Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- What Do We Mean by Spiritual Guidance?
- Not rules but persons
- Compassion and co-suffering
- Creative silence
- Counsellor, intercessor, burden-bearer
- Bibliography
- Spiritual Fatherhood on the Holy Mountain
- Spiritual Guidance according to the Philokalia
- The art of arts
- ‘Do not judge him in any respect’
- ‘Do not ask for a drink of water …’
- ‘… another angel destroying the firstborn of Egypt …’
- To publish or not to publish?
- Two troublesome questions
- Bibliography
- Spiritual Guidance in Mount Athos and Russia and the Theological Notion of Person
- The theological perspective
- The purposes of spiritual guidance
- Eldership as an ideal of spiritual leadership
- The historical overview: Kievo-Pechersky monastery
- The hesychast movement, St Sergius of Radonezh and his disciples
- St Paisy of Moldova and a wave of spiritual revival in Russia
- The revival of Russian monasticism on Mount Athos
- Distinctive characteristics of the patterns of Orthodox spiritual guidance
- Personal relationship and its dynamics in spiritual guidance
- Catholicity and the person’s embracing of other persons
- Irreducibility to the natural element and the element of meta-rationality in spiritual guidance
- Freedom in spiritual guidance
- Creativity and uniqueness in spiritual guidance
- Humility and morality in spiritual counselling
- Love, integrity, and discernment in spiritual fatherhood
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Charisma and Institution at an Athonite Cloister: Historical Developments and Future Prospects
- Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra
- The ‘Story of a Certain Monk’
- Commentary
- The elder’s synthesis
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Spiritual Fatherhood in the World: A Practical Approach
- Spiritual direction for all
- In place of a conclusion
- Bibliography
- The Challenges of Spiritual Guidance in Modern Greece
- Mount Athos and Greece
- The prophetic voice of the monk
- Monks and laymen: roles and spiritual guidance
- East and West: the importance of Athonite monasticism
- Spiritual challenges in Greece: urbanization
- The Church and the Left
- Bibliography
- The Renewal of Women’s Monasticism in the Twentieth Century through the Guidance of Athonite Monks
- Introduction
- Historical background
- Spiritual guidance
- 1. Monastics have nothing in this life except Jesus
- 2. Monastics have to force their nature
- 3. Monastics see their need for guidance
- 4. Monastics become likeness of God through monastic life
- 5. Monastics realize that, ‘If I was still trying to be liked by mankind, I would not be a servant of Christ’
- 6. Monastics try to live out the words: ‘The vision of angels is God, the vision of monks is the angels, the vision of mankind is the monks’
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Greek
- English
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
| vii →
Most of the papers included in the present volume were first delivered at a conference entitled ‘Spiritual Guidance on Mount Athos’ which was held by the Friends of Mount Athos at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in March 2013. The society would like to acknowledge with thanks the generous sponsorship that it received from the Eling Trust and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in support of the conference. The editors in their turn would like to thank the Friends of Mount Athos for generously contributing towards the cost of publishing the proceedings. They would also like to acknowledge with thanks the helpful and courteous treatment that they have always received from the publishing staff of Peter Lang Ltd in this and previous collaborative ventures. It is a mutually rewarding partnership that they hope will continue.
| 1 →
Spiritual guidance is the serious business of Mount Athos, the principal service that the Fathers offer to each other and to the world. Athonites have been purveyors of spiritual guidance for more than a thousand years in a tradition that goes back to the fourth-century desert fathers. The recent monastic renewal on the Mountain is testimony to the Fathers’ continuing power to attract disciples and pilgrims to listen to what they have to say. The papers included in this volume examine some of the many aspects of this venerable tradition, as it has developed on Mount Athos, and as it has devolved upon monks and nuns, spiritual fathers and confessors, lay men and women, in other parts of Greece and in the world.
In an introductory chapter Metropolitan Kallistos Ware asks the question, ‘what do we mean by spiritual guidance?’ It is not about rules, it is about persons. What the spiritual father (or mother) offers is not a set of inflexible rules but a personal relationship founded upon love. He must above all be a good listener, sometimes in silence, creative silence. He is the physician who offers healing, not only by his words, but by his example and by his prayers. He shares the burdens of his spiritual children and is their soul-friend, but there can be no spiritual guidance without compassionate love.
Archimandrite Ephraim, hegoumenos of St Andrew’s skete on Mount Athos, continues the introductory theme by describing what is meant by ‘spiritual fatherhood on the Holy Mountain’. As Christians it is our privilege to address God as ‘Our Father’, as Christ himself taught us. But we may call other people ‘father’, starting with Abraham who is the spiritual father of us all. The grace to forgive sins is passed down from Christ through the Apostolic Fathers to bishops and priests who by the laying on of hands are empowered to serve the sacraments. Without this ceremony priests cannot ← 1 | 2 → forgive sins, but on Athos not all the priests are also spiritual fathers and confessors, nor are all the monks priests. The Athonite pilgrim is not necessarily looking for a priest or an abbot but a Spirit-bearer or elder who can guide him to Christ. Such blessed elders are traditionally simple monks, such as St Silouan or Elder Joseph the Hesychast or Elder Paisios. They acted as elders to other elders, for even spiritual fathers need a spiritual father.
In his second paper Metropolitan Kallistos examines what the Philokalia has to say about the need for spiritual guidance. It is in fact one of the unifying threads that runs through the whole work. The care of other men’s souls, says St Neilos, is the hardest thing of all; it is ‘the art of arts’. The true elder, he says, is not self-appointed but is sought out by others; he needs experience and he should teach more by example than by his words; and he should remember that ultimately the only true spiritual guide is Christ himself. St Peter of Damaskos repeats the theme that the spiritual father acts in the place of Christ and emphasizes the importance of disclosing not just sins but thoughts, catching them before they have become sins. Symeon the New Theologian reiterates the teaching of his predecessors and, because the elder represents Christ, insists on complete obedience. He was writing for monks but he believed that laymen as well as monks could have a spiritual father. St Paisy Velichkovsky was taught that obedience was the essence of monasticism and for a long time he searched in vain for a spiritual father. He insisted that monks should submit to their spiritual father in all things and should confess their thoughts daily. In the absence of an elder, the disciple may seek the counsel of a spiritual brother; or as St Nil Sorsky advises, if a teacher cannot be found, then we should turn to the Scriptures and listen to the Lord Himself.
Details
- Pages
- VIII, 158
- Year
- 2015
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783035306934
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783035396546
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9783035396539
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783034318945
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-3-0353-0693-4
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2015 (March)
- Keywords
- Monastery Pilgrimage Religious tradition Desert father
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2015. VIII, 158 pp.
