One who climbs a mountain for the first time needs to follow a known route; and he needs to have with him, as companion and guide, someone who has been up before and is familiar with the way. To serve as such a companion and guide is precisely the role of the “Abba” or spiritual father, whom the Greeks call “Geron” and the Russians “Starets”, a title which in both languages means “old man” or “elder”. ¹

The importance of obedience to a Geron is underlined from the first emergence of monasticism in the Christian East. St. Antony of Egypt said: “I know of monks who fell after much toil and lapsed into madness, because they trusted in their own work… So far as possible, for every step that a monk takes, for every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he should entrust the decision to the Old Men, to avoid making some mistake in what he does.” ²

This is a theme constantly emphasized in the Apophthegmata or Sayings of the Desert Fathers: “The old Men used to say: ‘if you see a young monk climbing up to heaven by his own will, grasp him by the feet and throw him down, for this is to his profit… if a man has faith in another and renders himself up to him in full submission, he has no need to attend to the commandment of God, but he needs only to entrust his entire will into the hands of his father. Then he will be blameless before God, for God requires nothing from beginners so much as self-stripping through obedience.’” ³

This figure of the Starets, so prominent in the first generations of Egyptian monasticism, has retained its full significance up to the present day in Orthodox Christendom. “There is one thing more important than all possible books and ideas”, states a Russian layman of the 19th Century, the Slavophile Kireyevsky, “and that is the example of an Orthodox Starets, before whom you can lay each of your thoughts and from whom you can hear, not a more or less valuable private opinion, but the judgement of the Holy Fathers. God be praised, such Startsi have not yet disappeared from our Russia.” And a Priest of the Russian emigration in our own century, Fr. Alexander Elchaninov (+ 1934), writes: “Their held of action is unlimited… they are undoubtedly saints, recognized as such by the people. I feel that in our tragic days it is precisely through this means that faith will survive and be strengthened in our country.” ⁴

The Spiritual Father as a ‘Charismatic’ Figure

What entitles a man to act as a starets? How and by whom is he appointed?

To this there is a simple answer. The spiritual father or starets is essentially a ‘charismatic’ and prophetic figure, accredited for his task by the direct action of the Holy Spirit. He is ordained, not by the hand of man, but by the hand of God. He is an expression of the Church as “event” or “happening”, rather than of the Church as institution. ⁵

There is, of course, no sharp line of demarcation between the prophetic and the institutional in the life of the Church; each grows out of the other and is intertwined with it. The ministry of the starets, itself charismatic, is related to a clearly-defined function within the institutional framework of the Church, the office of priest-confessor. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the right to hear confessions is not granted automatically at ordination. Before acting as confessor, a priest requires authorization from his bishop; in the Greek Church, only a minority of the clergy are so authorized.

Although the sacrament of confession is certainly an appropriate occasion for spiritual direction, the ministry of the starets is not identical with that of a confessor. The starets gives advice, not only at confession, but on many other occasions; indeed, while the confessor must always be a priest, the starets may be a simple monk, not in holy orders, or a nun, a layman or laywoman. The ministry of the starets is deeper, because only a very few confessor priests would claim to speak with the former’s insight and authority.

But if the starets is not ordained or appointed by an act of the official hierarchy, how does he come to embark on his ministry? Sometimes an existing starets will designate his own successor. In this way, at certain monastic centers such as Optina in 19th-century Russia, there was established an “apostolic succession” of spiritual masters. In other cases, the starets simply emerges spontaneously, without any act of external authorization. As Elchaninov said, they are “recognized as such by the people”. Within the continuing life of the Christian community, it becomes plain to the believing people of God (the true guardian of Holy Tradition) that this or that person has the gift of spiritual fatherhood. Then, in a free and informal fashion, others begin to come to him or her for advice and direction.

It will be noted that the initiative comes, as a rule, not from the master but from the disciples. It would be perilously presumptuous for someone to say in his own heart or to others, “Come and submit yourselves to me; I am a starets, I have the grace of the Spirit.” What happens, rather, is that — without any claims being made by the starets himself — others approach him, seeking his advice or asking to live permanently under his care. At first, he will probably send them away, telling them to consult someone else. Finally the moment comes when he no longer sends them away but accepts their coming to him as a disclosure of the will of God. Thus it is his spiritual children who reveal the starets to himself.

The figure of the starets illustrates the two interpenetrating levels on which the earthly Church exists and functions. On the one hand, there is the external, official, and hierarchial level, with its geographical organization into dioceses and parishes, its great centers (Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, and Canterbury), and its “apostolic succession” of bishops. On the other hand, there is the inward, spiritual and “charismatic” level, to which the startsi primarily belong. Here the chief centrs are, for the most part, not the great primatial and metropolitan sees, but certain remote hermitages, in which there shine forth a few personalities richly endowed with spiritual gifts. Most startsi have possessed no exalted status in the formal hierarchy of the Church; yet the influence of a simple priest-monk such as St. Seraphim of Sarov has exceeded that of any patriarch or bishop in 19th-century Orthodoxy. In this fashion, alongside the apostolic succession of the episcopate, there exists that of the saints and spiritual men. Both types of succession are essential for the true functioning of the Body of Christ, and it is through their interaction that the life of the Church on earth is accomplished.

Flight and Return: the Preparation of the Starets

Although the starets is not ordained or appointed for his task, it is certainly necessary that he should be prepared. The classic pattern for this preparation, which consists in a movement of flight and return, may be clearly discerned in the liyes of St. Antony of Egypt (+356) and St. Seraphim of Sarov (+1833).

St. Antony’s life falls sharply into two halves, with his fifty-fifth year as the watershed. The years from, early manhood to the age of fifty-five were his time of preparation, spent in an ever-increasing seclusion from the world as he withdrew further and further into the desert. He eventually passed twenty years in an abandoned fort, meeting no one whatsoever. When he had reached the age of fifty-five, his friends could contain their curiosity no longer, and broke down the entrance. St. Antony came out and, ‘for the remaining half century of his long life, without abandoning the life of a hermit, he made himself freely available to others, acting as “a physician given by God to Egypt.” He was beloved by all, adds his biographer, St. Athanasius, “and all desired to ‘have him as their father.” ⁶ Observe that the transition from enclosed anchorite to Spiritual father came about, not through any initiative on St. Antony’s part, but through the action of others. Antony was a lay monk, never ordained to the priesthood.

St. Seraphim followed a comparable path. After fifteen years spent in the ordinary life of the monastic community, as novice, professed monk, deacon, and priest, he withdrew for thirty years of solitude and almost total silence. During the first part of this period he, lived in a forest hut; at one point he passed a thousand days on the stump of a tree and a thousand nights of those days on a rock, devoting himself to unceasing prayer. Recalled by his abbot to the monastery, he obeyed the order without the slightest delay; and during the latter part of his time of solitude he lived rigidly enclosed in his cell, which he did not leave even to attend services in church; on Sundays the priest brought communion to him at the door of his room. Though he was a priest he didn’t celebrate the liturgy. Finally, in the last eight years of his life, he ended his enclosure, opening the door of his cell and receiving all who came. He did nothing to advertise himself or to summon people; it was the others who took the initiative in approaching him, but when they came — sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a single day — he did not send them empty away.

Without this intense ascetic preparation, without this radical flight into solitude, could St. Antony or St. Seraphim have acted in the same ‘degree as guide to those of their generation? Not that they withdrew in order to become masters and guides of others. ‘They fled, not, in order to prepare themselves for some other task, but out of a consuming desire to be alone with God. God accepted their love, but then sent them back” as instruments of healing in the world from which they had withdrawn. Even had He never sent them back, their flight would still have been supremely creative and valuable to society; for the monk helps the world not primarily by anything that he does and says but by what he is, by the state of unceasing prayer which has become identical with his innermost being. Had St. Antony and St. Seraphim done nothing but pray in solitude they would still have been serving their fellow men to the highest degree. As things turned out, however, God ordained that they should also serve others in a more direct fashion. But this direct and visible service was essentially a consequence of the invisible service which they rendered through their prayer.

“Acquire inward peace”, said St. Seraphim, “and a multitude of men around you will find their salvation.” Such is the role of spiritual fatherhood. Establish yourself in God; then you can bring others to His presence. A man must learn to be alone, he must listen in the stillness of his own heart to the wordless speech of the Spirit, and so discover the truth about himself and God. Then his work to others will be a word of power, because it is a word out of silence.

What Nikos Kazantzakis said of the almond tree is true also of the starets: “I said to the almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God,’ And the almond tree blossomed.”

Shaped by the encounter with God in solitude, the starets is able to heal by his very presence. He guides and forms others, not primarily by words of advice, but by his companionship, by the living and specific example which he setsin a word, by blossoming like the almond tree. He teaches as much by his silence as by his speech. “Abba Theophilus the Archbishop once visited Scetis, and when the brethren had assembled they said to Abba Pambo, ‘Speak a word to the Pope that he may be edified.’ The Old Man said to them, “if he is not edified by my silence, neither will be he edified by my speech.’” ⁸ A story with the same moral is told of St. Antony. “It was the custom of three Fathers to visit the Blessed Antony once each year, and two of them used to ask him questions about their thoughts (logismoi) and the salvation of their soul; but the third remained completely silent, without putting any questions. After a long while, Abba Antony said to him, ‘See, you have been in the habit of coming to me all this time, and yet you do not ask me any questions’. And the other replied, ‘Father, it is enough for me just to look at you.’” ⁹

The real journey of the starets is not spatially into the desert, but spiritually into the heart. External solitude, while helpful, is not indispensable, and a man may learn to stand alone before God, while yet continuing to pursue a life of active service in the midst of society. St. Antony of Egypt was told that a doctor in, Alexandria was his equal in spiritual achievement: “In the city there is someone like you, a doctor by profession, who gives all his money to the needy, and the whole day long he sings the Thrice-Holy Hymn with the angels.” ¹⁰ We are not told how this revelation came to Antony, nor what was the name of the doctor, but one thing is clear. Unceasing: prayer of the heart is no monopoly of the solitaries; the mystical and “angelic” life is possible in the city as well as the desert. The Alexandrian doctor accomplished the inward journey without severing his outward links with the community.

There are also many instances in which flight and return are not sharply distinguished in temporal sequence. Take, for example, the case of St. Seraphim’s younger contemporary, Bishop Ignaty Brianchaninov (t1867). Trained originally as an army officer, he was appointed at the early age of twenty-six to take charge of a busy and influential monastery close to St. Petersburg. His own monastic training had lasted little more than four years before he was placed in a position of authority. After twetity-four years as Abbot, he was consecrated Bishop. Four years later he resigned, to spend the remaining six years of his life as a hermit. Here a period of active pastoral work preceded the period of anachoretic seclusion. When he was made abbot, he must surely have felt gravely ill-prepared. His secret withdrawal into the heart was undertaken continuously during the many years in which he administered a monastery and a diocese; but it did not receive an exterior, expression until the very end of his life.

Bishop Ignaty’s career ¹¹ may serve as a paradigm to many of us at the present time, although (needless to say) we fall far short of his level of spiritual achievement. Under the pressure of outward circumstances and probably without clearly realizing what is happening to us, we become launched on a career of teaching, preaching, and pastoral counselling, while lacking any deep knowledge of the desert and its creative silence. But through teaching others we ourselves begin to learn. Slowly we recognize our powerlessness to heal the wounds of humanity solely through philanthropic programs, common sense, and psychiatry. Our complacency is broken down, we appreciate our own inadequacy, and start to understand what Christ meant by the “one thing that is necessary” (Luke 10:42). That is the moment when we enter upon the path of the starets. Through our pastoral experience, through our anguish over the pain of others,’ we are brought to undertake the journey inwards, to ascend the secret ladder of the Kingdom, where alone a genuine solution to the world’s problems can be found. No doubt few if any among us would think of ourselves as a starets in the full sense, but provided we seek with humble sincerity to enter into the “secret chamber” of our heart, we can all share to some degree in the grace of the spiritual fatherhood. Perhaps we shall never outwardly lead the life of a monastic recluse or a hermit — that rests with God — but what is supremely important is that each should see the need to be a hermit of the heart.

The Three Gifts of the Spiritual Father

Three gifts in particular distinguish the spiritual father. The first is insight and discernment (diakrisis), the ability to perceive intuitively the secrets of another’s heart, to understand the hidden depths of which the other is unaware. The spiritual father penetrates beneath the conventional gestures and attitudes whereby we conceal our true personality from others and from ourselves; and beyond all these trivialities, he comes to grips with the unique person made in the image and likeness of God. This power is spiritual rather than psychic; it is not simply a kind of extra-sensory perception or a sanctified clairvoyance but the fruit of grace, presupposing concentrated prayer and an unremitting ascetic struggle.

With this gift of insight there goes the ability to use words with power. As each person comes before him, the starets knows — immediately and specifically — what it is that the individual needs to hear. Today, we are inundated with words, but for the most part these are conspicuously not words uttered with power. ¹² The starets uses few words, and sometimes none at all; but by these few words or by his silence, he is able to alter the whole direction of a man’s life. At Bethany, Christ used three words only: “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43) and these three words, spoken with power, were sufficient to bring the dead back to life. In an age when language has been disgracefully trivialized, it is vital to rediscover the power of the word; and this means rediscovering the nature of silence, not just as a pause between words but as one of the primary realities of existence. Most teachers and preachers talk far too much; the starets is distinguished by an austere economy of language.

But for a word to possess power, it is necessary that there should be not only one who speaks with the genuine authority of personal experience, but also one who listens with attention and eagerness. If someone questions a starets out of idle curiosity, it is likely that he will receive little benefit; but if he approaches the starets with ardent faith and deep hunger, the word that he hears may transfigure his being. The words of the startsi are for the most part simple in verbal expression and devoid of literary artifice; to those who read them in a superficial way, they will seem jejune and banal.

The spiritual father’s gift of insight is exercised primarily through the practice known as “disclosure of thoughts” (logismoi). In early Eastern monasticism the young monk used to go daily to his father and lay before him all the thoughts which had come to him during the day. This disclosure of thoughts includes far more than a confession of sins, since the novice also speaks of those ideas and impulses which may seem innocent to him, but in which the spiritual father may discern secret dangers or significant signs. Confession is retrospective, dealing with sins that have already occurred; the disclosure of thoughts, on the other hand, is prophylactic, for it lays bare our logismoi before they have led to sin and so deprives them of their, power to harm. The purpose of the disclosure is not juridical, to secure absolution from guilt, but self-knowledge, that each may see himself as he truly is. ¹³

Endowed with discernment, the spiritual father does not merely wait for a person to reveal himself, but shows to the other thoughts hidden from him. When people came to St. Seraphim of Sarov, he often answered their difficulties before they had time to put their thoughts before him. On many occasions the answer at first seemed quite irrelevant, and even absurd and irresponsible; for what St. Seraphim answered was not, the question his visitor had consciously in mind, but the one he ought to have been asking. In all this St. Seraphim relied on the inward light of the Holy Spirit. He found it important, he explained, not to work out in advance hat he was going to say; in that case, his words would represent merely his own human judgment which might well be in error, and not the judgment of God.

In St. Seraphim’s eyes, the relationship between starets and spiritual child is stronger than death, and he therefore urged his children to continue their disclosure of thoughts to him even after his departure to the next life. These are the words which, by his on command, were written on his tomb: “When I am dead, come to me at my grave, and the more often, the better. Whatever is on your soul, whatever may have happened to you, come to me as when I was alive and, kneeling on the ground, cast all your bitterness upon my grave. Tell me everything and I shall listen to you, and all the bitterness will fly away from you. And as you spoke to me when I was alive, do so now. For I am living, and I shall be forever.”

The second gift of the spiritual father is the ability to love others and to make others’ sufferings his own. Of Abba Poemen, one of the greatest of the Egyptian gerontes, it is briefly and simply recorded: “He possessed love, and many came to him.” ¹⁴ He possessed love — this is indispensable in all spiritual fatherhood. Unlimited insight into the secrets of men’s hearts, if devoid of loving compassion, would not be creative but destructive; he who cannot love others will have little power to heal them.

Loving others involves suffering with and for them; such is the literal sense of compassion. “Bear one anothers burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). The spiritual father is ‘the one who par excellence bears the burdens of others. “A starets”, writes Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, “is one who takes your soul, your will, unto his soul and his will… . ” It is not enough for him to offer advice. He is also required to take up the soul of his spiritual children into his own soul, their life into his life. It is his task to pray for them, and his constant intercession on their behalf is more important to them than any words of counsel. ¹⁵ It is his task likewise to assume their sorrows and their sins, to take their guilt upon himself, and to answer for them at the Last Judgment.

All this is manifest in a primary document of Eastern spiritual direction, the Books of Varsanuphius and John, embodying some 850 questions addressed to two elders of 6th-century Palestine, together with their written answers. “As God Himself knows,” Varsanuphius insists to his spiritual children, “there is not a second or an hour when I do not have you in my mind and in my prayers… I care for you more than you care for yourself… I would gladly lay down my life for you.” This is his prayer to God: “O Master, either bring my children with me into Your Kingdom, or else wipe me also out of Your book.” Taking up the theme of bearing others’ burdens, Varsanuphius affirms: “I am bearing your burdens and your offences… You have become like a man sitting under a shady tree… I take upon myself the sentence of condemnation against you, and by the grace of Christ, I will not abandon you, either in this age or in the Age to Come.” ¹⁶

Readers of Charles Williams will be reminded of the principle of ‘substituted love,’ which plays a central part in Descent into Hell. The same line of thought is expressed by Dostoevsky’s starets Zosima: “There is only one way of salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins… To make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone.” The ability of the starets to support and strengthen others is measured by his willingness to adopt this way of salvation.

Yet the relation between the spiritual father and his children is not one-sided. Though he takes the burden of their guilt upon himself and answers for them before God, he cannot do this effectively unless they themselves are struggling wholeheartedly for their own salvation. Once a brother came to St. Antony of Egypt and said: “Pray for me.” But the Old Man replied: “Neither will I take pity on you nor will God, unless you make some effort of your own.” ¹⁷

When considering the love of a starets for those under his care, it is important to give full meaning to the word “father” in the title “spiritual father”. As father and offspring in an ordinary family should be joined in mutual love, so it must also be within the “charismatic” family of the starets. It is primarily a relationship in the Holy Spirit, and while the wellspring of human affection is not to be unfeelingly suppressed, it must be contained within bounds. It is recounted how a young monk looked after his elder, who was gravely ill, for twelve years without interruption. Never once in that period did his elder thank him or so much as speak one word of kindness to him. Only on his death-bed did the Old Man remark to the assembled brethren, “He is an angel and not a man.” ¹⁸ The story is valuable as an indication of the need for spiritual detachment, but such an uncompromising suppression of all outward tokens of affection is not typical of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, still less of Varsanuphius and John.

A third gift of the spiritual father is the power to transform the human environment, both the material and the non-material. The gift of healing, possessed by so many of the startsi, is one aspect of this power: More generally, the starets helps his disciples to perceive the world as God created it and as God desires it once more to be. “Can you take too much joy in your Father’s works?” asks Thomas Traherne. “He is Himself in everything.” The true starets is one who discerns this universal presence of the Creator throughout creation, and assists others to discern it. In the words of William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is, infinite.” For the man who dwells in God, there is nothing mean and trivial: he sees everything in the light of Mount Tabor. “What is a merciful heart?” inquires St. Isaac the Syrian. “It is a heart that burns with love for ‘the whole of creation — for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for every, creature. When a man with such a heart as this thinks of the creatures or looks at them, his eyes are filled with tears; An overwhelming compassion makes his heart grow! small and weak, and he cannot endure to hear or see any suffering, even the smallest pain, inflicted upon any creature. Therefore he never ceases to pray, with tears even for the irrational animals, for the enemies of truth, and for those who do him evil, asking that they may be guarded and receive God’s mercy. And for the reptiles also he prays with a great compassion, which rises up endlessly in his heart until he shines again and is glorious like God.”‘ ¹⁹

An all-embracing love, like that of Dostoevsky’s starets Zosima, transfigures its object, making the human environment transparent, so that the uncreated energies of God shine through it. A momentary glimpse of what this transfiguration involves is provided by the celebrated conversation between St. Seraphim of Sarov and Nicholas Motoviov, his spiritual child. They were walking in the forest one winter’s day and St. Seraphim spoke of the need to acquire the Holy Spirit. This led Motovilov to ask how a man can know with certainty that he is “in the Spirit of God”:

Then Fr. Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: “My son, we are both, at this moment in the Spirit of God. Why don’t you look at me?”

“I cannot look, Father,” I replied, “because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and it hurts my eyes to look, at you.”

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “At this very moment you have yourself become as bright as I am. You are yourself in the fullness of the Spirit of God at this moment; otherwise you would not be able to see me as you do… but why, my son, do you not look me iii the eyes? Just look, and don’t be afraid; the Lord is with us.”

After these words I glanced at his face, and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its mid-day rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips and the changing expression of his eyes and you hear his voice, you feel someone holding your shoulders, yet you do not see his hands, you do not even see yourself or his body, but only a blinding light spreading far around for several yards and lighting up with its brilliance the snow-blanket which covers the forest glade and the snowflakes which continue to fall unceasingly ²⁰.

Obedience and Freedom

Such are by God’s grace, the gifts of the starets. But what of the spiritual child? How does he contribute to the mutual relationship between father and son in God?

Briefly, what he offers is his full and unquestioning obedience. As a classic example, there is the story in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers about the monk who was told to plant a dry stick iii the sand and to water it daily. So distant was the spring from his cell that he had to leave in the evening to fetch the water and he only returned in the following morning. For three years he patiently fulfilled his Abba’s command. At the end of this period, the stick suddenly put forth leaves and bore fruit. The Abba picked the fruit, took it to the church, and invited the monks to eat, saying, “Come and taste the fruit of obedience.” ²¹

Another example of obedience is the monk Mark who was summoned by his Abba, while copying a manuscript, and so immediate was his response that he did not even complete the circle of the letter that he was writing. On another occasion, as they walked together, his Abba saw a small pig; testing Mark, he said, “Do you see that buffalo, my child?” “Yes, Father,” replied Mark. “And you see how powerful its horns are?” “Yes, Father”, he answered once more without demur. ²² Abba Joseph of Panepho, following a similar policy, tested the obedience of his disciples by assigning ridiculous tasks to them, and only if they complied would he then give them sensible commands. ²³ Another geron instructed his disciple to steal things from the cells of the brethren; ²⁴ yet another told his disciple (who had not been entirely truthful with him) to throw his son into the furnace. ²⁵

Such stories are likely to make a somewhat ambivalent impression on the modern reader. They seem to reduce the disciple to an infantile or sub-human level, depriving him of all power of judgment and moral choice. With indignation we ask: “Is this the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God’?” (Rom. 8:21)

Three points must here be made. In the first place, the obedience offered by the spiritual son to his Abba is not forced but willing and voluntary. It is the task of the starets to take up our will into his will, but he can only do this if by our own free choice we place it in his hands. He does not break our will, but accepts it from us as a gift. A submission that is forced and involuntary is obviously devoid of moral value; the starets asks of each one that he offer to God his heart, not his external actions.

The voluntary nature of obedience is vividly emphasized in the ceremony of the tonsure at the Orthodox rite of monastic profession. The scissors are placed upon the Book of the Gospels, and the novice must himself pick them up and give them to the abbot. The abbot immediately replaces them on the Book of the Gospels. Again the novice take the scissors, and again they are replaced. Only when the novice gives him the scissors for the third time does the abbot proceed to cut hair. Never thereafter will the monk have the right to say to the abbot or the brethren: “My personality is constricted and suppressed here in the monastery; you have deprived me of my freedom”. No one has taken away his freedom, for it was he himself who took up the scissors and placed them three times in the abbot’s hand.

But this voluntary offering of our freedom is obviously something that cannot be made once and for all, by a single gesture; There must be a continual offering, extending over our whole life; our growth in Christ is, measured precisely by the increasing degree of our self-giving. Our freedom must be offered anew each day and each hour, in constantly varying ways; and this means that the relation between starets and disciple is not static but dynamic, not unchanging but infinitely diverse. Each day and each hour, under the guidance of his Abba, the disciple will face new situations, calling for a different response, a new kind of self-giving.

In the second place, the relation between starets and spiritual child is not one- but two-sided. Just as the starets enables the disciples to see themselves as they truly are, so it is the disciples who reveal the starets to himself. In most instances, a man does not realize that he is called to be a starets until others come to him and insist on placing themselves under his guidance. This reciprocity continues throughout the relationship between the two. The spiritual father does not possess an exhaustive program, neatly worked out in advance and imposed in the same manner upon everyone. On the contrary, if he is a true starets, he will have a different word for each; and since the word which he gives is on the deepest level, not his own but the Holy Spirit’s, he does not know in advance what that word will be. The starets proceeds on the basis, not of abstract rules but of concrete human situations. He and his disciple enter each situation together; neither of them knowing beforehand exactly what the outcome will be, but each waiting for the enlightenment of the Spirit. Each of them, the spiritual father as well as the disciple, must learn as he goes.

The mutuality of their relationship is indicated by certain stories in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where an unworthy Abba has a spiritual son far better than himself. The disciple, for example, detects his Abba in the sin of fornication, but pretends to have noticed nothing and remains under his charge; and so, through the patient humility of his new disciple, the spiritual father is brought eventually to repentance and a new life. In such a case, it is not the spiritual father who helps the disciple, but the reverse. Obviously such a situation is far from the norm, but it indicates that the disciple is called to give as well as to receive.

In reality, the relationship is not two-sided but triangular, for in addition to the starets and his disciple there is also a third partner, God. Our Lord insisted that we should call no man “father,” for we have only one father, who is in Heaven (Matthew 13:8-10). The starets is not an infallible judge or a final court of appeal, but a fellow-servant of the living God; not a dictator, but a guide and companion on the way. The only true “spiritual director,” in the fullest sense of the word, is the Holy Spirit.

This brings us to the third point. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition at its best, the spiritual father has always sought to avoid any kind of constraint and spiritual violence in his relations with his disciple. If, under the guidance of the Spirit, he speaks and acts with authority, it is with the authority of humble love. The words of starets Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov express an essential aspect of spiritual fatherhood: “At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sin, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide, ‘I will combat it by humble love.’ If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.”

Anxious to avoid all mechanical constraint, many spiritual fathers in the Christian East refused to provide their disciples with a rule of life, a set of external commands to be applied automatically. In the words of a contemporary Romanian monk, the starets is “not a legislator but a mystagogue.” ²⁶ He guides others, not by imposing rules, but by sharing his life with them. A monk told Abba Poemen, “Some brethren have come to live with me; do you want me to give them orders?” “No,” said the Old Man. “But, Father,” the monk persisted, “they themselves want me to give them orders.” “No”, repeated Poemen, “be an example to them but not a lawgiver.” ²⁷ The same moral emerges from the story of Isaac the Priest. As a young man, he remained first with Abba Kronios and then with Abba Theodore of Pherme; but neither of them told him what to do. Isaac complained to the other monks and they came and remonstrated with Theodore. “If he wishes”, Theodore replied eventually, “let him do what he sees me doing.” ²⁸ When Varsanuphius was asked to supply a detailed rule of life, he refused, saying: “I do not want you to be under the law, but under grace.” And in other letters he wrote: “You know that we have never imposed chains upon anyone… Do not force men’s free will, but sow in hope, for our Lord did not compel anyone, but He preached the good news, and those who wished hearkened to Him.” ²⁹

Do not force men’s free will. The task of the spiritual father is not to destroy a man’s freedom, but to assist him to see the truth for himself; not to suppress a man’s personality, but to enable him to discover himself, to grow to full maturity and to become what he really is. If on occasion the spiritual father requires an implicit and seemingly “blind” obedience from his disciple, this is never done as an end in itself, nor with a view to enslaving him. The purpose of this kind of shock treatment is simply to deliver the disciple from his false and illusory “self”, so that he may enter into true freedom. The spiritual father does not impose his own ideas and devotions, but he helps the disciple to find his own special vocation. In the words of a 17th-century Benedictine, Dom Augustine Baker: “The director is not to teach his own way, nor indeed any determinate way of prayer, but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper for them… In a word, he is only God’s usher, and must lead souls in God’s way, and not his own.” ³⁰

In the last resort, what the spiritual father gives to his disciple is not a code of written or oral regulations, not a set of techniques for meditation, but a personal relationship. Within this personal relationship the Abba grows and changes as well as the disciple, for God is constantly guiding them both. He may on occasion provide his disciple with detailed verbal instructions, with precise answers to specific questions. On other occasions he may fail to give any answer at all; either because he does not think that the question needs an answer, or because he himself does not yet know what the answer should be. But these answersor this failure to answerare always given the framework of a personal relationship. Many things cannot be said in words, but can be conveyed through a direct personal encounter.

In the Absence of a Starets

And what is one to do, if he cannot find a spiritual father?

He may turn, in the first place, to books. Writing in 15th-century Russia, St. Nil Sorsky laments the extreme scarcity of qualified spiritual directors; yet how much more frequent they must have been in his day than in ours! Search diligently, he urges, for a sure and trustworthy guide. “However, if such a teacher cannot be found, then the Holy Fathers order us to turn to the Scriptures and listen to Our Lord Himself speaking.” ³¹ Since the testimony of Scripture should not be isolated from the continuing witness of the Spirit in the life of the Church, the inquirer will also read the works of the Fathers, and above all the Philokalia. But there is an evident danger here. The starets adapts his guidance to the inward state of each; books offer the same advice to everyone. How is the beginner to discern whether or not a particular text is applicable to his own situation? Even if he cannot find a spiritual father in the full sense, he should at least try to find someone more experienced than himself, able to guide him in his reading.

It is possible to learn also from visiting places where divine grace has been exceptionally manifested and where prayer has been especially concentrated. Before taking a major decision, and in the absence of other guidance, many Orthodox Christians will goon pilgrimage to Jerusalem or Mount Athos, to some monastery or the tomb of a saint, where they will pray for enlightenment. This is the way in which I have reached the more difficult decisions in my life.

Thirdly, we can learn from religious communities with an established tradition of the spiritual life. In the absence of a personal teacher, the monastic environment can serve as guide; we can receive our formation from the ordered sequence of the daily program, with its periods of liturgical and silent prayer, with its balance of manual labor, study, and recreation.³² This seems to have be en the chief way in which St. Seraphim of Sarov gained his spiritual training. A well-organized monastery embodies, in an accessible and living form, the inherited wisdom of many starets. Not only monks, but those who come as visitors for a longer or shorter period, can be formed and guided by the experience of community life.

It is indeed no coincidence that the kind of spiritual fatherhood that we have been describing emerged initially in 4th-century Egypt, not within the fully organized communities under St. Pachomius, but among the hermits and in the semi-eremitic milieu of Nitria and Scetis. In the former, spiritual direction was provided by Pachomius himself, by the superiors of each monastery, and by the heads of individual “houses” within the monastery. The Rule of St. Benedict also envisages the abbot as spiritual father, and there is no provision for further development of a more “charismatic” type. In time, of course, the coenobitic communities incorporated many of the traditions of spiritual fatherhood as developed among the hermits, but the need for those traditions has always been less intensely felt in the coenobia, precisely because direction is provided by the corporate life pursued under the guidance of the Rule.

Finally, before we leave the subject of the absence of the starets, it is important to recognize the extreme flexibility in the relationship between starets and disciple. Some may see their spiritual father daily or even hourly, praying, eating, and working with him, perhaps sharing the same cell, as often happened in the Egyptian Desert. Others may see him only once a month or once a year; others, again, may visit a starets on but a single occasion in their entire life, yet this will be sufficient to set them on the right path. There are, furthermore, many different types of spiritual father; few will be wonder-workers like St. Seraphim of Sarov. There are numerous priests and laymen who, while lacking the more spectacular endowments of the startsi, are certainly able to provide others with the guidance that they require.

Many people imagine that they cannot find a spiritual father, because they expect him to be of a particular type: they want a St. Seraphim, and so they close their eyes to the guides whom God is actually sending to them. Often their supposed problems are not so very complicated, and in reality they already know in their own heart what the answer is. But they do not like the answer, because it involves patient and sustained effort on their part: and so they look for a deus ex machina who, by a single miraculous word, will suddenly make everything easy. Such people need to be helped to an understanding of the true nature of spiritual direction.

Contemporary Examples

In conclusion, I wish briefly to recall two startsi of our own day, whom I have had the happiness of knowing personally. The first is Father Amphilochios (+1970), abbot of the Monastery of St. John on the Island of Patmos, and spiritual father to a community of nuns which he had founded not far from the Monastery. What most distinguished his character was his gentleness, the warmth of his affection, and his sense of tranquil yet triumphant joy. Life in Christ, as he understood it, is not a heavy yoke, a burden to be carried’ with resignation, but a personal relationship to be pursued with eagerness of heart. He was firmly opposed to all spiritual violence and cruelty. It was typical that, as he lay dying and took leave of the nuns under his care, he should urge the abbess not to be too severe on them: “They have left everything to come here, they must not be unhappy.” ³³ When I was to return from Patmos to England as a newly-ordained priest, he insisted that there was no need to be afraid of anything.

My second example is Archbishop John (Maximovich), Russian bishop in Shanghai, in Western Europe, and finally in San Francisco (+1966). Little more than a dwarf in height, with tangled hair and beard, and with an impediment in his speech, he possessed more than a touch of the “Fool in Christ.” From the time of his profession as a monk, he did not lie down on a bed to sleep at night; he went on working and praying, snatching his sleep at odd moments in the 24 hours. He wandered barefoot through the streets of Paris, and once he celebrated a memorial, service among the tram lines close to the port of Marseilles. Punctuality had little meaning for him. Baffled by his unpredictable behavior, the more conventional among his flock sometimes judged him to be unsuited for the administrative work of a bishop. But with his total disregard of normal formalities he succeeded where others, relying on worldly influence and expertise, had failed entirely — as when, against all hope and in the teeth of the “quota” system, he secured the admission of thousands of homeless Russian refugees to the U.S.A.

In private conversation he was very gentle, and he quickly won the confidence of small children. Particularly striking was the intensity of his intercessory prayer. When possible, he liked to celebrate the Divine Liturgy daily, and the service often took twice or three times the normal space of time, such was the multitude of those whom he commemorated individually by name. As he prayed for them, they were never mere names on a lengthy list, but always persons. One story that I was told is typical. It was his custom each year to visit Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, N.Y. As he left, after one such visit, a monk gave him a slip of paper with four names of those who were gravely ill. Archbishop John received thousands upon thousands of such requests for prayer in the course of each year. On his return to the monastery some twelve months later, at once he beckoned to the monk, and much to the latter’s surprise, from the depths of his cassock Archbishop John produced the identical slip of paper, now crumpled and tattered. “I have been praying for your friends,” he said, “but two of them” — he pointed to their names — “are now dead and the other two have recovered.” And so indeed it was.

Even at a distance he shared in the concerns of his spiritual children. One of them, superior of a small Orthodox monastery in Holland, was sitting one night in his room, unable to sleep from anxiety over the problems which faced him. About three o’dock in the morning, the telephone rang; it was Archbishop John, speaking from several hundred miles away. He had rung to say that it was time for the monk to go to bed.

Such is the role of the spiritual father. As Varsanuphius expressed it, “I care for you more than you care for yourself.”

Endnotes

1. On spiritual fatherhood in the Christian East, see the well-documented study by I. Hausherr, S. L., Direction Spintuelle en Orient d’Autrefois (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 144: Rome 1955). An excellent portrait of a great starets in 19th-century Russia is provided by J. B. Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky’s Staretz Zossima (Belmont, Mass. 1972); compare also I. de Beausobre, Macanus, Starets of Optina: Russian Letters of Direction 18341860 (London, 1944). For the life and writings of a Russian starets in the present century, see Archimandrite Sofrony, The Undistorted Image. Staretz Silouan: 18661938 (London, 1958).
2. Apophthegmata Patrum, alphabetical collection (Migne, P.G., 65, pp. 37-8).
3. Les Apophtegemes des Pres du Desert, by J. C. Guy, S.jj. (Textes de Spiritualit Orientale, No. 1: Etiolles, 1968), pp. 112, 158.
4. A. Elchaninov, The Diary of a Russian Priest, (London, 1967, p. 54).
5. I use “charismatic” in the restricted sense customarily given to it by contemporary writers. But if that word indicates one who has received the gifts or charismata of the Holy Spirit, then the ministerial priest, ordained through the episcopal laying on of hands, is as genuinely a “charismatic” as one who speaks with tongues.
6. The Life of St. Antony, chapters 87 and 81 (P.G. 26, 965A, and 957A.)
7. Quoted in Igumen Chariton, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London, 1966), p. 164. [Webmaster Note: I could not determine where this footnote appeared in the original article.]
8. Apophthegmata Patrum, alphabetical collection, Theophilus the Archbishop, p. 2. In the Christian East, the Patriarch of Alexandria bears the title “Pope.”
9. Ibid., Antony p. 27.
10. Ibid., Antony, p. 24.
11. Compare Ignaty’s contemporary, Bishop Theophan the Recluse (+l894) and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (+l753).
12. Three of the great banes of the 20th century are shorthand, duplicators and photocopying machines. If chairmen of committees and those in seats of authority were forced to write out personally in longhand everything they wanted to communicate to others, no doubt they would choose their words with greater care.
13. Evergetinos, Synagoge, 1, 20 (ed. Victor Matthaiou, I, Athens, 1957, pp. 168-9).
14. Apophthegmata Patrum, alphabetical collection, Poemen, p. 8.
15. For the importance of a spiritual father’s prayers, see for example Les Apophtegmes des Peres du Dsert, tr. Guy, “srie des dits anonymes”, P. 160.
16. The Book of Varsanuphius and John, edited by Sotirios Schoinas (Volos, 1960), pp. 208, 39, 353, 110 and 23g. A critical edition of part of the Greek text, accompanied by an English translation, has been prepared by D. J. Chitty: Varsanuphius and John, Questions and Answers, (Patrologia Orientalis, XXXI, 3, Paris, 1966). [Webmaster Note. This and many other fine books on spiritual direction are available from St. Herman Press.
17. Apophthegmata Patrurn, alphabetical collection, Antony, p. 16.
18. Ibid., John the Theban, p. 1.
19. Mystic Treatises of Isaac of Nineveh, tr. by A. J. Wensinck, (Amsterdam, 1923), p. 341.
20. “Conversation of St. Seraphim on the Aim of the Christian Life,” in A Wonderful Revelation to the World (Jordanville, N.Y., 1953), pp. 23-24.
21. Apophthegmata Patrum, alphabetical collection, John Colobos, p. 1.
22. Ibid., Mark the Disciple of Silvanus, pp. 1, 2.
23. Ibid., Joseph of Panepho, p. 5.
24. Ibid., Saio, p. 1. The geron subsequently returned the things to their rightful owners.
25. Les Apophtegmes des Peres du Desert, tr. Guy, “serie des dits anonymes,” p. 162. There is a parallel story in the alphabetical collection, Sisoes, p. 10; cf. Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22).
26. Fr. Andr Scrima, “La Tradition du Pre Spirituel dan l’Eglise d’Orient.” Hermes, 1967, No. 4, p. 83.
27. Apophthegmata Patrurn, alphabetical collection, Poemen, p. 174.
28. Ibid., Isaac the Priest, p. 2.
29. The Book of Varsanuphius and John, pp. 23, 51, 35.
30. Quoted by Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation. (1960), p. 12.
31. “The Monastic Rule,” in G. P. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, (London, 1950) p.96.
32. See Thomas Merton, op. cit., pp. 14-16, on the dangers of rigid monastic discipline without proper spiritual direction.
33. See I. Gorainoff, “Holy Men of Patmos”, Sobornost (The Journal of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius), Series 6, No. 5 (1972) pp. 341-4.

From Cross Currents (Summer/Fall 1974), pp. 296-313.

Paper presented at the European Pentecostal/Charismatic Research Conference held in Prague on 10-14 September 1997

The Holy Spirit supplies all things:
He causes prophecies to spring up,
He sanctifies priests,
To the uninitiated He taught wisdom,
The fishermen He turned into theologians.
He holds in unity the whole structure of the Church.
— From an Orthodox hymn on the Feast of Pentecost

Solovetsk and Sunderland

Around the year 1890 an Anglican traveller from Sunderland, the Revd Alexander Boddy, Vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, came as a pilgrim to the great Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea in the far north of Russia. One thing in particular impressed him. It was a depiction of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost:¹

When, nearly two decades later, on the occasion of a famous visit from T.B. Barratt, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Boddy’s Sunderland parish on 31 August 1907, is it not likely that this ’striking representation’ of Pentecost that he had seen in Russia was still vividly present in his memory? A formative event in the history of British Pentecostalism turns out in this way to have, as one of its sources, the iconography of an Orthodox monastic church.

This unexpected connection between Orthodox Christianity and the origins of the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement in Britain naturally leads us to ask: can we discover other links, on a more specifically theological level, between Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism? How far is the Christian East sympathetic to a ‘charismatic’ understanding of the spiritual life? At first sight it might appear that there is but little affinity. Orthodoxy, it might be said, is liturgical and hierarchic, whereas Pentecostalism is grounded upon the free and spontaneous action of the Spirit; Orthodoxy appeals to Holy Tradition, whereas Pentecostalism assigns primacy to personal experience.

Anyone, however, who searches more deeply will soon realize that stark contrasts of this kind are one-sided and misleading. In actual fact, many of the Greek Fathers insist with great emphasis upon the need for all baptized Christians to attain in their own personal experience a direct and conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit. No one can be a Christian at second-hand: such is the frequently repeated teaching of the Fathers. Holy Tradition does not signify merely the mechanical and exterior acceptance of truths formulated in the distant past, but it is in the words of the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky – nothing else than ‘the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church² here and now, at this present moment.

“The worst of all heresies”

The vital significance of the Holy Spirit for the Christian East will be apparent if we consider one of the outstanding mystical authors of the Middle Byzantine period, St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022). Each of us, he maintains, is called by God to experience the indwelling presence of the Spirit ‘ in a conscious and perceptible way’, with what he describes as the ’sensation of the heart’. It is not enough for us to possess the Spirit merely in an implicit manner:

Do not say, It is impossible to receive the Holy Spirit;
Do not say, It is possible to be saved without Him.
Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.
Do not say, God does not appear to us.
Do not say, People do not see the divine light,
Or else, It is impossible in these present times.
This is a thing never impossible, my friends,
But on the contrary altogether possible for those who wish.³

All the charismata available to Christians in the apostolic age, Symeon is passionately convinced, are equally available to Christians in our own day. To suggest otherwise is for Symeon the worst of all possible heresies, implying as it does that God has somehow deserted the Church. If the Gifts of the Spirit are not as evident in the Christian community of our own time as they are in the Book of Acts, there can be only one reason for this: the weakness of our faith.

Symeon goes on to draw some startling conclusions from this. When asked, for example, whether lay monks, not ordained to the priesthood, have the power to ‘bind and loose’ that is to say, to hear confessions and to pronounce absolution he answers that there is one essential qualification, and one only, which empowers a person to act as confessor and to bestow forgiveness of sins; and that is the conscious awareness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Monks who possess such awareness, even though not in holy orders, may confer absolution upon others; but anyone who lacks such awareness – even though he may be bishop or patriarch – should not attempt to do this.⁴

Symeon speaks also of a ’second baptism’, the baptism of tears, which is conferred on those who are ‘born from above’ through the Holy Spirit:

When someone suddenly lifts up his gaze and contemplates the nature of existing things in a way that he had never done before, then he is filled with amazement and sheds spontaneous tears without any sense of anguish. These tears purify him and wash him in a second baptism, that baptism of which our Lord speaks in the Gospels when He says, ‘if someone is not born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Again He says, ‘If someone is not born from above’ (cf. John 3:5,7). When He said ‘from above’, He signified being born from the Spirit.

Symeon even seems to consider the second baptism more important than the first; for he regards the first baptism – sacramental baptism through water – as no more than a type’ or foreshadowing, whereas the second baptism is to be seen as the truth’ or full reality: ‘The second baptism is no longer a type of the truth, but it is the truth itself.’ ⁵

How far is Symeon’s standpoint typical of Eastern Christendom? He himself warns his readers that he is a ‘frenzied’ or ‘manic zealot’:⁶ are his remarks, then, to be discounted as the ravings of an extremist? Let us compare Symeon with three other writers, all of whom emphasize the Holy Spirit, and all of whom are held in high esteem within the Orthodox spiritual Tradition: with St. Mark the Monk (Plate fourth or early fifth century), alias Mark the Hermit or Mark the Ascetic; with the author or authors of the Homilies attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, but in fact of Syriac origin (late fourth century); and with St. John Climacus (c.570-c.649), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a work which Orthodox monks are supposed to reread each Lent.

Three Questions

In assessing how these different writers understand baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Luke 3:16), let us ask three more specific questions:

1. Must the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit be always a conscious indwelling, or can there be an indwelling of the Paraclete which is unconscious yet nonetheless real?
2. What is the relationship between sacramental baptism that is to say, water baptism – and ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire’? Is the ’second baptism’ in the Spirit to be seen as something radically new, conferring a fresh grace distinct from that of water baptism, or is the ’second baptism’ essentially the reaffirmation and fulfilment of the first – not a fresh grace but the realization and manifestation of the grace already received in our sacramental baptism with water?
3. What outward experiences – tongues, tears and the like – accompany and express our attainment of a conscious awareness of the Spirit?

Any answers that we propose need to be offered with diffidence and humility, for it is hard to contain within verbal formulae the living dynamism of the Spirit. Pointing as He does always to Christ and not to Himself (John 15:26; 16:13-14), He remains elusive and hidden so far as His own personhood is concerned. He is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’, to use the words of a familiar Orthodox prayer, but we do not see His face. Symeon the New Theologian emphasizes this mysterious character of the Paraclete in an Invocation to the Holy Spirit which precedes the collection of his Hymns. ‘Hidden mystery’, he calls the Spirit, treasure without name … reality beyond all words … person beyond all understanding’; and he continues: ‘Come, for Your name fills our hearts with longing and is ever on our lips; yet who You are and what Your nature is, we cannot say or know.’ ⁷

Let us display, then, an apophatic reticence in all that we assert concerning the free and sovereign Spirit, who is like the wind that ‘blows where it chooses: and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where goes’ (John 3:8).

St. Mark the Monk: from ’secret’ to ‘active’ presence

Little known in the West, Mark’s writings have always been popular in the Christian East. They are included in the first volume of that classic collection of Orthodox spiritual texts The Philokalia; in the Byzantine period there was even a monastic adage, ‘Sell everything and buy Mark’. Reacting against the Messalians (an ascetic movement originating in fourth-century Syria), Mark insists in trenchant terms upon the completeness of baptism. He is speaking, of course, about sacramental baptism:

However far someone may advance in faith, however great the good he has attained … he never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through  baptism…. Christ, being perfect God, has bestowed upon the baptized the perfect grace of the Spirit. We for our part cannot possibly add to that grace, but it is revealed and manifests itself increasingly, the more we fulfil the commandments …. Whatever, then, we offer to Christ after our regeneration was already hidden within us and came originally from Him.

Mark ends – for he is strongly Pauline in spirit – with a quotation from Romans 11:35 – 36: ‘Who has first given a gift to God, so as to receive a gift in return? For from Him… are all things.⁸

Baptism, according to the Monk’s teaching, confers upon us a total purification from all sin, both original and personal; it liberates us from all ’slavery’, restoring the primal integrity of our free will as creatures formed in God’s image; and at the same time, through our immersion in the baptismal font, Christ and Holy Spirit take up their abode within us, entering into what Mark terms ‘the innermost and uncontaminated chamber of the heart’, the innermost and untroubled shrine of the heart where the winds of evil spirits so not blow’.⁹

At this point Mark makes a crucial distinction, summed up in the two Greek adverbs m u s t i k v V meaning ‘mystically’ or ’secretly’, and e n e r g u v V , meaning ‘actively’. Initially, at sacramental baptism -and Mark seems to envisage primarily the situation of infant baptism – the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is given to us ’secretly’, in such a way that we are not at first consciously aware of it. We only become ‘actively’ conscious of this presence if we acquire a living faith, expressed through our practice of the divine commandments. In this way baptism plants within us a hidden seed of perfection, but it rests with us – assisted always by God’s grace – to make that seed grow, so that it bears conscious and palpable fruit. While we cannot “add* to the completeness of baptism, God nevertheless awaits a response on our part; and if we fail to make that response, although the Spirit will still continue to be present ’secretly’ in our heart, we shall not feel His presence ‘actively’ within us, nor experience His fruits with full conscious awareness.

Such is Mark’s map of the Christian pilgrimage. Our starling-point is the presence of baptismal grace within us ’secretly’ and unconsciously; our end-point is the revelation of that grace ‘actively’, with what he terms ‘full assurance (p l h r o j o r i a ) and sensation (a i s q h s i V )’. As he states:

‘Everyone baptized in the Orthodox manner has received secretly the fullness of grace; but he gains assurance of this grace only to the extent that he actively observes the commandments.’ ¹⁰

Our spiritual programme can therefore be summed up in the maxim ‘Become what you are’. We are already, from the moment of our sacramental baptism as infants , ‘Spirit-bearers’ in an implicit and unconscious manner. Our aim is therefore to acquire conscious experience – several times Mark uses the Greek term p e i r a – of Him who already dwells within us:

‘All these mysteries we have received at our baptism, but we are not aware of them. When, however, we condemn ourselves for our lack of faith, and sincerely express our belief in Christ by performing all the commandments, then we shall acquire experience within ourselves of all the things that I have mentioned; and we shall confess that holy baptism is indeed complete and that the grace of Christ is invisibly hidden within us; but it awaits our obedience and our fulfilment of the commandments.’ ¹¹

We are now in position to assess the answers which Mark offers to our three questions.

1. It is abundantly clear that Mark allows for an indwelling presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet nonetheless real. Such, in his view, is precisely the position of those who have been baptized in infancy. They receive a genuine indwelling of the Paraclete, and this ’secret’ indwelling will never be altogether lost, however careless or sinful their subsequent lives may be; as Mark puts it, ‘Grace never ceases to help us in a secret way. ^l2 At the same time Mark regards this ’secret’ presence as no more than an initial starting-point; and he clearly affirms that the vocation of every baptised Christian without exception is to advance from this to a conscious awareness of the Spirit.
2. In Mark’s view, this conscious awareness of Spirit experienced ‘actively’ and ‘with full assurance and sensation’ is in no sense a new grace, distinct from the grace conferred in water baptism, but it is nothing else than the full ‘revelation’ of the baptismal grace conferred upon us at the outset. The baptized Christian ‘never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through baptism’. Everything is contained implicitly in the initial charisma of baptism.
3. As to the outward experiences which accompany this conscious awareness of the indwelling Spirit, Mark is reticent. He does not speak about visions, dreams, trances and ecstasy.

Nowhere have I found in his writings anything that could be interpreted as a reference to speaking with tongues. His allusions to tears are infrequent; so far from exalting the gift of tears, he warns us, ‘Do not grow conceited if you shed tears when you pray.’¹³ He does indeed believe that our aim is to experience consciously the energies of the Spirit’ and to reach the state above nature’, where the intellect (n o u V ) ‘discovers the fruits of the Holy Spirit of which the Apostle spoke: love, joy, peace and the rest’ (cf. Gal. 5:22).¹⁴ But he does not specify what precise form these ‘energies’ and ‘fruits’ are to take.

When interpreting an author such as Mark, it is helpful to make a distinction between ‘experience’ (in the singular) and experiences’ (in the plural). There are surely many Christians who feel able to say in all humility, ‘I know God personally’, without being able to point to any single event such as a vision, a voice, or a concentrated ‘conversion crisis’ of the kind undergone by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Pascal or John Wesley. Personal experience of the Spirit permeates their whole life, existing as a total awareness, without necessarily being crystallized in the form of particular ‘experiences’. When Mark and other Greek Fathers refer to our conscious awareness of the ‘energies’ or ‘fruits’ of the Spirit, they may well have in view an all-embracing ‘experience’ of this kind, rather than any specific and separate ‘experiences’.

The Macarian Homilies: light, tears and ecstasy

The Homilies attributed to Macarius are better known in the West than are the writings of Mark the Monk: John Wesley, for example, was an enthusiastic reader of the Homilies, characteristically observing in his diary for 30 July 1736, ‘I read Macarius and sang.’ Whereas Mark is evidently an opponent of Messalianism, the Homilies are commonly regarded as a Messalian or semi-Messalian work. But in fact, when Mark and the Homilies are carefully compared, their respective theologies of baptism turn out to be not so very different. It is true that the best-known group of Macarian texts, the collection of the Fifty Spiritual Homilies (known as Collection II or Collection H), is largely silent about sacramental baptism; but there are a number of important references to it in the other main groups, Collection I (B) and III (C).

In agreement with Mark, the Macarian Homilies see sacramental baptism as the foundation of all Christian life: ‘Our baptism is true for us and valid, and it is the source from which we receive the life of the Spirit.’ ¹⁵

The Homilies concur with Mark in insisting furthermore upon the completeness of baptism: ‘In possessing the pledge of baptism, you possess the talent’ in its completeness, but if you fail to work with it, you yourself will remain incomplete; and not only that, but you will be deprived of it.’ ¹⁶

Mark would not have said, ‘you will be deprived of if, for he believes that the gift of baptismal grace can never be wholly lost. But otherwise the two authors agree: baptism is ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’, but in order to experience the full effects of the sacrament, we need to ‘work’ with the initial charisma of baptism by fulfilling the commandments.

Once more in agreement with Mark, the Macarian writings state that the gift of the Holy Spirit is conferred ‘from the Moment of baptism’.¹⁷ Just as Mark envisages a progress from baptismal grace present ’secretly’ to baptismal grace experienced ‘actively’, so likewise the Homilies maintain that the indwelling presence of the Spirit, conferred at baptism, is something of which we ere initially unconscious. The Spirit’s working is at first so slight that the baptized person is ignorant of His activity:

‘Initially divine grace exists within a person in such a subtle way that he is unaware of its presence and does not understand [that it is within him]…. But if we persist and advance in all the virtues, struggling with full exertion, then baptism will increase in power and will be revealed in us, making us perfect through its own grace.’ ¹⁸

This, as we have noted, is exactly Mark’s teaching: through our fulfilment of the commandments and our ascetic struggles, the hidden grace of baptism is gradually ‘revealed’ in its full power.

At the outset, then, so the Homilies affirm, the Spirit is present ‘invisibly’, but if we persevere on the path of Christian obedience we shall gradually come to experience His presence with power and assurance’:

‘In His own wisdom the heavenly Physician bestows the heavenly bread – that is to say, the power of the Spirit invisibly through the holy mystery of the “washing of rebirth’ (Titus 3:5) and of the Body of Christ; and through the “word of consolation’ (Heb. 13:22) in the Scriptures He nourishes and warms the damaged soul that is still subject to the passions and that is not yet capable of experiencing the energy of the Spirit with power and assurance, whether on account of its childishness or because of its lack of faith and its carelessness. Every soul, on receiving the remission of sins in holy baptism according to the measure of its faith, participates in the energy of grace: one receives it with power and assurance, another with weaker energy of grace …. Thus the grace of the Spirit bestowed in baptism seeks to overshadow each person in abundance and to grant to each more speedily the perfection of divine power, but the degree to which someone shares in this grace depends on the measure of that person’s faith and piety.’ ¹⁹

This is less clear and coherent than the treatment that we find in Mark; also the Homilies seem to envisage adult baptism whereas Mark thinks primarily in terms of infant baptism. But there is no fundamental discrepancy between the two authors. Both agree that there is a progressive advance from an unconscious presence of the baptismal gift of the Spirit to a conscious awareness of the baptismal gift “with full assurance and sensation’ (a phrase used by the Homilies as well as by Mark).

How, then, do the Macarian Homilies answer our three questions?

1. The Homilies clearly assert that, in certain cases at any rate, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit conferred at baptism is at first unconscious: He is present within us ‘invisibly, in such a way that we are ‘unaware’ of Him. At the same time, however, it is the vocation of every baptized Christian to advance from unconsciousness to conscious awareness, so that we experience this gift of the Spirit ‘with full assurance and sensation’. Here the Homilies, like Mark the Monk, rely heavily upon the language of feeling. Sometimes the Homilies describe this higher stage of conscious awareness as ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’,²⁰ a phrase nowhere found in Mark’s writings.
2. This ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’ does not, however, connote a new and distinct gift of the Spirit, but according to the Homilies it is nothing else than the developed and conscious awareness of the gift of the Spirit inherent in water baptism. As with Mark, it is water baptism that constitutes the ’source’ of all our life in the Spirit.
3. lf the Homilies and Mark prove thus far to be in substantial agreement, in their respective answers to the third question there is a significant difference between them. The Homilies emphasize various outward experiences that accompany the conscious awareness of the Spirit, in a way that Mark does not. Macarius speaks, for example, about a vision of divine light received by the spiritual aspirant,²¹! and about his illumination by ‘non-material and divine fire’.²² These Macarian texts concerning light and fire had an important influence upon the mystical theology of the fourteenth-century Byzantine Hesychasts, and they were taken up in particular by St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). The Homilies also attach more importance than Mark does to the gift of tears. Only if we ‘weep’ shall we experience the ‘power” of the Spirit:
   ‘If anyone is naked because he lacks the divine and heavenly garment which is the power of the Spirit… let him weep and beseech the Lord that he may receive the spiritual garment from heaven.’ ²³

Unlike Mark, the Homilies speak explicitly about trance-like and ecstatic experiences:

Sometimes a person when praying has fallen into a kind of trance (e c t a s i V ) and has found himself standing in church before the sanctuary; and three loaves of bread were offered to him, leavened with oil…

There have been other occasions, Macarius continues, when the impact of a vision of inner light has proved so devastating that a person loses normal self-control:

Swallowed up in the sweetness of contemplation, he was no longer master of himself, but became like a fool and a barbarian towards this world, so overwhelmed was he by the excessive love and sweetness of the hidden mysteries that were being revealed to him. ²⁴

There is no parallel in Mark’s writings to this kind of language.

There is even a possible allusion in one Homily to speaking with tongues. Recalling the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, Macarius says: As for the apostles, they cried out willy-nilly. Just as a flute, when air is blown through it, gives out the sound that the flute-player wants, so it is also with the apostles and those who resemble them. When they were ‘born from above’ (John 3:3,7) and received the Paraclete Spirit, the Spirit spoke in them as He wanted.²⁵

The reference here to those who ‘resemble’ the apostles suggests that the speaking with tongues on the day of Pentecost has been continued in later ages of the Church. But this is an isolated passage which has no exact parallel elsewhere in Macarian corpus, and so it would be unwise to base too much upon it.

Counterbalancing this passage on Pentecost, there are other occasions when the Homilies condemn the use of ‘unseemly and confused cries’ during times of prayer. Probably the author has in mind certain ‘enthusiasts’ among the more extreme Messalians:

Those who draw near to the Lord ought to make their prayers in quietness and peace and great tranquillity, not with unseemly and confused cries …. There are some who during prayer make use of unseemly cries, as if relying on their own bodily strength, not realizing how their thoughts deceive them, and thinking that they can achieve perfect success by their own strength. ²⁶

Yet even if the Homilies do not in fact provide clear support for glossolalia, it is evident that their author (or authors) expected the conscious experience of the Spirit to be marked by other external expressions, such as tears and ecstatic visions.

St. John Climacus: the baptism of tears

The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, provides relatively little material to help us in answering our questions. Although The Ladder contains a few (but not very many) references to baptism, and also a few (but not very many) references to the Holy Spirit, nowhere are these two themes – the gift of baptism and the grace of the Spirit – mentioned together in the same passage. It is clear from numerous statements in The Ladder that Climacus attaches great importance to personal experience, but he does not develop the point in explicit detail.

There are, however, two passages in The Ladder that are significant for our present purpose. First, Climacus indicates that there is a direct connection between the gift of the Spirit and obedience to a spiritual father or mother:

If you are constantly upbraided by your director and yet acquire greater faith in him and love for him, then you may be sure that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in your soul and the power of the Most High has overshadowed you. ²⁷

To some contemporary Christians there might seem to be a contradiction between, on the one hand, strict obedience to a spiritual guide and, on the other, the personal experience of freedom in the Holy Spirit. But this is not the way in which Orthodoxy views the matter. On the contrary, it is precisely through obedience that we learn freedom. The role of the spiritual guide or ’soul friend’ (Celtic amchara) is not to act as a substitute for the Spirit, but it is specifically through our relationship with our guide that we are helped to attain personal awareness of the Spirit’s presence. So far from discouraging a direct contact with the Spirit, our guide seeks to open the door for us; to vary the metaphor, he or she aims to be transparent.

The second and more important passage in The Ladder concerns the gift of tears. Climacus, as Symeon the New Theologian was later to do, regards this as a second baptism, which is to be placed on an even higher level than the first baptism in sacramental water:

The tears that come after baptism are greater than baptism itself, though it may seem rash to say so. Baptism washes off those evils that were previously within us, whereas the sins committed after baptism are washed away by tears. The baptism received by us as children we have all defiled, but we cleanse it anew with our tears. If God in His love for the human race had not given us tears, those being saved would be few indeed and hard to find.²⁸

This is relevant to the third of our questions. What outward signs accompany direct experience of the Spirit? Climacus says nothing about speaking with tongues, but he attaches deep value to the charisma of spiritual tears. The gift of tears is also strongly emphasized by Climacus’s contemporary, St. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian).²⁹

St. Symeon the New Theologian: ‘he cries and shouts’

Let us now return to the author with whom we started, St. Symeon the New Theologian. How far do his answers to our three questions correspond to those found in Mark the Monk and the Macarian Homilies?

(i) It might seem at first sight that Symeon excludes the possibility of an inner presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet real; for) in a passage already cited, he states unambiguously, ‘Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.³⁰ Taken literally, these words suggest that Symeon identifies the reality of grace with the conscious awareness of it. This is often regarded as a typically ‘Messalian’ deviation (although what the Messalians actually believed is notoriously difficult to establish). In fact, however, there are other passages in Symeon which imply that he did not in fact endorse such an extreme position. More than once he definitely allows for an unconscious working of grace:

Let us seek Christ, with whom we have been clothed through holy baptism (cf. Gal. 3:27). Yet we have been stripped of Him through our evil deeds; for, although in our infancy we were sanctified without being aware of it (a n a i s q h t v V ), yet in our youth we defiled ourselves. ³¹

As it is written, ‘He who endures to the end will be saved’ (Matt. 10:22). Not only will he be saved, but he will receive help – at first, without being aware of it, then with conscious awareness, and soon afterwards with the illumination that comes from Almighty God. ³²

When the fear of God leads someone to cut off his own will, God grants him His will, without the person knowing it, in a way that he does not perceive. ³³

Symeon – more than Mark the Monk, more even than the Macarian Homilies - attaches crucial importance to the attainment, by every Christian without exception, of a direct, conscious awareness of the Spirit; and this may sometimes lead him to exaggerated statements. But, as the passages quoted above clearly indicate, he does not altogether exclude an unconscious presence of Christ and the Spirit. He too, in common with Mark and Macarius, envisages a progress from a ’secret’ to an ‘active’ indwelling.

(ii) Does Symeon also agree with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’, not as a new grace, but as the ‘revelation’ and fulfilment of water baptism? It has to be admitted that his answer is less clear than that of his two predecessors. As we have seen, he asserts that water baptism is no more than a type’, while the second baptism of tears is the truth’.³⁴ He even suggests, in words that I find disturbing, that not all the baptized receive Christ:

Let no one say, ‘ I have received and I possess Christ from the moment of holy baptism.’ Such a person should recognize that it is not all the baptized that’ receive Christ through baptism, but only those who are strong in faith and in perfect knowledge.³⁵

Perhaps Symeon’s point here is that none of us should rest satisfied with a purely external and mechanical appeal to our baptism; we have to live out its effects. But in that case it would have been clearer if he had said, as Mark does: ‘We receive Christ in baptism, but we only become aware of Him if we fulfil the commandments.’

In general, however, Symeon affirms categorically that baptism confers forgiveness of sins, total liberation from tyranny, and the indwelling presence of the Spirit. To use his own words:

Descending from on high our Master through His own death destroyed the sentence of death against us. He entirely destroyed the condemnation that we inherited from the transgression of our first father, and through holy baptism He completely delivers us from it, regenerating and refashioning us; and He places us in this’ world altogether free and no longer subject to the tyranny of the enemy, honouring us with our original power of voluntary choice. ³⁶

You renewed me through the holy baptism that fashioned me anew, adorning me with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁷

Through divine baptism we become children and heirs of God, we are clothed with God Himself, we become His limbs, and we receive the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within us, which is the royal seal…. All these things, and other things yet greater than these, are given to the baptized immediately from the moment of divine baptism. ³⁸

After a careful assessment of the evidence, Archimandrite Athanasios Hatzopoulos concludes:

When Symeon speaks of Baptism in the Spirit, he means the grace of the renewal of sacramental Baptism. It is the same grace of the Spirit that makes water-Baptism a sacrament, which in turn makes possible the gradual renewal of the image…. The grace man receives in Baptism, which promotes his spiritual growth, acts as a starting-point in which the end is present in the beginning. ³⁹

In the last resort, then, Symeon concurs with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – the second baptism of tears – as the full realization of sacramental baptism, not as a new and different grace. But it has to be confessed that here Symeon constitutes a borderline case.

(iii) Like Macarius, but unlike Mark, the New Theologian speaks in some detail about the outward experiences that accompany a full conscious awareness of the Spirit. First of all, he lays great emphasis upon the gift of tears: the second baptism is precisely ‘a baptism of tears’. Here he appeals explicitly to John Climacus. Secondly, he assigns a central place in his mystical theology to the vision of divine light. This light, so he believes, is God Himself; Christ may sometimes speak to us from the light, although His bodily form is not seen m the vision. Thirdly, he describes ecstatic phenomena which have obvious parallels in modem Pentecostalism:

A person who has within him the light of the most Holy Spirit, unable to endure it, falls prostrate upon the ground; and he cries out and shouts in terror and great fear, for he sees and experiences something that surpasses nature, thought and imagination. He becomes as one whose entrails have been set ablaze: devoured by fire and unable to bear the scorching flame, he is beside himself, and he cannot control himself at all. And though he sheds unceasing tears that bring him some relief, the fire of his longing is kindled to yet fiercer flames. Then he weeps more abundantly and, washed by the flood of his tears, he shines as lightning with an- ever-increasing brilliance. When he is entirely aflame and becomes as light, then is fulfilled the saying, ‘God is joined in unity with gods and is known by them. ⁴⁰

It is not surprising that Symeon’s writings are popular among contemporary Orthodox who have come under the influence of the charismatic movement.

In conclusion, then, we may claim to have found a large measure of convergence between our Patristic witnesses:

1. All agree that it is possible to possess the Holy Spirit within oneself, without being conscious of His presence.
2. All agree that the ’second baptism’ – the baptism of tears or ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – is an extension and fulfilment of the first baptism bestowed sacramentally with water. ‘Spirit baptism’ is not to be seen as conferring an entirely new grace, different from that conferred through “water baptism’.
3. Some Eastern Christian authors, such as Mark the Monk, are reticent in describing the outward signs that may accompany conscious awareness of the Spirit. Others, such as Macarius and Symeon, enter into much fuller detail, referring in particular to the gift of tears, the vision of divine light and even on occasion to something that resembles the modem experience of speaking with tongues. But their allusions to this last are very infrequent.

Of these three points, the second will surely prove of crucial importance in any future Orthodox-Pentecostal dialogue.

Footnotes

1. Alexander A. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims: being an account of a sojourn in the White See Monastery and a journey by the old trade route from the Arctic See to Moscow (London, no date [ca.1931), p.181.1 am grateful to Dr. David N. Collins, of the University of Leeds, for drawing my attention to this passage.

2. In the Image and Likeness of God (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood 1974), p.152.

3. Hymn 27:125-32.

4. See Kallistos Ware, Tradition and Personal Experience in Later Byzantine Theology', Eastern Churches Review 3:2 (1970), pp.131-41, especially pp. 135-9.

5. Practical and Theological Chapters 1:35-36.

6. Catechesis 21:139-40.

7. Sources Chretiennes 156 (Paris 1969), p. 151.

8. On Baptism (PG [= J.P. Migne, Patrotogia Graeca] 65:1028BC). It is somewhat surprising that Mark, while speaking at length about baptism, says very little about the eucharist.

9. On Baptism (,PG 65:996C, 1016D).

10. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 85 (PG 65:944A).

11. On Baptism (PG 65:993C).

12. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 56 (PG 65:937D).

13. On the Spiritual Law 12 (PG 65:908A).

14. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 57, 83 (PG 65:940A, 941 CD).

15. B43:6.

16. C28:3.

17. Great Letter (ed. Wemer Jaeger), p.236, line 8.

18. B43:6.

19. B 25:2, §§2-4.

20. H 26:23; 27:17; 32:4; 47:1; etc. •

21. See, for example, H 1-8,10.

22. H 25:9-10.

23. H20:1.

24. H 8:3.

25. C 15:4.

26. H 6:4.

27. Ladder, Step 4 (PG 88:725D).

28. Ladder, Step 7 (PG 88-.804B).

29. See his Ascetical Homilies 14 and 37 (35), tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston 1984), pp.82-83, 174: cited in Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood 1995), p.101.

30. See note 3.

31. Catechesis 2:139-42.

32. Catechesis 26:63-66.

33. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:76.

34. See note 5.

35. Ethical Discourse 10:323-6.

36. Catechesis 5:381-6.

37. Thanksgiving 2:17-18.

38. Letter on Confession 3 (ed. Kari Holl), p.111, line 26 – p.112, line 6.

39. Athanasios Hatzopoulos, Two Outstanding Cases in Byzantine Spirituality (Thessaloniki 1991), pp.135,137.

40. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:21. The final phrase is from St. Gregory of Nazianzus.