Saint Sophrony: A "Renewer" of Orthodox Asceticism in the Modern Age
It is truly time for the Christian to renew himself, to fill his candle with the oil of the Spirit...And the oil of the Spirit is the indwelling of the Word of God, and that Word is Christ-the Truth.
Foreword to Principles of Orthodox Asceticism by Saint Sophrony of Essex
by Hieromonk Rafail Noica
The Lord said: Everyone that is of the truth heareth My voice (John 18:37). Many people today seek the voice of truth and the foundational Word in Spirit and Truth. It was possibly not by chance that the renewal of our nation’s destiny began with the cry: “We no longer want lies!” [N.T: this refers to the cry of the people in the streets of Bucharest in December 1989, during the Romanian “revolution” that led to the fall of the communist regime]
Historically, the world often longed for renewal, for a “better, more promising future,” wanting to renounce or even topple the things of the past that appeared antiquated; today, maybe more than ever, humanity tries to “carve a new destiny,” to the point of announcing a “New Era,” a “New Age.”
The Spirit, however, bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth (John 3:8). And in the Spirit, the hidden work of renewal takes place through a return, as it were, “back.” And, truly, where do we find fresh water running in our earthly history: in valleys, or where a river empties into the sea, or in the salty ocean from which no one can drink; or “back” to the source, where new, pure, clear water always wells up? And the Source, for those who love the appearing of Christ (2 Timothy 4:8), is where the Lord renewed man for eternity, imparting the Spirit of Truth as tongues of fire on the Apostles and those with them–the Spirit Whom up to this day we ask to renew us in the Divine Liturgy and church services.
And, see, today in all the churches, as much in the West as in the East, a search “for the source” makes itself known more and more powerfully. And it may seem surprising that one of the “renewers” of our age was Archimandrite Sophrony, through whom Saint Silouan the Athonite was made known to the world. Surprising because one can say that there was never a more “classic” man in his life and formation than Elder Sophrony. Born in a still Tsarist Russia, educated in the most traditional spiritual culture, in an Orthodox Church unshaken by the waves of afflictions of our age, Elder Sophrony took refuge from the onset of these afflictions in Paris as a young painter for a time, where the call of prayer led him to Mount Athos, where he was to remain as a monk for 22 years, being formed in possibly the most traditional school of the Orthodox Church.
Man’s renewal, however, does not lie in new forms, but it is the Spirit’s work of salvation, just as degradation is nothing other than the work of sin, of “corruption,” which then produces new forms, rotting the substance, “corrupting” life. The Spirit, however, as God the Creator, not only can create, but also renew life; but He first renews it within, essentially, and then, according to the need, in forms as well, which He adapts so that new, fresh, true life can find its place in external, historical conditions (Matt 9:17; Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37-38).
Archimandrite Sophrony was a man of the essence. Not tied to nor impressed beyond reason by external forms, his search was always for the deep meaning of life, which, once understood, he put all his effort into reaching its goal: union with God for eternity, while still here on earth; a goal which, as a spiritual father, he also guided all who came to him.
Union with God, or, as he himself describes it: “the desire to make the commandments (of Christ) the sole and eternal law of our entire being,” as much our temporal one as our eternal one, is historically the true calling and single aim of the monastic state of being. But, at the same time, it is the purpose and calling of each baptized Christian — even of all people made “in the image and likeness” of God —and in this possibly lies a potential service or historical “role” of the monk. The monk’s salvation is nothing other than the salvation of all people, and thus, says the Elder, the same commandments and Gospel were given by the Lord to the Mother of God, saints, laypeople, monks, and all who are born of Adam. Human nature is one, and thus the salvation of man is one; and by virtue of this fact, a monk can know by personal experience, if he has come to know the essential in prayer, all the states of man’s fall and tragedy, as well as something of the redemptive prayer of Gethsemane. Thus, he can guide or help anyone on the path of salvation, and even become a luminary of the entire Church, as history has shown not only once. But all of this is on the condition and to the degree of one’s own fulfillment, one’s own asceticism, and one’s own lived experience, experienced in Spirit and in Truth.
This leads us to the question: What is the fulfillment of asceticism? What is the essence of a monk? Venerable Abba Silouan says: “The monk is one who prays for the entire world, and in this lies his principal work…And therefore neither pastors of the Church nor monks must busy themselves with worldly things, but to follow the example of the Mother of God, who in the Church, in the Holy of Holies, day and night studied the law of the Lord and persevered in prayer for the world.” All deprivations, all renunciations, all monastic asceticism, if it does not lead to this state of prayer becomes without meaning. But who is “one who prays for the entire world”? What is this prayer for the entire world, so loved by the Venerable Silouan?
God’s initial thought for man is revealed in the book of Genesis. God, Who established the heavens and the earth by a single word–Let there be–when He arrives at man He proceeds differently: He stops, as it were, and consults Himself in “a pre-eternal counsel”: Let us make man according to Our image and likeness (Genesis 1:28)–and made Adam. And Adam was one, standing before the Face of his God, bearing in his body all of humanity that was to be.
But God, in Whose image He made man, is not a single Person (Our image); and finds that: It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him (Genesis 2:18), and in what follows, He creates Eve from his body, through whom all of us who have filled the earth throughout history have been born. And still, Let us make man–not “men,” not “humanity,” but “man.” Thus all of humanity, all humans, men and women (so that we no longer speak of “masses,” of “mobs” and other things similar to them, concepts that have no place in a true life of prayer), let them be as the sand of the sea and the grass of the earth and as the stars of heaven in number–all are one man, in the image of our God, Who in three persons is one God; he [Adam], nonetheless, cannot be fulfilled until he is perfected in us, in what is to come, in eternity, in the likeness that we could not attain until one was born [of a woman] and saved those who are to be born of a woman (cf. Hebrews 11:40).
This likeness, however, must be perfected on the personal level, or as Elder Sophrony liked to reinforce it, the hypostatic, each one of us becoming like the Person, the hypostasis of Christ-Man; and in this also lies the work, the asceticism of each person’s salvation. And likeness, according to the word of Christ: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48) must be brought to perfection, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). The Elder saw this measure in the prayer of Gethsemane, a prayer that he pondered and uttered very much, in particular at the end of his life on earth.
The content of this salvific prayer is not revealed in the Holy Gospel; only Saint Luke mentions something from the plea let this cup pass; but we know that in this prayer, Christ-Man prays for the sins, the perdition, the eternal hell of each soul that had been born or was to be born of Adam as for Himself. In this Prayer, Christ-Man, abandoned by all, alone, was One, standing before the Face of His God, bearing in His Spirit all of humanity from the first Adam, and those who were to be, down to those in the future who are still to be born of a woman. Because the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45).
This is what it means to “pray for the entire world,” or, again, as Elder Sophrony liked to say, for the “entire Adam”; a prayer in which man reaches the summit of his likeness to Christ-Man; in which he passes from the level of “individual” to that of person, of hypostasis; that is, in which he too becomes an Adam, bearing within himself, in prayer, all of humanity—the entire Adam, a prayer for which Elder Sophrony, in the final days of his life, called “Hypostatic Prayer.”
But man’s salvation does not end with likeness to Christ-Man, because Christ at the same time is God Himself; and man is like God to the measure of his likeness to this Man. And this should not be a surprise, because when God decides to make man according to Our image and according to Our likeness, He was not incarnate in another way, but was in His divine state, that which was before the ages. Therefore, the Orthodox Church also understands salvation as being nothing less or lower than man’s deification; and it alone has the deeper meaning of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God (Ephesians 3:9), and the humble daring to believe in it.
I spoke of “renewal,” and of Archimandrite Sophrony as being one of the “renewers” of our age. But, as can be seen in the present work, far from pretending to renew, let us say, the image of asceticism for “modern man” (an expression heavily used today), Elder Sophrony reinstates old, ancient spiritual foundations of asceticism in general, and thus, for monastics especially, [suited] for where they live, showing them, as an abbot from Mount Athos said about him, a scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven who knows how to bring out of his treasure things new and old (Matthew 13:52); and this, in an era in which man far too easily judges and lives only by external effects. And this judgment and experience are not only seen in asceticism, in monasticism, in Church, but in all domains of his life and culture, modern man appears incapable of penetrating the spirit and sense of things. And It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63). His “body,” or in general his external form lives only by the spirit that gives him life. Yet if the spirit is lacking, then his form is subject to corruption and disintegration — from which these new, “modern” forms in art or architecture arise, for example, which are nothing but the image of the disintegration of traditional or “natural” things, sometimes to the point of not being able to recognize them. If, however, the form is preserved, it must be noted that the motive, in general, is not that of the essential, of living in the spirit, but fully “external”; a historical inertia of “preserving,” for example; or a certain nostalgia for the past, or an arbitrary, aesthetic consideration through which the things of the past are imitated with more or less success. In both of these cases, we can paraphrase the old Romanian saying: “The spirit passes, but the forms remain.”
“Evolution” and even “progress” are talked about very much today; again, however, without observing a single spirit in them, neither their meaning, nor toward what we are evolving or progressing. Our fear is that the time has come for us to either return to the Spirit and Truth, or…
The world has grown old like a garment; Adam has aged in his sin, the outpouring of which has reached the depths today. Yet a little while and we will reach where the dark powers as a vesture they shalt be folded up, and they shall be changed (cf. Hebrews 1:12) by the gentle, but almighty hand of the Lord. It is truly time for the Christian to renew himself, to fill his candle with the oil of the Spirit, for behold the Bridegroom cometh at midnight, for the fashion of this world–the darkness of this Age –passeth away (1 Corinthians 7:31). And the oil of the Spirit is the indwelling of the Word of God, and that Word is Christ–the Truth (John 14:6).
True renewal, as Sophrony knew, is always a return… an excavation of the ancient, the unchanging, the eternal. It is the paradox of the Gospel: to move forward, one must go back… to be made new, one must drink from the old wellsprings.
What strikes most deeply is the insistence that the monk’s prayer, indeed, any true prayer, must bear the weight of the entire Adam. Here, your essay touches something perilous, almost unbearable in its implications. To pray as Christ prayed in Gethsemane is not to offer pious words, but to stand in the breach, to take the anguish of the world into one’s own soul. This is no sentimental universalism, no vague benevolence. It is the hard, bloody work of love, the kind that sweats drops of blood.
And yet, one wonders: in an age that chases after "new forms," how many are willing to endure such a crucible? Modernity thrives on distraction, on the illusion that progress means escape from the past, from the weight of sin, from the terrible responsibility of standing before God as Adam stood: naked, known, and called to account. Sophrony’s asceticism is a rebuke to all that. It demands everything, because only everything will suffice.
This piece offers a good warning that without the Spirit, forms, whether ancient or modern, are but hollow shells. But the greater warning lies unspoken, that the Spirit’s fire is not tame. It does not merely renew, it burns away. And those who seek it must be prepared, like Sophrony, to stand in the flame.