Jacques Touraille

This article by Jacques Touraille, translator of the Philokalia into French, offers a series of philokalic meditations inspired by the hesychast tradition and the spirit of Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite. The approach is contemplative and meditative, articulating theological reflection around cosmic light as an image and receptacle of the divine Light. The central idea is that knowledge of God does not belong to a rational process but to a subject-to-subject relationship, grounded in love and grace. The article explores the tension between cosmic time and liturgical time, between the mystical and the real, between temporal life and eternal life. Its theological contribution lies in the articulation of the prayer of the heart, discernment (*diacrisis*), and paschal transfiguration as the Christian path of the assumption of time into eternity.

This article offers a theological meditation on Philokalic prayer, written by Jacques Touraille, the translator of the *Philokalia* into French. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the Hesychast tradition and the Desert Fathers, the author develops a reflection on the prayer of the heart as a "breath of love," a double ascending and descending movement between the human and the divine. The central idea is that Philokalic ascesis, far from being a technique, engages a permanent spiritual struggle against the passions, the ultimate aim of which is the transformation of the creature into a "body of light." The theological contribution of the article lies in the articulation between *hesychia*, *nepsis*, and the Jesus Prayer, placed within a cosmic vision of salvation: the purified heart becomes the place where all of creation rediscovers its center and radiates toward the periphery of the world.

This article by Jacques Touraille focuses on the notion of "philocalic memory," a concept borrowed from the hesychast tradition of the Christian East. The author develops a theological meditation structured around three axes: the memory of sin, the memory of death, and the memory of God. His approach articulates biblical exegesis, patristic anthropology, and reflection on modernity. The central idea is that the memorial overaccumulation characteristic of contemporary civilization paradoxically creates the conditions for a return to this "other memory," interior and transformative, attested by the neptic Fathers and the Philokalia. The theological contribution lies in the distinction between cosmic memory and philocalic memory: whereas the former records the world, the latter transfigures it by relating it to its Edenic origin and its eschatological end, according to a biblical temporality irreducible to linear time.

This article constitutes the general introduction to the first complete French edition of the *Philokalia*, an anthology of Byzantine monastic texts compiled in 1782 by Makarios of Corinth and Nikodimos the Hagiorite. Written by Jacques Touraille, the translator of the work, the text adopts both a historical and theological approach. It traces the conditions under which the *Philokalia* emerged and spread, from the Egyptian hermitages of the fourth century to Mount Athos, by way of its Slavic and Romanian extensions. The article then sets out the fundamental concepts of the hesychast tradition — *hesychia*, *nepsis*, *nous*, the prayer of the heart, uncreated light — clarifying their interpretive stakes. Its principal contribution is to demonstrate the internal coherence of this spiritual tradition across a millennium, while examining its reception and its relevance in the modern Western world.

This article by Jacques Touraille offers a theological meditation on the human condition in the light of Christian revelation. Starting from a confrontation between the tragic fatality of Greek myth and the freedom offered by the Gospel, the author develops a reflection on evil, death and transfiguration. The central idea is that Christianity breaks cosmological determinism by opening, through the Passover of Christ, a passage from mortal flesh to the resurrected body. The article articulates several fundamental themes: the original innocence of creation, the dialectic between solitude and communion, the role of the Eucharist as the key to history, and the ascetic quest as the only path of access to eternal life. The theological contribution lies in a synthesis between anthropology, eschatology and mysticism, rooted in the Orthodox patristic tradition.

This article presents a selection of texts drawn from the final chapters of the Greek Philokalia, attributed to Kallistos the Patriarch and Kallistos Kataphygiotes, two figures of fourteenth-century Byzantine mysticism. It consists of an annotated translation, accompanied by a brief introduction, prepared by Jacques Touraille for the publication of the eleventh and final fascicle of the Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers by the Éditions de l'Abbaye de Bellefontaine. The central idea is that these texts represent the "vanishing point" of the hesychast tradition: beyond the methodical transmission of prayer, they bear witness to an experience of divine union in which the intellect, drawn by divine eros, passes from the created to the uncreated. On the theological level, these excerpts illuminate the doctrine of contemplation, of the unification of the intellect in the One, and of deification, thereby extending the heritage of Gregory Palamas in its most apophatic dimension.