In Search of True Wisdom: Visits to Eastern Spiritual Fathers

198 Pages·1979·25.906 MB·English

by  by Sergius Bolshakoff, M. Basil Pennington

SEARCH OF
IN
WISDOM
TRUE
Visits to Eastern Spiritual Fathers
Sergias Bolshakoff
nd
M.BcLsil Penningtonf0.c.$.o.

In Search of
True Wisdom

In Search
True Wisdom
Eastern
Visits to
Spiritual Fathers
Sergius BolshakofFand
M.
Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
1979
"Conference of Archimandrite Sophrony" originally appeared, under the title
"The Monks of Mt. Athos," in Monastic Exchange, Summer 1977, Vol. 9,
No. 2.
"Archimandrite Sophrony: Disciple of Father Silouan" originally appeared,
under the title "A Spiritual Father: Archimandrite Sophrony," in Monastic
Exchange, Autumn 1972, Vol. 4, No. 3.
"A Noble Spiritual Mother: Mother Alexandra" originally appeared in
Monastic Exchange, Fall 1978, Vol. 10, No. 3.
"Mount Athos in Boston: Archimandrite Panteleimon" originally appeared in
Diakonia, 1978, Vol. 13, No. 3.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Pubhcation Data
Bolshakoff, Sergius.
In search of true wisdom.
1. Monasticism and religi—ous orders. 2. Bolshakoff,
Sergius. 3. Spiritual life Orthodox Eastern authors.
I. Pennington, M. Basil, joint author. II. Title.
BX581.B64 27r.8
ISBN: 0-385-14791-0
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-20029
Copyright © 1979 by Cistercian Abbey of Spencer, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
First Edition
PREFACE
I had arrived at the Cistercian Abbey of Scourment, a stone's throw
from the French-Belgian border, late on a winter's day. Darkness
had set in, and the monks were already in choir chanting the evening
office. So I slipped into the visitors' gallery adjoining the guesthouse.
When the last, graceful echoes had blended into the silent climate of
prayer, I quietly rose and started toward the guesthouse. At the door
I met him. No introductions were necessary. We had corresponded
for years, and though we had no expectations of meeting at this time
or in this place, I knew immediately that the elderly gentleman who
graciously bowed me through the door was Dr. Sergius Bolshakoff.
We embraced as Russian Christians do and then repaired to his
room to enjoy an evening of sharing and presence. Out of that eve-
ning comes this volume.
By the time of our meeting, Dr. Bolshakoff was well known to
monks of the West. More times than he could count, he had been a
guest in our monasteries from one end of Europe to the other, and
beyond, during his fifty years and more as a pilgrim of ecumenism.
His unending journey had begun in 1919, when the aftermath of
the revolution forced the devout young man, who wanted nothing to
do with service in the godless army of the Bolsheviks, to emigrate
from his native land. He had settled in Estonia and was seeking to
complete his education as an engineer when, one day, he read a curi-
ous item in the Russian newspaper from Paris. The papal nuncio,
Monsignor Alexander Evreinov, had celebrated Liturgy according to
vi PREFACE
the Synodal rite for the Russian Catholics in the capital. Intrigued by
this, Bolshakoff contacted the local Catholic pastor to obtain some
information about Russian Catholics and their communities outside
Russia. He conceived a great desire to work for the unity of these
Russian Christians in the face of the common godless enemy. Advice
seemed to indicate he must first get steeped in his own Orthodoxy,
and so he began to pursue theological studies at Pskovo-Petchersky
Monastery. It was the needs of this monastery, especially in face of
its efforts to estabHsh a true seminary, that first sent the young theo-
logian to the West, to the ne—wly established Latin-Byzantine Bene-
dictine Monastery at Amay today's Chevtogne. His experience
there was a good one, greatly enriched by almost daily contact with
Dom Lambert Beauduin. At the end of the visit, when he sought to
return, he found the borders of Estonia closed to him. The poor
country had all the penniless Russian refugees it could afford. And
thus began the homeless exile's peregrinations.
Over the course of the next two years, Bolshakoff became con-
vinced not only that his life must be spent in the cause of Church
unity but that one of the most effective ways to work toward it was
by simple presence. Christians of East and West, especially monks,
needed to share in each other's community life and search for God,
the source of all unity. In England, on December 27, 1928, in the
Anglican Benedictine Monastery of Nashdown, established in the
former manor house of the Russian Prince Alexis Dolgoruki, Sergius
Bolshakoff made a lifetime commitment. In the hands of the Ortho-
dox Bishop of Berlin, Tikhon Ljoshenko, whom he had served as
secretary, he promised to seek perfection according to the Rule of
Saint Benedict as a lay oblate and to work for Christian unity.
Besides its extraordinary context, this profession had particular
significance since it was the first time an Orthodox had committed
himself to the Rule of the Patriarch of Western monasticism since
the Benedictine monasteries on Mount Athos* died out, in the thir-
teenth century.
*Note: At the end of the volume there is a Glossary of those expressions
common to the Russian monastic milieu that occur in these texts but
might not be familiar to the average Western reader. The first time each
of these appears, it is marked with an asterisk.
PREFACE vii
Saint Benedict has always been held in great honor among Eastern
—
Christians. His life, written by Pope Saint Gregory the Great called
in the East the Dialogos because of the Dialogues in whic—h he re-
counts the lives of Saint Benedict and other Italian saints is well
known. Saint Joseph of Vokolamsk drew heavily upon him when he
wrote the last great Russian monastic nile, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. At least three verbal citations from Saint Bene-
dict's Rule are found in the primitive Typicon, or Constitution, of
Mount Athos, drawn up by Saint Athanasios, the founder of the
Great Lavra Monastery. Saint Theophan the Recluse, a great Rus-
sian mystic of the nineteenth century, translated Saint Benedict's
Rule into Russian.
In the course of the following decades, Brother Sergius moved
about from monastery to monastery, spending anywhere from a week
to nearly a year with Benedictine and Cistercian communities in all
parts of Europe. Elsewhere he has published candid and colorful ac-
counts of many of these visits. When the Second World War placed
restrictions on his movements, he industriously employed the time to
obtain his degree as Doctor of Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford,
publishing his thesis, "The Doctrine of the Unity of the Church in
the Works of Khomyakon and Moehler," in 1946. But throughout
these decades Bolshakoff was concerned about growing ever deeper
in his own Russian Orthodox tradition and spirituality. It was for
this reason he seized whatever opportunities offered themselves to
visit the great Spiritual Fathers who still lived among the Russian
monks in exile, and on one occasion even returned to Russia itself.
From the Fathers, he received the teaching that served as the basis
for his own spiritual life. And it is something of this rich traditional
spiritual teaching that he shares with us in the narratives that follow.
I have taken the liberty to add a few accounts of my own, the last
five in the volume. They relate visits that are quite recent and there-
fore much of a generation after the visits of Brother Sergius. They
give witness to the fact that not only on Mount Athos and in Greece
but even in England and America the rich spiritual traditions that
had so enlivened Russian Christian life in the decades preceding the
godless revolution still live on. I have added to these narratives