ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Trust in God and Working with Each Other

Wendy Robinson

Last year we had our first Vicariate Conference. For those of us who were there it was a time of joy and hope, as the sense of fellowship was deep: joy and hope for the future of Orthodoxy in this country; joy and hope felt in spite of, along with, all the inalienable grief about change and losses. We still grieve Metropolitan Anthony and this year, of course, we mourn that wonderful, pastoral priest, Father Patrick Radley of the Walsingham church. The Gospel is full of extreme paradoxes of this kind. We need to live with the tension rather than deny one side at the expense of the other.

Now here we are again thanks to all the hard work of the Committee. It is wonderful to look around and see so many known and unknown faces. Where are we now? Can we really try to get to know each other more deeply – through shared worship, through prayer, through conversations with friends and strangers? At the end I wonder what each of us will have learned that we can take away and share with our local churches and in our life in the world. Learning is not always easy. In our church in Exeter we have some marvellous feisty little children. Lily, aged five, the granddaughter of Father John and Dawn, is one of them. After Lily’s first two weeks at school her mother told me that Lily said, ‘All this learning is very irritating; I think I’ve had enough of it now!’ Even so at five – as at forty-five or seventy-five...?

Let us acknowledge together that there is still much work to be done of a difficult and painful kind. There are problems of power, property, possession, problems of ownership; that involve not only Church but also charity law and the law of this country. Some of you are doing this work for us and you know how painful and bitter it can be. We want to thank you for undertaking it for us and to say that any wounds to the body affect the whole body – and we all need to seek healing together from our life in Christ and in the work of the Holy Spirit. It does not help if we adopt a simplistic, over-idealistic view of how Christians should solve deep problems. Story, history, memory are all continually made and re-made, told and re-told, under pressure of events. If we want to know what is going on we should talk with those at the sharp end and resist the temptation to get into a wistful apparently holier-than-thou huddle and deplore what is happening. I hope at this conference we can put these matters into a firm bracket – to be worked on at the Vicariate Council or on other occasions. Here perhaps we can focus on deepening our shared life in Christ, both corporately and personally, as a resource for what has to be done and for the sake of the world in which we live. Here perhaps we can take a deep corporate breath together and see how we are facing the challenges ahead.

II

About forty five years ago Edward and I were married in Central Africa at seven o’clock in the morning. Our journey afterwards meant driving along the Lunagwa escarpment, which was open twelve hours in one direction and then twelve in the other – and no messing in the middle! There wasn’t room!  When we got to the escarpment, the first road sign that greeted us read: ‘DANGER! BEWARE! DANGEROUS BENDS FOR THE NEXT 128 MILES!’  It was an accurate description of the journey and perhaps of marriage too? I have an awful feeling that there was a metaphysical road sign of that kind facing Bishop Basil as he set out with us into what is becoming the life of the Vicariate. I am sure that we want to assure him that we are in solidarity with him, here in our midst, as our Bishop, a potent symbol of unity; a unity that rejoices in diversity and wants to affirm and explore all the otherness with which we present each other. Let us remember that while we struggle with the extent of our otherness, it could be that the Spirit is ‘laughing in the mantle of variety’ and saying: 'Come ON...'

Let us be aware of how much we ask of our Bishop by our ‘Axios’. Think of him standing in our midst at the beginning of the Liturgy being clothed in his vestments. He wears the dalmatic, the symbol of Christ’s seamless robe. Over his shoulders is the stole, the omophor, representing his task as shepherd-in-Christ, carrying the sheep – us – home to the Father’s house.  He wears the panagia reminding him always to bear in his heart our Lord and his Mother, our intercessor with God. As is said in the ordination prayer,

Do Thou make this man who hath been proclaimed a steward of the Episcopal grace, to be an imitator of Thee, the true Shepherd, who didst lay down Thy life for the sheep; to be a leader of the blind, a light to those in darkness, a reprover of the unwise, a teacher of the young, a lamp to the world...

We only dare ask this of him if we are living out our dedication to God in the ‘royal priesthood of all believers’. To quote the lay theologian, Paul Evdokimov:

Universal priesthood implies no opposition to the functional priesthood of the clergy... The episcopate is chosen from among the people. It is of its priestly flesh and blood. The episcopate does not form a structure above, for it is an organic part of the Body, of the ontological unity of all its members. ... The sacramental power of celebrating the mysteries ... and the power of promulgating doctrinal definitions, the charism of the certainty of truth ... belong to the episcopate by virtue of the apostolicity of the Church.

There is also the pastoral charism of leading the Body, the royal priesthood, towards the glorious Parousia. As a living image of Christ, the bishop has only one true power, that of love, and only one true force of persuasion, and that is his martyrdom, his witness. As these beautiful words declare magnificently: ‘We are not the masters of your faith, but the servants of your joy’.
Ages of the Spiritual Life,p. 229

And here is a quotation from Saint Augustine, speaking on the anniversary of his ordination into the episcopate:

Bear me up then, so that, according to the Apostle’s precept, we may carry one another’s burdens and thus fulfil the law of Christ [cf. Gal.6:2]. If Christ does not carry this burden with us we will fall; if he does not carry us, we will fall.

Although I am terrified by what I am for you, I am consoled by what I am with you. For you, I am a bishop; with you I am a Christian. The former is a title of an office which has been undertaken; the latter is a title of grace. The first is a danger, the second salvation ... we are tossed about as though in a great ocean by the tempest of our responsibilities. However, when we recall by whose blood we have been redeemed, it is as though we enter into a safe harbour by the peace of this recollection. Precisely as we struggle in this office we find rest in our common good.
Introduction to the Fathers of the Church (1983: page 302)

Father Boris, it is some years since I last met you when I drove you to the magnificent joint Orthodox and Anglican Vespers in Wells Cathedral, where you preached so movingly. It was quite a Shakespearean pageant, as the ‘West’ swept in from one end and the ‘East’ from another. All the pews had been removed and I remember local people saying that this Vespers had made the very stones of the Cathedral come alive. It is wonderful to have you with us now – many years since you first came to this country, I believe to the conferences of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. When I was thinking of the nature of our commitment to, and our prayers for, Bishop Basil I found it was your book, The Compassion of the Father,that came to heart and mind with its moving introduction about your life and work by Maxime Egger. You join with Paul Evdokimov as the ones to whom I shall most refer tonight.

I want to stress the ‘French connection’ and in this talk keep up an internal dialogue, through quotation, with Paul Evdokimov and Father Boris Bobrinskoy. I find their thinking on the Church and the world both inspiring and congenial. Both of them write theologically, that is, spiritually, with ‘the head in the heart’ and standing in the presence of God – prayerfully. They draw us more deeply into prayer and worship as well as making us think.
Father Boris: you speak so movingly of our need to lean into and long for the mystery of the Father revealed in Christ, spread abroad in our hearts by the Spirit. You admit that living the questions as deeply as we can together is what can call us on into the greatest mystery of all. How do we turn our anxious fears of judgment into a constant worshipping and prayerful living of the miraculous fact of being eternally loved-by-God, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, if only we will turn? There is so much I could quote, but here is one passage from the Introduction:

Fr Boris is touched more and more, impressed, even overwhelmed, by the mystery of the Father ... which ... is inscribed, buried in the mystery of Christ. It is the mystery of silence of the one who utters the Word and who transcends all words; the mystery of tenderness of the one who is infinite mercy and compassion, who never tires of receiving his prodigal son (and daughter).

Fr Boris asks: What is a father if not an overflowing of love? But do we feel it as such? How do we live this filial relationship to the Father? ... Are we able to understand and to live the meaning and the implications of the “bowels of mercy” and of the tenderness of the Father? These are questions I ask myself and... the Holy Spirit Himself asks (them) in us, by prompting us to become more and more aware of the mystery of the person of the Father. ... In our personal or ecclesial experience, where is the prayer of the Spirit who sighs in us “Abba, Father”? Let us remember what St Ignatius of Antioch wrote in his Letter to the Romans: “A living water murmurs in me: come to the Father”.
The Compassion of the Father” pp. 38-39

III

We must surely pray for our Bishop that in the midst of the hurly-burly he will hear that living water murmuring in him, ‘Come to the Father’. And of course with Bishop Basil we also include all those whom we have asked and affirmed as priests and deacons of the mysteries for us. There are those of you, priests and deacons, in this room who have been having and are having a tough and demanding time. We thank you for all that you do for us. Remember that if at times we are carping or critical, it is certainly not the whole story. Help us to understand where you are and what you need of us, your fellow-members of the royal priesthood. May God help us all to listen to each other, to find the deep places where the ‘bowels of mercy’ and deep compassion of the Father can be experienced.

Sometimes at conferences or celebrations of the Liturgy we see the priests vesting. There are times when I am touched by the presence of the Divine Child in our midst. One sees the kind of child that the deacon-priest was once – and how he dressed himself; for instance when he is binding the wrist ribbons that are the symbolic representation of the bonds of Christ. What great mysteries they take on for us in all their sheer unique humanity.

One of my favourite stories of the lived interaction between the priesthood of all believers and the sacramental priesthood comes in the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt. I was at the opening evening of John Taverner’s opera about her. The moment that stays with me is as Mary and Zossima bow and prostrate constantly to each other saying, ‘Bless’, ‘Bless’ – each wishing to honour the other and learn what was necessary. And in the end, in answer to his appeal, she blesses him. And he says, ‘Amen’. She also prayed – silently – at his request, and he was moved with awe and trembling. Then later in this wonderful story he brings her Communion. He can’t see her in the desert and realises that she is on the other side of the Jordan. He despairs as there is no boat. Then he sees her in the moonlight walk straight across the waters of the Jordan to him. In awe he kneels to ask again for her blessing. But this time she says: ‘What are you doing, Father? You are a priest of God and carrying the Holy Mysteries.’ That right recognition of the greater Mysteries. They parted with him asking her to pray for the Church, for the kingdom and for himself.

That inspiring story is not just of repentance, though certainly it carries all the ‘eros of repentance’in it. It is also the story of the way we all have to bind our desires, our desire, to its Origin and End and Way, in Christ and in the life of Christ through the Spirit in and for each of us, so that we may seek to live out a mutual love and respect for each other. ‘Saint Mary of Egypt; Pray to God for us.’ And let us not forget our ever present helpers.

I want to quote Paul Evdokimov again, on the essence of the Eastern Church tradition, to remind us of the life of exchange that both truth and love ask of us:

There is neither an anti-clerical egalitarianism nor a division by the clergy of the One Body into two parts, but the sacerdotal participation of all in the one divine Priest, Christ, by means of two priesthoods. ...Before everything else, all are equal members of the People of God. By baptism... all are already priests and it is in the heart of this priestly equality that the functional differentiation of charisma is produced. It is not a new ‘consecration’ of a bishop or a priest, but an ordination for a new ministry of one who was already consecrated, already changed in his nature once and for all having already received his priestly character. ... The sacrament of the anointing by chrism... establishes all the baptised in the same hieratic priestly order. From this equality, some are chosen, set apart and established by a divine act, as bishops and presbyters.
Ages of the Spiritual Life, pp.230-1

Father Boris writes on his particular calling to the ‘sacramental’ priesthood:

The concrete and practical implications of this undertaking cannot be known and are not foreseeable. The mark of the Spirit is unconditional and the grace of the priesthood always signifies an ‘objective’ conformation to Christ, the Spirit-bearer, no longer for our personal sanctification but for the harvest of the Lord. Our sanctification lies in our effort to obey, and in daily purification, in a feeling of powerful contradiction between the power of God acting through us and our own unworthiness.
The Compassion of the Father,  p.16

IV

Now I want to begin again, but come back to the theme that if we are together to trust God and work with each other, then we need to realise the heights and depths of our baptised and chrismated life in the ‘priesthood of all believers’, and what it asks of us.

I realise in talking and listening with others in our Vicariate during the last year that some are feeling a bit tired, a little disappointed, disillusioned, even betrayed by the way the ‘Church’ in its more institutional aspects, handles divisions, differences, conflict. Some feel that they have stepped back a little; that they no longer want to live such a wholehearted commitment. The need to hold situations, while legal and other things happen, may teach us much about perseverance and patience and ‘waiting on God’ – or it may at times feel as if necessary repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation are a long way off. Disappointments that are felt as a betrayal of trust can spiral down into a rather depressed state.

We can react vengefully and get involved in interlocking feuding. We can believe we are right and ‘they’ (shifting and ubiquitous) are wrong – and project the blame. We can become satirically cynical with a world-weary shrug of the shoulders as if we have been taken in once but never again. Somewhere we can betray what is most alive and most suffering in us and for us – the Spirit. We can end up being paranoid not only about the external ‘Other’, but how we experience the ‘Other’ in our own midst. Sentimental nostalgia does not help. Hostility does not help. As someone said, ‘Hostility tends to make people sound more powerful than they really are.’ We can get things out of proportion. Conflict summons up the ‘tigers of wrath’ – and it is only love that quenches wrath. It is only Love that will help us to find the truth again and that will, in the end, if we are ready and willing, lead us towards true forgiveness and a tough reconciliation.

Human reactivity/responsiveness can experience sudden shifts – for good or ill. You can never be quite sure where sympathies lie. It reminds me of the mother who was horrified to see that her young children were looking at an old book with powerful portrayals of Christians being thrown to the lions. She saw that her three year old was crying. ‘O darling,’ she said, ‘what is the matter?’ To which the little dear replied, ‘O Mummy, look, that poor little lion hasn’t got a Christian.’

Amongst other things, reading Paul Evdokimov and Fr Boris has helped to steady things for me – and helped me to look at what IS, in the depths, about the royal priesthood of all believers and what that can teach us about Communion and Community – ‘For the Life of the World’, our conference title. It is one of the things that the Russian émigré tradition worked so hard to establish: a committed, seeking, studying, serving laity, steeped in liturgy and Eucharistic prayer – worship and thanksgiving. They did not want an over-clericalised Church, but one in which all were responsible for the life of the Church and could work together to serve the Church and the world in which we live. They could point out the dangers of every stage of church history. Let us hear how Paul Evdokimov put it in twentieth century Paris. And let us be aware of where we are now; and perhaps why.

Saint Peter takes up the expression, ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood’ (I Peter 2:9) ... They are united in Christ; and share in the unique priesthood and royalty of Jesus ... The Scriptures teach in a most firm and consistent manner the sacred and priestly character of each member of the people.

In the post-Constantinian reaction, it was the lay people themselves who relinquished their dignity as a universal priesthood and then inevitably the bishops became more and more the point of focus of the sacred, the priestly, ‘the consecrated’. A distance was created by the indigence, the progressive impoverishment of the laity by the regrettable rejection of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This was the great ‘betrayal of the laity’, a relinquishing of their priestly character. ...

(The two poles of the laos were the Christian king and the monastic.)

These two poles safeguarded the charismatic dignity of the laity. But the remainder between these two poles, fell into a vacuum now really profane ... identified with the things of this world ... Since then the definition of the laity has been negative. A lay person is a passive article of pure receptivity.

‘He lives on earth but he is a citizen of heaven.’ [Epistle to Diognetus] The faithful, the laity, are the chosen of God and fellow citizens of the saints. They have here below no lasting city. From this state of dignity of the ‘saints’ (those called to holiness) we see a dizzying descent to the profane state of those occupied solely with the things of this world. This is a radical profanation of the sacred.
Ages of the Spiritual Life,p.228-9

‘The great betrayal of the laity’: the word moves in two directions for we can be betrayed or we can betray our true inheritance, by not understanding or by neglect. Those of us who are converts can be almost overwhelmed by the riches that we find in Orthodoxy and the complexity. Here is how Fr Boris once put it: owning the riches but espousing the simplicity at the heart of it. There is a paradox:

When we turn towards Orthodoxy and the Church, we feel overwhelmed by the infinite richness manifested in its culture, its doctrine and spirituality. And the more we discover the inexhaustible abundance of treasures ... the more we marvel, but are also overburdened. This abundance of rituals and of forms assumed by doctrine, this very overabundance of the vestment over what is essential is almost too heavy to bear. ... For the presence of Jesus is a reality that is simple, pure, and unique, which is not in need of many words. We should move beyond words, figures, and symbols to contemplate the face of Jesus and, in Him, that of the Father.
The Compassion of the Father,pp.41-42

Father Boris: you have often been very courageous and outspoken in your pastoral work and preaching. Maxime Egger notes that some of your sermons were about to be published: I do not know whether they have yet appeared? But I hope when they do that they will soon be translated. He several times quotes from sermons preached for the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy when you seem inspired particularly to speak out! I now quote you on the problems that often face us:

The Orthodox churches show an occasional tendency to close in upon themselves, to define their identity against the surrounding world, against other religions, against non-Orthodox Christians – (against other Orthodox too) - in a confessional hardening which is humanly speaking understandable, but which limits the range of the gospel message... We are always busy protecting ourselves, isolating ourselves, building walls behind which we take pleasure in some kind of comfort, be it in our churches or in communities, which can become ghettos.... For me, the Church must be at the same time totally transparent to the grace of God ... and totally transparent to the world – of which it is the spokesperson and the prayer-bearer before the face of God – while not being of the world...The Church must not compromise the descent of the grace of God in the world, nor the ascent of the sufferings of the world to God. Now, if the Church accentuates and hardens its own frontiers, it prevents this double mediation and it becomes opaque to both the grace of God and the needs of the world.
The Compassion of the Father,p.42

M. Egger notes that you acknowledge that ‘Tensions are produced, and the choices are difficult’ [p.18] in pastoral life, but that you ‘ceaselessly worked towards the emergence of a local church, beyond juridical and ethnic boundaries’ [p.19]. You contrast ‘the parameters of an Orthodoxy in search of its identity ... which often knows nothing except that it is “against”: against the other churches, the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Uniates’ with the kind of Orthodoxy ‘where real desire and possibilities exist for listening, for understanding, and for common prayer.’ You warn that the Church is ‘threatened by grave dangers: dogmatic hardening, ritualism, conservatism, intolerance towards communities that are outside, and aestheticism. Consequently, the primacy of love expresses infinite respect for the other and passes through a shared repentance for the weight of the past.’The Compassion of the Father, p.20

In what you say you speak from a tradition that I met and loved as I came towards the Orthodox Church lived and taught to me by people like my Godparents Militza and Nicolas Zernov, by Fr Lev, and by what Metropolitan Anthony was struggling to establish in the diocese. Those people have gone on ahead (with many more who have influenced the lives of people here tonight...) and we are left to work it out now. Let us not betray them or ourselves. We are a small Vicariate, but we do not want to ghettoise ourselves. We have joined the Ecumenical Patriarchate because we want to live out an Orthodoxy that can take on its task, under God, in this country and in Western Europe. What is it that we want?

V

CHURCH

When I was in Russia in the millennium year of the Russian Orthodox Church, I kept seeing an icon of an almost naked man, surrounded by vines and greenery. I could not think who it was. I discovered it was Dismas, the Good Thief, in paradise. In a modern icon the inscription is apparently in a salty vernacular where he is saying: ‘Think on’t; Think on’t; and repent for even thieves and bandits can tell you there is a God’.
We want a Church that will help us to remember the fact of the priesthood of all believers. We remember the Chrismation prayer: ‘That he (she) may serve You in every act and every word’ – our whole life is consecrated. ‘They will bear Christ in their heart in order to be a dwelling place of the Trinity.’ Sealed with the Spirit we become a Christ-bearer, in order to be the dwelling place of the Trinity. As Paul Evdokimov writes:

The lay person participates in the unique priesthood of Christ by his sanctified being, by his sacerdotal nature. Every lay person is the priest of his or her existence; offering in sacrifice his entire life and existence... All, clerics and laity, are set apart for the things of God. All are consecrated.
Ages of the Spiritual Life, p.232 

 All clerics and laity are set apart for the things of God. All are consecrated. We want a Church that is humble and serving, a Church that is open to deep conversation and dialogue and prayer when possible with other Churches, other faiths, those with none. Occasionally friends in other Churches have said to me recently that they are glad that perhaps we have our troubles too, because often we have implied that we have it all and have got it right and that they are wrong – a terrible indictment often based on withdrawal and ignorance. In the kind of world we are living in, it seems to me that the ecumenical task is wide open for deeper dialogue and action. In one of Charles Williams’ poems the celebrant says: ‘Forgive us the power and the glory’. We have great riches – but let us remember the kenotic emptying of God in the Incarnation in order to show us his love and his longing for us, just as we are, where we are, when we are: NOW.

OUR APPROACH TO THE WORLD
We are terribly aware of living in a world that is threatened by ecological disasters, by what might follow climate change, by often incomprehensible economic shifts, by natural disasters; and all of it blasted at us by the power of mass media. We have to do what we can, and not just breathe fire and thunder about it all. We need to bury ourselves in Christ so that Christ may bury himself more and more deeply in us. God so loved the world that He came, He comes, and will come. The mysteries are great – but we believe in order that we might try to understand ... and having done all, to stand.

Some of you live alone and know how lonely a place the world and work can be. Some of us live in marriages and families where not all are Orthodox – and that makes us keenly aware that the human family is one – and we seek God’s mercy and love for all.

Mother Maria Gysi was one of my spiritual mothers. She experienced and witnessed to ‘the End point’. We must do, think, work, be, in every way we can – but having done all that we can, we meet the greatness of the mystery of the Trinitarian life and the mystery of creation. All we can do, at the end of our resources, is cast ourselves into the End point where Christ IS; to learn to call from the abyss of our being to the Abyss of God’s mercy. That End point becomes more and more real.

THE LITURGY AFTER THE LITURGY
I know that Irina will bring this powerfully to us at this conference. So let me support her by quoting Fr Boris again:

We must never forget that in front of us there is an immense world ... that does not know the secret that is in it, a world whose heart sighs without knowing for what. ... It seems to me that if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can no longer remain in ourselves cosily, holed up in our beautiful, great, and luminous Eucharistic communities. For, where it can, the Church must bring to the poor, the impoverished, the down-and-out, what it has received; namely the word and the love of God.
The Compassion of the Father,pp.42-43

In speaking of the urgency of brotherly love, of the poor, of the liturgy after the Liturgy, we offer God from moment to moment our entire life and that of the world. We need a ‘concern for the poor, behind whose face emerges the face of the One who made Himself poor in a limitless love’.

Metropolitan Evlogii, in giving the monastic veil to Mother Maria Skobtsova, gave her St Mary of Egypt as her patron and told her ‘to go to the deserts of the human heart’: Deserts or hell. It may be difficult to bear our own deserts or hell without despairing. But there is also a universal call to learn to be there with others too. Only in Christ, in the Spirit, can we learn to do that.

REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS
There is much that lies ahead of us in the Vicariate – unfinished business. Let us try to live in that spirit, the Holy Spirit; that will keep us open towards the possibility one day of mutual forgiveness, reconciliation. In your study of The Compassion of the Father, Fr Boris, you write so beautifully about the difficulties inherent in the Lord’s Prayer. In particular you write powerfully about the need to know in experience that God’s forgiveness is first. ‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you’. [Ephesians 4:32]. You add: ‘Let us note that ‘as God forgave you’ is in the definitive past: in Christ we are forgiven once and for all’ [p.75]. Then we can collaborate, work together – forgive us, as we forgive ... but always based on God’s forgiveness of us.  You go on to say: ‘The Father suffers from a “love wound” ... Until the end of time the sign of the forgiveness of God will be the gift of the Holy Spirit’ [p.76] – and in that Spirit we can act.

Whenever I think of true repentance I smile and remember my Godmother, Militza Zernov. I miss her so much. She was a woman with a bright, eager, deep and fierce spirit – and could get extremely angry. I used to say that she was the only person in my life who could make me weep – as she used to dismiss me from her presence when I had disagreed with her. I would trail miserably home. Always at some point the next day or so there would be heard the screech of tyres and brakes as Militza came bucketing along our road in her much abused Mini. ‘Milita! Militza!’ our three boys would shriek and rush to the window to watch her progress. She would deliver a letter always truly apologising for the break in relationship – and then go on for several pages outlining again her point of view. Who is there now who will challenge me in the way Militza did? And she could change, even in her nineties. I remember saying to her very seriously, ‘You know Militza one day you will die and I will have to work things out for myself and not rely on you to put me right. Please be patient with me.’ And from then on she just was patient with me.

What we want of our Church, of our Vicariate, will only be possible if we take our calling as Christians, as Orthodox, as all members of the royal priesthood of the laity to be something that we live with a deep commitment. As Fr Boris says:

We should therefore become aware of our lukewarm attitude in prayer, in faith, and in love. We should rediscover the meaning of inward prayer, of unceasing prayer, this breathing of the Holy Spirit in us, which Christianity conveys from generation to generation, the life and labour of the saints. It is our programme; it is our call [p.43].

Each believer must work ceaselessly to free the inner icon from its impurities ... to make the glory, the light, and the grace of God shine forth in the world. Thus, this purification must be personal, intimate and unique for each one of us, and at the same time collegial, common, social and ecclesial [p.44].

A long apprenticeship is needed before our language reaches the transparency of the icon and of the gaze of the saints. But this transparency ... is only possible through the holiness and the purity of our own lives, a passionate love of the truth, and the humble love for our brothers [p.46].

It is the same way that Paul Evdokimov and so many others have shown us. Evdokimov calls it the way of ‘Interiorised Monasticism’, as the way for all believers. Here is a brief summary of how he interprets the traditional monastic commitment to poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Total OBEDIENCE to God supplants all self-sufficiency; every ascendancy coming from the world. The one who truly obeys God ... is royally free. 

CHASTITY is found in the priestly sacrifice of one’s having and being; it is the dispossession and the full consecration of one’s life.”

POVERTY is a poor person’s completely open sensitivity to the designs of God and their prophetic penetration  ... (the one) who hopes for one possession only, that of the indwelling of the Spirit.
The Sacrament of Love,p.83

We see how obedience relates to our being kings; chastity to our being priests; and poverty to our prophetic vocation, as we work out our calling to be ‘a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own special people’ [I Peter 2:9].

Evdokimov’s work, his way, has sometimes been described as an ‘eschatological maximalism’. He longs for the Lord, for the pleroma; he longs for us to live the depths of the faith, in hope and in love. He longs for us to worship and pray with heart, mind and understanding, so that we might be able to serve Christ, the church, and all our fellow human beings with openness, with repentant and forgiving love, and with a deep longing; a joyous and impatient expectation of the coming of Christ ... daily... and in the parousia. May the Lord find us ready!

MARANATHA! COME, LORD JESUS.