Confessor. Of course not. The falling away of a confessor is his death, and a mortal is not obeyed.

   Unknown. But can not erroneous demands due to the inexperience or sinfulness of a spiritual father ruin a novice?

   Confessor. They cannot. True obedience will make everything salvific for the novice. Mistakes in spiritual guidance are dangerous for those who lack true obedience, and they can confuse and even ruin them. But a novice is out of danger to the end. Obedience will cover everything and transform everything for good. He will turn the most unreasonable and harmful into wise and useful. For obedience is humility, self-denial, impartiality, and love. And these virtues are always the sure path of salvation. In obedience, as in fire, all worldly habits, presumption, self-assertion, self-exaltation burn up. Obedience frees the heart from that worldly self-will that slavery of the passions passes off as freedom, and opens the way to that true state of freedom which is given only by the grace of God to His humble servants. Without obedience, there is no monasticism. It permeates in its spirit the entire monastic system, the entire rule and way of monastic life. Without obedience, there is no podvig, and all the seeming virtues of a monk are self-deception. Self-will nullifies prayer, fasting, and the struggle with the passions, and makes any podvig fruitless and even dangerous. Where there is no obedience, there begins a terrible spiritual illness, which in monastic language is called prelest. Podvig without obedience is the path to pride, which in a single hour turns the fruits of long ascetic labors into nothing. A monk is first and foremost a novice.

   The apostles were novices of the Savior. The original Church was established in obedience to the apostles, and through obedience, prayer and fasting, a monastery was created. Obedience, like prayer, fasting, and every virtue, has its own stages of ascent, its own path of development. A person cannot immediately become a doer of mental prayer and a passionless ascetic. He cannot immediately reach the highest levels of obedience. The monastery teaches prayer, fasting, and obedience. He does not demand anything by force and does not break, but saves the soul.

   This is what monasticism is. It is the most perfect creation of Christianity, not a distortion of it. This is the stronghold of the Church. A bulwark against the evil elements of the world. The Golden Apostolic Age, carefully preserved in Orthodox monasteries and carried undamaged through the long centuries of world history.

   Unknown. But again I ask you: does this mean that everyone must be monks?

   Confessor. No, not all.

   Unknown. Why?

   Confessor. Firstly, because the monastic path -- since monasticism has left the world behind a stone fence -- is necessarily the path of the celibate. And you know that celibacy is not a universally obligatory way of salvation, but only for those who can contain it. Secondly, because the Church militant has special tasks in the world. And just as in war not everyone should fight in fortresses, although they are considered the main strongholds, so the militant Church conquers peace not only by monastic feat, but also by public service. Who is given what. Some must guard the fortress, others fight in the open field. The Lord calls some to the wilderness, and they walk the path of salvation in the conditions of solitary monastic life, others are called to serve the same higher ideals of God's perfection and to struggle with the same internal obstacles, but in different conditions, in other external forms, not in monastic, but in worldly life.

   Unknown. Yes, that's clear. But the question of the future arises. The monastery has clearly fallen into decay and, one might say, even destroyed. And if the strongest, that which you call the stronghold of the Church, has been destroyed, is it not evident that the less powerful, that is, the worldly Church, must be destroyed? But how can this be allowed by God?

   Confessor. The outward form of monastic life known to us may be destroyed by the external historical system, but monasticism will never be destroyed. In striking, truly prophetic words, St. Anthony the Great reveals the fate of monasticism. He says: "The time will come, my beloved children, when the monks will leave the deserts and flow in their place to rich cities, where, instead of these deserted caves and cramped cells, they will erect proud buildings that can compete with the palaces of kings; instead of poverty, the love of gathering wealth will increase; humility will be replaced by pride; many will be proud of knowledge, but bare, alien to good deeds corresponding to knowledge; love will grow cold; instead of abstinence, gluttony will increase, and very many of them will take care of sumptuous viands no less than the laity themselves, from whom the monks will differ in no other way than in robes and headpieces; and despite the fact that they will live in the midst of the world, they will call themselves solitaries (a monk is actually a solitary). Moreover, they will magnify themselves, saying: "I am Paul, I am Apollos" (1 Corinthians 1:12), as if all the strength of their monasticism consisted in the dignity of their predecessors: they would be magnified by their fathers, as the Jews were by their father Abraham. But at the same time there will be those who will prove to be much better and more perfect than we are; for more blessed is he who could transgress and did not transgress and did not do evil (Sir. 31:11) than he who was drawn to good by the mass of zealots striving for it."

   Unknown. How do you imagine the future of this new monasticism?

   Confessor. It is quite clear that St. Anthony here means monasticism in the world. It will not be outwardly protected from worldly temptations, as it was in the former monastery. These new ascetics will live in a world where they "could transgress" and would not transgress, where they could "do evil" and would not. Of course, this is not an internal temptation or an internal perpetration of evil, since this inner fall threatened the monk in the former monasteries and deserts, and St. Anthony in his prophetic words contrasts the future monks with the former ones and says that they will be more blessed, because their task will be more difficult. Obviously, we are talking about the proximity and accessibility of temptations, the ease with which one can "transgress", succumb to them, because they are right there, at hand, not behind the fence, but in the world in which this future ascetic will live. And it is further clear that this will not be coenobitic asceticism, but an individual one, because this ascetic path will be followed not by the "mass of those striving" for salvation, but by individual people. It is as if history will complete the circle and will again come to the persecutions of the first century, and to the monastery of primitive Christianity.

   This is what the Word of God says about persecution before the end of the world. On the Mount of Olives, the Lord said to His disciples about the future fate of the world and Christianity: "... nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in every place; yet this is the beginning of sickness. Then they will deliver you up to torment and kill you; and ye shall be hated by all nations for My name's sake" (Matt. 24:7-9). And the Evangelist Luke quotes the following words of the Saviour: "Ye shall also be betrayed by parents, and brothers, and relatives, and friends, and some of you shall be put to death" (Luke 21:16). But persecution, of course, will make it impossible to establish an external monastery and will place the Church in the conditions of primitive Christianity. But it will be a Church that has gone through its entire glorious earthly path, it will have all the spiritual treasures that it has acquired. She will be a "monastery in the world," as the Apostolic Church was, not because she will renounce everything that she has acquired over two thousand years by the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit, but in her spiritual state and in her relationship to the world.