Behind the walls of ancient Russian monasteries we find all the beginnings of Russian culture. Outside of them we can neither understand nor explain it. Our culture has grown under the protection of the Orthodox Church, and having left the monastery, having entered the worldly life, it has never forgotten its origin. The Russian monastery was the creation of the entire people. It arose out of a religious need, not political considerations. Monasticism has never been organized into any congregations with a specific goal. Nevertheless, the influence of the monks, even those who did not hold any position in the monastery, was very noticeable. Peter the Great's attempt to make Russian culture more secular had only temporary success. If we turn to the history of Russian thought in the nineteenth century, whether we cast a glance at Gogol or the Slavophiles, at Dostoevsky, or at the entire philosophical world of subsequent years, up to recent times, we will always find a connection with the saints of the ancient Church, whose thoughts these philosophers tried to reformulate and deepen. From this point of view, eldership acquires exceptional importance. The Spiritual and Ascetic Atmosphere of Russian Monasteries

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The sheaf entangles the Nnimanne of the Unruling and receives recognition, a huge influence on the people's soul.

The eldership is also closely connected with the history of monastic life in Russia. It was a phenomenon arising from the historical development of asceticism and mysticism of the Eastern Church. Initially, it came from Mount Athos. Its spread in Russia occurred at the end of the fifteenth century thanks to the ascetic and mystical works of St. Nil of Sorsky and his disciples, the so-called Trans-Volga elders. Then the eldership was little known. We have no information about its significance in the XVII-XVIII centuries. But in the last quarter of the XVIII century, the elder Paisius Velichkovsky appeared. He is credited with the revival of the eldership, its role in the life of monks and laity. In the nineteenth century, the eldership reached its highest flowering, first in the small monasteries of central Russia, and then in the exceptional life of Fr. Seraphim of Sarinsky and the Elders of the Optina Hermitage.

The Elder is one of the senior monks who went through a difficult path of self-denial and took young monks and laypeople under his spiritual guidance. He sees his task primarily in guiding and caring for the soul, educating the will of those who do not have much spiritual experience, striving to lead them through all the temptations and sorrows of this life. From his own life and experience, he knows about the variety of dark paths on which the adversary awaits us. To strangers who come from outside, he gives advice to protect them from mistakes.

The Elder is the heart of all believing hearts who receive advice from him. The elder is the will to the religious and social perfection of these believing hearts; People who have given themselves over to its leadership completely abandon their own will.

In a monastery, an elder usually does not hold any position; He is a spiritual leader and counselor. His disciples are grouped around him in the monastery, and he humbly and responsibly takes upon himself this heavy responsibility.

The disciple himself chooses the elder he wants. And it often happens that a person who wanted to talk to an elder about only one issue remains under his guidance for the rest of his life and even becomes a monk.

Sincerity and obedience, humility and readiness to fulfill the will of the father on the part of the spiritual son, cordiality and just severity on the part of the leading elder form the content of bilateral relations, illumined by the Divine love in which both live. Thus the searching soul attains the sweetness of inner prayer, the all-conquering power of love and the full grace of life in God, with the risen Christ. This, in short, is the essence of eldership. In the image of the elder Zosima in Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" we find the first attempt to give the image of the elder in an artistic form.

"More important than any books and any kind of thinking," wrote the Russian thinker Ivan Kireevsky, who was himself under the guidance of Elder Macarius of the Optina Hermitage, "is to find a holy Orthodox elder who could be your guide, to whom you could communicate every thought and hear about it, not his opinion, more or less intelligent, but the judgment of the Holy Fathers. Such elders, thank God, still exist in Russia!";

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Spiritual Hand-Holding in the Old Asceticism

The institution of eldership is a very ancient phenomenon in the life of the Eastern Church. On the one hand, it depends on the history of confessional practice, on the other hand, on the development of monastic life in general. The Elder was a spiritual father who was next to the monk in his spiritual battle. The expression "pneumatikos patir" or "pater spiritualis" (spiritual father) is first encountered in the ascetic writings of the general Christian Fathers, i.e., approximately in the fourth century. This definition existed simultaneously among almost all hermits and ascetics in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, as well as among the Latin Fathers, as, for example, in John Cassian. At the same time, it was often not a priest who was meant, but simply an experienced old monk, often without a priestly rank, who lived in a monastery or in a skete on his own, so that even the abbot did not interfere in the activities of the elder, who guided the young monks on the path to perfection and was often elected by the newcomers themselves. The elder could hear confession, so the priest only had to give a prayer of absolution. At a later time, approximately from the eighth or ninth century, and even then rarely, a monk had, in addition to the elder, a special hieromonk who received confession.

Eldership is a phenomenon peculiar to the ascetic life. It developed its own Christian-ascetic views, paying special attention to certain aspects of asceticism, which it laid as the basis of the path of salvation of the soul; it rests mainly on the principles of obedience and prayer.