Saturday, November 13, 2021

A Christian perspective.
Saint Sophrony the Athonite.

  

Saint Sophrony the Athonite.
What a misfortune to live in such unstable times. Millions and millions of people suffer all their lives. The whole history of mankind is a nightmare of ceaseless fratricidal wars. And up to this time this humanity remains - forgive the expression - as savage and bloodthirsty, as violent and criminal, as ever. The holy words "the meek [ ... ] shall inherit the earth", will undoubtedly come true at some as yet undefined moment, but thus far it is horror upon horror. This horror has grown in our time, because at each moment all the earth knows about more or less every event, and the events are for the majority gloomy and criminal. But let's hope against all hope that our meeting will take place, now that we are at the end of our sojourn here [on earth]. 

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.