The Orthodox Word No. 73

THE ORTHODOX WORD

A Bimonthly Periodical OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT HERMAN OF ALASKA

 

Established with the blessing of His Eminence the late John (Maximovitch), Archbishop of Western America and San Francisco, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia PLATINA, CALIFORNIA 96076

1977, vol. 13, no. 2 (73)
March-April

ISSN 0030-5839

CONTENTS

55 I. M. Andreyev: True Orthodox Convert from the Russian Intelligentsia

68 The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God (VII) by Archbishop John Maximovitch

74 Orthodox Monasticism in 5th and 6th Century Gaul

94 Two New Miracles of Archbishop John Maximovitch

COVER: I. M. Andreyev in 1963.

All unsigned articles are written by the fathers of the St. Herman Brotherhood.

MICROFILM copies of all back issues and of individual articles are available from Xerox University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI., 48106.

Copyright 1977 by the Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.

Published bimonthly by the Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. Second-class postage paid at Platina, California. Yearly subscription $7, two years $12, three years $16. Office of Publication: Beegum Gorge Road, Platina, California.

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THE ORTHODOX WORD, PLATINA, CALIFORNIA, 96076, U.S.A.

 

I. M. ANDREYEV

1894 - December 17-30, 1976

TRUE ORTHODOX CONVERT FROM THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA

AT THE DAWN of the 20th century, the Russian intellectual class — the intelligentsia — had wandered far from the Orthodox Christian roots of Russian life. The promising beginnings in the mid-19th century of a genuine Orthodox philosophy able to meet the challenge of Western ideas (Kireyevsky, Khomiakov) had few followers. With a few exceptions (such as Constantine Leontiev) the Russian intelligentsia in the second half of the 19th century went far away from the Orthodox Church, turning ever more to Western revolutionary ideas, ending in materialism and Marxism.

The natural reaction against this materialism in the late 19th century did not take an Orthodox form. The powerful religious philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev influenced many to return to religion of a sort — but to a "free" religion, not the Orthodoxy of Byzantine and Russian tradition. As a result, the Russian religious "renaissance" of the early 20th century was remote from Orthodoxy; it was a current of religious "freethinking" that prepared the ground for "renovationism" in Russia and for religious "liberalism" and outright heresy in the Diaspora.

In many minds the impression remains that the Russian intelligentsia, even when religious, is basically free-thinking, modernist, renovationist, even when its members join the ranks of the Orthodox clergy, while they are opposed only by "narrow church circles" which have no "creativity," but simply preserve the church tradition of the past without any answer to the "problems of the time."

Such an over-simplified view does not do justice to the integrity of the genuine bearers of tradition, who transmit the Orthodox patristic philosophy of life without the great crises and "conversions" and fanfare of the intelligentsia, and perform indeed a difficult and creative task in living and transmitting it against all the attacks of the modern world; nor does it pay sufficient attention to those members of the intelligentsia whose conversion from materialism and Western ideas is complete and not partial, and who therefore become part of the preservers of tradition and cease being a part of the rebellious intelligentsia.

These latter "converts" are invariably and especially disowned by the liberal intelligentsia, and their views are not seen as worthy of respect. But their experience of philosophical and spiritual growth is of great value, whether for younger Russians or Western converts whose experience in our times (so hostile to tradition) is much closer to theirs than to those who never rebelled. One such convert, an inspiring example for our times, was I. M. Andreyev, whose conversion and spiritual growth can be followed for the most part in excerpts from his own writings.

IVAN MIKHAILOVICH ANDREYEVSKY (Andreyev being his literary pseudonym) was born on March 14, 1894, of well-to-do parents in St. Petersburg and attended secondary schools in that city. He had at least one brother and one sister (the poetess Maria Shkapskaya). He evidently was raised in Orthodox piety (he twice had contact with St. John of Kronstadt), but in late adolescence he entered a period of "rebellion." His outlook at the end of his secondary schooling may be seen in the following account by someone who knew him then, Nicholas Sergeev (private letter of February 7, 1977):

"Ivan Mikhailovich came to the sixth class of the Vyedensky Gymnasia in 1911-12; where he had been before that I don't know. He sat two seats away from me; he was a serious boy, never joked, was a fairly good student... I sang in the choir of our house church, but I never saw I. M. in church. In the seventh class, I believe in November, 1912, we were all thunderstruck when we found out from the newspapers that a revolutionary group had been discovered (in our school and in the Wideman Gymnasia) — I.M. and a student of the class ahead of him, in whose room a mimeograph machine and proclamations had been found (the latter killed himself). We didn't see I. M. in the Gymnasia after that. I can only write what was said: there was a trial; the participants of the group were taken under the protection of the millionaire Shacht and sent to study in Switzerland."

The beginning of Andreyev's intellectual and spiritual path, therefore, is clear: he was an unchurchly, deadly-serious, revolutionary-minded youth, such as were common in the Russia of the early 20th century.

Apparently he finished his secondary schooling in Switzerland, and we next hear of him in Paris. "In 1914 I was a young student of the Philosophy Department of the Sorbonne, and I had the right of attending lectures at the College-de-France. There I listened to Lalande and Bergson." He also attended the lectures of Emile Durkheim, Levy-Bruel, and other noted philosophers and scientists of that time, and completed his studies in the department of philosophy at the Sorbonne. Most of all he was under the influence of Bergson: "Bergson lectured with inspiration, improvised, thought out loud, created on the lecture platform, and ruled the minds of the young generation, especially of Russians. I was among the latter." ("The Path of Prof. S. A. Askoldov," in Orthodox Way for 1955, Jordanville, p. 55; all sources translated from Russian.)

Here again it is not difficult to understand the course of Andreyev's intellectual growth. The young "revolutionary," broadened by exposure to some of the leading scientific and philosophical minds of Europe, made the same jump "from Marxism to idealism" that was then being made by Bulgakov, Berdayev, and other famous members of the Russian intelligentsia. The philosophy of Bergson was a reaction against 19th-century materialism and atheism which strove to attain some higher reality by means of "intuition," making use of the then fashionable scientific philosophy in order to create a new philosophy of "creative evolution," where in the world is viewed as a reality constantly changing, constantly being created, constantly striving towards something beyond itself. "God" Himself, according to Bergson, is constantly moving and changing, and the "worlds" He creates are in a constant process of "evolution," lower beings being transformed into higher with virtually no limit to the upward surge of this irreversible process: "There is a center from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fireworks display... God, thus defined, has nothing of the already-made; he is unceasing life, action, freedom... All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance, and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death" (Bergson, Creative Evolution). Such a philosophy must have been alluring indeed to a 20-year-old "philosopher," just awakened to the insufficiency of a materialistic philosophy and the utter stupidity of atheism, but not yet ready to see any other way out of the crisis of modern European philosophy than a vague and romantic irrationalism. The philosophy of Bergson did not leave a deep trace on the mature world-view of Andreyev; it was, rather, an important stage in his assimilation of the best of modern "wisdom," which enabled him later to be a brilliant apologist for the higher wisdom of Orthodoxy. His older contemporary, Berdayev, never left this immature stage of "romantic idealism"; but Andreyev advanced, one step at a time, along a path that was to take him to true orthodoxy.

It was Bergson who introduced Andreyev to a more mature philosopher than himself. In Andreyev's own words: "Once, after one of his inspired lectures, brilliant in form, Bergson asked those who surrounded him in the corridor: who, in their opinion, was the most remarkable thinker in the world at the present time? Seeing the perplexity of his listeners, he clearly and distinctly said: 'It is a modest Russian philosopher, Askoldov by name.' It was extremely flattering for me, a Russian student, to hear such an opinion about a Russian philosopher; but to my shame I had to acknowledge that I heard the name of Askoldov then for the first time and knew absolutely nothing about him" (Ibid., p. 55). A few years later he was to meet this remarkable and little-known Russian philosopher and become his disciple.

Andreyev returned to Russia after the outbreak of the Revolution, already much changed from when he had left. He was no longer under the spell of revolutionary ideas and took no part in the Revolution that swirled about him. He took up advanced studies in medicine and psychiatry, at the Bekhterev Institute in Petrograd, and these studies also served for his intellectual and philosophical development. Later he was to say: "I came to God through science," and this statement well reveals his spiritual life's path: through a burning love for truth (as opposed to the opinions and prejudices that often usurp the name of science), he came finally to the Truth itself.

In the first years of the Soviet regime he was also studying literature at Petersburg University; indeed, his interest in psychiatry had originally been aroused by the depths of the human soul which he had found revealed in the novels of Dostoyevsky. In literature also he was seeking truth first and foremost.

The intellectual vigor and depth of Andreyev's student years are truly astonishing. Obviously a man of genius, he received in these years three doctorates: in medicine, literature, and philosophy; a few years later he was to add a fourth: in theology.

Philosophically, Andreyev came at this time under the influence of N. Lossky, one of the most renowned Russian philosophers of the time, an "idealist" and "intuitionist" (but rather "liberal" in his Orthodoxy) who brought Andreyev a little closer to his own Orthodox roots. But the most important event in his intellectual life was his meeting, at Petersburg University in 1919, with S. A. Askoldov, the Russian philosopher who had been pointed out to him in Paris by Bergson.

The nature of the influence of Askoldov upon Andreyev cannot be understood by reference to the pitiable academic world of today, which is oriented to the passing down of fragmented knowledge and opinions and not a wholeness of world-view. "For the first time after Bergson," writes Andreyev, "I experienced the spiritual awe of contact with a man of genius. I felt that I had found, at last, a real teacher" (Ibid., p. 56). "I learned from him true philosophizing" (Outlines of the History of Russian Literature, p. 305). Askoldov taught him much about philosophy and introduced him to his own philosopher-friends, such as Fr. Paul Florensky and Fr. Theodore Andreyev; but more importantly, Andreyev absorbed from his teacher a whole attitude of mind and soul which was just what he needed for his own further intellectual and spiritual growth. "Everything I came to know of what Askoldov had written produced on me an exceptionally powerful impression, because it directly and clearly answered to the deepest questions of my spirit" (Orthodox Way, 1950, p. 57).

Askoldov had a constant "will for righteousness and truth... Intellectual dishonesty always evoked in him an explosion of dissatisfaction" (Ibid., p. 62). Andreyev himself inherited from his teacher this intellectual uprightness that could not tolerate the slightest dishonesty or fakery, whether in philosophy or church life.

From Askoldov, Andreyev also learned of the often complex organic relationship between good and evil, and of the necessity to choose in real life “primary good” even if it is joined to a “secondary evil.” For example, the political and social order of Imperial Russia was a primary good (because founded on God and Orthodoxy) joined to secondary evils (moral defects of some of its representatives, social injustices, etc., while the Revolution even at its best offered a secondary good (the correction of injustices) joined to a primary evil (the overthrow of the God-ordained order, the installation of atheism). This is the key also, in Askoldov’s view, to understanding Antichrist, who will seem “good” to those who have lost the Christian hierarchy of values and do not see the warfare against Christ and His Church hidden beneath his mask of “humanitarianism.”

Askoldov opened up to Andreyev the possibility for a modern man to believe in miracles and the immortality of the soul, and gave him “the key to a true understanding of contemporary world events: the recognition of our times as apocalyptic” (Ibid., p. 64). When reminded of the “mistakes” of those Christian thinkers in the past who thought their times also were apocalyptic, “Askoldov would usually reply that they had not been mistaken then; and he would give an example: It happens that people are near death, and this is known and felt by them, as also by the physicians who are treating them and by their close relatives. But then such a man suddenly recovers. One cannot say that he had not been near death; he had been near death, but then recovered. So also the world has been several times near death, and those who are sensitive in religious matters have felt it, and there was no mistake in this. So also now: the world is ‘near death’” (Ibid., p. 64).

Askoldov further influenced Andreyev in religious ways by his “religious outlook of soul, thirst for purity, and gift of contrite tears of repentance” (Orthodox Way, 1950, p. 61). Once, during the Second World War, when the two were together in a small wooden house and had nowhere to flee during a fierce bombardment, Andreyev was astonished when Askoldov, in the absence of a priest, asked permission to confess his sins to him in the face of death. “I will never forget this confession: a more sincere repentance would be difficult to imagine” (loc. cit.).

In a word, Askoldov brought Andreyev, through his intellectual, moral and religious influence, to the threshold of a true Orthodox Christian consciousness. But soon the disciple was to outgrow the teacher. Askoldov, although Orthodox in religion, had some heretical views, and Andreyev began to argue with him over them, trying to persuade his teacher to become fully Orthodox and not hold to his mistaken views. The profound love and friendship of these two men, who were to share years of Soviet life, exile and war together, produced its most touching fruit on the deathbed of Askoldov in Germany in 1945, from where he wrote Andreyev that he had finally decided to burn his work “On Reincarnation,” having become fully reconciled with everything churchly, largely under Andreyev’s influence (Ibid., p. 60).

It was Askoldov who introduced Andreyev to the first of the more strictly “churchly” influences in his intellectual and spiritual life: Professor (later Priest) Theodore K. Andreyev, whose surname he was to take as his own out of his great respect for him. Andreyev thus writes of his first impression of this brilliant young professor: “In 1921-22 Prof. T. K. Andreyev would sometimes give lectures or, more frequently, debates. Especially striking was his talk at the ‘Home of Scientists,’ in the discussion after the lecture of Prof. N. O. Lossky in 1921, ‘On the Nature of the Satanic,’ when the young professor, with immense feeling and broad erudition, censured the renowned philosopher Lossky, reading as it were a counter-lecture on the theme of ‘The Origin of Evil’” (Fr. M. Polsky, Russia’s New Martyrs, Jordanville, 1957, vol. II, p. 134). This was perhaps the first clear clash which Andreyev had witnessed in his mature years between the wisdom of this world, which he had been pursuing up until then, and the Church’s wisdom, which now began to conquer his mind and soul.

Later, in 1924, after serving briefly as a psychiatrist at the Nikolaevsky Military Hospital, as a professor at Petersburg University, and as a literature instructor in a Petrograd high school, Andreyev was living in a sanitorium near Tsarskoye Selo (sharing a room with Askoldov), where many of the residents were spiritual children of the newly-ordained Father Theodore Andreyev. Here frequent religious and philosophical discussions were held, and Fr. Theodore himself (and Andreyev after him) was noticeably maturing in the strictly Orthodox side of his philosophy, finding his former professor and friend, Father Paul Florensky, to be rather un-Orthodox and even in a refined state of spiritual deception. Father Theodore taught Dogmatic Theology and Liturgics in the “Pastoral Courses” which had been set up in Petrograd by a number of theology professors as an answer to the two other theological schools remaining in the city, a “renovated” and a “liberal” theological institute. Andreyev studied in this actual “theological academy” from 1924 to 1928 and here received his “catacomb” theological degree. A further church influence on Andreyev at this time was Fr. Sergei Tikomirov, spiritual father both of him and of Askoldov; he was a frequent visitor of Optina Monastery and had spiritual contact with its elders. In these years also, beginning after both Andreyev and Askoldov had lost their professorships in the University and were teaching in technical and high schools, the two began to form religious-philosophical groups with the best of their students, sharing with them their maturing Orthodox world-view, books from their library, and their enthusiasm for important religious questions. Out of these groups was formed, in 1926, a “Brotherhood of St. Seraphim of Sarov” — an indication of the direction in which their religious growth was taking them.

By 1926 Andreyev had read a number of Orthodox patristic sources, under whose influence he came to intellectual maturity in Orthodoxy, and had visited a number of Orthodox monasteries, where he saw true Orthodoxy in practice. “Bergson, Lossky, Askoldov: these are the three stages of my philosophical development — philosophical, but not religious. On the latter path I had entirely different teachers: Bishop Theophan the Recluse, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, the Optina Elders, and the ever-memorable Father John of Kronstadt — and then the Philocalia, and, in general, Orthodox patristic literature. With Optina Elder Nectarius I engaged in a long correspondence, and with Elder Dositheus I was in personal contact. Twice I had had personal contact with Father John of Kronstadt also. Being taught by them the strictly Orthodox spiritual method (if one can thus express oneself), I made it secure by means of unforgettable impressions of visits to remarkable Russian monasteries (Valaam, Solovki, the Kiev Caves Lavra, Sarov, Diveyevo, Optina Monastery, and others). As a result, the choice became clear to me between the conservative Orthodoxy of Father John of Kronstadt and the ‘modernized’ Orthodoxy of V. Soloviev and his school. Without wavering, I chose the former path” (Outlines of the History of Russian Literature, p. 304).

Having come to true Orthodoxy, Andreyev finally, on a pilgrimage to St. Seraphim’s Diveyevo Convent, had an experience which he describes as his “spiritual birth.” It was the custom for pilgrims to Diveyevo to remain at least 24 hours in the Convent and perform there the “rule” laid down by St. Seraphim himself: to walk three times around the “canal” of the Mother of God (the path around the Convent), saying a special rule of prayer by prayer-rope, praying for all one’s relations and close ones, and at the end expressing one’s most heartfelt, most needed desire, which would unfailingly be granted, according to one’s prayer. Andreyev thus describes his experience:

“When, at the end of my third circuit of the ‘canal’, having performed the whole rule, I wished to express my heartfelt desires, something miraculous occurred to me, evidently by the great mercy of St. Seraphim. I was suddenly gripped by an entirely special, quiet, warm, and fragrant joy — an undoubting conviction with my whole being of the existence of God and of an entirely real communion in prayer with Him. And it became entirely evident and clear to me that any request for anything earthly would be equal to the prayer: Lord, depart from me and deprive me of Thy wondrous gift... And inwardly I fervently addressed God, ‘O Lord, give me nothing, take away from me all earthly prosperity, but only do not deprive me of the joy of communion with Thee, or, if it is impossible to preserve this always in our life, then grant me remembrance of heart, grant me the possibility of preserving to death the remembrance of this present blessed minute of the sensing of Thy Holy Spirit!’

“The next day we went to Sarov. We venerated the relics of St. Seraphim with great emotion, with spiritual fear and reverence. I sensed that I had been spiritually born the preceding day at Diveyevo. Everything had become new within me. Previously I had not understood such a simple truth, that spiritual things are more distinct from those of the soul than the latter from bodily things. But now I understood this all well. Within, in the depths of my soul, it was quiet, calm, joyful. The outward miracles at the shrine of St. Seraphim, which occured before my eyes, did not astonish me. All this seemed simple and natural...

“My whole life after my pilgrimage to Sarov Monastery changed. The Lord took away from me, in accordance with my prayer at the canal, all earthly goods, but He preserved forever in me the remembrance of that moment when, in His limitless kindness, by the mercy of the Most Holy Mother of God and the prayers of St. Seraphim, I, a sinner, totally undeservedly, was vouchsafed to experience in myself the quiet, joyful, gentle and fragrant wafting of the Holy Spirit of the Lord” (“A Pilgrimage to Sarov and Diveyevo in 1926,” in Orthodox Way, 1953, pp. 20-21, 25).

Thus did Andreyev, after his intellectual maturity, come to spiritual maturity. He himself was later to describe to his students these years of his intellectual and spiritual formation as his full growth from “body” (science, medicine) to “soul” (literature, philosophy) to “spirit” (theology, true Orthodoxy), using the threefold division of the human personality discussed by St. Seraphim, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, and many other Fathers, on the basis of the words of St. Paul (I Cor. 2:14-15, etc.). By “spirit,” of course, is not meant a separate component of man’s nature, as some heretics have taught, but only the higher part of the soul, where contact with God and the spiritual world is opened up, as opposed to the lower part of the soul, which is occupied with the normal human pursuits of art and science, philosophy and culture. The awareness — in first-hand experience — of this critical distinction between soul and spirit was later to give to his teaching a depth and preciseness which few philosophers and thinkers attain.

In 1926 Andreyev reached philosophical and religious maturity; in 1927 his period of testing began. In the latter year Metropolitan Sergius issued his infamous “Declaration,” and the Orthodox faithful were divided into two camps. Andreyev, together with most of those in his circle of friends — Askoldov, Fr. Theodore Andreyev, Fr. Sergei Tikhomirov, even Fr. Paul Florensky — protested the “Declaration” and joined the opposition to it, out of which was formed the present-day Catacomb Church. In this critical choice the soundness and rightness of Andreyev’s spiritual formation was confirmed.

Andreyev’s activities in first protesting the “Declaration” and then suffering imprisonment (at Solovki from 1929-31) and banishment for his religious views, are described in some of his articles which are printed below. During the 1930’s he was an active participant in the Catacomb “Josephite” movement while serving as a physician and psychiatrist wherever he was able to do so; it is known that he attended the catacomb services of Father Ismael Rozhdestvensky and was his spiritual son for a while. Just before the Second World War he was chief physician of the Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Novgorod. When the Germans advanced he found himself in the occupied zone, and when they retreated he went to Germany, settling finally (in 1950) at Holy Trinity Monastery near Jordanville, New York. Here he joined the faculty of Holy Trinity Seminary, which during his time (the 1950’s and 1960’s) included some of the most remarkable minds of the Russian Diaspora, who were indeed a group of tradition-minded Orthodox thinkers without rival in the whole Orthodox world for the depth and refinement of their thought in theology, philosophy, and literature, and for the wholeness and balance of their view of the present-day church situation. (Apart from the two theologian-rectors, Archbishops Vitaly and Averky, one may name Archimandrite Constantine, Fr. M. Pomazansky, I. M. Kontzevitch, N. Talberg, and others.)

Unfortunately, owing precisely to the lack of depth and refinement among Orthodox Christians in general today, and also to the ingrained modesty and humility of these superb products of genuine Orthodox tradition, these Orthodox thinkers, Andreyev among them, have seldom been appreciated at their full value, and even those who have lived and studied in their midst have too seldom realized what treasures they could have mined from their wealth of Orthodox knowledge and experience. Their spiritual and intellectual maturity, their old-world refinement, their subtle art of understatement, the complexity yet wholeness of their Orthodox world-view — all this has largely gone over the heads of a younger generation (whether Russian, Greek, or convert) that too often seeks easy answers to over-simplified questions, that is so easily scandalized by slight flaws that it misses the whole point of a profoundly Orthodox life’s work, whose spiritual immaturity and lack of intellectual culture simply cannot follow the thought-processes of a mature Orthodox thinker, whose lack of artistic and literary sensitivity can lead to false spirituality, making one unaware of the elements of the lower part of “soul” which can usurp the higher place of the “spirit” if one is not trained to distinguish them, whose deficiency in Orthodox feeling renders it blind to the Orthodox giants in its midst. We all suffer from this. All the more, then, must we strive to understand these giants who have now all but departed, leaving all would-be defenders of Orthodoxy in a very precarious position against the increasingly subtle temptations of an anti-Christian age. Without a broadening and deepening of our Orthodox world-view, without absorbing at least something of the genuine Orthodox teaching of the great men who have handed down Orthodoxy to us — we will scarcely survive.

Archbishop Vitaly of Jordanville highly valued Andreyev as an Orthodox confessor and thinker; on numerous occasions he blessed him to put on the church-server’s sticharion and give sermons in the monastery church. His students remember him as a very enthusiastic, eloquent, and inspiring lecturer (on the Sorbonne level rather than the usual seminary level!), teaching subjects in which he wholeheartedly believed and to which he was thoroughly committed. He was absolutely intolerant only of one thing: fakery, whether in spiritual or intellectual life.

In America, Andreyev was an active participant in church life as well as in scholarly and scientific societies. He was a director of and regularly gave addresses on medical subjects to the Pirogov Society (an organization of Russian physicians in the United States) and participated in and gave lectures to the Pushkin literary society. Outside the Seminary, his most beloved church work was bound up with the St. Vladimir Society, founded by Archbishop Vitaly with the aims of building a St. Vladimir Memorial Church in Cassville, New Jersey (where he is now buried) before the thousandth anniversary of Russia’s Baptism (1988), and constantly reminding Russians in America of their Orthodox roots in Holy Russia. Andreyev was editor of the annual St. Vladimir Calendar, where he printed his own and many other theological and philosophical articles in defense of true Orthodoxy and documenting the origin and history of the Catacomb Church in Russia. Every year on St. Vladimir’s feast day, when Russians from all over the Eastern United States would come on pilgrimage to the Memorial Church, Andreyev would give flaming addresses on true Orthodoxy, the combating of worldliness and atheism, the future resurrection of Orthodox Russia, and the principles of Orthodox monarchy (without which he found the future of Russia to be unthinkable).

I. M. ANDREYEV is not easy to classify as an Orthodox thinker. Corresponding to his four doctor’s degrees, he was a qualified physician and psychiatrist, historian of literature, philosopher and theologian. His writings reveal elements of all these intellectual strands simultaneously, and that is what gives them a rather unique quality and value.

The central thread of his Orthodox teaching is the defense of true Orthodoxy. On the most obvious (“jurisdictional”) level, this meant a defense of the True-Orthodox (Catacomb) Church of Russia to which he had belonged and for which he became one of the chief apologists in the free world. Among the Russian “jurisdictions” of the Diaspora, he found only the Russian Church Outside of Russia to have the spirit of the Catacomb Church inside Russia, the others being modernizing separatists from it, spiritually akin to the Moscow Patriarchate which at various times they have recognized to have “spiritual” authority over them. His defense of the Catacomb Church was always on a very high level, always on theological and spiritual grounds, and even in the height of polemical arguments, and after his own bitter experience in the Soviet Union, he never went to unnecessary extremes in his condemnation of the betrayal of Orthodoxy by the Moscow Patriarchate. Even in his celebrated and provocative article, “Does the Moscow Patriarchate Have Grace?” (Orthodox Russia, 1948, nos. 17, 18, 19), after enumerating the reasons why one might doubt that the Mysteries of the Moscow Patriarchate are grace-filled he carefully steps back from any incautious statement with the very wise observation that “the falling away of a Church from God and the conversion of it into a ‘synagogue of satan’ is a process. But the Soviet church has entered on the path which will lead it to this ‘synagogue’ — of this there can be no doubt.” Without presuming to make any judgment himself on this question, he leaves it to the decision of a future Council of the whole Russian Orthodox Church. This whole article in general is quite profound philosophically and theologically, setting forth the same idea as the “catacomb documents” of 1971: that the Soviet authority is not a true authority requiring obedience, according to St. Paul (Rom. 13:1), but an illegitimate anti-Christian authority. With great insight he speaks of the “mystical power” of Communism, which he sees as a new phenomenon in human history, a direct preparation for the reign of Antichrist. In other articles he subjects Communism itself to a relentless scientific and philosophical criticism, showing that while it was powerless to prove the truth of atheism and materialism, it did prove (with its endless murders, tortures, crimes, and destruction) the existence of objective evil and its founder, the devil. (See “On the Character of Scientific-Atheistic Propaganda in Soviet Russia,” Orthodox Way, 1956; “Christianity and Bolshevism,” St. Vladimir Calendar, 1955.) His outlines of the History of the Russian Church from the Revolution to the Present Day (Jordanville, 1952) is virtually the only book of its kind that examines the “jurisdictional” history of 20th-century Russian Orthodoxy from the point of view of faithfulness to Christ and church tradition. For Andreyev, the concept of true Orthodoxy is entirely permeated with the experience of the new catacombs of our century: everything he wrote has a feeling of urgency, seriousness, and deep commitment that is often not understandable to those who have not lived under conditions of persecution, betrayal, and secret (often literally underground) church meetings. His teaching constitutes a catacomb theology and philosophy for Orthodox Christians today, remote from the idle academic exercises of most “Orthodox theologians” in the 20th century.

All of Andreyev’s writings reflect his philosophical background, but he made perhaps the best use of his philosophical mind in his articles on the uses and limitations of science. Trained scientists themselves are seldom able to look sufficiently far outside their specialty in order to place science in a broader and deeper philosophical context; and those who attempt to evaluate science from the viewpoint of theology or academic philosophy are often too general and imprecise in their conclusions. Andreyev, however, being both a trained scientist and a philosopher — as well as a theologian — was in a uniquely advantageous position to view all three fields of knowledge in proper perspective. His article, “Christian Truth and Scientific Knowledge” (Orthodox Way, 1961) brilliantly defines the spheres and methods of these two kinds of knowledge and points out how there can be no conflict whatever between true science and true Christianity. “Only with a superficial knowledge do there arise false contradictions between faith and knowledge, beween religion and science. With a deeper knowledge these false contradictions disappear without a trace . . . A broad, deep scientific and philosophical education not only does not hinder faith in God, but makes it easier, because the whole arsenal of the authentic attainments of scientific-philosophical thought is a natural apologetic material for religious faith. Moreover, honest knowledge often has a methodical opportunity of uncovering corruptions of faith and exposing superstitions, whether religious or scientific-philosophical” (p. 72).

In Andreyev’s own case, his scientific and philosophical knowledge was especially valuable in defending Orthodox Christianity against its contemporary attackers. In his textbook, Orthodox Christian Apologetics (the only one of his books to be translated into English, Jordanville, 1957), he attempts to give “a basis for an organically-whole Orthodox conception of the world” (p. 5). In this book he makes full use of scientific facts but does not overestimate their value, realizing that “in the utilization of scientific facts it is necessary to be extremely cautious not to become overly absorbed in strictly scientific proof as do Roman Catholics, remembering that all sciences give only a temporary hypothetical knowledge, while the object of Apologetics is the eternal and unchangeable truth” (p. 7). He also resists the temptation of overemphasizing criticism of anti-Christian views, “to which inexperienced Christian apologists are exposed,” seeing that Apologetics “should not squander its efforts in trivial criticism of private, narrow-minded fallacies,” but should emphasize “the radiantly-bright image of Christian truth,” presented in the most understandable way, which “convinces one much better than the most exact logical proofs” (p. 6). Faithful to these principles, the book is calm and moderate in tone, broad in scope (making maximum use of non-Orthodox sources when they are relevant), and quite definite in its conclusions, even in spheres which some Orthodox apologists, less scientifically equipped, would prefer to leave indefinite or hazy. Thus, for example, he does not avoid the question of “evolution” where it touches on the origin of man, and he comes to conclusions, on the basis of scientific and patristic evidence, rather different from his youthful faith in Bergson’s evolutionism: “the animal ancestors of mankind exist only in the invention of the Darwinists; they exist nowhere in nature and never existed . . . To deny the fact that man has existed only about 8000 years is hardly possible” (pp. 66-7). His criticism of scientific “uniformitarianism,” and his ideas on the “evolution of the laws of nature” give food for a more thorough patristic investigation of some of the important questions raised by the theory of evolution.

Interestingly, Orthodox Christian Apologetics has penetrated the Iron Curtain and was used extensively by the Moscow priest Fr. Dimitry Dudko in his talks to his flock in 1974 (published in English as Our Hope, Crestwood, N.Y., 1977) — thus proving its apologetic value in present-day Soviet Russia. In Fr. Dimitry’s urgent moral tone, in his emphasis on the importance of suffering, and in his ability to come quickly to the point of an intellectual question, he is akin to Andreyev; but he lacks the preciseness in church questions which Andreyev acquired by his catacomb experience. Despite the fact that Fr. Dimitry quotes more extensively from Andreyev (pp. 68-72, 95-99) than from any other single source in his book, and that he gives his name and the title and date of publication of Orthodox Christian Apologetics — still the translator (who gives information in footnotes on virtually all other writers mentioned) gives no word of information as to who “I. M. Andreyev” might be. A sad but symptomatic commentary on our times: that one of the profoundest Russian minds of the century is a name “unknown” to scholarship — precisely because he rejected the wisdom of this world and chose the path of “conservative,” genuine Orthodoxy.

Of Andreyev’s theological writings one may cite especially his Orthodox Christian Moral Theology (Jordanville, 1966), where he sets forth the general principles of Christian conduct according to patristic teaching, with strict adherence to the Orthodox hierarchy of values, according to which moral conduct is entirely dependent on religious principles and can never be divorced from them to form an “autonomous morality.” He also devoted several articles to the Most Holy Mother of God, contrasting the Orthodox veneration of Her to Protestant and Roman Catholic ideas, and describing his beloved “Blue Feast” — the Annunciation.

Perhaps the most penetrating of Andreyev’s writings are those devoted to Russian literature. His Outlines of the History of Russian Literature in the 19th Century (Jordanville, 1968) is a collection of essays which are virtually unique in literary criticism. They are written with a theological dimension and depth, a philosophical wholeness of world-view, and a psychological insight that are to be found together in no other thinker. His essay on V. Soloviev in this collection is a masterpiece which sensitively analyzes this religious philosopher’s “spiritual experiences” and shows them, on the basis of Orthodox patristic writings, to be classic examples of prelest, spiritual deception. Without losing sympathy for Soloviev (especially in his last years, when he came closer to Orthodoxy), Andreyev uses this article to set clearly against each other the “renovated” Christianity of Soloviev and his followers and the “conservative” Orthodoxy of the Holy Fathers. The “renovationists” attacked the Russian Church especially of the last two centuries as being in a state of “paralysis” (or, in the words of more recent renovationists, “Western captivity”), blind to the multitude of holy ascetics and confessors which that Church has produced precisely in these centuries. “We need no ‘renaissances’ of Christianity, no ‘new religious self-consciousness,’ for Orthodox Christianity has never died and can never die, and there is no ‘new’ religious consciousness that leads to salvation!” (p. 279).

The essay on Dostoyevsky in the same book is a remarkable example of a deeply Christian literary criticism. With deep psychological insight, he seeks the reality of Dostoyevsky’s growth in Christianity, judging his mature Christian message in the light of the Orthodox hierarchy of values, without overlooking the flaws that were also present. Especially striking in this essay is Andreyev’s answer to Ivan Karamazov’s humanitarian concern over the sufferings of children; he cites the Orthodox Lives of Saints which describe the heavenly crowns attained by children for their innocent sufferings.

Other of Andreyev’s writings (for example, “On the Orthodox Christian Moral Upbringing of Pre-school Children”, Orthodox Way, 1959; on St. John of Kronstadt, Orthodox Way, 1958; on the principles of Orthodox monarchy, Orthodox Way, 1951; on the Imperial Martyrs and the need for the Russian people to repent for their regicide and apostasy, (St. Vladimir Calendar, 1972) reveal him to have been a thoroughgoing convert to true “conservative” Orthodoxy, without those many “qualifications” by which numerous converts, both new and old, have shown their failure to understand the wholeness of the Orthodox world-view.

In all his writings, as in his life, Andreyev was a man of great heart. He suffered terribly from the low level of church and moral awareness in our times, both in the Soviet Union and in the free world. It is very likely that his creative years would have been even more fruitful than they were if he had not been weighed down by the feeling that few seem to care deeply for God, for Orthodoxy, for their fellow man. One article especially (printed as an appendix to his Moral Theology) reveals his deep Christian concern, something which truly seems now to be vanishing from the face of the earth.

This article, entitled simply “Weep!” and dedicated to the memory of Dostoyevsky (who more than any other figure in Russian literature described human suffering and its meaning), tells simply of one of the cold and “senseless” crimes of a large American city. A 29-year-old mother in New York City, in a fit of rage, beat to death her two-month-old son, leaving him unimaginably deformed; and she expressed no regret over her crime. Andreyev describes the wounds suffered by the small body with sickening clinical detail — and then stops, knowing that many readers will protest against such “unnecessary” details. “People have become deaf to sufferings. They either do not hear or do not wish to hear about what is done, not in a nightmare, but in reality.” He calls to the Orthodox conscience of his readers. “All for one and one for all are guilty: this is the essence of the social ethic of Christianity . . . We are all guilty, for we are sinful; we do evil, contribute our evil to the universal ‘storehouse of evil.’ And this evil accumulates into an immense universal energy of evil and seeks for its incarnation the vessels of bodies without grace, and when it finds them it becomes incarnate in them and they perform great evil deeds . . Let each one think of himself . . . What were you doing on that evening when this unbelievable but authentic evil deed was performed? Perhaps it was your sin, your immoral deed, your malice, which turned out to be the last little drop which caused the vessel of evil to overflow. This is the way we must reflect, if we are Christians . . .

“Weep, brothers and sisters! Do not be ashamed of these tears! . . . Weep! And let these tears be the fount in which the Lord will baptise the child-martyr, who was probably unbaptized, being chrismated — in place of oil — with his innocent child’s blood. Weep! Let your tears also be a fount of a different energy, an energy of good that fights against the energy of evil, which by its power will save at least one child from innocent tortures and at least one criminal mother from an unforgiveable sin. Let these tears also awaken many of the indifferent . . . Do not be ashamed to weep with tears of grief, compassion, and repentance.”

These words are Andreyev’s testament to us, the fervent cry of his soul. A man of rare erudition and sensitivity, he poured all of his talents into serving God with the whole of his burning heart and soul. For him true Orthodoxy was not a catchword, and not simply a means for preserving himself from the apostasy of a corrupt world. He deeply realized that whoever would preserve his soul shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his soul for My sake shall find it (Matt. 16:25); therefore, deeply rooted in true Orthodoxy, he spent his life in losing his soul, sacrificing himself for the sake of others, out of love for Christ.

True Christianity has become so weak today that all of this may seem strange to many who regard themselves as perfectly Orthodox. Few understood Andreyev in his own lifetime; he was too deep, too burning for them. In a way, he was a sign of the future resurrection of Holy Russia, for which he fervently hoped. Having experienced deeply and fully the attraction of the best of modern wisdom, he ended — not merely by renouncing it — but by surpassing it through making his own the higher wisdom of the Holy Fathers. His “convert” experience is invaluable to us and gives us a key to understanding the heart of true Orthodoxy, the Catacomb Church, in Russia today.

In the latter part of his life Andreyev himself suffered a cruel blow from the coldness of the modern world: he was attacked and beaten by hoodlums in a New York City elevator. He never fully recovered from this, and in his last years his intellectual creativity was gone. For the last months of his life he was mostly unconscious. But even thus, in a way, his prayer to God at the Diveyevo “canal” was answered: “O Lord, take away from me all earthly prosperity . . .” Deprived of his greatest earthly gift, his brilliant intellect, he lived on the spiritual capital which he had acquired up to then. In his address on “The Psychology and Psychopathology of Old Age” (St. Vladimir Calendar, 1970), originally delivered before the Pirogov Society, Andreyev emphasizes that “a great consolation in all sorrows of life in mature years, and especially in old age, is the religious feeling that has been preserved. This consolation can give a quiet, calm old age and help one to calmly accept death as a sleep in the hope that eternal life exists in another better world.”

As God is faithful to those who truly serve Him, we cannot but believe that He answered, in thse last years, the second half of Andreyev’s petition at Diveyevo as well: “Do not deprive me of the joy of communion with Thee, grant me to preserve to death the remembrance of this present blessed moment of the sensing of Thy Holy Spirit.”

The true experience of the Holy Spirit, faithfulness to true Orthodoxy with one’s whole heart and soul: this is the message of I. M. Andreyev to those who have not become too cold in heart to hear it.

 
Andreyev in his student years

 
Ourdoor procession at the "Josephite" parish of the Transfiguration in Petrograd, which Andreyev attended. (Photograph taken in late 1920's, after the first arrest of the priest, Fr. Ismael Rozhdestvensky.)

 Prof. Andreyev with his wife at Jordanville (1954)

 
Prof. Andreyev with Archbishop Andrew (then priest) in the cemetery of New-Diveyevo Convent (1960)


THE ORTHODOX VENERATION OF THE MOTHER OF GOD
by Archbishop John Maximovitch

VII
"ZEAL NOT ACCORDING TO KNOWLEDGE" (Rom. 10:2)

The corruption by the Latins, in the newly-invented dogma of the "Immaculate Conception," of the true veneration of the Most Holy Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary.

WHEN THOSE WHO censured the immaculate life of the Most Holy Virgin had been accused, as well as those who denied Her Ever-virginity, those who denied Her dignity as the Mother of God, and those who disdained Her icons — then, when the glory of the Mother of God had illuminated the whole universe, there appeared a teaching which seemingly exalted highly the Virgin Mary, but in reality denied all Her virtues.

This teaching is called that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and it was accepted by the followers of the Papal throne of Rome. The teaching is this: that "the All-blessed Virgin Mary in the first instant of Her Conception, by the special grace of Almighty God and by a special privilege, for the sake of the future merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin" (Bull of Pope Pius IX concerning the new dogma). In other words, the Mother of God at Her very Conception was preserved from original sin and, by the grace of God, was placed in a state where it was impossible for Her to have personal sins.

Christians had not heard of this before the ninth century, when for the first time the Abbot of Corvey, Paschasius Radbertus, expressed the opinion that the Holy Virgin was conceived without original sin. Beginning from the 12th century, this idea begins to spread among the clergy and flock of the Western church, which had already fallen away from the Universal Church and thereby lost the grace of the Holy Spirit.

However, by no means all of the members of the Roman church agreed with the new teaching. There was a difference of opinion even among the most renowned theologians of the West, the pillars, so to speak, of the Latin church. Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux decisively censured it, while Duns Scotus defended it. From the teachers this division carried over to their disciples: the Latin Dominican monks, after their teacher Thomas Aquinas, preached against the teaching of the Immaculate Conception, while the followers of Duns Scotus, the Franciscans, strove to implant it everywhere. The battle between these two currents continued for the course of several centuries. Both on the one and on the other side there were those who were considered among the Catholics as the greatest authorities.

There was no help in deciding the question in the fact that several people declared that they had had a revelation from above concerning it. The nun Bridget, renowned in the 14th century among the Catholics spoke in her writings about the appearances to her of the Mother of God, Who Herself told her that She had been conceived immaculately, without original sin. But her contemporary, the yet more renowned ascetic Catherine of Sienna, affirmed that in Her conception the Holy Virgin participated in original sin, concerning which she had received a revelation from Christ Himself. (See the book of Archpriest A. Lebedev, Differences in the Teaching on the Most Holy Mother of God in the Churches of East and West.)

Thus, neither on the foundation of theological writings, nor on the foundation of miraculous manifestations which contradicted each other, could the Latin flock distinguish for a long time where the truth was. Roman Popes until Sixtus IV (end of the 15th century) remained apart from these disputes, and only this Pope in 1475 approved a service in which the teaching of the Immaculate Conception was clearly expressed; and several years later he forbade a condemnation of those who believed in the Immaculate Conception. However, even Sixtus IV did not yet decide to affirm that such was the unwavering teaching of the church; and therefore, having forbidden the condemnation of those who believed in the Immaculate Conception, he also did not condemn those who believed otherwise.

Meanwhile, the teaching of the Immaculate Conception obtained more and more partisans among the members of the Roman-Papist church. The reason for this was the fact that it seemed more pious and pleasing to the Mother of God to give Her as much glory as possible. The striving of the people to glorify the Heavenly Intercessor, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the deviation of Western theologians into abstract speculations which led only to a seeming truth (Scholasticism), and finally, the patronage of the Roman Popes after Sixtus IV — all this led to the fact that the opinion concerning the Immaculate Conception which had been expressed by Paschasius Radbertus in the 9th century was already the general belief of the Latin church in the 19th century. There remained only to proclaim this definitely as the church's teaching, which was done by the Roman Pope Pius IX during a solemn service on December 8, 1854, when he declared that the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin was a dogma of the Roman church.

Thus the Roman church added yet another deviation from the teaching which it had confessed while it was a member of the Catholic, Apostolic Church, which faith has been held up to now unaltered and unchanged by the Orthodox Church. The proclamation of the new dogma satisfied the broad masses of people who belonged to the Roman church, who in simplicity of heart thought that the proclamation of the new teaching in the church would serve for the greater glory of the Mother of God, to Whom by this they were making a gift, as it were. There was also satisfied the vainglory of the Western theologians who had defended and worked it out. But most of all the proclamation of the new dogma was profitable for the Roman throne itself, since, having proclaimed the new dogma by his own authority, even though he did listen to the opinions of the bishops of the Catholic church, the Roman Pope by this very fact openly appropriated to himself the right to change the teaching of the Roman church and placed his own voice above the testimony of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. A direct deduction from this was the fact that the Roman Popes were infallible in matters of faith, which indeed this very same Pope Pius IX likewise proclaimed as a dogma of the Catholic church in 1870.

Thus was the teaching of the Western church changed after it had fallen away from communion with the True Church. It has introduced into itself newer and newer teachings, thinking by this to glorify the Truth yet more, but in reality distorting it. While the Orthodox Church humbly confesses what it has received from Christ and the Apostles, the Roman church dares to add to it, sometimes from "zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2), and sometimes by deviating into superstitions and into the "contradictions of knowledge falsely so-called" (I Tim. 6:20). It could not be otherwise. That "the gates of hell shall not prevail" against the Church (Matt. 16:18) is promised only to the True, Universal Church; but upon those who have fallen away from it are fulfilled the words, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me." (John 15:4).

It is true that in the very definition of the new dogma it is said that a new teaching is not being established, but that there is only being proclaimed as the church's that which always existed in the church and which has been held by many Holy Fathers, excerpts from whose writings are cited. However, all the cited references speak only of the exalted sanctity of the Virgin Mary and of Her immaculateness, and give Her various names which define Her purity and spiritual might; but nowhere is there any word of the immaculateness of Her conception. Meanwhile, these same Holy Fathers in other places say that only Jesus Christ is completely pure of every sin, while all men, being born of Adam, have borne a flesh subject to the law of sin.

None of the ancient Holy Fathers say that God in miraculous fashion purified the Virgin Mary while yet in the womb; and many directly indicate that the Virgin Mary, just as all men, endured a battle with sinfulness, but was victorious over temptations and was saved by Her Divine Son.

Commentators of the Latin confession likewise say that the Virgin Mary was saved by Christ. But they understand this in the sense that Mary was preserved from the taint of original sin in view of the future merits of Christ (Bull on the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception). The Virgin Mary, according to their teaching, received in advance, as it were, the gift which Christ brought to men by His sufferings and death on the Cross. Moreover, speaking of the torments of the Mother of God which She endured standing at the Cross of Her Beloved Son, and in general of the sorrows with which the life of the Mother of God was filled, they consider them an addition to the sufferings of Christ and consider Mary to be our Co-Redemptress. According to the commentary of the Latin theologians, "Mary is an associate with our Redeemer as Co-Redemptress" (see Lebedev, op. cit., p. 273). "In the act of Redemption, She, in a certain way, helped Christ" (Catechism of Dr. Weimar). "The Mother of God," writes Dr. Lentz, "bore the burden of Her martyrdom not merely courageously, but also joyfully, even though with a broken heart" (Mariology of Dr. Lentz). For this reason, She is "a complement of the Holy Trinity," and "just as Her Son is the only Intermediary chosen by God between His offended majesty and sinful men, so also, precisely, the chief Mediatress placed by Him between His Son and us is the Blessed Virgin." "In three respects — as Daughter, as Mother, and as Spouse of God — the Holy Virgin is exalted to a certain equality with the Father, to a certain superiority over the Son, to a certain nearness to the Holy Spirit" ("The Immaculate Conception," Malou, Bishop of Brouges).

Thus, according to the teaching of the representatives of Latin theology, the Virgin Mary in the work of Redemption is placed side by side with Christ Himself and is exalted to an equality with God. One cannot go farther than this. If all this has not been definitively formulated as a dogma of the Roman church as yet, still the Roman Pope Pius IX, having made the first step in this direction, has shown the direction for the further development of the generally recognized teaching of his church, and has indirectly confirmed the above-cited teaching about the Virgin Mary.

Thus the Roman church, in its strivings to exalt the Most Holy Virgin, is going on the path of complete deification of Her. And if even now its authorities call Mary a complement of the Holy Trinity, one may soon expect that the Virgin will be revered like God.

There have entered on this same path a group of thinkers who for the time being belong to the Orthodox Church, but who are building a new theological system having as its foundation the philosophical teaching of Sophia, Wisdom, as a special power binding the Divinity and the creation. Likewise developing the teaching of the dignity of the Mother of God, they wish to see in Her an essence which is some kind of mid-point between God and man. In some questions they are more moderate than the Latin theologians, but in others, if you please, they have already left them behind. While denying the teaching of the Immaculate Conception and the freedom from original sin, they still teach Her full freedom from any personal sins, seeing in Her an Intermediary between men and God, like Christ: in the person of Christ there has appeared on earth the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Pre-eternal Word, the Son of God; while the Holy Spirit is manifest through the Virgin Mary.

In the words of one of the representatives of this tendency, when the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the Virgin Mary, she acquired "a dyadic life, human and divine; that is, She was completely deified, because in Her hypostatic being was manifest the living, creative revelation of the Holy Spirit" (Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov, The Unburnt Bush, 1927, p. 154). "She is a perfect manifestation of the Third Hypostasis" (Ibid., p. 175), "a creature, but also no longer a creature" (p. 191). This striving towards the deification of the Mother of God is to be observed primarily in the West, where at the same time, on the other hand, various sects of a Protestant character are having great success, together with the chief branches of Protestantism, Lutheranism and Calvinism, which in general deny the veneration of the Mother of God and the calling upon Her in prayer.

But we can say with the words of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus: "There is an equal harm in both these heresies, both when men demean the Virgin and when, on the contrary, they glorify Her beyond what is proper" (Panarion, "Against the Collyridians"). This Holy Father accuses those who give Her an almost divine worship: "Let Mary be in honor, but let worship be given to the Lord" (same source). "Although Mary is a chosen vessel, still She was a woman by nature, not to be distinguished at all from others. Although the history of Mary and Tradition relate that it was said to Her father Joachim in the desert, 'Thy wife hath conceived,' still this was done not without marital union and not without the seed of man" (same source). "One should not revere the saints above what is proper, but should revere their Master. Mary is not God, and did not receive a body from heaven, but from the joining of man and woman; and according to the promise, like Isaac, She was prepared to take part in the Divine Economy. But, on the other hand, let none dare foolishly to offend the Holy Virgin" (St. Epiphanius, "Against the Antidikomarianites").

(To be continued)

 
The TOLGA Icon


Orthodox Monasticism in 5th & 6th Century Gaul

THE HEART of the Christian life of early Orthodox Gaul was monasticism. Orthodox monasticism sprang up on the soil of Gaul almost as soon as news of the great Egyptian Fathers reached the West; and once Christian Gaul had been given the example of its first great native monastic saint, St. Martin of Tours, its monastics already numbered in the thousands, some 2,000 of whom attended the funeral of St. Martin in 397. With the founding of the monastery of Lerins in the Egyptian tradition, at the dawn of the new century, and the writings of St. John Cassian on the spiritual teaching of the Egyptian Fathers early in the 5th century, the golden age of monasticism in Gaul may be said to have begun. We know of the founding of some 200 monasteries in Gaul in the next two centuries, and probably there were many more; and the wonderworking saints from among these communities were already past counting.

But the history of Orthodox monasticism in Gaul in this period is not at all one of institutions. The monastic "orders" of the medieval West, with their centralized government and uniform rule, were of course unheard of in this early period of fresh monastic fervor; and even the dominance of the Rule of St. Benedict (+529) over the monastic institutions of the West (a dominance which, for all its good points, also indicated a waning of the early monastic fervor of the West) was still several centuries away. The spiritual tone of monastic Gaul in these centuries was set by the Orthodox East.

The most general picture of the monasticism of these centuries in the West is to be found in the writings of St. Gregory of Tours, particularly in the Life of the Fathers, but also scattered throughout the pages of the History of the Franks and his other works. But we will look at his writings in vain for an account of monastic institutions; we will find there the names of few monasteries, and there is almost nothing on monastic rules or government. He is interested first of all not even in monks or nuns (i.e., formally tonsured monastics), but in ascetic strugglers and their spiritual deeds. For the most part he recounts the exploits of ascetics renowned for their sanctity and miracles; but he also recounts tales of those who went astray, holding these up as a warning to those who would undertake the path of spiritual struggle. The center of his attention, and that of monastic Gaul, is spiritual struggle itself. The forested "desert" of Orthodox Gaul at this time breathes the same freshness and fervor and freedom as the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts, as chronicled in the Lausiac History and other such classic accounts of early Eastern monasticism. Let us see if we can recapture something of the spirit of the "flight to the desert" in 5th and 6th century Gaul by examining some of the texts of the great Western monastic Fathers of this time.

 THE TEACHING OF ST. JOHN CASSIAN

WE KNOW LITTLE of the written sources by which the Orthodox monastic teaching was given to St. Martin's disciples and other early monastic strugglers in Gaul; probably there was not much more than St. Athanasius' Life of St. Anthony and one other of the early Latin versions of the Lives and Sayings of the Egyptian Fathers. In the presence of a living model of the monastic ideal such as St. Martin was, these sources were sufficient; but when the monks of Gaul became numbered in the thousands and numerous new monasteries were being opened, the need for a rather "systematic" written account of the monastic teaching became acutely felt. As with one voice, the monastic fathers of Gaul turned for this account to St. John Cassian, abbot of a newly-founded monastery in Marseilles, who had just returned from a long sojourn in the monastic deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Having thoroughly absorbed the teaching of the Eastern Fathers, and being a man of spiritual discernment himself, he answered their plea with two books: the Institutes, setting forth the outward order of monasticism (dress, services, discipline, etc.) and the spiritual teaching on an elementary level, and the Conferences, giving the profounder monastic teaching of the great Egyptian Fathers. These works, addressed and dedicated to various abbots and monastic founders in Gaul, were by far the most influential monastic source-books in 5th and 6th century Gaul and, (albeit, to a lesser extent) in other Western countries as well. To understand the monastic movement which St. Gregory describes, we can begin in no better way than by a brief account of the teaching of St. Cassian, and in particular of the "ABC's" of monasticism contained in the Institutes, the single book that is most often mentioned in the monastic accounts of this period. (All citations translated here, with book and chapter number, are from the Russian translation of Bishop Peter of Ufa, Moscow, 1892.)

The book is dedicated to Castor, Bishop of Apt (a short distance north of Marseilles) who had just established a coenobitic monastery in his diocese. In his Introduction St. Cassian explains what is demanded of him, and what he intends to give: "Desiring that the coenobitic monasteries in your region should be ordered according to the rules of the Eastern, and in particular the Egyptian monasteries . . . you demand of me, poor in word and knowledge, that I set forth those monastic rules which I saw in Egypt and Palestine, and of which I heard from the Fathers, so that the brethren of your monastery might know the way of life which the saints lead there." Following in the footsteps of monastic teachers "outstanding in life, understanding, and eloquence, such as Basil the Great, Jerome, and others," he promises to speak of the monastic rules, the origin of the eight chief vices, and of how they may be uprooted, on the basis of what he learned in the East, for "there can be no new brotherhood in the West, in the land of Gaul, better than those monasteries."

Although St. Cassian notes, in this same Introduction, that not all the monastic rules of the Egyptian desert may be applicable in Gaul, "owing to the severity of the climate and the difficulty and difference of manners," and in general he is condescending to "Western" weakness — still, he is rather merciless in castigating any aspect of Gallic monasticism in practice that smacks of self-pampering or idleness. Then, even as today, a large part of the interest in monasticism was a product of idle dreaming which would rather not face the daily struggles and humiliations necessary for the forging of true spiritual life according to the Gospel. Thus St. Cassian places much emphasis on the necessity of just plain work. "The cause of the fact that in these (Western) regions we do not see monasteries with such a multitude of brethren (i.e., thousands and tens of thousands) is that they are not supported by what their own labors can acquire; but if the generosity of another might furnish them sufficient food, then a love of idleness and distraction of heart do not allow them any longer to remain in that place. Therefore, there is a saying among the ancient Fathers of Egypt: a laboring monk is tempted by one demon, while a lazy one is attacked by a numberless multitude of demons" (Institutes X, 23). The Eastern Fathers "think that the more fervent they will be in handiwork and labors, the more will be born in them the desire for the higher purity of spiritual contemplation" (II, 12). There is a definite correlation between willingness to work and a genuine striving for spiritual attainments: "Equally exercising the powers of body and soul, they equalize the gain of the outward man and profit to the inward man, opposing to the passionate movements of the heart and the inconstant wave of thoughts the heaviness of handiwork, as some kind of firm, unwavering anchor, by which one can restrain the distraction and wandering of the heart within the cell as in a safe harbor" (II, 14). Zeal for work, in fact, is a measuring stick of spiritual advancement: "The Egyptian Fathers in no way allow monks to be idle, especially the young, measuring the condition of their heart and their advancement in patience and humility by their zeal for work" (IX, 22). Awareness of this basic principle of spiritual life is what produces the "down-to-earth", even "rough" quality of a genuine Orthodox monastery even today. A novice being formed in such a spiritual atmosphere often finds himself in hectic circumstances that test his natural love of idleness and repose. Thus Abba Dorotheus, author of a 6th century "ABC" of monasticism, describes his own monastic training: "When I was living in coenobitism, the Abbot, at the advice of the Elders, made me the receiver of visitors, while not long before this I had had a severe illness. And thus it happened that visitors would come in the evening and I would spend the evening with them; then camel-drivers would come, and I would serve them; and often after I had gone to sleep, another need would arise, and they would wake me up, and meanwhile the hour of the Vigil would also be approaching. Hardly would I have fallen asleep when the canonarch would wake me up; but from labor or from illness I would be exhausted, and sleep would again take such possession of me that, weakened by fever, I would not remember myself and would answer through sleep: 'Very well, my Lord, may God remember your love and reward you; you have commanded, I will come, O Lord.' Then when he went out, I would again fall asleep and be very sad that I was late in going to church. And since the canonarch could not wait for me, I begged two brethren, one to wake me up, and the other not to let me doze at the Vigil; and believe me, brethren, I revered them as if through them my salvation was accomplished, and maintained toward them great piety" (AbbaDorotheus, Spiritual Instructions). A similar hectic novitiate, in modern times, was spent by the Optina elder Joseph, who for a private cell was given the busy waiting room of Elder Ambrose! The idle dreamers among monastic aspirants do not survive under such conditions; they often leave because the monastery is "not spiritual enough" — not realizing that thus they are depriving themselves of the spiritual "anchor" without which they will wander in vain dissatisfaction at not finding their "ideal monastery."

Laziness is not the worst sin of monastic aspirants; but without love of labor they will never even enter into the struggle of monastic life nor understand the most elementary principles of spiritual combat.

If the novice has zeal for work, there is hope that he can acquire understanding of the other ABC's of monastic life. The first of these is cutting off the will. "The elder strives first of all to instruct the novice to conquer his will, desiring that through this he might gradually ascend to the highest perfection; and for this he deliberately orders him to do what he does not like. By much experience it has been shown that a monk (especially a young one) cannot bridle his desires if he has not learned through obedience to mortify his will. Therefore they say that he who has not first learned to conquer his will can in no way suppress anger, despondency, fleshly lust; he cannot have true humility, constant unity and harmony with the brethren, and long remain in the community" (IV, 8). The novice who is unwilling to cut off his will by monastic obedience often finds that he is "not understood" by the monastic authorities, or that he is forced to do things "unsuited" to him, or that his "zeal" in performing ascetic labors (according to his own understanding, of course) is not appreciated; but the true lover of obedience, like the lover of labor, rejoices in the midst of the hard work of going against his own will, even when it may seem to his earthly logic that he is "right" and his spiritual father is "wrong".

Another important part of the monastic basic training is learning not to trust one's own judgment, which is closely bound up with revelation of thoughts. "If we wish to follow the commandments of the Gospel and be imitators of the Apostles and the whole of the early Church, or of the Fathers who in our times have followed their virtues and perfection, we should not trust our own opinions, promising ourselves evangelical perfection from this cold and pitiful condition; but following their steps, we should strive not to deceive ourselves, and thus we shall fulfill the good order and the commands of the monastery, so that we might renounce this world in truth" (VII, 18).

"Giving novices the beginning instruction, they strive to raise them to greater perfection, at the same time finding out whether their humility is true or pretended. And the more easily to attain this, they teach them not to hide any of the thoughts of their hearts out of false shame, but to reveal them to their elder immediately after they arise, and in the judging of them not to trust their own opinion, but to consider bad or good only what the elder shall recognize as such. Because of this the cunning enemy cannot catch the inexperienced young monk in anything; he can in no way deceive one who trusts not his own but his elder's judgment" (IV, 9).

Despite the ascetic prodigies for which the Eastern Fathers are noted, the emphasis of their spiritual teaching is not at all on outward asceticism. "The infirmity of the flesh does not hinder purity of heart, if we use only the food that is needful for strengthening our infirmity, and not that which desire demands . . . Fasting and continence consist in moderation . . . Each must fast as much as necessary for the taming of fleshly warfare" (V, 7, 8, 9).

The purpose of the monastic discipline is to uproot the passions and acquire the virtues. In Egypt, the elders see that novices "discover both the causes of the passions by which they are tempted, and the means against them . . . These true physicians of souls, averting by spiritual instruction as by some heavenly medicine the afflictions of heart that might arise in the future, do not allow the passions to grow in the souls of youths, revealing to them both the cause of the passion that threatens, and the means for healing" (XI, 16). It may well be imagined what pain this process of self-knowledge causes in the soul of the novice, who usually comes to a monastery full of illusions about himself.

All of the virtues must be sought together, and all of the passions fought at the same time, for "he who does not possess several of the virtues has not mastered any of them to perfection. For how can one quench the blazing heat of lust, which is kindled not merely from the desire of the body, but also from the fault of the soul, if he cannot tame the anger which bursts forth from the incontinence of the heart alone? Or how can he handle the sensuous arousal of the flesh and soul if he cannot conquer the simple vice of pride?" (V, 11).

The spiritual battle to acquire virtues and uproot passions is above all an inward battle: the chief enemy is not outside of us, but in our own passionate nature; our advancement in virtue is judged not chiefly by our outward actions, but by our inward state; the means of battle is not primarily outward acts (such as avoiding people, in order to avoid occasions of temptation), but working on one's inner man. "It is clear that disturbance occurs in us not always because of others, but more often from our own faults, because we have in us the hidden causes of offense and the seeds of vices, which, as soon as the rain of temptation pours on our soul, immediately produce sprouts and fruits" (IX, 5). "Perfection of heart is acquired not so much by going away from people as by the virtue of patience. If patience will be made strong and sure, it can keep us peaceful even with those who hate peace; but if it will not be acquired, we shall be constantly in discord even with those who are more perfect and better than we" (IX, 7). "If we wish to receive that higher divine reward of which it is said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5:8), then it is not only in our actions that we must suppress anger, but it must be torn up by the roots from the hidden part of the soul as well" (VIII, 19). "For those who seek perfection, it is insufficient merely not to become angry at another. For we remember that when we were in the desert we became angry at a writing reed when its thickness or thinness did not please us, as also at a knife when it did not cut quickly with a dull blade, and at a flint if a spark did not quickly fly from it when we were hastening to the reading; the flash of dissatisfaction went so far that we could put down and pacify the disturbance of soul in no other way than by pronouncing a curse on the unfeeling objects, or at least on the devil" (VIII, 18). "We have nothing to fear from the foe without; the enemy is concealed within ourselves. In us there proceeds a daily inward warfare; after gaining a victory in it, everything is reconciled to the warrior of Christ and submits to him. We shall not have a foe whom we have to fear outside of us, if what is within us will be conquered and subjugated to the spirit . . . The forcing of the flesh, joined with contrition of spirit; comprises a sacrifice most pleasing to God and a worthy dwelling of sanctity in the hidden parts of a pure, well-adorned spirit" (V, 21).

Most important is it for the monastic struggler in this inner warfare to judge himself and not others. "A monk is subjected to the same guilt and vices for which he has thought to judge others. Therefore, each should judge only himself, should cautiously, carefully look after himself in everything, and not examine the life and conduct of others" (V, 30).

One key to the acquirement of other virtues is chastity, which must be of soul as well as body. "We should most fervently struggle not only in continence of body, but also in contrition of heart, with frequent sighs of prayer, so that the furnace of our flesh, which the Babylonian king constantly ignites by the arousal of fleshly lust, may be put out by the dew of the Holy Spirit which descends into our heart" (VI, 17). "It is possible to acquire purity without the gift of knowledge; but it is impossible to acquire spiritual knowledge without the purity of chastity" (VI, 18).

Eight of the twelve books of the Institutes are devoted to a description of the eight primary vices and the struggle the monk must make against them. These eight are: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sorrow, despondency, vainglory, and pride. These chapters are very practical and contain numerous instructive examples taken from the experience of the desert Fathers. One memorable example among these, illustrating the sin of vainglory, may be taken as an apt warning against the tendency, so present in 20th century monastic aspirants also, of spiritual fakery and "posing", based on an elementary self-love and idleness.

"When I lived in the desert of Scetis, I remember an elder who, going to the cell of a certain brother for a visit, when he drew near to the door and heard him saying something inside, stopped a little, desiring to find out whether he was reading from the Sacred Scripture or, as was the custom, was reciting something from memory while working. When this pious tester, putting his ear close, heard more clearly, he discovered that the brother had been so deceived by the spirit of vainglory that he pretended to be delivering a sermon of admonishment to the people in church. When the elder, continuing to stand, heard that he had finished the sermon and, changing his role, was giving the deacon's dismissal to the catechumens — he knocked on the door. The brother met the elder with his usual respect and, leading him in, being wounded in conscience for his dreams, asked whether he had been there for a long time, or whether, standing for a long time at the door, he had endured some unpleasantness? The elder, joking, tenderly replied: I came when you were giving the dismissal to the catechumens" (XI, 15). The fantasies of 20th century monastic aspirants are not far from this classic example!

As for the chief of the vices or passions, pride, St. Cassian is, as always, down-to-earth and practical, and spends most of this chapter describing the lower or "fleshly" type of pride that is one of the commonest pitfalls for monastic aspirants, ancient as well as modern. "This fleshly pride, when it settles in the soul of a monk who has placed a cold or bad beginning to his renunciation of the world, not allowing him because of his former worldly arrogance to come to the humility of Christ, at first makes him insubmissive and stubborn, then does not allow him to be meek and affable, as likewise to be equal with the brethren and sociable, nor to leave all possessions and remain in poverty according to the commandment of our God and Saviour . . . He does not wish to bear the burden of the monastery's life, does not accept the instruction of any elder. For whoever is possessed by the passion of pride not only considers it unworthy of him to observe any kind of rule of submission or obedience, but does not even allow into his ears the very teaching concerning perfection; in his heart there grows such a repulsion for spiritual words that when such a conversation takes place his gaze cannot stay in one place, but his wandering look is directed this way and that, the eyes turned the other way, obliquely . . . As long as the spiritual conversation continues, he imagines that he is sitting on crawling worms or sharp sticks, and no matter what the simple conversation might utter for the edification of the hearers, the proud one thinks that this is said to put him to shame. And the whole time the talk on spiritual life is taking place, he, being occupied with his own suspicions, catches and intercepts not what he should accept for his own advancement, but with preoccupied mind seeks out the reason why this or the other is being said, or with secret disturbance of the heart he invents what he might reply to them; so that from a soul-saving inquiry he can receive nothing at all, or correct himself in any way" (XII, 25, 27). As an example of this lower kind of pride: "I have heard that in this very country (something strange and shameful to relate) one of the younger ones, when his Abba began to rebuke him, asking why he had begun to abandon the humility which he had preserved for such a short time after renouncing the world, and had become arrogant with diabolical pride, replied with extreme haughtiness: 'Did I really humble myself for a time so as to be always in submission? At this brazen, criminal reply the elder was so astonished that all talk was cut off, as if he had received these words uttered from Lucifer himself" (XII, 28).

The aim of all this monastic warfare and struggle, which St. Cassian describes so concretely, is to raise one's mind to the eternal and unchanging and prepare one for the blessedness of the Kingdom of Heaven. "The work of the monk's calling is nothing else than the contemplation of divine purity, which surpasses everything" (IX, 3). "We can in no way despise the satisfaction of the food before us unless the mind, giving itself over to Divine contemplation shall take greater enjoyment of the love of virtue and the beauty of heavenly objects. And thus, everyone shall despise everything here below as quickly passing away, when he will uninterruptedly direct the gaze of his mind towards the unwavering and eternal, and when, still being in the body, he will contemplate the blessedness of the future life" (V, 14).

The monastic aspirant who allows earthly things or his own passions to draw him away from heavenly things is invariably entangled in the things here below and perishes; St. Cassian's warning regarding this is equally applicable to our own day. "The mind of a lover of idleness has nothing else to think about than only food and the belly, until, having contracted friendship with some man or woman, who has been weakened by an identical coldness, he binds himself with their doings and needs, and thus little by little becomes entangled in harmful occupations, as it were is constrained by serpentine meanderings, and finally is in no condition to untie himself in order to acquire the perfection of his earlier (monastic) vow" (IX, 6).

Therefore, St. Cassian gives an inspiring word of encouragement to those who wish to follow the monastic life to its goal. "Know that you are in the number of the few who are chosen, and beholding the example and the coldness of the many, do not grow cool, but live as the few live, so that with these few you might be vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven. For many are called, but few are chosen, and small is the flock to whom the Father has been pleased to give the Kingdom" (IV, 38).

The foundation of this whole monastic struggle is humility and fear of God, without which all ascetic labors are vain and empty: "If we wish to bring our (spiritual) building to completion, so that it might be perfect and pleasing to God, let us hasten to place its foundation not according to the will of our passion, but according to the precise teaching of the Gospel; this foundation can be nothing else than the fear of God and humility, which latter proceeds from meekness and simplicity of heart. Humility cannot be acquired without (spiritual) nakedness. Without the latter one can in no way acquire either readiness for submission, nor the strength for patience, nor the calmness of meekness, nor the perfection of love, without which things our heart can not at all be the dwelling of the Holy Spirit" (XII, 31). "It is precisely necessary that in the beginning, with a sincere disposition of heart, we should manifest true humility to our brethren, taking care not to offend or grieve in any way, something we can in no way fulfill if there will not be established in us, out of love for Christ, true self-renunciation, which consists in the abandoning of all possessions and non-acquisitiveness; and then, if we will not take up the yoke of obedience and submission with a simple heart, without any pretense, so that no will of our own should live in us at all, apart from the Abba's orders. This can be done only by one who considers himself not only dead for this world, but also foolish and stupid, and will fulfill all that the elder commands him without any investigation, considering this as sacred and as announced by God" (XII, 32).

Finally, the struggler must be fully aware that the attainment of his goal — victory over the passions and the salvation of the soul — comes not from his own efforts, as essential as they are, but from the grace of God. "It is impossible for anyone to be perfectly cleansed of fleshly vices unless he is aware that all his labors and striving cannot be sufficient to attain such perfection, and unless he becomes convinced that he attains it not otherwise than by the mercy and with the help of God" (XII, 13). "The attainment of perfection is the work not of the one who desires or struggles, but of the merciful God (Rom. 9:16), who makes us victors over vices not at all as a reward for the merit of our labors or struggle . . . The action of every good thing proceeds from the grace of God, Who has given us with great bounty such an eternity of blessedness and limitless glory for our weak fervor and our short, small struggle" (XII, 11). The whole book of the Institutes ends with the following words: "We must acknowledge that we in ourselves, without the help of God's grace, can do nothing at all with regard to the doing of virtues, and we must be assured in truth that even that which we have been vouchsafed to understand is the gift of God" (XII, 33).

It may be seen from this brief exposition of the teaching of the Institutes that the monastic life in 5th and 6th century Gaul had a solid foundation under it. The teaching of St. Cassian is not for idle dreamers or those fleeing from the responsibilities of life in the world. With its sober, down-to-earth tone, and its insistence on work, ascetic struggle, and coming to know and overcome one's own passions, it is rather a manual for serious, energetic, determined Christian fighters who are looking for greater, not lesser, struggles than the Christian finds in normal worldly life.

It is above all the Institutes that set the tone for the monasticism of this period. St. Gregory of Tours himself, when he had occasion to give spiritual instruction to a recluse of his diocese, "sent him books with the Lives of the Fathers and the Institutes of the Monks, so that he might learn what recluses ought to be and with what prudence monks ought to behave. When he had read and re-read them, not only did he drive out of his mind the bad thoughts which he had had, but even more it so developed his knowledge that he astonished us with his facility in speaking of these matters" (Life of the Fathers, XX, 3). These same two books (as we shall see below) are the ones that St. Romanus took with him when he set out for his hermit's life in the Jura mountains. But even apart from its direct influence on monastic aspirants, the Institutes may be seen also clearly reflected in the teaching of the monastic Fathers of Gaul who came after him.

SAINT FAUSTUS OF LERINS

CHIEF OF THE monastic Fathers of Gaul in the 5th century, after St. Cassian himself, was St. Faustus (+490), who was abbot of Lerins during the last years of St. Cassian's lifetime, and was later Bishop of Rhegium (Riez), less than a hundred miles north of Marseilles.

Noted for his defense of the "Eastern" teachings on such questions as the relative corporeality of the soul (God alone being perfectly incorporeal) and grace and free will (and probably for this reason much neglected in the later West), he was first and foremost a teacher of monastic life, and had more direct influence on the great monastic Father of the 6th century, St. Caesarius of Arles, than did St. Cassian. (Citations here are from Abbe Alliez, Histoire du Monastere de Lerins, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1861); and A. Malnory, Saint Cesaire, Eveque d'Arles, Paris, 1894.)

In his instructions to his monks he has the same emphasis as St. Cassian on unremitting struggle and the avoidance of idleness and repose: "It is not at all for peace and quiet, not for security, that you have come to this island, but rather to struggle and combat vigorously . . . We have come to these remote shores, into the ranks of this spiritual army, in order to struggle every day against our passions . . . Our profession obliges us to reject all that the present life can offer of consolation or of glory. The sweetest things of the earth should be foreign to us; our thoughts should be intent solely on the eternal rewards which are promised us. To rejoice at living in dependence and wretchedness, to seek fervently poverty, to uproot from our hearts not only the attachment to created things, but the will itself — these are our means to perfection" (Homily Ad monachos I). "A ship, after having braved the billows of the open sea, can be in danger even in the middle of what seems the safest port, and is in peril of sinking there. Likewise, in the refuge of religion to which the Saviour has led you, do not be without fear; force yourselves, with the help of Christ, to avoid the least negligence, the slightest faults; they act on the soul like drops of water entering a ship's keel by imperceptible fissures" (Ad monachos II).

With St. Cassian, St. Faustus teaches the inward nature of the monastic struggle. "Of what benefit is it to live in this silent place, if one suffers within oneself the torment of the passions? Will there be tranquility without, and a storm within? Is it worth the trouble of abandoning the world which is down there far away, in order to keep the passions shut up in oneself? (Homily Sicut a nobis).

Above all St. Faustus, like St. Cassian, emphasizes the virtue of obedience and the ruinousness of disobedience and pride. "The strength which the work of salvation requires, God refuses to him who does not know how to obey . . . Obedience is a necessity for youth, and at the same time old age finds therein its glory . . . The habit of disobedience obscures the intelligence and falsifies the judgment. The heart of the guilty one becomes so hard that, if he does not by an extreme effort suddenly humble himself in order to correct his fault, he will dare to battle against his superior, will go on to insult him and to say: How strongly I resisted! How well I did to disobey! With what haughtiness I replied! He believed that I would always humble myself before him!" (Homily VII).

St. Faustus, seeing the rapidly growing monastic movement of Gaul, saw also the tragedy of "runaway" monks — those who had tasted the monastic life but did not have the patience to persevere in it. His forceful words on remaining in the monastery where one has made one's renunciation of the world anticipate the emphasis on monastic stability in the 6th-century Fathers, St. Caesarius of Arles and St. Benedict of Nursia. Referring to the sea around Lerins, he told his monks: "This sea is the world; the monastery is the harbor. What should the true monk propose for himself? — to fix his anchor forever in the harbor. Would he return to the world? These rocks, against which the sea is breaking down there, are the image of the reefs against which the monk inconstant in his path is sure of breaking himself" (Homily, Sicut a nobis). "What in truth is more cruel than to uproot yourself so suddenly, like a migrating bird, from the place where your God has called you, where He illumined you with the first rays of His light, and which He opened up to you like a harbor against the raging of the storm? Do you so quickly forget your brothers and companions who applied themselves to console you? Is it thus that you abandon the place where you put off the clothes of this world and changed the name you bore when you were there? . . . But you are so wanting in good sense as to prefer to the favors of God your own will and whim, and to place yourself at the mercy of your own ideas! Do you not feel to what shipwreck you are rushing?"

The true monastic path, according to St. Faustus, is one of humility, patience, and obedience, which can change those around one and make the monastic community indeed a paradise on earth. "Oh, how blessed by God is he whose humility has diminished the pride of his brother, whose patience has extinguished the wrath of his neighbor, who by his obedience and fervor corrects in others lukewarmness and sloth, whose consoling examples or words restore light in the heart which anger has rendered blind" (Ad monachos I).

POET OF THE WESTERN DESERT
SAINT EUCHERIUS OF LYONS:

IN GENERAL, the "desert" in 5th and 6th century Gaul refers to the deserted places, outside of cities, suitable for the habitation of monks, those who have abandoned worldly ways. There is, however, another more specific meaning of the word "desert" which St. Cassian uses: the place for those who wish to lead the solitary, anchoretic life away even from the coenobitic or semi-coenobitic communities wherein most monks dwelt. St. Cassian sets forth in the Institutes the conditions for entering upon this higher way of life. "We set out to look at a special, higher kind of monks, who are called anchorites. At first they live for a long time in a community, until they learn patience, discernment, humility, non-acquisition, and totally uproot in themselves all vices; then, intending to enter into the fiercest battle with demons, they go away to the remote places of the desert" (V, 36). "The desert should be sought by those who are perfect, cleansed of every vice, and one should go into it after being perfectly cleansed from vices in the community of the brethren, not out of faintheartedness but for Divine contemplation, with the desire of higher vision, which can be acquired only in solitude and only by the perfect" (VIII, 17).

This higher kind of desert life had a definite attraction for the monastic aspirants of St. Gregory's Gaul, not actually as a separate form of monastic life, but as a higher ideal of the one common monastic life. We shall see several of such advanced desert-dwellers in the Life of the Fathers. Here above all, however, we must be aware of the context of hard ascetic struggle, usually in a monastery, that invariably precedes such desert-dwelling, as well as the down-to-earth monastic teaching which underlies it. St. Cassian's Institutes are the ABC of this kind of monasticism also, while his Conferences contain a more advanced teaching for desert-dwellers (as well as coenobites).

The very idea that the "desert" could be found in Gaul itself was not one that was immediately evident. Even after the example of St. Martin and his disciples, St. Honoratus set out to find his desert in the East; it was only owing to the death of his companion that he returned after traveling only as far as Greece and retired first to a cave on the mainland, and then to the island of Lerins off the coast of southern Gaul, where with his followers he founded a monastery as much as possible in the tradition of the East. We do not have a detailed description of his original monastery at Lerins, but the few brief references to it show it to be a close imitation of the semi-hermitic lavras of the East. St. Eucherius, disciple of St. Honoratus, describes it as a place of "holy elders living in separate cells." We have a more detailed description of the same kind of monastery in Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin:

"The place was so secluded and remote that it had all the solitude of the desert. On one side it was walled in by the rock-face of a high mountain, and the level ground that remained was enclosed by a gentle bend of the River Loire. There was only one approach to it, and that a very narrow one. His own cell was built of wood, as were those of many of the brethren; but most of them had hollowed out shelters for themselves in the rock of the overhanging mountain. There were about eighty disciples there, being trained in the pattern of their most blessed master. No one possessed anything of his own; everything was put into the common stock . . . It was seldom that anyone left his cell except when they assembled at the place of worship." (Life of St. Martin, ch. X, F. R. Hoare translation).

As such monastic settlements grew in 5th-century Gaul, the need to go to Egypt to see the Christian "desert" became less and less urgent. It was above all St. Cassian who put to rest the idea of "going to the East" for monastic training when he provided in his books the spiritual teaching of the great elders of Egypt. When he heard that St. Eucherius, even after being in Lerins, was thinking of going to Egypt, he dedicated to him (and to his great Abba, St. Honoratus) seven books of his Conferences, with this preface: "O holy brethren, Honoratus and Eucherius, you have become so inflamed by the praise of those exalted men from whom we have received the first instructions of the anchoretic life, that one of you, being head of a great coenobium of brethren, desires that his community, which is edified by the daily sight of your holy life, should be instructed further by the commandments of those fathers, while the other has desired to set out for Egypt so as to be edified also by seeing them in the body, so that, leaving this region, numbed by the severity of the Gallic frost, he would fly like a pure turtledove to the lands which, being more closely illuminated by the Sun of Righteousness, also abound with mature fruits of virtue. This has involuntarily aroused a love in me, so that, being consoled by the desire of the one and the labor of the other, I have not shunned the peril of writing in brief, if only to increase the authority of the former among his monks themselves, and to divert the latter from the necessity of a dangerous voyage" (Preface to Conference XI).

St. Eucherius, clearly, took the words of St. Cassian to heart. Not only did he not go to Egypt, but he also became the great church poet of the desert of Gaul. Perhaps it is a matter of his (and our) "Western" temperament and experience, or perhaps it is only the "Northern" setting of his writings, made familiar to us in recent centuries by the great monastic strugglers of the "Northern Thebaid" of Russia, down to St. Seraphim of Sarov and other holy monks and nuns right up to our own century — that makes us feel something very kin to us in the writings of St. Eucherius, and in particular his Praise of the Desert (De laude eremi). Let us quote here from this work, which, albeit in a different way, helps set the tone for the monastic strugglers of 5th and 6th century Gaul almost as well as St. Cassian's Institutes. This little book is not one of monastic teaching as such, but gives us a good view of the impulse of soul which inspired young men (and women) to go to the desert in the Gaul of his time. (Citations from an unpublished manuscript translation by James Graves.)

"Let him who burns with divine fire abandon his abode in order to choose the desert; let him prefer it to his close ones, his children . . . For the Christian who abandons his native soil, let the desert become a temporary fatherland, from which let nothing call him back, neither fear, nor desires, nor joy, nor sorrows. Yes, one can well pay for the happiness of solitude by the sacrifice of all that one loves."

"How sweet, for those who thirst after God, are these remote solitudes with their forests! How pleasant, for those who thirst after Christ, are those retreats, extending far and wide, where only nature wakes! All things are hushed. Then, as if under the goad of silence, the mind is aroused joyfully towards its God, and quickens with unutterable transports. No shrill distraction is met there, no word, except perchance with God. That sweet din alone breaks in amid the hush of the remote abode. An uproar sweeter than silence interrupts that state of placid silence, a holy tumult of modest converse . . . Then the deceitful enemy roars vainly like a wolf within the folds where the sheep have been penned. Back and forth along Jacob's wondrous ladder, a choir of rejoicing angels makes watchful call upon the desert expanse and illumines the solitude with the thronging of unseen visitation (Gen. 28:12). Moreover, lest those who guard the city stand their watch in vain, Christ guards and hedges His property within. He wards off its foes from the circuit of the desert in such a way that, though God's adopted people lie exposed to the expanse of the desert, yet they are hedged from their foes. Within, moreover, the Bridegroom reclines in that noontide, and the desert dwellers, wounded by His loving kindness, contemplate Him, saying, We have found Whom our soul loveth. We shall hold Him, nor shall we let Him go" (Cant. 3:4) (chs. 37, 38).

" 'The soil of the desert is not unfruitful, though it is commonly thought to be so . . . In the desert the husbandman reaps harvests bearing a rich yield . . . In that place is found the bread of life which descends from heaven. Amid those crags burst forth refreshing fountains, even the living waters, with power to quench not only thirst for water, but thirst for salvation as well. Here is the meadow and the pleasure of the inward man . . . The same desert of the body is the paradise of the soul" (ch. 39).

" 'Rightly then, O land deserving reverence, you have come forth as a dwelling lately fit for habitation by the saints who dwell in your confines . . . Whoever has sought out your brotherhood of saints, has found God. Each who has cultivated you has found Christ in you. He who dwells in you rejoices in the Lord Who dwells there also. The same man is at once your possessor and a divine possession. He who does not flee your dwelling becomes himself a temple of God' " (ch. 41).

" 'Indeed, to all deserts illumined by the retreats of the pious I owe meet honor. Yet before all others I embrace my Lerins, which receives in its most pious arms those who come there scattered by the shipwrecks of the stormy world. Those tossed by the billows of the world it leads gently within its shades, so that there within that inward shade of the Lord they may catch their panting breath. Bubbling with streams, green with grass, bright with vineyards, joyful in its sights and scents, it reveals itself as a paradise for those who possess it . . . It now has those wondrous holy elders who, living in separate cells, have brought the Egyptian Fathers to our Gaul' " (ch. 42).

" 'What gatherings and assemblies of saints, O good Jesus, have I myself seen there, fragrant with the precious scent of sweet ointments in boxes of alabaster! The fragrance of life breathes everywhere. They prefer the appearance of the inward man to the garb of the outer one. Strengthened in lovingkindness, downcast in lowliness, most gentle in piety, most strong in faith, modest in gait, swift in obedience, silent upon encounter, majestically serene in feature: in a word, they display ranks of angelic peace in unremitting contemplation. They long for nothing, they desire nothing, save only when they long for Him Whom alone they desire. While they seek a blessed life, they live it; and even while they strive after it presently, already they achieve it.

" 'Do they wish, then, to be set apart from sinners? They have already been set apart. Do they choose to possess a life that is pure? They possess it. Do they strive to keep all their time for the praises of God? They keep it. Do they yearn to rejoice in the gatherings of saints? They rejoice in them. Do they desire to enjoy Christ? They enjoy Him. Are they eager to gain the life of the desert? In their heart they gain it. Thus, through the most bountiful grace of Christ, here and now they earn many of those blessings which they long for in the time to come. While following the hope, though at a distance, they seize its substance now. Even their toil itself brings great reward, for their future recompense lies, as it were, within their present work" (ch. 43).

Lest it be thought that this lavish "praise of the desert" is some kind of "Western romanticism", let us put beside it the words of the great monastic Father of the East in the preceding century, St. Basil the Great (as quoted in the Life of the great Father of Russia's "Northern Thebaid," Elder Nazarius of Valaam). Inspired by the outwardly very different deserts of Egypt and Cappadocia, St. Basil sees, just like the Western poet, the same paradise of the heart of him who has abandoned everything for God:

"O life of solitude, house of heavenly learning and divine knowledge, school wherein God is everything that we learn! O desert of sweetness, where fragrant flowers of love now blaze with fiery color, now shine with snow-like purity. With them is peace and quiet; and those who live beneath them remain unmoved by the wind. There, is the incense of complete mortification, not only of flesh, but, what is more praiseworthy, of the will itself, and the censer of perpetual prayer burns ceaselessly with the fire of divine love. There, are diverse flowers of virtue, resplendent with diverse adornments, blossoming with the grace of unfading beauty. O desert, delight of holy souls, paradise of inexhaustible sweetness! Thou art a furnace, the power of whose blazing flame the Three Youths make cool by prayer, and by means of burning faith they extinguish around themselves the fierce flame in which both arrows and chains burn away, but those in chains do not burn, only the bonds of sin are loosed, and the soul is led up to the singing of divine praise, exulting: Thou has burst my bonds asunder; I will offer Thee the sacrifice of praise" (Ps. 115:7-8).

Love for the desert, as a refuge from the storms and occupations of the world and a place of intense spiritual combat for the sake of the heavenly kingdom; and reverence before the holy monks who dwelt there and were already making the lands of the West fragrant with their deeds of asceticism and piety — these were the impulses which inspired the young, newly-converted Christians of the West to seek out the deserts of Gaul and learn there at first hand, from experienced elders and in their own practice, the spiritual teaching of the Eastern Fathers. There were many casualties and spiritual disasters, as the very ferocity of the battle would promise; but those who persevered against all obstacles and truly planted the seeds of Eastern monasticism in Western soil have left a fragrant memory and example which is not dead even today, for those who wish to seek it out and be inspired by it.

Of the lives of the early desert-dwellers of Gaul, none is so fascinating and inspiring as the one with which St. Gregory begins the Life of the Fathers: the Life of Sts. Romanus and Lupicinus. As it happens, there exists a much longer Life of these Fathers than St. Gregory's, written in their monastery within a few decades of their death. This Life gives the most detailed account we have of the early monastic fervor of Gaul, and a summary of it will give the most fitting completion for this introduction to the Orthodox Gaul of St. Gregory.


Next: The Desert-dwellers of the Jura Mountains.

 
The island of Lerins, with the fortress where the relics of St. Honoratus were treasured for several centuries.

 
St. Cassian's Monastery of St. Victor, overlooking the Port of Marseilles (1655)

 
Atrium of the ancient basilica of St. Cassian's Monastery

 
The first hermitage of St. Honoratus: Grotto at Sainte Baume near Cannes.


TWO NEW MIRACLES
 of Archbishop John Maximovitch

 I.
I WILL TELL YOU how Vladika John healed me. I suffer from heart trouble, high blood pressure, and arthritis. It was all tolerable until, two and a half years ago, arthritis took hold of my whole chest. The pain was unbearable. I couldn't move my arms or bend down, and I did my housework in torment. The whole time I prayed to the Mother of God and begged Her to deliver me from these torments.

And it was not long before help came to me, sinful and unworthy one. I saw a dream. I was walking on a road and carrying before me a cross; it was an old one and had become quite yellow, but here I saw that it was shining like new (it was the size of the palm of a hand). Then I saw coming up to me a monk with a staff in his hands. When he reached me he said to me: "Here you are all the time praying to the Mother of God to help you, but you are not the only one who suffers; be patient and wait."

Here I woke up and thought for a long time as to what this dream might mean. I decided that evidently this is pleasing to God and I should be patient. In a few days I received a letter from a friend whom I had written about my pains. She told me that I should write to the Batiushka who serves in the cathedral where the Sepulchre of Vladika John is located. I wrote him a letter and sent money, asking him to serve a panikhida for Vladika John and to pray for me. Batiushka fulfilled my request and sent me a little icon of the Mother of God, a little cross from Jerusalem, some cotton dipped in oil from the lamp that burns in the Sepulchre of Vladika John, and most important — his portrait. As soon as I saw it, I immediately recognized the monk whom I had seen in the dream — and I had never seen him while he was alive, you know. I burst into tears and began to thank the Lord for His mercy to me. I began to pray and to ask Vladika to pray for me. I confessed my sins to him, begging him to entreat the Lord to forgive me and grant me remission of sins and healing of soul and body. With the cotton I annointed my chest and fervently prayed.

After this I became gradually better and better. The pain became weaker, my heart felt better, and my blood pressure began to fall. And so, after two and a half years of pain in my chest, it passed away entirely — and the whole time, because of my heart, I had been under a physician's care, and no matter what he gave me or advised, nothing helped. But by the prayers of Vladika John, the Lord healed me. I gave a promise to send money for candles or oil to his Sepulchre every year for the day of Vladika's repose, which I will do until the Lord calls me to Himself. My friend Olga Alexandrovna Makarova also was healed of arthritis, but that was during Vladika's lifetime. It was she who advised me to turn to him.

I have written you everything, as God is my witness! What good fortune that we have intercessors before God and His Most Pure Mother!

Sofia Zukulis
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
February 15, 1977

 II.
ONE SATURDAY I went to visit an old American lady-friend, now reposed, who lived in an old-age home and could move around only in a wheelchair. She was entirely alone and my visits always gave her great joy. I always brought her sweets. The day was very hot, and I had to travel for about an hour. Having sat with her, I began to get ready to go home, again in the intense heat. But I managed to ask a woman who was visiting her mother to take me, even though it wasn't at all on her way.

She drove me to my apartment, and so as not to detain her I quickly got out of the automobile, and in my haste I closed the door on three fingers of my right hand. The pain was very intense and the woman became frightened, but I immediately ran into the house. There was blood, extreme pain, and immediately the joints of the three fingers swelled up immensely and turned blue. I thought that the fingers were broken, since I couldn't bend them.

I should tell you that I work as a pianist in a ballet school and play many hours every day. I thought that I would be unable to work for a long time or even might lose the job, and I was terrified. And so, with tears I turned for help to Vladika John with these words: "You see, Vladika, what happened to my hand. During your lifetime you loved to visit the sick. I also love to visit the sick very much, and now I can lose my job." In tears I fell asleep, after placing the ailing hand on his portrait. I woke up in the morning — and I couldn't recognize my own hand. The swelling had gone down, the color was normal, and there was only a barely noticeable pain when I bent the fingers. The whole day Sunday I thanked Vladika and asked for complete healing. On Monday no trace at all remained, and I played without hindrance for many hours. From that time I thank Vladika every day and pray for the repose of his soul. I would like to live to see his canonization.

Nina Pashchenko
Birmingham, Alabama
May 27, 1977


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ARCHBISHOP JOASAPH OF CANADA

As Remembered by His Friends

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