Fr. Rafail Noica: I was born when I met Elder Sophrony
I was born when I met Elder Sophrony. From that moment on, I considered all my previous life as stumbling around in the darkness.
I was sure I was not meant to be a monk, but still, I had a calling…And someone brought me to Elder Sophrony Sakharov; I told him about me, and he told me: “You have one year to go in school; go and finish this year, but as a foundation for your monasticism.” This was hard to swallow for me, but then some comforting words followed: “Keep your mind in hell and despair not!” This was typical for the Elder, who always gave obediences a bit obliquely. He also told me: “What I tell you is contrary to what the Fathers used to say. They said that if you have a calling for monasticism, you should run so that this calling doesn’t cool down - because if it cools down, you won’t find it anymore.” Elder Sophrony added: “What we do now is for the needs of our world; nowadays, it is necessary to arm ourselves with the means of this world; otherwise, the people of today’s world will crush you as they crush a fly. I trust that if you do this and obey me, God will protect you!”
Only a long time after this did I realize that the Elder was clairvoyant and could see into your soul. This is something I have started to understand only recently: how much he could see in your soul.
And it happened exactly this way: I had to do another year of school in France, then another one in England, and when I came to the monastery [note: the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England], I was like a lemon that was all squeezed and moldy, but the important fact was that I came back to the monastery! While I was talking to Elder Sophrony, I was looking at him, at his gestures, and he was so simple, so natural in his whole attitude, that I could have been deluded as I was listening and looking at him so intensely; but then the thought came to me that in everything I had read, I saw that these great men were also very humble, very natural. I was very interested in everything he was saying, and I was not only interested, but he was begetting me - he was the man who confirmed some intuitions I had from my childhood.
Parents, pay attention to the intuition of your child! It can be very deep and true, but the child cannot express it at a young age. Many good people from my friends’ circles often turned me away from my path because they didn’t have the power to perceive my intuition as a child.
Finally, when I was 20 years old, my childhood intuitions were confirmed by Elder Sophrony, and he was setting me on the right path. I was born that evening, even though I wasn't aware of it rationally! In the end, I was born when I met Elder Sophrony. From that moment on, I considered all my previous life as stumbling around in the darkness. Many years later, I understood something else. The Holy Apostle Paul said we can have ten thousand teachers in Christ, "yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." When I understood that what I felt had a theological foundation, I realized that spiritual birth is a reality! A reality even stronger than the physical one, even though it is not palpable.
Elder Sophrony had asked me where I wanted to go as a monk. I wanted to go into the wilderness, in the Gobi or Kalahari Desert, wherever God would lead me. I would say: “Lord, lead me where You want, but only give me time to take off my pajamas and put on some proper clothes!” Elder Sophrony told me: “If you don’t find another place, know that the door of our monastery is open, and you can join the Three Musketeers!” At that time, at the monastery in Essex were only Father Simeon, Father Procopios, and Elder Sophrony.
I would have preferred the endless wilderness and not civilization, but I fulfilled my obedience, and I went back there. In the next few months, I realized that the Gobi and Kalahari Deserts had vanished from my mind, and the only thing I wanted was not to be separated from Elder Sophrony. I had a sort of fear of being far from him, so I decided to swallow the fact of staying in the civilized world in England so I could be close to Elder Sophrony.
By telling you these things, I want to convey the effect of his personality - in psychological language - and of his spirit, in spiritual language. Elder Sophrony had a capacity of persuasion that emanated from him, he had a simplicity that caused you to not even think of contradicting him - this is what I call his spirit. I experienced next to Elder Sophrony some things that were absolutely natural; I saw that God and His saints are so humble and simple, so full of grace without even realizing it, so close to your heart (when people have grace, they don't even realize they have it; they only realize it when they lose it, and then they don't know what happened), that you might not even pay attention to them! This is the danger of perdition!
When God gives us the commandment of humility, it is not so that He can command us by stomping on our head with His boot - that if we don’t obey, we’ll be devoured by ogres - but He teaches us to be like Him, to not lose our eternal life by mistake. St. Silouan said that grace withdraws because of the slightest impious thought, and you don’t even realize when it leaves you. So that he could regain grace, he had to go through what he learned from Christ Himself: again to throw himself into hell, again to allow God’s grace to fill him with His love.
Because it is so easy to be insolent with God, it is so easy to lose the grace that you didn’t even know you had!
(From the conference “Meeting the Spiritual Father”, 2016)
Translated from doxologia.ro: https://doxologia.ro/parintele-rafail-noica-m-am-nascut-cand-l-am-cunoscut-pe-parintele-sofronie-toata-viata-mea
This is wonderful. Thank you for sharing this! 🙏
"I was born when I met Elder Sophrony. From that moment on, I considered all my previous life as stumbling around in the darkness." Amen. Though I never met him in person, when I was led to find his writings, his words gave me the same feeling. Again I say, amen.