Orthodox Monasticism 16A — Passion and Dispassion in the Ladder 1

Just when we thought that we had finished up with one issue (our young Romanian-Orthodox reader) and were ready to continue with our post on St John of Sinai’s doctrine on the passions and dispassion, we got the following letter. It seems to us that we should reply. The issues being raised in this letter are relevant to St John of Sinai’s doctrine, and so we are treating this letter as an introduction to our post on his doctrine on the passions and dispassion.

Since this letter is the length of an average post, we will continue with our reply in the next post, Blogger having problems with long posts. We have slightly edited the letter for style, to bring it into conformity with our own style sheet. The ellipsis is merely a link. We have removed the sender’s name for the sake of his privacy.

Dear Fathers:

I have really benefited from the regular reading of your posts. I check the site almost daily in eager anticipation.

I am an Episcopalian who has been drawn to Orthodoxy over a number of years. I grew up in a ‘non-denominational’ Protestant church and then drifted from it in my teenage years, not finding much within this tradition (or anti-tradition) that was spiritually nourishing or very deep. My re-entry into Christianity, and perhaps my rediscovery of it, came through the discovery of the monastic tradition and particularly the teaching and practice of contemplative prayer as it is being recovered today, particularly from the efforts of the Benedictine monk John Main … but also from the efforts of the Cistercian Thomas Keating and others. This recovery of the discipline of contemplative prayer in the West has come from the rediscovery of the teaching on prayer in John Cassian’s 9^th and 10^th Conferences as well as the post-Schism work, The Cloud of Unknowing, which in spirituality is still very pre-Schism in many respects (in my opinion). Cassian’s Conferences, I understand, are a common foundation shared by both the later developments of the Jesus Prayer and the practice of contemplative prayer in the contemporary West today.

As Orthodox monks[*] familiar with the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and having read your warnings to non-Orthodox not to practice it, I wonder what you might say about the contemporary contemplative prayer movement in the West. In many respects this movement attempts to return to the spiritual sobriety of the first Christian millennium and especially that of the Desert Fathers. As a movement it is international and has introduced countless priests, monks, and lay persons to a daily discipline of silent and attentive prayer which leads beyond thought and conception to a greater sense of God’s presence in the midst of everyday life. In its understanding of our capacity to know God and of who we are as persons, this way of prayer is very affirmative of Hesychast theology and critical of the excessive rationalism of the Scholastic heritage. It is firm in its commitment to the ideal of contemplation and overcomes the West’s historical dissociation between active and contemplative, realizing that all pure action arises from love, from contemplation. In its sensibilities the movement as a whole, coming out of its experience of prayer, really aims at recovering the simplicity of communion with God in silence and stillness as a central call of Christian life and feels quite embarrassed by the flamboyant, overly sentimental, rationalistic, highly institutionalized, imaginative, and somewhat fantastic spirituality and theology that has developed after the Schism—though admittedly the Schism is not a commonly acknowledged or declared reference point in this movement for understanding or evaluating the strange departures which afterwards took place. Obviously, if this were the case, the movement would perhaps be much larger collective migration to Orthodoxy from within.

I have been drawn to Orthodoxy having grown especially in love and reverence for the Desert Fathers after beginning a daily practice of contemplative prayer and beginning to read their lives and sayings. In the West we know that we are recovering something that at one time was lost, whereas what has drawn me to Orthodoxy is the obvious continuity. I have, of course, since discovered a great deal more in Orthodoxy but I’d like for you to respond first to what I have so far said. Perhaps you could also say a word about Thomas Merton, a pivotal person in contemplative renewal in the West who I have come to understand may be viewed somewhat differently by the Orthodox than in the West. Yet, not getting bogged down on Merton, some words about prayer specifically in the context of the contemporary recovery of contemplative prayer in the West would be deeply appreciated.

As Orthodox often critique the West, this is one area which Orthodox should be especially equipped to discuss, yet I have seen almost nothing from Orthodox about the phenomenon of this contemporary movement in the West. Perhaps this is because the voice of Orthodoxy in the West has been more immersed in the study of peoples, history, and ideas than in the prayerfulness out of which such discernment and dialogue can take place? Bishop Kallistos Ware has had some involvement with our organization (‘The World Community for Christian Meditation’) but usually to the extent of talking about the Orthodox tradition of the Jesus Prayer and affirming what in our own tradition is to be affirmed. I have not heard much of a critique from him, in other words, though I certainly am not looking for criticism if the subject is more worthy of affirmation than criticism.

How, dear Fathers, might you respond to all I have just said?

In Christ,

(Name Withheld)

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[*] There is only one of us on this blog—Orthodox Monk.

Orthodox Monasticism 15D — Our Response Part 3

Our reader has asked us what we think of ‘Mircea Eliade, Romania’s great theologian, and his work in studying religions’.

When we ourselves saw the light on the road to Damascus, we did not deem it necessary to confer with flesh and blood in Chicago, so we have never studied the Chicago School of the study of religion. Hence, we really know very little about Mircea Eliade.

When we were thinking about this response, we searched the Internet on ‘Mircea Eliade’, but we were doubtful about what we read: Wikipedia is like a fish four days dead. But one thing rang true, that Eliade was the co-founder of the Chicago School of the study of religion, a school that dominated the study of religion in the United States for the last half of the Twentieth Century. But we would be hard-pressed to outline the tenets of the Chicago School. We understand, again from the Internet, that it is derived from the school of Rudolf Otto.

While some of Rudolf Otto’s concepts are useful, they are not the whole story. To suggest that Tatiana Goricheva had a subjective, psychological experience of the ‘holy’ would make her snort: she met God. Period. She’s a changed woman.

In this regard it is useful to look at our reader’s use of the term ‘theologian’. In the Orthodox Church, there are three saints who are given the title ‘theologian’: St John, the author of the Fourth Gospel; St Gregory of Nazianzus, the friend of St Basil the Great; and St Symeon, the 10–11^th Century mystic. No one else bears the title.

The 153 Chapters on Prayer, now ascribed to Evagrius Ponticus, has a dictum that he who prays correctly is a theologian and a theologian is he who prays correctly. In other words, the theologian is one who has immediate direct experience of God. This dictum is repeated by St Maximos the Confessor.

Now there are of course academic professors of theology. These are professors who in the case of Orthodoxy discuss both historically and intellectually the tenets of Orthodoxy and what they mean.

In none of the above senses was Mircea Eliade a theologian. He was a student of comparative religion.

We do not know Eliade’s personal history, so we do not know what relations he had with the Orthodox Church, especially how he died—whether as a member of the Church or not. We have no idea. There are some indications on the Internet that in India he engaged in practices that are not acceptable to the Church, but we have no idea how true these assertions are, nor, if they are true, whether Mircea Eliade ever went through the cycle of Orthodox conversion according to the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ that we have discussed above. He might have; he might not; we have no information.

In general, this is not to deny that something useful might come out of the study of comparative religion, assuming that the person doing the study is a devout Orthodox. However, usually the devout Orthodox spend their time on other activities, like prayer or learning Orthodoxy. But that is not to say that such a study is impossible or wrong.

What is necessary here is a sensitivity to issues in the history of ideas: where did Eliade’s ideas come from? On the Internet, they say ‘ultimately from Kant by way of Rudolf Otto’. What connection do Eliade’s sources have to philosophical schools opposed to revealed religion, to Orthodoxy, to Roman Catholicism or to whatever? We have never done this study, but this is the sort of question that the Orthodox must raise. This is not to be fanatical but to be open-eyed. In this regard it is worthwhile to note that towards the ends of both their lives, Eliade was a collaborator with C. G. Jung, Hesse’s psychoanalyst.

We are a little more confident in discussing Jung’s religious orientation: The road taken by Jung is an ersatz-Religion that bedecks itself in myths and archetypes but lacks the essential capacity to meet God, to love.

Now this is not to say that in his scholarly work, Eliade was not an effective Professor. We really do not know. We have only read one work, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, and while we had some small questions about it, especially about his treatment of the Jesus Prayer (he dismisses it), we liked its general tone and it was in any event an early work of Eliade’s.

The next issue is the relation of secular learning, especially the study of comparative literature, to religion.

Both St Gregory the Theologian and St Basil the Great studied in Athens at the university for many years. St Gregory delayed his baptism lest he defile it in Athens. Both saints used the literary and philosophical knowledge that they gained in Athens in the service of the Orthodox Church. St Basil wrote a homily on the use of pagan literature in which he counsels the young to study and to make use of it, but not to get mixed up in the myths of the pagan gods. We would say: without getting lost in philosophical schools opposed to religion and especially to the Orthodox Church. One saint has described the Orthodox use of pagan learning as ‘despoiling the Egyptians’, after a passage in Exodus.

In general, we would counsel our young reader to get the best education he can, but to have a certain critical attitude, so that he understands when he’s being sold a philosophical bill of goods. That is not to say that he should pass his remaining time in boarding school arguing, or that he should do so in college. He is clearly philosophically and literarily oriented, and he will also need to do some work in the history of ideas. The only advice we would give is for him to get into the best college he can and make the most of his years there, without sacrificing his faith and without falling into sin. This may require—and certainly does require—the support of the Church through regular confession.

Our own view is that the study of comparative literature will give our reader some insight into the human condition: great literature portrays the human condition; like all great art it has both its limitations and its strokes of blinding insight. Great art cannot be opposed to religion: religion speaks to the human condition that it portrays. And it is not so bad for a student who is well-grounded in Orthodoxy to read something of the literature that arises out of cultural contexts defined by other faiths: he will understand his own faith better when he sees how the other faith moulds the weltanschauung of both the author and the characters in the author’s work.

With respect to the issue of monasticism, it is clearly early for our reader actively to be considering entry into a monastery. However, there is no reason he should not be investigating the matter while he is completing his education, through reading and even through having a confessor who is a monk in a monastery. In general, unless there are serious reasons to do otherwise, we counsel all to get the best education they can before entering a monastery.

As we have emphasized, our reader has to exercise a certain amount of discretion, only attending Church and monasteries which are in a canonical jurisdiction (i.e. in active communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople; this includes the Romanian Church).

If we suppose that one day our young Romanian-American reader will have a position of authority in American or other society, then it behoves him to know how to think, and how to understand both American and other societies. The study of comparative literature will give him that, especially when combined with some work in philosophy and languages, including ancient Greek. He will come out an educated man, an educated Orthodox. We wish him well.

Orthodox Monasticism 15D — Our Response Part 2

The Brothers Karamazov can be seen as a meditation on the ways that a man might confront the issue of being the prodigal son: father Karamazov and the sons, including Smerdyakov, each represents one possible road that a man might take. The only thing missing in this day and age is the son who has become the disciple of a guru ‘in Bokhara’—although after a fashion Pierre in War and Peace covers that angle.

However, our young reader, being an essentially humble man, might very easily return to the Father’s house. He might not need the dramatic destruction of his life to bring him to his senses. We ourselves do not know beforehand how things will evolve in the life of another, not having the charisms of discernment and prevoyance. However, we do have some hope for our young Romanian reader. We feel he has made his journey and found the Father. We shall see.

One thing that is very important in the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ is this. The younger son was very far off—the Gospel is emphatic on that point—when the Father ran out of the house to meet him. What this means is that God waits for our slightest turn towards repentance and then rushes towards us.

It is in this context that we should reconsider the case of Tatiana Goricheva. She was leading the life of a hippy in Brezhnev’s Russia, and in a turn to the East, she was reciting continually the ‘Our Father’ as a mantra, without any remote idea of (re)converting to Orthodoxy. And God heard her. As she herself wrote: ‘…from the nothingness of a meaningless existence bordering on desperation we had come into the Father's house, into the church, which for us was paradise.’ We can see the pig-herding in the ‘meaningless existence bordering on desperation’; we can see the return to the Father’s house.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, once the younger son had started on his journey back to the Father’s house, the Father ran out to meet him, told a servant to slaughter the fatted calf, dressed his lost son in new clothes and put a ring on his finger. He didn’t wait with crossed arms at the door. What does that mean? It means that once we make a decision to search for God (even as vaguely and confusedly as Tatiana Goricheva in reciting the ‘Our Father’ as a mantra), God rushes out of his house in the Heavens to meet us and to help us, to embrace us with his overwhelming love. After all, from one second to the next Tatiana went from lost hippy to enlightened, believing Orthodox. It was not all her own work. But we have to reach the stage of recognizing our own sin, our own desperation. We must conquer our pride and recognize the truth. It is very important to realize how confused Tatiana’s turn to God was. There was nothing of sitting down to write a list of sins before going to a confessor so as to be reconciled to God—that was after God had run out to embrace his lost daughter.

As we have pointed out, many of our young reader’s classmates will go through life blithely unaware of this narrative of salvation, distracted from distraction to distraction like newspapers blowing before the wind. Even Eliot went through this narrative, as can be seen in his Four Quartets. Our reader’s classmates may be intelligent; they may realize something is wrong; they just won’t connect that sense of wrongness with God.

Here there is a problem. In the schools of upper-class America, there is no God. These schools are children of the Enlightenment, where God is gone. A whole generation of the West is going through life indifferent to religion. Appalling. Elder Sophrony, who lived the last decades of his life in England, where he is buried in the monastery he founded, remarks on the unprecedented apostasy in our day of the West from Christ. There is a slight correction to be made to his remark. The working class left Christ in the 19^th Century. It is the middle and upper classes that are abandoning Christ in the West, starting in the second half of the 20^th Century.

Our reader is Orthodox. He is not unwashed. Let us suppose that he makes the spiritual journey of the prodigal son to pig-herding, there to repent. There is a danger that he will be drawn into an Evangelical Protestant narrative, and that he will suffer serious, perhaps life-long, damage. There is a great plasticity of personality in a person who has reached the stage of repentance. That is why he is vulnerable to taking the first road that he sees. This of course is an illustration of the proverb that a drowning man will clutch at straws.

How does a baptized Orthodox actualize the narrative of salvation? If we want, of being born again? He attends the mystery (sacrament) of confession in the Orthodox Church. Without making the journey to the altar of the Evangelical Protestant to be prayed over. He resumes going to Church, assuming he has stopped. He then, when the confessor permits, receives communion. We once heard a man remark that he went to confession, evidently for the first time in his life, and felt something like a shiver when the priest read the prayer of forgiveness. From that moment on, he was a devout Orthodox believer. Since his son became an Athonite monk, we can assume that his shiver was genuine and that he set a good example in the family. For the unbaptized, the movement of repentance leads towards Orthodox baptism. For the baptized Orthodox, the same movement leads towards an Orthodox priest who hears confessions.

There is a delicate matter here. Our reader (we really don’t know him, so he shouldn’t think that we’re discussing him personally; we are using him literarily) might say, ‘Well let’s give this fellow ‘Orthodox Monk’ a shot; I’ll go to confession and see if anything comes of it.’ Naturally, there’s going to be no shiver when the priest reads the prayers of absolution, no sudden changing of the light-bulbs, if the fellow goes to confession mechanically, as a lark (although you never know). That spiritual reduction to herding pigs has to take place; that recognition that the Gospel is the truth has to take place; and then the return to the Father’s house through the mystery of confession can occur in such a way that the person is indeed made a new man when the Father rushes out to greet his son who was dead and is now born again.

The Brothers Karamazov is all about this.

Our reader has raised the matter of The Glass Bead Game. We read that work when it was known as Magister Ludi. That might date us. What we recall is that the bead game itself was a metaphor, based on Indra’s net, of the life of the intellect. That life of the intellect is counterposed by Hesse to the act of self-sacrifice of the Master who jumps into the lake to save his young disciple, knowing full well that he will thus lose his own life. We have never thought that the bead game was a metaphor for meditation per se, since only in the Roman Catholic Church is meditation understood to be an activity of the intellect at all remotely similar to the bead game. There might be a mere problem with the terminology here, since we can call anything whatever we want—the essence of the matter is important. However, we have always understood the bead game to be a metaphor for a sort of Scholastic Theology that busies itself with building more and more refined systems.

In the East, meditation is a means of entering into deeper, non-intellectual strata of the personality, of surpassing the intellect, of reaching God non-verbally.

In the Orthodox tradition of the Philokalia, meditation is a term that is not used: the term used is the ‘Jesus Prayer’, and what is cultivated is ‘sobriety’. Sobriety is a method intended to help the mind or nous stop thinking thoughts, so as to leave the mind or nous open in an interior silence to the Holy Spirit, which raises it to a non-verbal direct contemplation or sight of God (understood in a perfectly Christian way, taking into account that St John the Evangelist says that no one has ever seen God).

What interests us in The Glass Bead Game here is what we thought was the central theme of the work: the contrast between the ultimately sterile life of the mind and the act of the heart which sacrifices itself for another. In this regard, it is well to realize that an integral (if advanced) part of the practice of sobriety and of the Jesus Prayer as taught in the Philokalia is to bring the mind or nous down from the head into the heart. This is to be taken literally, not metaphorically. Hence, the Orthodox tradition of meditation, if we can use that word, is centred on the heart of man. As we have just pointed out, this tradition is not foreign to the non-verbal contemplation of God, understood in an Orthodox way. However, this centring of the spiritual endeavour on the soul is actualized by meditation centred on the heart of man.

This is important, for there is in the Orthodox method of the Philokalia a joining of the two elements that Hesse contrasts in The Glass Bead Game: the mind or nous and the heart. In the tradition of the Philokalia, the natural seat of the mind or nous is the heart. In Orthodoxy, the bead game, so to speak, is played out in the heart.

Let us be a little clearer. What is peculiar about Orthodoxy? Orthodoxy teaches love. One of the results of centring the meditative religious practice on the heart is that the Orthodox—after much suffering—learns to love. Now at the age that we are seniors in high school, love is a very important matter. However, it is usually experienced as a quest to find someone who loves us, not as a quest to learn to love another. The love that the Orthodox practitioner of the Jesus Prayer over his lifetime learns to practise is the spiritual love of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that with joy sacrifices itself for the sinner without condemnation and condescension. We have seen this love. It takes much time and much pain to open the heart. Once it is open, however, the person can love; and the strength of his love is the strength of the Holy Spirit. No other religion teaches this. No other religion can. No other religion has the Spirit of Jesus Christ. If it did, it would be Christian.

For an introduction to Orthodoxy at this level, see Wounded by Love.

As our young reader is undoubtedly aware, Hesse comes out of a certain tradition in the Western history of ideas: he was psychoanalyzed by C. G. Jung. This might lead the reader to turn to that sort of religion, to that sort of religious experience—the sort taught by Jung, by the Tibetan Dalai Lama and so on.

The central issue here is this: Who is Jesus Christ? Is he the second Person of the Holy Trinity who was made flesh so that we might become gods by Grace, as St Athanasios the Great of Alexandria teaches us in ‘On the Incarnation’? Is he a prophet as is taught by Islam? Is he a bodhisattva as perhaps is taught by the Dalai Lama? Was he just a great ethical teacher, as was taught by post-Enlightenment moralists? Is he a symbol of the Self (counterposed in the Jungian system to the ego) as a Roman Catholic priest who had been through Jungian psychoanalysis once told us? Who is he? This is one of the basic questions that our reader must answer in his days of herding pigs. When he realizes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, then he can get on over to the Orthodox confessor.

Orthodox Monasticism 15D — Our Response Part 1

In Orthodox Monasticism 15C, we posted the reply of ‘our young Romanian-American reader’ to our posts on what he should be reading to improve his knowledge of Orthodoxy and Orthodox monasticism. We would now like to respond to his reply.

Again, this is a rather long response and because of the limitations of Blogger we will have to post this response in parts. But the parts comprise a whole.

There are a number of issues that our reader has raised, and we have wondered how to respond in an integrated fashion, and, moreover, in such a way that we would naturally lead in to our next post, on the passions and dispassion in the Ladder of St John of Sinai. Actually, the easiest part is to segue into St John of Sinai: the issues being raised are relevant to what we want to discuss in that post. The difficult part is to handle the issues being raised in our reader’s reply in such a way as to cover them all in a global way.

We would like to repeat that we know nothing more about our reader than what we have posted and to point out that we are writing not only for him but with an eye on our broader readership. In so doing, we may be addressing issues that are irrelevant to him. We hope he will forgive us.

The main issues are these: our reader has discovered in late adolescence, a senior in a ‘rather prestigious boarding school’ in the United States that there is an emptiness in his life where God should be. Moreover, that emptiness is not being filled with the study of comparative literature, and all the other courses that he is doing, evidently for a baccalaureat. So he wants to think about it while he prepares to enter college, which presumably also will be a prestigious American institution. Moreover, he finds when reading The Glass Bead Game of Hesse that his own Romanian-Orthodox tradition has an authentic tradition of meditation (in the Philokalia). Finally, he has discovered that Mircea Eliade, a Romanian, is an important figure in the study of religion.

We would like to begin by encouraging our young Romanian-American reader and indeed all our other readers to (re)-read Orthodox Monasticism 14, The Charism of Discernment, before continuing. The content of that post is quite relevant to the issues at hand.

Next, let us look at the practical situation (as we suppose) of a young Romanian-Orthodox in a prestigious secular boarding school in the United States who feels a religious emptiness. It will become clear why we emphasize ‘prestigious’. In Orthodox Monasticism 14 we discussed how when he was baptized our young Orthodox reader received the Holy Spirit, and how that Holy Spirit cleansed his mind or nous and united his mind or nous to itself, thus illuminating him. We pointed out that an Orthodox does not lose the Holy Spirit that he received in baptism except in cases of denial of Christ. We suppose that our reader has not denied Christ; he would have said so. Then why does he feel this emptiness?

He says that during his adolescence he has not practised his Orthodoxy as he ought. We imagine that part of this is precisely the boarding school: we do not think this is his first year there. And we know that the boarding school is ‘liberally secular’. Unfortunately, it is not clear how often our reader was attending the mysteries (communion) as a child. It would be helpful to know this, because then we would be able to judge how close to God he is. But let us assume that he at least went to Church and received communion a number of times a month. But he has grown distant from the Church, as many of us do in adolescence. Now he discovers not only emptiness, but some indications that even by the standards of his liberally secular boarding school, there might be something about Orthodoxy that is genuine. What should he do?

This is a very complicated matter in the psychology of religious conversion, in the psychology of religion. Basically, our reader is faced with a re-conversion to Orthodoxy from his vantage point—i.e. from where he actually is now spiritually. This is not to suggest that he must be chrismated again, that he must seek martyrdom. We do not think that that is where things are. But, nonetheless, he feels distant from the Church. He is wondering what to do.

There is a parable in the Gospel of Luke called the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’. That parable speaks to our reader’s situation. Since the parable is so well known, and since this post is going to be much longer than usual, we will not post the text of the parable. Basically what happens is this: A man has two sons, an elder and a younger. The elder is well-behaved; the younger, not. The younger says to his father, ‘Give me what is due to me and I am leaving.’ The father says, ‘Okay.’ (Under Jewish law, the father was obliged to give his estate as an inheritance in two equal parts to his sons when he died. The younger son is demanding his inheritance now.) The younger son takes his inheritance and spends it in debauchery (shades of The Brothers Karamazov!). He ends up broke. Down and out, he gets a job herding pigs. To the Jew, pigs are unclean: the younger son is truly down and out. Not only is he herding pigs, but he is hungry and wants to eat pig-food to fill his belly. Moreover, he is probably sleeping under a tree. After a time of this he comes to himself and says, ‘Why am I here herding pigs and eating pig-food when my father’s hired servants are eating well and have a roof over their head? I will go to my father and say to him that I have sinned and would he please make me a hired servant.’ So he does. He goes back to his father with that in mind. When his father hears of that his son is coming, he runs out of the house to meet him, when his son is still far off, saying to a servant to slaughter the fatted calf so that they can have a party. He puts a good set of clothes on his son—who has said to his father what he had decided to say when he was herding pigs—and a ring on his finger.

What is this all about? When we Orthodox sin, we are faced with a barrier between us and our Father who is in the Heavens. We feel an emptiness. We realize that something is wrong. We are the younger son who has squandered his inheritance on wine, women and song, lost everything and come to herding pigs. Although we might be in a prestigious private school in the United States, our interior state might be that of a New Testament Jew herding pigs. It is hard to explain this aspect of the psychology of salvation. We might be living in the midst of wealth and privilege and we might be unhappy. We might feel an emptiness; we might feel that something is wrong. Nowadays, when we grow up in America, we seldom have a good religious formation in our childhood, and even if we do have this inheritance we squander it on sin. The problem is to return to the Father’s house and to say, ‘I’m sorry.’

It is not easy to do this in the context of an upper-class American boarding school, or even an upper-class American university. As our reader must have realized by now living as he is among the upper class of America, the upper class in America is mixed up. It has issues. It is far from God. Moreover, the strangest thing is, our young reader might feel this emptiness, this sense that something is wrong or missing, while his classmates blithely continue living like animals: they might have no idea whatsoever that anything is missing whatsoever from their lives. They have issues; they see therapists; but there is no aching for God in them. And they might continue like this their whole lives, militantly opposed to religion, living a dissolute life of one kind or another, possibly passing from one therapist to another, possibly passing from one recreational drug to another, ultimately committing suicide with medical assistance when the thread of their life runs out in a case of cancer or AIDS. And the whole time not having the same consciousness of the absence of God that our young reader has. Fr Sophrony discusses this sort of thing in his autobiography, We Shall See Him as He Is.

The only possible spiritual road for our young reader, if indeed this is his situation, is this: On the human level, he is faced with considering his Romanian-Orthodox past. On the human level, he might reject it and join with his classmates in their debauchery. But he will always be just slightly out of step with them: he will always know the spiritual emptiness of which they are blithely unaware, the dimension of the sacred that is just words and fairy-tales to them. However, will he simply start going to Church again? We think not—that is, we think that the issue is deeper and will require more spade-work. Essentially, on the spiritual level, our young reader—and he is no different from us or from anyone else—is going to have to follow the cycle of the prodigal son through. That is, having awakened to the issue of the existence of God—a good time to be reading Karamazov—he is going to have to ‘fight it out’ in his soul: he will have to reach the stage spiritually in his heart of herding pigs and living on pig-food until he repents and returns to the Father’s house. This does not at all mean that he must or will drop out of school. This is a spiritual matter: he will have to fight it out with God up to the time he realizes that the Orthodox Church teaches the Gospel and that the Gospel is the truth. In cases of serious spiritual pride, as in the case of Tolstoy, he might die before he has done that. (The same Elder at Optina who remarked that Dostoyevsky was a man who repented, remarked, after speaking for 8 hours straight with Tolstoy, that Tolstoy had great pride.) In some cases, a person caught in this dynamic might literally end up a bum on the Bowery, an alcoholic who repents and accepts Jesus. Or again, he might die before he repents, and thus be lost. However, these are extreme cases. A lesser case might be that of a prosperous lawyer whose family all leave him because of his pride (although possibly even they might not understand precisely what the real issue is); and although the lawyer has not lost his career, his life is shattered: only then can he realize that something is wrong and that he has to be reconciled with God. Another man might be dying and encounter a priest who hears confessions passing through the ward; God might give him the grace to call the confessor over. We cannot humanly say. These are the judgements of our Lord.

However, in every case, the person must come to his wit’s end, be humbled by a suffering so intense that his pride is broken by his need to repent. And the degree of suffering seems to be in direct proportion to the degree of spiritual pride.

Orthodox Monasticism 15C — Our Reader’s Reply

Our young Romanian-American reader has replied to our remarks on his comment in the last posts. Since he signs his comments with his own name, we have not posted his comment so as to protect his identity and privacy: things posted on the Internet under your own name can haunt you for years. In this regard we note to our blog readers that they can send ‘Orthodox Monk’ an email either via the profile page or at an_orthodox_monk [at] yahoo [dot] com. We will eventually reply to this comment. Here is the text of our readers comment:

Thank you for your elaborate recommendations and advice. I expected the list to be long and it has proven so. Of course my assumption is only further solidified by the fact that my knowledge of the Church is rather basic in nature. Your presuppositions regarding my background are surprisingly accurate. Although I have lived in the U.S for the majority of my life, it has not deterred me from maintaining my Romanian. I have also studied French for 4 years and am semi-fluent. In addressing your statement regarding the language limitations that lie before me, I think that with English, Romanian, and French I can manage to make something of the various translations you have recommended. I should note that I’m attending a rather prestigious boarding school which has no religious affiliation; thus my education thus far can only be characterized as secularly liberal. Being so, I have become acquainted with a good portion of the literary canon (subjective as it is). Yet from a religious perspective, I recently discovered a rather alarming intellectual void. I was drawn to learn more of the monastic life from my reading of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game. Although the thematic elements of the novel don’t comprise of staunch religious connotations, the focus upon intellectual meditation impressed me. I was surprised to find that my faith possesses such a historically and spiritually significant history in the realm of religious meditation. I know my indirect venture is in itself derived from a secular attraction. It reminds me of an example that you cite in [one] of your posts, that often Westerners are drawn to Orthodox monasticism due to a desire to substitute Eastern meditative traditions. I would like to stress that this is not the case with me. My genuine concern is to learn and to gain a better understanding of Orthodoxy. The truth is that this religious void not only became apparent from an intellectual perspective; I felt that my scholarly concerns (ex. comparative literature, international relations, American politics, poetry, history, philosophy) were not leading me into a definitive path. Thus, I want to revaluate my options between senior year and my entrance into college. I will be sure to consult all of the recommended works you have mentioned, of course dependant upon availability. In addition I have to review my lecture notes on Aristotelian principles, since you have suggested that a good portion of theological studies demand a sound understanding of this. As far as Dostoevsky goes, I have only read Notes from the Underground (which is an existentialist piece from my understanding) and Crime and Punishment. Next on my list is The Brothers K. I already possess some brief essay reflections by Romanian monks who spent time in one of the Romanian monasteries in Mt. Athos. I will seek the ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’ collections and take careful heed regarding possible translation difficulties. St John Chrysostom’s will surely be high on my list as you have recommended it as so. As you can probably imagine I am not sure the monastic life is yet for me; it is something that has yet to be determined. Yet visiting Mt. Athos is something that I look forward to doing in the future. Judging from your diction, and superior knowledge of both religious and secular texts, I think I can safely deduce that you too have studied in the U.S. I was wondering if you could further share your opinion on the influence of great secular works on religion. What are your thoughts on Mircea Eliade, Romania’s great theologian, and his work in studying religions? Once again thank you for your wise recommendations, they will not be taken casually and they will surely occupy me for quite some time.

Orthodox Monasticism 15B — What Should I Be Reading C & D?

C. Better Understanding Orthodox Monasticism

The first thing to do is to read the Lives of Orthodox monastic saints, starting with the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In English, we are aware of the translations of Benedicta Ward and of the translations of Budge from the Syriac. Both are good, but they do not cover the whole range of manuscripts in all languages. We would avoid the ‘New Directions’ translation due to Thomas Merton. The situation is perfect in French, since Regnault has compiled a complete set in many volumes of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and there is now a critical edition of the ‘Systematic Collection’ in ‘Sources chrétiennes’ (a series published by Cerf in Paris), in the original Greek with French translation.

Next is the Life of Anthony.

‘Cistercian Studies’, a series published in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has an excellent work on St Pachomios, the founder of Egyptian coenobitical monasticism. This work includes all his Lives, and all the associated material.

Next are the works of St John Cassian. We would avoid the ‘Classics of Western Spirituality’ series translation. There is a mostly complete verson in ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’ which is to be preferred. It is more important for the beginner to read the ‘Coenobitical Institutions’ than the ‘Conferences’ although he will profit from the ‘Conferences’.

Next is the collection of Lives of Syrian saints written by Theodoretos of Cyr. He knew St Symeon Stylites personally and has a vivid vignette describing what occurred during one of his visits to St Symeon’s pillar. There is nothing of a dogmatic character in the Lives.

Next are the works of Cyril of Scythopolis, a collection of lives of St Euthymios the Great, St Savas the Sanctified and of a number of other saints of their circle in 5^th and 6^th Century Palestine. These lives gives very important information on monasticism, and also, for those who are interested, on the Origenist controversies of the 6^th Century.

Later Orthodox saints that are very important include St Lazarus of Mt Galesion (11^th Century), whose Life is really a monastic catechism. The Life can be found on-line at http://www.doaks.org/Laz1.pdf. This is a book-length PDF download of almost 1MB.

In general, read all the Lives of Orthodox monastic saints written by their immediate disciples that you can get your hands on. We would recommend against reading periodicals published by non-canonical jurisdictions even if they contain Lives of saints. Sometimes these publications lack a sound Orthodox phronema (habit of thought) and you can get a bad spiritual headache, not to mention axes ground in your mind by a mixed-up guy who thinks he’s more Orthodox than St John Chrysostom. This also applies to periodicals published by groups with a dubious history.

There is a new English translation of Abba Isaiah, who is very important, by Pachomios Penkett and Rev Dr John Chryssavgis.

There is a translation of the homilies of St Dorotheos of Gaza in the ‘Cistercian Studies’ series.

In general we would recommend against reading St Ephraim the Syrian and St Isaac the Syrian in the modern English translations unless your confessor suggests it.

This also goes for the ascetical works of Evagrius Ponticus.

This also goes for such works as the Philokalia and the collected works of St Symeon the New Theologian.

There will be time for these works once you get the spiritual basics down.

Read the ascetical works of St Basil the Great, especially his homilies on the ascetical life and the ‘long’ and ‘short’ rules.

Read St John of Sinai, the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

Read the available works of St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain.

In terms of modern works, the most important work to read is undoubtedly St Silouan the Athonite by Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov). This work contains the writings of St Silouan the Athonite together with a very important introduction by Archimandrite Sophrony. St Silouan is a man of great love; pray to him and to Fr Sophrony.

Read The Way of the Pilgrim, in the translation by a fellow named French.

Read Archimandrite Sophrony’s autobiography, We Shall See Him as He Is. We have the impression that it is out of print, but it should be available somewhere. Unless you have theological inclinations, don’t start off with Fr Sophrony’s other works; they are too difficult. However, if you read the French language and can get hold of the translations from the Russian into the French of his ‘Homilies to the Community’ delivered by him near the end of his life, these are well worth walking a mile for.

Read the works of Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain that are available in English.

Read the works of Elder Ephraim of St Anthony’s Monastery in Arizona.

Read the Life of Elder Joseph the Hesychast published by Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos, and his letters, published by St Athony’s Monastery in Arizona.

Read the Life of Elder Charalambos, the former Abbot of Dionysiou Monastery on Mt Athos. This work is hard to find in English translation, but they have it at the bookstore at St Anthony’s Monastery (ask them).

Read the Life of Elder Ephraim of Katounakia. This is available in English. Think about what obedience means. It is important to realize that Elder Ephraim of Katounakia achieved sanctity not through bodily asceticism—he was physically too weak and would get ill—but through an obedience that would leave most of us in despair in five minutes.

Elders Charalambos and Ephraim of Katounakia were disciples of Elder Joseph the Hesychast along with Elder Ephraim of Arizona.

There is a collection of letters of direction of St Ambrose of Optina Monastery, done by Dunlop.

The letters of spiritual direction of St Theohpane the Recluse (19^th Century) are good.

In reading the collected letters and remarks of modern Elders, it is very important to bear in mind the following point: The Elder speaks to a specific situation by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That advice is for that person in that situation. The next day the Elder might say the complete opposite to someone else, responding to what would seem to us to be the same situation; however, the next day’s remarks might not have been recorded, so that we see in the book we are reading only the first day’s remarks. We can’t apply the occasional remarks of Elders willy-nilly to ourselves without discernment. They are directed to a specific time, place, person and situation.

We ourselves have published a translation of the vows of the tonsure to the Great Schema on this blog in this post. We have also commented on these vows, both the narrow meaning of the words and the broader sense of what it’s all about, in the subsequent two posts, here and here. [Update May 16, 2007: we have just published the full service of the tonsure to the Great Schema in this post of May 14, 2007.] While you might think that the Great Schema is not for you, it is the criterion and standard by which all Orthodox monasticism is judged. Hence, even if we are far from it, we must know the Great Schema and measure ourselves by it. A complete English translation of the services of tonsure for all three degrees of Orthodox monasticism is to be found in N. F. Robinson, Monasticism in the Orthodox Churches, 1916. That out-of-print work was republished some years ago by a group in Seattle, but we believe that that reprint is now also out of print. The work is worth tracking down, although not so much so that you should pay an arm and a leg for it.

In general, read our own posts from the beginning of this blog, especially on the Jesus Prayer, starting on September 28, 2005; on the passions, starting on October 8, 2005; and on combating the passions, starting on November 7, 2005. Those series of posts contain discussions that will help you.

We have here given our references to previous posts by date because these are series of posts, and a specific URL for the first post in a series would make navigation difficult. Using the monthly archives will be more convenient for you, starting with the month in which the series that interests you begins.

There are various recordings of Elders’ homilies that circulate either publicly or privately. If you understand the language, if the Elder has a sound reputation and if you are sure that the recording and distribution have been authorized by the Elder, then there is no reason not to listen to such homilies.

Avoid modern works with novel interpretations of the ancient monastic saints, for example ones which ‘prove’ that Evagrius was not a heretic, that St Anthony was a ‘gnostic’ and so on. These are the supposedly scholarly works, not the popular works that take you right off the deep end with conspiracy theories about the Gospel transmission or about how the apocryphal Gnostic gospels have the same validity as the canonical gospels. The serious Orthodox does not get mixed up with this stuff.

Visit a monastery. You can’t become a monk if you don’t have a monastery to become a monk in. Unfortunately, Orthodox monasticism in the West is a mixed bag. It is possible to fall in with a group of mixed-up people and thus to damage yourself for life. Be cautious. Go only to monasteries in canonical jurisdictions. Go to monasteries that have an Elder with a sound reputation. (That doesn’t necessarily mean that he doesn’t have enemies.) If you are serious about monasticism, it would be good to have a confessor who is a monastic and also to visit Mt Athos. The ‘Friends of Mt Athos’ have the details on their web-site about how the paperwork is done for a visit to Mt Athos. Once you are on Mt Athos, you can request an extension of your visitor’s permit. If you explain that you are thinking of becoming a monk, that you are already Orthodox and that you are expected by a monastery that you have already contacted before coming, then the Fathers at the Holy Community will be happy to assist you to spend more time on the Holy Mountain. If you belong to a non-Greek jurisdiction, there is no reason not to visit monasteries in the home country of your jurisdiction, especially if you have roots and perhaps some command of the language.

D. General Remarks

Read, if you can, the services of the Church. Especially study the texts of the Divine Liturgy, in all three forms that the Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the Orthodox Church. If you can get hold of a video which explains the Divine Liturgy in detail, study it. The same for a video on the layout of the Church, the priest’s vestments, the various services and so on.

Go to Church. Attend the Church services in a canonical jurisdiction. Participate, if you can, without losing humility. There’s nothing worse than an Orthodox know-it-all running roughshod over the people around him who know far more than he but who are too spiritual to say anything.

Avoid ecclesiastical disputes. You’re a learner, not a teacher.

St John of Sinai in the Ladder counsels three things that are very important in regard to becoming a monk: First, the beginning monastic needs a guide. Without a guide, you are headed for delusion and a mental hospital. Next, not every guide is for every man or woman. The guide must be suited to your character, to what your spiritual problem really is, to what your controlling passion or weakness really is. Finally, St John recommends that we be a little bit devious when we are selecting our Elder: We should approach the Elder and his monastery as if we were merely visitors. Then we should use our discernment (in the case of us beginners, through prayer and our confessor who is not part of the monastery) to size up the Elder and the monastery. We shouldn’t merely jump off the deep end and hope for the best. But, says St John, once we have selected an Elder and a monastery, then we should exercise obedience. After all, we came to be trained, not to train others. As the reader can infer, we wouldn’t dream of entering an Orthodox monastery that was not in a canonical jurisdiction, nor one where there was any hint of moral turpitude, nor one where there were a lot of monks with mental problems.

In terms of secular literature, there is nothing wrong with having a broad education. However, it must be pointed out that post-modern literature is ‘post-nihilist’: post-nowhere, post-lost-in-the-passions. It might be good for you to consult with someone about your capacity in this regard, whether for example there is anything wrong given who you are with your reading Shakespeare. We ourselves think very highly of Middlemarch by George Eliot although that work is explicitly anti-Christian. We don’t think highly of it because of Eliot’s anti-Christian sentiments, but because of her compassion and her characterization of Dorothea Brooke. But presumably we read it at an age where our faith was not in danger. Your confessor can help in such matters.

Of course, you will read Dostoyevsky unless you find him too heavy. We should suggest reading him in the order of composition of his works.

If you have any idea that you would want to study theology, you are going to have to study Greek philosophy.

That should do you for a while.

Orthodox Monasticism 15A — What Should I Be Reading A & B?

In our last post, we answered the first of two questions posed by a reader. We continue with the second question, what he should be reading to deepen his knowledge of Orthodoxy and to better understand Orthodox monasticism—clearly because he is considering entering a monastery. Let us treat this matter in four sections: assumptions about who the reader is; what he should be reading to deepen his knowledge of Orthodoxy; what he should be reading to better understand Orthodox monasticism; and general remarks. However, because of technical problems with Blogger, we must break this up into two separate posts, 15A and 15B.

A. Assumptions

Judging from our reader’s name, he is a Romanian; judging from his diction, he lives in the United States and English is his first language or close to it. Since English is his first language, we doubt that he will, as an American, be at ease reading in other languages, even Romanian. This somewhat limits the possibilities of his improving his knowledge of Orthodoxy and Orthodox monasticism because, unfortunately, the Orthodox literature in English is not very good. There just isn’t much of it. Moreover, what there is of it is not always very good or even very complete. We will concentrate on books in English with reference to works in other languages.

We gather that our young reader is in his twenties, that he is intelligent, and that, as he says, he has returned from a wasted ‘adolescence’ to the Church. We imagine that he is attending an Orthodox Church, possibly but not certainly the Romanian Church. Since we assume that he is an American, it behoves us to recognize that there is a plethora of jurisdictions that he might be attending, from the Romanian Church to the Orthodox Church in America to the Antiochan Church—even with a Western rite—to one of the many Slavic jurisdictions to a non-canonical jurisdiction. Since he doesn’t speak in detail about his childhood, we assume that in his childhood he was a nominal Orthodox and that he did not receive a serious spiritual formation although he did attend the mysteries (sacraments).

B. Deepening Our Knowledge of Orthodoxy

With the above assumptions, we strongly recommend to our reader to read the Fathers of the Church, beginning with the simpler Fathers. We suggest that above all he read the commentaries of St John Chrysostom. Particularly important is the formation that St John gives in his commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and, we believe, the Gospel of John. These works can be found in the series ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’. The problem here, which shouldn’t bother our particular reader given his intelligence and command of English, is that the ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’ translations were done in a high Victorian style.

There is another problem in the ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’ series collection of St John Chrysostom’s works in that the translations and notes were done by Protestants. This is not much of a problem in the commentaries of St John Chrysostom on the Gospels, but it shows through in his commentaries on Romans: the Protestants don’t like what St John is saying, even though they don’t understand it, and treat St John with respect only in their words. They insert a different text of Romans into the commentary than the one that St John had before him (compare the texts of Romans in ‘Post Nicene Fathers’ to the ancient Greek texts of the commentaries), and then criticize St John’s interpretation of the text they have inserted. But our reader should be able to sort through that. One very important aspect of St John Chrysostom’s commentaries is that he always spends half his homily on interpretation and the other half on a moral exhortation. This is very important for our reader living as he does in Protestant America: he will develop an Orthodox moral sense and orientation from St John’s moral exhortations. We cannot overemphasize this.

The next work that our young Romanian-American should be reading is the Catechisms of St Cyril of Jerusalem, also to be found in ‘Post-Nicene Fathers’. This is not only a matter of the ‘mystagogical catechisms’, the ones that were delivered to the newly baptized, but also of the others, the ones that were delivered to the catechumens before they were baptized. We point this out because we believe there is an English edition which has only the mystagogical catechisms. Don’t read these first: read the whole set in order. We have seen someone suggest that since St Cyril does not comment on the whole Nicene Creed, then he was using a different form of the creed than the Nicene Creed. This is silly. He was commenting on what he thought was important. Someone else would have gone through the creed in detail.

The reader should read St Athanasios of Alexandria, the Great, especially ‘On the Incarnation’.

He should read the Apostolic Fathers. This is a collection of writings of St Clement of Rome, St Polycarp of Smyrna, St Ignatios of Antioch and so on, men who were the immediate disciples of the Apostles. There are a variety of translations of this work.

He should read St Irenaeus of Lyons.

He should read St John of Damascus. His most important work is the Fountain of Knowledge. This is a three-part work. The first part is a summary of Aristotelian philosophy. This should not be too difficult for our intelligent young reader. The next part is a summary of heresies, based for the most part on St Epiphanios of Cyprus, although the remarks on Islam are clearly those of St John, who grew up in Damascus at the court of the Caliph. The final part is the Summary of the Orthodox Faith, which is very important, although without a complete command of Aristotelian philosophy as St John of Damascus understood it, some of the fine points will be lost on the reader. Next by St John of Damascus is a work that might cause some of our readers to object: the Life of Barlaam and Ioasaph. It has been objected that this is really a Life of Buddha that has been assimilated through a translation from the Georgian into the Greek by an Abbot of Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos, and taken over by the Orthodox. First of all, it is naïve to think that everything that comes out of the East is exactly what it claims to be: does anyone seriously think that the Life of Buddha was written down immediately upon the Buddha’s death? Hence, any serious study of Barlaam and Ioasaph (which has not been done) would have to consider the textual history of the Life of Buddha. Good luck! Moreover, in its present form, whatever the provenance of its plot-line, Barlaam and Ioasaph is a catechism written by an Orthodox Father of the Church. This unfortunately does not come through too well in the Loeb translation, especially when the Creed is being discussed. The underlying Greek is much clearer and much more Orthodox than the rather confused and stilted translation by the two Anglican divines. We understand, perhaps wrongly, that a new translation of Barlaam and Ioasaph has been made but we do not know anything about it. The reader should also read St John of Damascus, ‘On the Icons’.

The next writer is very important for those in our day and age who have an intellectual maturity: Clement of Alexandria, the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria. (By ‘school’ we here mean an actual building and students, not a school of interpretation.) Clement is recognized as a saint in the West, in the Roman Catholic Church, but he is not so honored by the Orthodox (although there is no reason to suppose that there is anything wrong with him). There are three basic works by Clement, some of which are available in English (in general, searching the Net will bring up various works, publishers, booksellers for the books and so on). It seems to us that the most complete editions of his works are to be found in French, but even they are not complete. In one of his works, Clement discusses moral life in Alexandria in his day, the late Roman Empire. He could be writing in America today. This should make us uneasy.

Read St Basil the Great, especially ‘On the Holy Spirit’ and ‘On the Six Days of Creation’ (we will mention his ascetical works below). In general, it will not be useful to the beginner to jump in the deep end of the Arian dogmatic disputes. You need a lot of philosophy to understand them. For the same reason, and because he is at the best of times extremely difficult, we recommend against reading St Gregory of Nyssa, St Basil’s brother, at the beginning.

Some Roman Catholic series have reliable translations of the Fathers, for example the ‘Ancient Christian Writers’ series based at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Other Roman Catholic series, such as the ‘Classics of Western Spirituality’, are much less useful.

Some modern Elders have written—or have had their sayings collected—concerning broader social issues for the Orthodox Christian. These are good works to read if you can find them in a language that you know. Among these Elders are Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, especially in the series called ‘Logoi’ published in Greek by the Hesychasterion of St John the Theologian in Souroti, Greece, where Elder Paisios is buried. Since the sisters of the Hesychasterion arrange for translations of Elder Paisios’ works, it may be that ‘Logoi’ may yet come out in English, although we have no information yet. Wounded by Love, the spiritual reminiscences and teachings of Elder Porphyrios, is a work to which we have referred many times in this blog. There are also the writings of Elder Aimilianos, the ailing Elder of Simonos Petra on Mount Athos. His works are published by the woman’s monastery of the Annunciation that he founded in Ormylia, Greece, and are also available through the Greek publisher Indiktos. Elder Aimilianos’ works are important but difficult. Some of them have been translated into English and these are worthwhile to track down and read. More of the works have been translated into French.

In general, we should avoid modern writers who have theories about the end-times. It is not to the advantage of the Christian to spend his time on the end-times when he should be spending on the poor and homeless.