The Old Rectory
3rd December 1966
Saint Sophrony the Athonite.
My
beloved and dear Maria,
May
strength from on High be sent down upon you, and may it remain with you
unceasingly all the days of your life here, and even more beyond the limits of
this life.
In your letter of 11 th November I stopped especially on the words: 'Perhaps this is because I was suffering in my soul over her fate in eternity? The thought that anyone of us should perish is unbearable to me. It's dreadful to think of it. These words reminded me of Staretz Silouan, for whom it was unbearably dreadful to think that anyone would be separated from the glory of the vision of Christ's Divine Love, separated from communion with Him in eternity. In a word, if I understand your words 'anyone of us' not within the limits of our family, but in the dimension of all humanity, of all epochs and nations, of all the past and all the future, then what you write about is truly like Christ, the true Man, the Son of God. And my prayer for you is that this 'us' be all-embracing and truly universal. Then you too will repeat the Staretz's words, when he says that someone who has known this state will no more set out to seek for other forms of knowledge, because he has passed from death into life eternal.
Yes,
Maria, and I also pray that the Holy Spirit will never cease to strengthen your
faith, to deepen your love for Christ, in Whom is the main foundation of all
the life of our world. The foolish sages of our age, who consider themselves
'learned', and claim that they know everything - by virtue of which
omniscience, a time of bliss for people on earth is supposedly coming - in
fact 'love darkness rather than light' . Not to see our limitation, our
self-condemnation to mortal punishment; like animals, not to be aware that man
is not confined within the limits of temporal earthly life, not confined to
the dimension of what can be seen, or known through our senses; not to be
conscious of our impending departure for the eternity which is marvellously
revealed to us through Christ - this is in essence profound darkness of
ignorance about what man is. In this connexion our epoch is so 'backward",
regressing into the millennia of paganism and cults of the flesh and the
passions, that one's soul begins to be terrified. Seeing this infernal
darkness in people, the Staretz prayed for decades for them, in an unrestrained
surge of love for humanity. When Divine Love touches the soul, she contemplates
with inexpressible trembling the holiness of Christ Who is God, and burns with
the desire to see all men in the light of this Love. And it is fearful to think
that this union with God may at any time be cut off, and because of this fear
for herself the soul fears for others as well. From earthly experience the
soul knows her limits, and thus in sacred awe, when eternity is opened up to
her with such power, the soul grows faint from the immeasurability of God, from
a certain wonder beyond any expressing, and from the impossibility of believing
that this is actually real. It's like the Apostles on the Mount of Olives: 'And
they worshipped Him, but some doubted'. To doubt in such moments is normal for
a poor weak man. That is why those who believe in Christ must have within them
the strength of holy 'foolishness', without which we cannot have the resolve we
need to cross the abyss separating us from eternity.
Reference:
Letters
to his family. Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov. Essex 2015.