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| Saint Sophrony the Athonite. |
I can tell that your meeting with M. was both joyous and important for all of you. Of course she knew that you are living in poverty, and from that point of view she was not expecting anything. The main thing is the peaceful communion, in love and confidence, between open souls. For our times that is a great thing. As long ago as the thirties Berdyaev was saying that to the degree that the social system is being improved, personal communication between people becomes more and more rare, and therefore more precious."Almost everywhere communication takes place on a political footing, or a business footing (for trade, industry, and suchlike), and more rarely on a basis of common spiritual interests, and even more rarely, simply as communion between one person and another.
You say that M. "is an exceptional
person. Everybody likes her, and her unusual capacity for entering into
spiritual contact with each particular person from the first meeting wins
people's hearts."
The secret of her charm lies in the fact that since
she has deepened her Christian understanding of things, she has cultivated the
practice of sincerely looking upon each person as someone of
unrepeatable eternal value, absolutely irreplaceable in the most
serious meaning of the word. A man is not a 'head' of livestock; he must not be
counted (it would be a crime): one, two, three ... a thousand, a million, etc.
Man does not die in the sense of being totally reduced to nothing. His spirit
passes over to a different sphere of Being. The passage from one form of
existence to another, infinitely greater - that is what death is. M. herself
expresses her idea like this: "Friendship should be
like GRACE, not demanding, but simple, with a constant disposition of readiness
to give, and likewise to receive simply. One should approach a person
without any low-level self-interest, so as to call forth in him the manifestation
of his best qualities, and not his worst. Trust, friendship, and love lead to
such communication. Mistrust, suspicion, hostility, ambition, and
self-interest, on the contrary, give rise to estrangement and in the end to
wars - that age-long curse that hangs over all humanity."
She has prayed, and prays, much. She is striving to
live in a Christian manner, and not according to the animal law of earthly
nature. Such an approach to people is in our world bound up with the risk of
becoming a victim to trustfulness and losing, but in the Christian approach to
people life takes on another, human, character - and even more than that, a Divine
character, and consequently, the 'gain' is incomparably greater, more majestic,
than the loss.
All this time I have been busy with the translation of
the book Starets Silouan into Greek. Once again each word had to be
lived attentively. And his teaching is really directed towards man in the
likeness of God, that is, it is truly Christian. M.loves Staretz Silouan.
And you too, again and again turn to his word, so that
you really understand this word of life. Then your sufferings will take
on another character and you will exploit them for spiritual progress. People
cannot love with the universal love of Christ. Like animals they only love
those who approach them on the same animal 'wavelength'. And this animal love
is dictated by the cosmic process of determined natural life. But the love of
Christ is love which embraces all the world in both aspects, spatial and
temporal (that is, in past ages and in ages yet to come). To have this love it
is absolutely vital to overcome pride within ourselves, for pride "stops us loving”.
Whereas when we humble ourselves, condemning ourselves and only ourselves,
there is no sin in us, and this itself makes it possible for the Holy Spirit to
act in us. And if this Holy One comes into the soul, victory over death becomes
more evident than the material reality of this corruptible world. Then
everything that had seemed from the human-animal perspective to be impossible,
crazy, destructive, and so on, appears as truly meaningful, as wisdom, truth,
as the only real life, without corruption, without darkness, without any
of the evils which destroy humanity.
And so may the Lord grant you the Holy Spirit, that we
may all reach at the end of our lives Him Whom the soul has loved since the
days of youth, the Light without Which there is only the interminable tragedy
of outer darkness.
Reference:
Letters to his family.
Archimandrite Sophrony(Sakharov). Essex 2015.