On despondency, melancholy and despair.Saint Sophrony l’Athonite.

 

The Old Rectory

26th January 1967

 

Dear Maria,

when we ourselves have become

 images of Him, 

we “overcome the world”

The peace and blessing of the Lord be upon you.

        Night has fallen long since. It is now late in the evening, and my working day is over. I have sat down to write you a letter, but I don't know how it will turn out, for I have little time, and yet I want to write about many things. First and fore­most I thank you for your letters, for your festal greetings, for all your long-suffering love. You know that I unfailingly think of you, particularly at midnight, or even later, depending on when I am free from my vain activities - and then I earnestly beg God to bless you then and to continue to bless you.

So, now I am trying not to leave anything out after such a long silence on my part.

Your despondency, melancholy, languor, must certainly visit you, as they visit each one of us.The main thing is how we take this. I think I have already told you in another letter that if we live our state only as our own, our soul is impoverished, and in the end becomes barren, and life becomes meaningless and unbearably wearisome. Our task, set before us by the Gospel, is to become universal persons, to bear in ourselves all the cosmos, to live in our life all the depth of the world's history, and above all of MAN. For all humanity is “I” and all history is my life. Each and every suffering, each and every joy, every experience, be it of love, enmity, joy, melan­choly, hope, despair; everything we go through, whether riches, poverty, hunger, satiety, fear, power, violence, humility, fighting, non-resistance, and all the rest, appear to us as rev­elations of what is happening in the world of men. Through our personal experience, which seems to us so small and so brief, we come to know Being in its potential fullness.

If we go along this path, reacting to everything in this manner, we are preparing ourselves to receive the Spirit of Christ, Who has shown us the image of the perfection of the sons of God, and when we ourselves have become images of Him, we “overcome the world”, we rise above the world's level, we become cosmic and even supra-cosmic - in the measure of our likeness to Christ. It is not within our power to seek out pain, suffering: it is natural for every living being to strive for joy, love, light. But taught of God, we are not terrified in the face of sufferings, because through them we too become en­riched with eternal knowledge, we assimilate all-embracing life. If we live in this way we also prepare ourselves for the experience of death, and we become capable of receiving our “better resurrection”. Of course, for us, at the centre of everything stands CHRIST, God and Man. Without Him we are in darkness; without Him we are incapable of coming to know where lies sin - that is, in distancing ourselves from the eternal Divine love of the Father. We should long ago have left behind us a naive understanding of sin. Sin is a break be­tween us and God, Who is absolute Light, absolute Knowl­edge, absolute Love. We cannot apply to Him anything that is not His attribute. If we want to be with Him and in Him, to be His true children, then we must be holy as He is holy. And if we are not such, then we lament over ourselves, we stand “on the threshold of despair”, in fear lest we lose for­ever our divine sonship and our abiding in infinite Light. But we do not go beyond this threshold. We reject utter despair. Thus, the life of God, even if not in its fulness, is preserved in us, and in one way or another we gain full victory. Love for Christ is the surest guarantee of our Resurrection. And you do love Him, so “the path of despondency is not for you”. I think it was St Seraphim who spoke these words a century and a half ago.

 

 

 

Reference:

Letters to his family. Archimandrite Sophrony(Sakharov).(2015)