THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF THE ELDERS

THE PATH TO A PERFECT LIFE

PREFACE

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"In fact, it seems to me the art of the arts and the science of the sciences to guide men, these different and varied beings."

These words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus briefly depict a phenomenon that occurs quite often in the life of the Eastern Church and is known under the name of eldership. Eldership arose and developed in connection with the ascetic education of young monks, in order to teach them active Christianity.

In the concept of "renouncing all earthly things" there is no negation of the world. This is the fundamental question, the most difficult in all Christian asceticism. All the means that are given to the disciple should have as their goal not the complete mortification of the flesh, but its overcoming and transfiguration. In ascetic-mystical teaching, this is clearly called: "union with God" and "deification." It is in this state that the ascetic, wholly bound up with earthly sufferings and who has already attained the glory of a saint, must return to the world again to serve his neighbor, seeing in him a man like himself. This is the ultimate goal of all forms of active asceticism.

The proper training of a monk, which educates the future ascetic, cannot consist in a complete renunciation of himself, he must preserve all the ties inherent in social life in the monastery, and especially his personal attitude towards the elder. Of course, those who have reached the highest stages of asceticism can educate a hermit in themselves. But only a select few are given the path of complete self-denial, and if they serve as a model for others, they set an example not of hermitage, but of their own solitary virtues.

The monastery arose from the idea of saving oneself, from the desire to love God and for people, and not from independent motives to achieve salvation. Both goals are interconnected. The seventh-century ascetic Abba Dorotheus presented these problems in the following comparison. Our life, he said, is nothing but the path to perfection, to the attainment of love, which comes from our relationship to God and to our neighbors. If we take God as the center of the circle, then our path to God follows a radius, and to the extent that we approach the center, that is, God, the same degree we approach each other. Love for God is conditioned by our love for our neighbor and vice versa. The lives of the elders, who went through all the stages of Christian asceticism, are, perhaps, the best confirmation of this comparison of Abba Dorotheus, for the elders lived and acted in the spirit of love for God and neighbor. In them, and especially in St. Seraphim of Sarov, Christianity

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CHAPTER I. BASIS