The Way of a Pilgrim and Other Classics of Russian Spirituality

G. P. Fedotov

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780486147192
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Essays

"A valuable treasure of Russian spirituality that theologians, philosophers, and laymen will read with pleasure and delight."  —  The Personalist.
An anonymous nineteenth-century peasant attempts to follow St. Paul's advice to "pray without ceasing," setting out on a pilgrimage with only a Bible, a rosary, and some dried bread. Throughout his travels, he recites the Jesus prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"), an invocation reputed to instill a sense of love for all creation. The story of his spiritual education, "The Way of a Pilgrim" ranks among the classics of world spirituality, and its appearance here distinguishes this superb anthology of spiritual works by Russian writers.
Clear, scholarly commentaries introduce the texts, which date from the eleventh century to modern times and derive from the lives of saints, ascetic and mystic treatises, and spiritual autobiographies. All the authors — mystics, prophets, rebels, and saints — belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church, and most occupied places of spiritual authority. Their works offer both literary sensibility and compelling examples of intense religious experience. The first such anthology in any language, this volume was hailed upon its original publication as "a gold mine indeed" (Commonweal).

FATHER YELCHANINOV

THE TEACHER OF SELF-EXAMINATION

YELCHANINOV The main-stream of monastic spirituality in modern Russia has its source in the revival of the ancient ascetic tradition of the Greek Fathers (contained in the Philocalia, translated by Païsius Velichkovsky) and remains true to this fountainhead. The outstanding feature of this spiritual current is its complete detachment from modern culture. At the same time, it severs all connections with the social and active-ethical spirit of medieval Russian monasticism. To the extent that its exponents are obliged to take a stand upon social and political issues, their attitude is that of extreme reaction against all liberal reforms in Russian life. In theology they take pride in being merely followers and expositors of the Patristic tradition. Indeed the reader acquainted with this tradition will find nothing original in the numerous writings of Bishop Theophanes (surnamed Govorov, “The Recluse”), who was the compiler of the second, greatly enlarged, edition of the Philocalia. Theophanes represents the ascetical tradition, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov the mystical. Of more practical interest are the published letters of some of the startzy, especially those of the Optina monks Macarius and Ambrosius. It is extremely difficult to find copies of these books in the United States, but we can take comfort in the consideration that the writings of St. Nilus Sorsky, who is a true disciple of this school, can serve to represent it as well as could those of the majority of its modern disciples.

From among the moderns we choose instead of Theophanes and Ignatius a man whose name is little known but whose book (the only one on the spiritual life that he has written) is of greater interest than all the volumes of Theophanes and Ignatius for the reason that this representative of the Patristic ascetical doctrine is a true modern of broad and refined culture, who has passed through the fiery revolutionary atmosphere of the Russian symbolist movement.

Father Alexander Yelchaninov was our contemporary. He died an exile in Paris in 1934. Born in 1881, the son of a traditionally military family, he was graduated from the University of St. Petersburg as a student in history and philology. He gave up the offer of a career of scholarly research and for some years lived in the centers of religious-philosophical activity, which during that decade (1900-10) was at its zenith in the circles of the progressive and artistic intelligentsia. Yelchaninov was associated with the writers S. Merezhkovsky, V Rozanov and V Ivanov, the poet. Having moved to Moscow, where he encountered Bulgakov and Berdiaev, he became associated in particular with two remarkable men, his friends and schoolmates from boyhood days. One was Vladimir Ern, the philosopher, the other, Paul Florensky, a mathematician and later a theologian, undoubtedly a man of genius. Both placed a heavy impress upon modern Orthodox thought. At the time of the first revolution in Russian (1905-6), these friends, together with Yelchaninov and a very few others, tried to enter politics as an underground group called the “Christian Brotherhood of Struggle,” with revolutionary and anarchical tendencies.

Soon after the repression of the revolutionary movement, the members of this group became conservative or national spirited, as did most of the religious intelligentsia at that time. Yelchaninov spent the last years of the old regime as a teacher and headmaster in a progressive high school in Tiflis (now Tfilisi), the capital of Georgia in the Caucasus. Education was his true calling, and when he left Russia after the Communist Revolution and established residence in Nice (France) in 1922, he returned to the teaching profession. Even after his ordination as a parish priest (he was a married man), Father Alexander was, first of all, a spiritual guide to boys and girls, one of the leaders of the Russian Christian Student Movement in Exile. His gifts as a spiritual guide were remarkable. Even as a boy he was the intellectual leader of his younger schoolmates. For him it was both a need and a joy to assist in the discovery of the dormant powers of souls. He had somewhat the Socratic method, applied to nature in such a way that he might be described as a “spiritual midwife.” Far from the spirit of proselytism, and with a distaste for the use of any force whatsoever, he simply opened to those under his guidance the way to self-examination. And he himself was a master of the technique of self-examination. Perhaps this is his real vocation in the spiritual life: he is not a struggler or a mystic but a serene and kind counselor, meek but interiorly austere, a stranger to any kind of opportunism.

The harrowing experience of the Revolution and the destruction of all hope for the peaceful cultural development of Russia produced in Yelchaninov, as in so many others, a profound reaction. People who kept free of political counter-revolutionary activities and were sufficiently thoughtful to develop their spiritual lives, turned their backs upon their social and historical environment. Theirs was the apocalyptic attitude of mind which characterized the early Church and the Fathers of the Desert. Yelchaninov discovered in the Patristic writings a correspondence with his personal experience, and it is this that makes his diary of such great interest. It is an intimate disclosure of his life. Father Alexander did not publish it himself, nor is it known whether he had considered its publication, but his wife had it printed after his death.

There is no attempt made at systematization in the diary, nor is it free of the contradictions naturally contained in unstudied writing of this kind. For the attentive reader there is one special attraction: from time to time, in the course of an austere ascetic world-denial, another trend of thought reveals itself: the humanistic appreciation of freedom, the hope of Christian culture, the positive evaluation of beauty, love, and friendship. This is the residue of the great spiritual movement of the early twentieth century. Its generous dreams are dissipated; yet certain positive elements are alive under the ground of ascetic reaction, awaiting their resurrection, when they will be incorporated with the traditional ascetic-mystical doctrine of the Church.

FRAGMENTS OF A DIARY

By ALEXANDER YELCHANINOV

BEFORE PRIESTHOOD THERE WAS SO MUCH I HAD TO BE SILENT ABOUT—TO RESTRAIN MYSELF. PRIESTHOOD, FOR ME, MEANS the possibility of speaking in a full voice.

There is no consolation in suffering other than to consider it in relation to the background of the “other world.” Moreover, this is essentially the only correct point of view. If this world alone exists, then everything in it is absolute nonsense: separation, sickness, the suffering of the innocent, death. But all these acquire a meaning in that ocean of life invisibly washing the small island of our earthly being. Which of us has not experienced the breath of other worlds in dreams, in prayer? When a man finds in himself the power to acquiesce in the ordeal sent by God, he accomplishes great progress in his spiritual life.

What is that continual feeling of dissatisfaction, of anxiety—our ordinary disposition—but the stifled voice of conscience speaking within us beneath the level of consciousness and often contrary to our will and declaring the untruth that our life is? As long as we live in conflict with the radiant law which has been granted us, this voice will not be silent, for it is the voice of God Himself in our soul. On the other hand, that rare feeling of keen satisfaction, of plenitude and joy, is the happiness caused by the union of the divine principle of our soul with the universal harmony and the divine essence of the world.

I am continually pondering the text: “If you had been of the world, the world would love its own.” Our sufferings are the sign that we belong to Christ; and the greater they are, the more evident it is that we are not “of the world.” Why did all the saints, after Christ Himself, suffer so much? Contact with the world, plunging into the midst of things, gives pain to the followers of Christ; only the children of this world suffer no pain. This is in the nature of an unerring chemical reaction.

What augments our spiritual forces?—a temptation which has been overcome.

The presence of the Infinite—of Love—in us, who are finite beings, leads to the desire of death as of an entrance into the Infinite.

Life is a precious and unique gift, and we squander it foolishly and lightly, forgetful of its brevity.

Either we look back sadly on the past or live in the expectation of a future in which, it seems to us, real life will begin. But the present—that is, what actually is our life—is spent in these fruitless dreams and regrets.

The opinion of others concerning us—that is the mirror before which we all, almost without exception, pose. A man tries to be such as he wishes to appear to others. The real man, as he actually is, remains unknown to all, often himself included, while a figure projected and embellished by the imagination conducts his life. This tendency to deceive is so great that, distorting his very nature, a man will sacrifice his own self, the unique and inimitable essence of his human personality.

But how great the attraction we feel whenever we meet a person free of this cancer, and how much we love the complete simplicity and directness of children, who have not as yet entered the zone of self-consciousness. Yet we have the alternative of struggling consciously to revert from this evil complexity to simplicity. In any case, when we become aware of the presence of this evil in us, the task is already half-accomplished.

Our Lord has infinite pity for us, and yet He sends us suffering: it is only when we are stricken by calamity that we are able to yield certain sparks, a certain sacred fire. This is the meaning of wars, revolutions, sickness.

The proud man is deaf and blind to the world; he does not see the world, but only himself reflected in all things.

Sickness—what a school of humility! It makes us see that we are poor, naked and blind. [Written a short while before his death.]

How shall we comfort those who weep? By weeping with them.

What joy to be a priest! Yesterday I confessed a whole family. The children especially were lovable—two boys of about seven. All evening I was almost rapt in ecstasy. Priesthood—the only profession in which men reveal to you the most earnest side of their nature, in which you also are “in earnest” all the time.

All that is sinful in us is so inveterate, so full-blooded, that our usual languid contrition is completely disproportionate to this sinful element possessing us.

It often seems to me that the thorns and thistles of our life’s condition are ordained by God in view of curing precisely our soul. I see this with absolute clearness in my personal life.

If you are seized with anger towards someone, try to imagine that both you and he must die; how insignificant his fault will then appear, and how unjust your anger, even if formally justified.

Sickness is the most favorable time for us to return to our own heart, to God. As soon as our health has improved, the possibility of this drifts once more to an infinite distance.

Faith has nothing to fear from negative polemics, the ordeal by the mind; faith is able to withstand such an ordeal. But what it has to fear in us is the terrible weakness of the spirit, “the apostasy of the heart” (Kireievsky’s expression).¹

Those who seek proof to justify their faith are on a false track. Faith is a free choice; wherever there is a desire of proof, even a desire hidden from ourselves, there is no faith. The evidences of divine manifestation must not be taken as “proofs”—this would lower, cancel, the great virtue of faith.

To free ourselves from inner chaos, we must recognize objective order.

This is the kind of man we most often encounter; he presents a combination of three traits: (1) pride—faith in his own strength, delight in his own creations; (2) a passionate love of earthly life; and (3) freedom from any sense of sin. How can such men approach God? What is their path? Can they be transformed? As they now are, they are hopelessly isolated from God; they do not even feel the need of Him. And it is this kind of personality that is cultivated by modem life, by education, literature, et cetera. The idea of God is erased from the soul. In order that such a man should be reborn, what catastrophes are required!

There is a spirituality closely enmeshed with emotions—esthetic, sentimental, passionate—which is easily combined with selfishness, vanity, sensuality. Men of this type seek the praise and the good opinion of the priest who confesses them; their confession is very difficult for him, for they come in order to complain of others, to whimper; they are full of themselves, readily accuse others. The poor quality of their religious exaltation is best demonstrated by the facility with which they pass to a state of anger, irritation. They are further from genuine contrition than the most inveterate sinners.

The man who does not order his life according to logic and common sense but proceeds from the supreme law—the law of love—is always right. All other laws are naught in face of love, which not only directs hearts, but “moveth the sun and other stars.”² He who keeps this law within him lives. He who lets himself be governed by philosophy, politics, reason alone, dies.

Faith originates in love; love, in contemplation. It is impossible not to love Christ. If we saw Him now, we should not be able to take our eyes off Him, we should “listen to Him in rapture”; we should flock around Him as did the multitudes in the Gospels. All that is required of us is not to resist. We must yield to Him, to the cont...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• ST. THEODOSIUS
• ST. SERGIUS
• ST. NILUS SORSKY
• AVVAKUM: THE CONSERVATIVE REBEL
• ST. TYCHON
• ST. SERAPHIM, MYSTIC AND PROPHET
• “THE PILGRIM” ON MENTAL PRAYER
• JOHN OF CRONSTADT - A GENIUS OF PRAYER
• FATHER YELCHANINOV
• NOTES
• A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RUSSIAN SPIRITUALITY
• A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST