Question 3: In our journey to the heart, as we come to know God more, there is spiritual growth. Part of our journey is also learning and studying, and I was wondering if you could comment on the balance between the knowledge and growth of the mind versus the knowledge and growth of the heart. How do we know whether they are growing together or whether they are growing apart? And as we learn, we realize that we will never truly learn anything anyway, and it seems that the heart goes one way and the mind realizes that it will never know it at all.

Question 1: Forgive this very naive question: Where is the heart? Not "What is the heart?"

Answer 1: The heart is within our chest. When we speak of the heart, we speak of our spiritual heart which coincides with the fleshly one; but when man receives illumination and sanctification, then his whole being becomes a heart. The heart is synonymous with the soul, with the spirit; it is a spiritual place where man finds his unity, where his mind is enthroned when it has been healed of the passions. Not only his mind, but his whole body too is concentrated there.

Two dogmas concerning the Mother of God are bound up, in closest fashion, with the dogma of God the Logo's/Word's becoming man. They are (a) her Ever-virginity, and (b) her name Theotokos. They proceed immediately from the dogma of the unity of the Hypostasis of the Lord from the moment of His Incarnation--the Divine Hypostasis.

On the Holy Feast-Day of Transfiguration (Metamorphosis) on August 6th our tradition calls that the Orthodox Christian faithful bring fruits and even vegetables to be blessed on this day. The most common fruit to be blessed are grapes.

Apolytikion (Dismissal) Hymn of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Grave Tone

Thou was transfigured on the mountain, O Christ our God, showing to Thy disciples Thy glory as each one could endure. Shine forth Thou on us, who are sinners all, Thy Light ever-unending, through the prayers of the Theotokos. Light-bestower, glory to Thee.

That same Inscrutable Light shone and was mysteriously manifest to the Apostles and the foremost of the Prophets at that moment, when [the Lord] was praying. This shows that what brought forth this blessed sight was prayer, and that the radiance occurred and was manifest by uniting the mind with God, and that it is granted to all who, with constant exercise in efforts of virtue and prayer, strive with their mind towards God. True beauty, essentially, can be contemplated only with a purified mind. To gaze upon its luminescence assumes a sort of participation in it, as though some bright ray etches itself upon the face.