Monasticism in the 21st Century: A Viable Alternative or a Forgotten
Ideal?
by
Mother Ephrosynia of the Convent of Lesna, France
A brother went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as
I can I say my prayer rule, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I
live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I
do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards
heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to
him, "If you will, you can become all flame."
This is what monasticism is: a longing for God that knows no limits.
It is the beginning of the Age to come, of the Kingdom of Heaven
still here on earth. The Church calls monasticism the Angelic Life.
According to Holy Tradition, in the 4th century an angel appeared to
St. Pachomius, the first of the monks struggling out in the Egyptian
desert to establish a monastic community, and gave him a bronze
tablet, inscribed with a Rule for his monks to follow. From
Apostolic times to the present day thousands, hundreds of thousands,
probably millions of people have left everything they had and
scorned everything that this world has to offer in order to follow
Christ and to live the Gospels more fully.
At times this impulse has been stronger, at times weaker, and the
Holy Fathers speak of monasticism as a barometer of spiritual life
in the Church. When monastic life flourishes, the faithful are
really striving spiritually, and conversely, when few people find
inspiration in the monastic ideal, monasteries diminish and are
ignored, spiritual life amongst the faithful is on the decline. At
the end of the 4th century, when persecution of Christians ceased
and the Church knew peace for the first time, but the zeal of
converts hadn't cooled, and many Christians desired to give
everything to Christ, monasticism even became a mass movement. One
of the travel writers of the period, St. Palladius, tells of his
visit to "Oxyrhynchus, one of the cities of the Thebaid (in Egypt).
It is impossible to do justice to the marvels, which we saw there.
For the city is so full of monasteries that the very walls resound
with the voices of monks. Other monasteries encircle it outside...
The temples and capitols of the city were bursting with monks; every
quarter of the city was inhabited by them... The monks were almost
in the majority over the secular inhabitants... and there is no hour
of day or night when they do not offer acts of worship to God...
What can one say of the piety of the... people, who when they saw us
strangers.. approached us as if we were angels? How can one convey
an adequate idea of the throngs of monks and nuns past counting?
However, as far as we could ascertain from the holy bishop of that
place, we would say that he had under his jurisdiction 10,000 monks
and 20,000 nuns. It is beyond my power to describe their hospitality
and their love for us. In fact each of us had our cloaks torn apart
by people pulling us to make us go and stay with them." Closer to
our own time, in Russia in 1907, towards the end of the spiritual
revival of the 19th century and before the Revolution there were
24,000 monks and 66,000 nuns, about 90,000 monastics, living in 970
monasteries. On the bleak side, the countryside of France, where my
monastery is, is peppered by empty monasteries in ruins, remnants of
the Age of Faith, as historians call the Middle Ages. They are
testimonies to the spiritual barrenness of France, where more people
believe in astrology than in Christ, and people spit at me on the
streets because they think I'm a Moslem. It would never occur to
them that a woman wearing black might be a nun. The scene at the
airport here in Ottawa when I arrived was nothing like the scene in
Oxyrhyncus when St. Palladius walked through the gates, and you
could probably travel clear across Canada or America and not see a
single monastery nor meet a single monk or nun.
But is monasticism completely a lost cause today? True, to modern
eyes, the monk is increasingly a figure of yesterday, someone silly
and eccentric. People think of roly-poly Friar Tuck from Robin Hood
or of the sinister, murderous monks in the novel "The Name of the
Rose". The word "nun" brings to mind Mother Theresa or silly movies
about nice but rather dumb women wearing strange, uncomfortable
clothes. Even in someone with a more Orthodox frame of mind the
word "monastic" applied to our times calls up the image of St. John
of Shanghai, of Fr. Seraphim Rose, or the New Martyr the Grand
Duchess Elizabeth, and we wonder what can these saints possibly have
in common with us? Is anything from their lives and experiences at
all relevant or applicable, and how can we, Orthodox Christians of
the 21 century, even dare to aspire to imitate them? The Sayings of
the Desert Fathers and the lives of the founders of monasticism
abound with dire warnings that monasticism, especially the strict
asceticism of past centuries, will be just about impossible in the
latter days. Once, when "the Holy Fathers were making predictions
about the last generation, they said, "What have we ourselves done?"
One of them, the great Abba Ischyrion replied, "We ourselves have
fulfilled the commandments of God." The others replied, "And those
who come after us, what will they do?" He said, "They will struggle
to achieve half our works." They said, "And to those that come after
them, what will happen?" He said, "The men of that generation will
not accomplish any works at all and temptation will come upon them;
and those who will persevere in that day will be greater than either
us or our fathers". Reading St. Ignaty Brianchaninov's instructions
for contemporary monastics, first published a little over a century
ago and known in English as "The Arena" can be downright
depressing. "We are extremely weak," he says, "while the temptations
that surround us have increased enormously... Spiritual activity is
quite unknown to us. We are completely engrossed in bodily activity
and that with the purpose of appearing pious and holy in the eyes of
the world and to get its reward. We have abandoned the hard and
narrow way of salvation... we monks are diminished more than any
nation, and we are humbled in all the earth today for our sins...."
At the end of the Arena, St. Ignaty uses the image of beggars eating
the scraps left over from a sumptuous banquet to describe the monks
of the latter days, where the Lord says to them, "Brothers, in
making my arrangements for the banquet, I did not have you in view.
So I have not given you a proper dinner, and I am not giving you the
gifts which have all been given away according to a previously made
calculation which only I can understand." If someone today so much
as even dares think of monasticism everything around him, both
worldly and Orthodox, of the Church seems to say, "Forget it! Don't
even try! It's absolutely useless!"
In spite of the hardships and the off-putting advice of even the
most authoritative Orthodox sources, many people still do choose to
leave everything and everyone behind, to take up the cross of
monastic struggles and to follow our Saviour. I don't think that
it's too optimistic to speak of a sort of revival of monasticism in
our times. In the 20 years that I've been struggling to be a
monastic my monastery has doubled in size. Every week we get letters
and phone-calls from women and girls that want to come, to enter or
to learn more about our life. They are clearly searching for a
deeper, more intense spiritual life and some form of dedication. Our
monasteries in the Holy Land are growing and flourishing. Since the
years of Perestroika in Russia hundreds, if not thousands of
monasteries have been opened. When I travel there, on the street
every few feet of the way someone comes up to ask where I'm from,
what monastery, for prayers, for a word of advice or consolation.
They weep at the very sight of a nun and press lists of names into
my hands, and their last kopecks and rubles. A very serious writer
noted in surprise that in Russia more tourists visit monasteries
than exhibits, museums or zoos.
What is it that continues to draw people to this way of life that is
essentially a mystery, something that even the holiest monks speak
of with awe and trembling? Above all, monasticism is the way of
repentance. Not of the sort of repentance when we stop to sigh and
feel sorry about the bad things we've done and then quickly move on
to the next item on our list of things to do, or mumble a list of
sins at confession so that we can go to Communion, but the sort that
means a complete turn-about, a conversion, a profound change of
lifestyle. This is the repentance of the Prodigal Son of the
Gospels, who comes to realize that his entire way of life has been
very wrong, and who leaves it all behind to go home to his father to
ask forgiveness. The service of monastic tonsure begins with a
stichera paraphrasing this parable: "Make haste to open unto me Thy
fatherly embrace, for as the Prodigal I have wasted my life. In the
unfailing wealth of Thy mercy, O Saviour, reject not my heart in its
poverty. For with compunction I cry to Thee, O Lord: Father, I have
sinned against heaven and before Thee." It is this longing for our
Heavenly Father's embrace, for His forgiveness, and for a home with
Him that still makes people turn their backs on everything and
trudge along this rocky road.
The first step along this road is renunciation of the world, leaving
it behind. This does not mean simply quitting school or your job,
closing your bank account, moving to a monastery, putting on black
and saying your prayers. According to the Holy Fathers the
term "world" means the sum total of all our passions, attachments,
opinions, petty likes and dislikes; everything that distances us
from God and prevents us from discerning His Will. "No one can draw
nigh to God save the man who has separated himself from the world.
But I call separation not the departure of the body, but departure
from the world's affairs", says St. Isaac the Syrian, one of the
greatest monastic fathers of all time. "...No one who has communion
with the world can have communion with God, and no one who has
concern for the world can have concern for God", he continues." If
you truly love God", begins St. John of the Ladder, another monastic
guide, "and long to reach the Kingdom that is to come, if you are
pained by your failings and are mindful of punishment and of the
eternal judgement, if you are truly afraid to die, then it will not
be possible to have an attachment, or anxiety, or concern for money,
possessions, for family relationships, for worldly glory, for love
and brotherhood, indeed, for anything of earth... Stripped of all
thought of these, caring nothing about them, one will turn freely to
Christ..."
At this point the most common question is "how do I know?" How do I
know that I'm called to the particular form of renunciation of the
world that monasticism represents? All of us have to leave the world
in the sense of struggling to overcome our passions in one way or
another; there's no question about that. But how can a person be
sure that the Lord means for him to do it by embracing the monastic
life? How can we discern the will of God in this case? It's very
true that there's no specific "monastic type" or particular
character trait that defines someone as a candidate. My monastery
has all sorts of people: fat, thin, old, young, outgoing, very shy,
well-educated, high-school drop-outs, of the sweetest disposition,
and some can be downright nasty at times. They did all sorts of
things: one was a magazine editor, another a seamstress, someone was
a semi-professional ball player, another sister has a PHD in
philosophy, one of the youngest sisters came to us practically off
the streets. Some of them had happy childhoods, others hated their
parents, some of them were extremely successful at what they did,
others hated their jobs. But all of them at some point in time
became convinced of the necessity of dropping everything and
starting along the road home to their Heavenly Father.
People often talk of vocations and callings, assuming that there has
to be some sort of mystical experience to convince you to become a
monastic. It's true that a lot of monastics can look back to a
particular event that was the turning point in their lives. 9 times
out of 10 there's nothing really otherworldly about it. If you hear
voices or see angels probably the last place where you belong is a
monastery! One of our sisters made her decision during an akathist
before a miracle-working Icon of the Mother of God. All of her
friends had gone dancing that night, but she chose to attend this
akathist, and in the middle of it, it dawned on her that she was
having a really good time; much better than she would have had
dancing, and that it would make sense to do this full-time, as it
were. Another sister was moved by the example of 2 nuns she met at
the Synod Cathedral in NY. They were there to collect money for the
Holy Land. Someone from the parish attacked them for no reason,
accusing them of taking food from the kitchen without permission.
Most of us would have tried to reason and explain the mistake, but
one of the nuns, in a beautiful example of monastic humility, simply
made a prostration and begged forgiveness. The fact that there
really are still people today who try to do what the Gospels teach
was a real revelation, and within a year this girl was a novice.
Someone else was moved by a passage from St. John Cassian. One of
our older nuns made her decision when her parish priest asked her if
she knew anyone that might consider entering being a nun. This was
soon after World War II, and this person had assumed that there were
no longer any monasteries left, that monasticism wasn't even a
possibility. And when the priest asked, everything fell into place
for her.
Even if there is such a moment, the choice and the decision to
follow a monastic path is almost always a period of real struggle,
of doubts, fears and temptations. A lot of the monastics I know,
when the thought first came to them, wanted nothing to do with it
and were quite shocked by the idea. The Holy Fathers emphasize that
there is nothing that the evil one hates as much as monasticism and
he will do everything possible to turn someone away from this path.
If one is at all spiritually alert you can practically see and hear
him at work at this point. I've known people to get incredible job
offers, receive huge amounts of money, marriage proposals from tall,
dark, handsome and rich men. An older nun I knew had her husband,
missing for 20 years, turn up on her doorstep the day before she
left. Another one had her son threaten to shoot himself, someone
else's mother starved herself for 6 weeks. If you speak to monastics
you truly will find that fact is stranger than fiction! In spite of
the trials, there's a growing conviction that there is nothing else
that you can do, that no matter what, the monastic life is the only
viable alternative. And this nags at you until there's just no other
way out.
Once a monk escapes from the world he begins to try to finally think
clearly and to concentrate on the things that will determine his
eternal fate. He begins to really understand and to feel that we,
wretched sinners, really are perishing, that we desperately need a
Redeemer and Someone to heal our souls, and that in Him alone is
life, that everything besides is empty and senseless. He begins to
really feel and experience this, not just to say the words. Only
when a person stops listening to the noise and clatter of the world,
turns his eyes away from its wild, psychedelic colors, and when he
gets over the hangover that the world leaves you with does he begin
to see himself clearly and to discern the meaning and aim of life on
this earth and to struggle against his enemy, the evil one. St. John
of the Ladder tells us, "All who enter upon the good fight, the
monastic life, which is tough and painful, but also easy, must
realize that they must leap into the fire, if they...expect the
heavenly fire to dwell within them...let everyone test himself, and
then eat the bread of the monastic life with its bitter herbs.. .and
drink the cup of it with its tears... Yes, it's true. The monastic
life is not "fun". Most of us, especially those that had to go
through a severe trial to leave the world, experience a "honeymoon"
period, when you finally take the plunge, make the break with the
world and get to a monastery. It's such a relief to have all that
behind you and to have finally started out on the way. Everything
and everyone seems wonderful, you're full of zeal, and you can
practically see the grace, it's so abundant. For some monastics this
stage can go on for years. But sooner or later reality strikes and
you see that everything that's been written about the hardships of
monastic life is not just fancy words or symbolic phrases or
allegory. It's not the physical side that's hard. With some effort
and discipline anyone can learn to get up early and to stand through
long church services, to make prostrations and to work and work hard
at jobs that you don't necessarily like. A lot of people in the
world have a much more difficult life in that sense. It's the
encounter with yourself and who you really are and the struggle to
change that, that is the slow but painful, day by day, minute by
minute work of the monk. The work is done largely through our
contacts and conflicts with other people. St. John of the Ladder is
very blunt about this: "...Derided, mocked, jeered, you must accept
the denial of your will. You must patiently endure opposition,
suffer neglect without complaint, put up with violent arrogance. You
must be ready for injustice, and not grieve when you are slandered;
you must not be angered by contempt and you must show humility when
you have been condemned." For most of us the most difficult element
in all this is giving up your own will. In one of the most quoted
monastic sayings Abba Dorotheus, another great teacher of the
monastic life says: "I know of no fall that happens to a monk that
does not come from trusting his own will and his own judgement... Do
you know someone who has fallen? Be sure that he directed himself...
nothing is more grievous... nothing is more pernicious."
When I was a young novice I would get really annoyed at the writings
of the Holy Fathers and the constant repetition that in the latter
days monks will not be able to perform any podvigs, or great ascetic
feats, but will work out their salvation through patience and long-
suffering. "How boring!" I would think, "Surely if we set our minds
and spirits to it, we can do it, too? How come all we're allowed is
to sit around and be patient?" The secret here is that this is truly
a great mercy of the Lord. Today we are not only unchristian in our
approach to life, in our thoughts, words and actions, we are
outright anti- Christian. Were the Lord to grant us the grace and
give us the strength to perform even just 1/10 of the ascetic feats
of previous times, we would not only not profit, but the resulting
pride and vain-glory would lead us straight to perdition. This is
especially true in monasticism, where, for the inexperienced, the
intense work on one's self is very easy to confuse with the self-
analysis that so many self-help/'feel-good-about-yourself" guides
teach today.
Take, for example, the concept of "moods". This is not an Orthodox
concept; we do not have moods, we are inflicted by passions and we
strive to acquire virtues. "Being in a bad mood" can never excuse
your behavior in a monastery. This can be very hard for a novice to
accept. Likewise, we do not have any "rights"; we have obligations
and obediences, and we owe it to the Lord Himself to fulfill them,
but no one owes us anything. Similarly, we cannot expect to
be "happy" and "fulfilled"; we come to a monastery to weep for our
sins. Today just about everything is "boring". We've tried
everything, we're stubborn and very self-assured. To cure the
boredom, some people decide to try monasticism. Young people
especially want nothing more than to make an impression, cause a
sensation. What could be more sensational than to suddenly have all
your friends see you 30 pounds thinner, draped in black, clutching a
prayer rope, expounding spiritual wisdom? Worst of all, in our times
people are prouder than ever before. We take pride in our imaginary
virtues, we even take pride in our sins. And most of all, we are
proud of our minds. We see ourselves as great thinkers,
understanding psychologists, brilliant philosophers, who of course
can understand all the finer, most profound monastic truths much
more deeply than those that came before us.
The notions of humility, obedience, self-condemnation, meekness and
renunciation of one's will used to "go without saying" for Orthodox
Christians, but today they have to be learned. One of the Russian
new martyrs, Vladyka Varnava Beliaev, wrote that it takes 30 years
for someone to start being a monk. That was said 80 years ago; today
it probably takes 40 or 50!
So why bother? Is it really worth it? I remember Metropolitan
Philaret, paraphrasing St. John of the Ladder, saying, "If everyone
knew how hard it was in monasteries, no one would ever go. But if
they knew the joys and rewards of monastic life, they would all come
running. And it's true, the rewards and the blessings really are
there. One of the Optina Elders, St. Barsanuphius, taught, "True
blessedness can only be acquired in a monastery. You can be saved in
the world, but it is impossible to be completely purified.. .or to
rise up and live like the angels and live a creative spiritual life
in the world. All the ways of the world, .... laws destroy or at
least slow down the development of the soul. And that's why people
can attain the angelic life only in monasteries... Monasticism is
blessedness; the most blessed state that is possible for a person on
this earth. There is nothing higher than this blessedness, because
monasticism hands you the key spiritual life."
In what do we find this blessedness? There is the knowledge that
every day of your life and every minute of your day are sanctified
and significant before God. Even your "bad" days and your really low
days having meaning before Him. As long as you live the life
consciously there is no wasted time. There is the solemnity and
beauty of the Divine Services of our Church, which is truly the
beginning of the life of Heaven still here on earth. In the world
our attendance in Church is always time stolen away from the world's
affairs, a welcome respite, a sort of spiritual treat. In the
monastery the services determine the very patterns of life, and they
are the real life; everything else is time stolen away from them.
They nourish us, instruct us, and in a certain sense even entertain
us. When I was entering the monastery one of my greatest fears was
that eventually I would find the services boring-the same thing,
year in, year out, forever. Instead I find that they contain such
vast wealth and so many levels, each more profound than the one
before it, that a lifetime is nowhere near enough to begin to
appreciate them. The saints have become my close friends and
mentors, I experience the feasts differently each year, every Great
Lent and every Pascha are a completely new revelation. Above all, in
monasticism there is what St. Theophan the Recluse called "being
sure that God keeps you as His own". If you accept the ways of the
Lord as your life your conscience will soon be lit up with the
knowledge that He, too has accepted you as His own. I remember the
night I spent in church after my tonsure, after making my monastic
vows. I had such a vivid sense that the Lord was with me, it seemed
that Heaven was literally just around the corner, that if I opened
the door of the church it would be right there. This wasn't a
feeling; I knew this.
There is nothing more beautiful than the way monastics die. Most of
our sisters die having received Holy Communion, surrounded by the
community, with prayers and chanting and tears. Not the desperate
tears of the world, but tears at parting with a friend and sister,
even if just for a while. The funeral service of a monk, which is
quite different than that of a lay person, is a lesson on the
monastic life and the solidly grounded hope of eternal life that it
represents rather than a meditation on death. For those that spend
their life on the threshold of the Age to Come death is merely
stepping into the next room.
We do give up a lot in monastic life. My arms have ached after
holding my friends' children, knowing that I would never hold my
own. But the Lord has given me many children of the spirit amongst
the young novices that I work with in the monastery. A monastic will
never know the special intimacy and closeness that is the blessing
of an Orthodox marriage. And a married person will never know the
spiritual kinship of a monastic community. There are no vacations
from monasticism, no sick days, no time off. But every day is a
feast.
"Monasticism", one of the Optina elders said, "supports the entire
world. And when there will be no more monasticism the Dread
Judgement will be upon us.
And for those of us that are drawn to this way of life there simply
is no other way to live. One writer described it like this: "Some
people are very single- minded by nature. And there are ideas that
permeate the lives of such people down to the very last detail.
Everything beautiful, joyous and of consolation in this life is
overshadowed for them by the memory of one thing, by a single
thought: that of Christ Crucified. No matter how bright the sun
might be, how beautiful nature, God's creation is, how tempting
faraway places might seem, they remember that Christ was Crucified,
and everything is dim in comparison. We might hear the most
beautiful music, the most inspired speeches, but these souls hear
one thing: Christ was Crucified, and what can ever drown out the
sound of the nails being hammered into His flesh? Describe to them
the happiness of a family life, of a beloved husband or wife, of
children, but Christ was Crucified, and how can we not show the Lord
that He isn't alone, we haven't deserted Him. There are those that
are willing to forget everything in the world so as to stand by His
Cross, suffer His suffering and wonder at His Sacrifice. For them
the world is empty, and only Christ Crucified speaks to their
hearts. And only they know what sweetness they taste still on this
earth by sharing in the eternal mystery of the Cross and only they
hear what He says to them when they come to Him after a life full of
incomprehensible hardships and inexplicable joy.
Lesna Monastery, Provemont, 5/18 December 2000.
St. Sabbas the Sanctified