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| Saint Sophrony painting the Icon of the Savior. |
In
the Person of Christ was revealed the inapproachable and eternal God, but also
the true man, as God had conceived him before the foundation of the world in
the bosom of the Holy Trinity in His wondrous and pre-eternal Council. In His
Person all things were fulfilled, for He is ‘the way, the truth and the life’.
By
extension, as imitations of Christ, all the Saints can also be said to be the
signs of God for their generation, who give a solution ‘not of this world’ to
the problems it is confronted with, be they philosophical, psychological or
theological. They live in a natural way ‘the tragedy of mankind, and at the
same time the peace of Christ’.
‘A man shall approach and the heart is deep.’
It is difficult to speak about the Saints, because the man who still lives in
the confines of the visible world cannot even imagine the depths of the heart
of a holy Christian, the pain of his repentance and love, the infinite expanse
that his prayer traverses like lightning, the freedom of his spirit.
Saint
Sophrony’s earthly life lasted almost one century, but his spiritual life is
unfathomable. As he himself writes about his attempt to depict the figure of
his own Elder, Saint Silouan: ‘Anyone who has ever given himself over with a
pure heart to contemplation of his inner self knows how impossible it is to
detect the spiritual processes of the heart, because in its profundity the
heart touches upon that state of being where there are no processes. But now in
writing this profile I find myself faced with just such a task – portraying the
evolution of a great ascetic striver.’
Likewise,
we cannot speak about Saint Sophrony without diminishing his greatness. Yet, by
the command of the Spirit and against his own desire to live in such a way as
not ‘to be seen of men’, he did leave us his writings. And the best way to
know the spiritual portrait of this holy man is to read his books. Every
paragraph is the fruit of his prayer and the Elder is fully present in his
words.
Saint
Sophrony received the great blessing to rejoice in the vision of the uncreated
Light when he was but an infant, yet from the first years of his youth he also
felt very acutely the absurdity and vanity of temporary life. His intellectual
erring on the alien paths of transcendental meditation was interrupted by the
saving Sinaitic revelation that God brought before his eyes: ‘I AM THAT I
AM.’ In his repentance he ‘would pray like one demented, weeping copious
tears, afflicted to his very bones.’ The cry of his prayer reached back
‘to the source of the world’s tragedy’.
Elder
Sophrony ‘ardently loved Jesus Christ, God our Creator and Saviour’, and,
‘without fail’, according to his own words, he experienced ‘two states of being
that would seem to be diametrically opposed: descent into hell (of repentance
and love) and ascent into heaven’.
Until
the end of his life, he spoke with infinite gratitude about his Father in God
Saint Silouan, whom he called ‘the most important event of his life’, the
greatest blessing, and he attributed every gift from on high to his prayers. He
considered that the purpose of his life and his greatest task was to minister
unto the word of his Elder.
Saint
Sophrony lived among us with great simplicity. He was warm and loving, but you
could not forget for one instant the Christ-like otherness of his soul. He had
a different mind, different feelings, different thoughts. Every contact with
him was an opening of life. When he opened his mouth it was as if he snatched
the word from God and brought it down to earth. Rather, he was incarnating the
word of God in his own life. As he himself confesses: ‘His words, like fire,
were imparted to my mind and heart, and I learned to see things from His
perspective, because His word became my life.’
Certainly, when we say that the Elder was a man of the word of God, we do not mean that he spoke about the word of God, but that he was a bearer of the quickening power of the personal God. The divine word resounded like a harp in his heart whether he was awake or asleep. In other words, he was the bearer of the word which is born in the heart through prayer and which regenerates man when it visits him, whilst when he imparts it to the others, it informs them with grace.It transforms and renews them, showing unto them the ways of salvation.
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| Saint Sophrony with the brotherhood of Essex.Father Zacharia the first from left. |
He
emphasised the importance of calling upon the Name of the Lord Jesus so that
the impasse of human tragedy may be overcome and that man may be born in the
eternal Kingdom. He says about himself: ‘When the pain of the heart reaches the
limits of physical endurance, the invocation of the Name of Jesus Christ brings
the peace that keeps man alive.’ He ‘tormented’ with fiery prayer everything he
did or said.
He
also gave the greatest importance to the Divine Liturgy, whose celebration
enraptured and inspired him. He said that in our times, when it is no longer
possible to find favourable conditions for hesychastic life, if we celebrate
the Divine Liturgy with attention, fear and the appropriate preparation, it
brings the same results at the level of the spirit, the same sanctification as
the prayer of the heart. For this reason he was mindful to impart to his monks
and to all those who asked for his help, his love for the Divine Sacrament and
the knowledge of a deeper approach to it.
Just
as Moses desired to see the whole people of God prophesy, so also Saint
Sophrony longed to impart to those around him the breath of the Holy Spirit,
the inspiration of an artist. He even said that the Christian must be an artist
in his spiritual life. As the artists are possessed by the object of their art
and strive to find the perfect expression for their inspiration, so the
Christian should be possessed by Christ and strive to refine his relationship
with Him, running ‘that he may apprehend that for which also he is
apprehended.’
For some,
the neighbour becomes a hindrance, for others even hell, whilst for our holy
Fathers Silouan and Sophrony, the brother was their life. God enlarged their
heart to embrace heaven and earth, just as Christ spread His holy hands on the
Cross to embrace all people.
As a
conclusion, we will quote the words of the Saint:
‘A
single saint is an extraordinarily precious phenomenon for all mankind. By the
mere fact of their existence – unknown, maybe, to the world but known to God –
the saints draw down on the world, on all humanity, a great benediction from
God… Thanks to these saints – whom the world does not know of – the course of
historical, even of cosmic events, is changed. So then, every saint is a
phenomenon of cosmic character, whose significance passes beyond the bounds of
earthly history into the sphere of eternity. The saints are the salt of the
earth, its raison d’etre. They are the fruit that preserve the earth. But when
the earth ceases to produce saints, the strength that safeguards it from catastrophe
will fail.’
This
is why Elder Sophrony considered as a sign of authentic and holy life the
prayer for the whole world, wherein the man of God, enlarged by the grace of
the Holy Spirit, brings to God every soul that came into being from the
foundation of the world and that will be born until the end of the world.
Another
criterion of genuine and holy life for Saint Sophrony, was love and prayer for
enemies. This phenomenon demonstrates the presence of the Holy Spirit, without
Whose grace such a virtue cannot exist in this world.
Saint
Sophrony gives witness that love for enemies is the token of the presence of
the Holy Spirit and of the truth of God, which justifies the ephemeral
existence of man and leads him into the unfading life that reigns in the bosom
of the Holy Trinity, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Reference:
https://pemptousia.com/2021/07/the-prophetic-ministry-of-the-word-of-god-in-saint-sophrony/