The Time of the Burning Bush

This article presents the first part of a work by André Scrima entitled *The Time of the Burning Bush*, devoted to the hesychast tradition in Eastern Christianity. It is a hermeneutical commentary on a spiritual letter written by Father John the Stranger, a figure of a Russian starets, addressed to his disciples shortly before his arrest at the end of the Stalinist period. The text is set within the context of a circle of Romanian intellectuals, monks and laypeople, who gathered clandestinely to reflect on the renewal of Orthodoxy through hesychasm, in resistance to the institutionalization of faith. Scrima analyzes the subtle structures of spiritual discourse — doxology, Providence, the figure of the stranger, charismatic transmission, the depersonalization of the spiritual father — drawing on patristic, biblical, and comparative references. The theological contribution lies in the rigorous articulation between living hesychast tradition and contemporary thought, bearing witness to the relevance of this spirituality at the heart of the twentieth century.