppositions of its own rationality. Freud, in his way, proved the same. Darwin and Marx, too, showed how all sorts of non-rational factors had to be in place before the human mind could come into being or start thinking. In general, the discovery of the reliance of reason upon non-rational factors has not been taken well by the West. Without prayer of the heart–without an alternative account of reason’s origin and role–you are really in trouble…” (Timothy G. Patitsas)

“For the faithful to gain such insight into their hope in Christ, Paul prays that the “eyes of their understanding” be “enlightened.” The Greek term for “understanding” that Paul uses refers to the “heart”… The heart is the “spiritual center of a man’s being.” Created to reflect the image of God…, it is the seat of man’s rational, emotional, and moral life...Further, the “eyes of the heart” refer to the “vision” of the heart, the inner self. The eyes represent the mental processes of knowing and understanding…in some cases all the soul seems to need is clear intellectual explanations of what is happening or happened to it; to say otherwise would be to damn all of human reason–even this discussion would be pointless. But “of many books there is no end,” and if there is not some door for the soul beyond the way of the mind, if there is not contact with the Logos who lives through crucifixion and a song that is sung in the silencing of the mind, then our soul healers are leading us to a sterile dead end. We need a true way of the heart.” (Fr. Basil, Timothy G. Patitsas)

“…when God accepts our prayers and good deeds, God takes notice of us and tells us what we must do! Our prayers and good deeds reveal to God our hearts and minds and tell God whether or not we will be willing to do His will. When our prayers are pleasing to God, that doesn’t necessarily mean God will grant our wishes, only that God sees us as having a heart, mind and soul which are willing to serve God.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“…we should not grow discouraged when we do not seem to reach profound prayerful states. Our aim is not to attain to certain states, but to continually raise our minds and hearts to God out of our love for Him. Even if we have not been able to do this undistractedly, God honors our effort.” (Hieromonk Damascene Christensen)

“When the mind is no longer submitted to the heart, it becomes irrational through an excess of rationalism, while at the same time the heart becomes dull through an excess of passion and imagination. The unity of mind and heart, of a mind stationed in the heart and focused on the Name of Christ, is far more than a matter of having the right attitude. Rather, it is a hard-fought, spiritual force-against-spiritual force, bodily achievement.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)

“It is up to each of us to transfer the word of God from the biblical text and to write it on our hearts. Love for one another is not an idea to be entertained in the mind, but a word to be written on our hearts which we live in our daily lives, thoughts, behaviors…One of the healings that salvation will bring about in us is making us whole by giving us a singleness of soul, heart and mind. What we think interiorly will be consistent with what we say or do exteriorly. No more double mindedness, no more speaking with a forked tongue. Spiritual growth is that work to make our thoughts and deeds consistent with the Gospel and Christ in us. Inner ‘secrets’ will no longer dominate our hearts and minds causing us to dread others finding out who we really are or what we really think. Spirituality is the expelling of unwanted and ungodly thoughts and feelings so that our will is one with God’s will.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“Acquiring phronema [mind of Christ] is not simply a matter of studying theology, standing in Church, or saying one’s prayers in a mechanical manner. We may initially begin to perform these actions in a routine manner, but they must eventually become united with the soul and truly an organic part of our general orientation toward life, toward others and the world—just as prayer also begins with the lips but must enter into the heart to truly become noetic [“of the nous”] prayer, the “prayer of the heart.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou)

“The love of God with all one’s mind is the “love of the Truth,” and those who refuse such love are those who will perish (cf. 2 Thess 2.9–11). The mind of man is the guide of his life, directed to truth by the purity of his heart. When one loves God with all his mind, he is not “conformed to this world” but proves “what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12.2). He is the one who follows the advice of Saint Paul, and thinks solely and continually about “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise . . .” (Phil 4.8). He is the one, in a word, who has “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2.16).” (Fr. Thomas Hopko)

“God gave us a mind in order that we might learn and receive help from Him, not in order that the mind should be self-sufficient. Eyes are beautiful and useful, but if they choose to see without light, their beauty is useless and may even be harmful. Likewise, if my soul chooses to see without the Spirit, it becomes a danger to itself.…we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, making us capable of spiritual discernment…The indwelling Spirit works in and through our spirits, illuminating our hearts and instructing us in the mind of Christ.” (St. John Chrysostom, Dynamis 7/28/2021)

“The Hebrew word לֵב (lev) “heart” includes the mind. Hebrew does not separate “heart knowledge” and “head knowledge.” While “heart” may convey a deep commitment, the “mind” is crucial to considering and adopting the instruction. To have the instruction “on your mind” is critical to the deliberate talking to oneself needed to conform to the instruction, to meditating on it and assimilating it into one’s world view.” (NET Bible, Proverbs 6:21)

“St. Diadochos who distinguishes between the mind and the heart. He uses the term “heart” to refer to this nonconceptual form of knowing, what Augustine and Aquinas will later call “higher reason.” For Diadochos, and indeed for many others after him, the heart was not the seat of emotions (emotions would be located at roughly the same level as thoughts) but the deep center of the person. The heart communes with God in a silent and direct way that the conceptual level of our mind does not.” (Martin Laird)

“We are easily corrupted by contact with the evil spirits around us, for the “skirmish line” of spiritual warfare is within our mind. Evil thoughts must be stopped there if we hope to attain the pure heart that knows Christ. “Once we have in some measure acquired the habit of self-control, and have learned how to shun visible sins, brought about through the five senses, we will then be able to guard the heart with Jesus, to receive His illumination within it, and by means of the intellect [i.e., the nous] to taste His goodness…Our surrender to the Lord must include our whole heart, soul, and mind (Mt 22:37), if we are to unite our spirits to Christ our God. When we are truly joined to Him, He gives us the grace to obey Him. We are to strive to be at one with the Lord Jesus in every respect, following the pattern of His union with the Father, in which He knows His Father and keeps His word (John 8: 55).” (Dynamis 12/13/2021, 5/19/2020, Philokalia)

“The love of God with all one’s mind is the “love of the Truth,” and those who refuse such love are those who will perish (cf. 2 Thess 2.9–11). The mind of man is the guide of his life, directed to truth by the purity of his heart. When one loves God with all his mind, he is not “conformed to this world” but proves “what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12.2). He is the one who follows the advice of Saint Paul, and thinks solely and continually about “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise . . .” (Phil 4.8). He is the one, in a word, who has “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2.16).” (Fr. Thomas Hopko)

“...the union of the mind with the heart is a gift of divine grace, granted in its time at God's discretion, but not at any time and not at the discretion of the ascetic. The gift of attentive prayer is usually preceded by special sufferings and upheavals of the soul which lead our spirit down into the depth of the realization of its poverty and nothingness.” (St. Isaac the Syrian)

“When people deny God or ignore Him they become vain in their reasoning and their senseless minds are darkened…From sinful arrogance there follows the inversion of truth. As Isaiah declares, men “call evil good, and good evil [and] put darkness for light and light for darkness [and] put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (vs. 20). The prophet describes what the Apostle Paul calls the debased mind (Rom 1:28). When we flaunt God and choose not to “glorify Him as God, nor [to be] thankful,” we become futile in our thoughts and our foolish hearts are darkened (Rom 1:21).” (Father John Zeyack, Dynamis 3/20/2019)

“Never lose hearty faith in Him who is your invisible Life, your Peace, your Light, your Strength, your Breath; that is, in Jesus Christ. Do not believe your heart when it becomes gross, darkened, unbelieving, and cold from plenteousness of food and drink, from worldly distractions, or finally when you live by the intellect, and not by the heart…Knowing Christ is a matter of the heart, not merely the intellect. When our hearts are illumined by faith in God, they are open to receive His presence and grace. In the ascetic writings of the Church, the heart is known as “the seat of knowledge.” (Saint John of Kronstadt, Orthodox Study Bible, Mark 6:52)

“To me, it is no wonder in a country that seems to be drifting away from God and rejecting “organized religion” that we are seeing in upward trend in anxiety and depression. While is always dangerous to be simplistic in cause and effect reasoning, I think the disordered personality that results in a tormented mind and a hardened heart, at least at the spiritual level, is linked to the rejection of God, either through outright rejection, ignorance, or apathy, and thus the rejection of the Holy Spirit within us. To not walk in the futility of our mind (Ephesians 4:17) and lack understanding due to hardened hearts (Mark 6:52), is to cultivate the Holy Spirit within, who unites us to Christ, the Logos, the ordering principle of reality, who then orders us from within, so we have receptive hearts and illumined minds and face pain, trials, and suffering as agents of our growth, not as things that destroy our mental health.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“We are not being renewed in our thinking process apart from the renewal of our spirits. Nor are we renewed in our spirits without thinking. We are being jointly renewed in the spirit of our mind. Hence as we sing psalms in the spirit, so we also sing them in our thoughts. As we pray in the spirit, so we also pray in our thoughts. The renewal of the spirit of our mind means that when the thought is clear and pure...then the spirit is rightly join to it. They are so coupled as if by a cohesive glue that we no longer speak simply of spirit but of the spirit of our mind.” (Blessed Jerome)

“Through our continued commitment of our lives in faith, the Holy Spirit provides us with a constant source of rejuvenation, dwells within us, allows us to grow as persons, to discover new ideas for the betterment of all humanity, and to enhance our growth as persons in the likeness of God. Thus, unlike other aspects of renewal, “renewal of the spirit” is not a condition that, once obtained, ceases its activity. Rather, it is a state of being that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, imparts to us an ongoing renewal, continually repairing all our human deficiencies, and propelling us to ever-increasing heights and potentials as we grow in our communion with God and His saving truth.” (Archbishop Demetrious of America)

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