Fr. Arseny
Father N.,
Theodore from Abrud greets you with all due respect. Having a little free time and a good disposition, after a few hours of rest and after taking a meal, in the quiet of an evening that is easy and peaceful, I have decided to write to you, in my specific manner, a sincere epistle with an effort of thought and synthesis in order to share some observations, opinions and convictions with you, which I’ve acquired through the battle and fire of many circumstances.
I consider myself close to being one of your friends and because of this I have dared to speak to you with familiarity, with easiness unhindered by formality or so-called respect for “good manners.”
I can say that our meeting in Campeni (and then our small excursion from Geoagiu) which recently took place were two occasions (the first being my small vacation to Crasna) when we were able to observe the discussions which we had in more detail. I’ve always had an analytical inclination when someone attempts to draw close to me, to get to know him. And then afterwards, when connections of friendship are established, I make spiritual bonds, and then in spite of many negative parts, unexpected weaknesses or whatever else comes along the way, they are unable to influence my friendly love any longer. I don’t know what to call this trait of mine…
So, I never forget a friend, even if he gets separated from me, even if the cruelties of life put us in opposition… I can’t uproot him from my soul, and my sadness tortures me, when the storm wants to lay waste, and evil tries to sow weeds with thorns, and from unfounded considerations, from demonic pride, stupidly criticizes, in order to separate us…
In this world, friendship is the most uplifting thing, the most beautiful thing, and that which gives the greatest joy, relaxation and optimism to the soul.
Words of encouragement from a friend are like balm. The comfort of a friend is more uplifting than music that raises you up again, like a pillar of strength. Oh, but I’ve had the sad occasion when a friend is lacking sincerity, full of reservations and only an apparent friend… But let us leave behind these wanderings from the subject I’d like to relate.
Sincerely speaking, I was surprised at a certain moment that seemed significant to me (your rapport with Father Arseny), when you brought into discussion your educational blessing that you gave to some young faithful people at Campeni for viewing some films… and then your hesitant look with many overtones, when the subject came up about my diet…
I found therefore, a fitting occasion when I could analyze (an analysis made in the distant past) this father Arseny, named the “hermit” from the Keys of Ramets. Maybe you smile… You know him well enough, you were at the same monastery… I don’t contest that! I, however, would like to share my opinions, the observations that I’ve made, and the true sense that I seek to reveal following the examinations that I subject everything to.
This issue is complicated enough because it must be eternally followed in rapport with the ancient – new, so as to become current again and therefore valid.
In order to study a man in his entire milieu, you must first understand him. You shouldn’t judge things according to yourself. You should intuit his specific spirit. You should extricate yourself from the prejudices that calibrate your field of vision. And the criticism that you are urged on to give shouldn’t be according to your own feelings, but according to universally acknowledged proofs, and according to a larger understanding.
Man always has two images, the apparent and the foundational. The apparent one is manifested in his activity. It’s the one defined by its specific form, while the foundational one is hidden, inexhaustible, uncontainable, the fact that made all the ancient philosophers say, “the hardest thing is to know yourself.” The role of this foundation is so complex, that most of the time you don’t understand it, or you miss interpret it.
In the category of faith, of piety, in religion, this foundation is multiplied, and this is why a religious person must search in his depths, and not in appearance (since the appearance, in most cases, masks the foundation of religious people too).
In appearance, father Arseny is the renowned sober monk, incorruptible, a rigorous and extreme ascetic, the preaching psychologist of a life of the cleansing of sins – intolerant even, who doesn’t want to depart from the norms and rules of tradition, a fact that therefore, gives him the air of a fanatic (even though this term doesn’t apply to him).
For the masses he is renowned as being a saint, to whom everything is possible, who discovers mysteries in miraculous ways. Like an excellent spiritual physician, he knows the appropriate remedy for all kinds of wounds… you must only listen to him, to do what he says.
However, to his colleagues (priests and monks), this appearance is striking and is subjected to criticism because of their tendency to search for a foundation [in their desire to look beyond appearances]. But something sad intervenes: what can you see in the depths of being if you don’t have the necessary light, and if you don’t know how to receive the light? And something else also intervenes: a tendency to modernize truth, which has become for most people a prejudice that is more fanatical than so-called fanaticism.
Look at how difficult it is to study a man who maintains himself in the (old) traditions in an effort to bring them up to date, to modernize them, who strikes at the modernism of the majority who consider that being modern means that everything should be new and not an actualization of the ancient light, which will always be light unto ages of ages.
The process and tendency towards modernizing the spiritual (with its religious profile) is a complicated psychological action, a problem that merits every effort to be penetrated, and for its deepest secrets to be understood.
Many pose the problem of “bringing religion up to date and modernizing it” as a new form, given however, that it has the same foundation because Christ is the End of the law (as Saint Paul says). And nothing can be erased, and regarding additions, likewise nothing [can be erased] outside of the small changes in the form of the exterior cult.
The essential in our modern epic regarding religion is however, the absence of religious living, which afterwards as an excuse, brings in so-called modernism in order to live in a civilized way, in other words, more materialistically and in negligence of a more intimate religious living. From this follows the lack of knowing how to live religiously and to be modern at the same time, which is the key problem. Because currently there are different surroundings and after all, isn’t there a need for new forms of spiritual rules, something new in order to be at peace with the modern epoch?
Look then at where the opinions and affirmations of many modern religious people come from, which is that if you respect the Ancient forms of religious living, the traditional of the Holy Fathers, you are Old fashioned and fanatical.
The ancient religious form along with its entire milieu shouldn’t be misunderstood.
There are many that don’t exclude this ancient form, but seek to simplify it and cut so much off of it that you can’t recognize it anymore. Or they recognize it as a relic that you worship in front of, but which is inaccessible to the modern era, in other words, impossible to bring to fulfillment in the new conditions, and in the end to conform to the new more accessible modern forms.
This is what the center of Arseny’s character consists of. A proverb says, “You will know a man according to his desires and aspirations, and his face is a reflection of the heart that beats in his breast.”
Father Arseny, from his youth had a sensitive soul, very sensitive, with a true vocation for his calling. He viewed his life with an awakened conscience, ceaselessly awake, with a perpetual tendency to move forward.
The complicated process in a monk’s soul is characterized by the refinement or in the “controversy” between spirit and matter, faith and apostasy, life and death, a truth that delimits the field of monastic conscience and life in well defined forms. This is why few arrive at Holiness. It’s not that many can’t live up to these requirements, it’s that they don’t even attempt to raise themselves up to them through continuous battle.
Many don’t fight with daily and rational effort, moderate in the beginning, until you know your inner man, in order to know from which side to attack the problem, in order to know your possibilities, the forces which you use (and not a blind enthusiasm). Because of this many of the daring people went bankrupt and the requirements gained the renown of inaccessibility.
Of course we won’t bring into discussion the “gifts” of God, but all of those who arrived at a high level of religious spirituality had the will, faith and unshakable firmness to follow the chosen road (of their particular self-sacrifice) in a regulated life, enthusiastically and in full consciousness.
A compromise with one’s own self has happened for the majority of monks (and even the faithful laymen). And it happens by enclosing yourself in your own opinions, with the specific prejudices of your character and temperament, a personal philosophy that ties you up, and you remain in the same place. And what’s worse is, you consider and ask the same thing from others.
This happens all the more nowadays when it is believed that the one who isn’t like you, who doesn’t live like you, is abnormal. He is made out to be crazy etc…
We must arrive at the understanding that not all people are the same (not from the point of view that some are superior and others inferior), but different in their spiritual structure, which calls for something from their specific characteristics. (For example: a monk must abstain more and more soberly in comparison with others who have a different temperament. He has on the other hand, a different sensitivity that requires a double or tenfold effort to be normalized. It is something that few understand. In some of our monasteries when they ask the same thing from everyone, those who have some different necessities are considered abnormal, or as making themselves out to be smarter or even as fanatics if they attempt a more rigorous diet in order to maintain their spiritual and even physical health.
Here is another point for understanding father Arseny’s personality. This monk, with his special gift and sensitivity, realized that the nucleus of monastic life is precisely this. In other words: the vast modality of the dynamics of spiritual movements that require certain norms for living, if there is to be determination and fancy for a conscientious and honorable monastic (and laymen’s life with its condescensions).
A more modern opinion exists, however, which is that this spiritual structure is no longer needed, in current conditions, for those rules (they are called in religious nomenclature canons).
The ancient canons, in the end, would no longer be valid as if they were surpassed by new social requirements, and those that try to respect them therefore, show evidence of fanaticism, of close-mindedness. This again is a problem that must be understood.
The word “fanatic” means: a man of stupid rigorism who, even if he “narrow mindedly” and strictly respects real laws, misses their true understanding, the ensemble of their sensibilities. Nevertheless, the word “fanatic” is sometimes used without rhyme or reason, without its true definition being known.
With this occasion I’m reminded of a discussion with father Michael, who told me at a certain point, “I don’t think you’re a fanatic, you don’t get scandalized; you understand that you must be like a bee and only collect what is good from all the flowers.” In other words, the fanatic doesn’t want to understand anything outside of his rigorism. He doesn’t accept anything in a different form and in a scandalous way, with thunder and lightning strikes with his fists with curses and threats.
The fanatic is spiritually narrow, short sighted, without vision and instead of any “fire of the heart” that melts evil by divine love, he exclusively anathematizes evil.
Father Arseny, even if he is a rigorist, isn’t a fanatic! He is a rigorist with understanding, by spiritual science, from the knowledge of things, to such an extent that the ugly word “fanatic,” which isn’t fitting, is transformed into “spiritual perfection.”
Father Arseny, when he threatens sinners with hell and rebukes the idle and lazy, does it out of a feeling heart, out of love, out of understanding and not with the coldness of a fanatic. He holds quite a bit to his ascetic life, sober, harsh, without deviation, yet without a rule beaten on the table with a fist, but rather with an eternal strike towards perfection. And more intimately, the secret of great men, this is done as an eternal sacrifice offered from the divine love that fills his heart.
Here is something that is not very well understood by modern people, some even refuse to understand. “What do you mean?” they ask, “Continual sacrifice, this way only existed in the ancients! It’s fanaticism!” Look at those who are small in understanding, in penetration and knowledge of things in themselves.
The lives of the great monastic saints Pachomius, Anthony the Great, Macarius, Evthemius, Arsenius, Sava, Poemen etc. – they’d like to say, are only some obsolete histories of the past, unreal today. And not only that, the one who lives them today, who continues them in the modern epoch is “abnormal,” is a fanatic!
Some of today’s monasteries (I have had the occasion to see) are even enemies set against outdated “mysticism.”
Father Arseny conducted his life for decades according to the model of the great monastic saints. In his sincere and special zeal he wanted to reveal to others the great hidden mysteries of a truly miraculous life that brings joy and happiness to those thirsty for heaven, consumed in the flames of divine love, purely spiritual.
They are great mysteries, the secret of monasticism, complex and uncontainable, as delicate as glass that can be shattered by the most gentle knock or fall. The aspiration to be a true monk isn’t fanaticism, in other words, eternal asceticism and battle to conquer the evil inside and outside of yourself, is then concomitant with making yourself a chosen vessel of the Holy Spirit. It’s not a proud desire to love God and to rise up towards Him. It is with humility that you surrender completely to God! Monasticism is truly a “heavenly gift that melts all other gifts.”
Well maybe someone will say that father Arseny, in his special sensitivity, follows the lives of the monastic saints and praises him that he can, and that he has the divine gift. But one could still say that he doesn’t agree with his rigorism in a certain regard which smacks too old-fashioned. That is, “the unchanging respect of the ancient canons in new, modern conditions.”
This point has led him to be viewed by many with reservation and to be considered a fanatic. And moreover, his position as a kind of Thebaiden Avva, which even impresses a lot of people by its mysterious aspect, along with his overwhelming influence, has also contributed to this view.
I have discussed this aspect of father Arseny at length and I have permitted myself to pose all these questions as if from a contrary position.
I remained amazed by the responses that were given. They, to the greatest measure, disarmed me. Did the Holy Fathers (when they formulated from grace and divine inspiration and from observations of the most intimate actions) have in mind only certain people limited in time, when they gave rules for the monasteries and the typicon of the true steps towards heaven?
And then, in which aspect is the ancient man’s soul differentiated from the new? The Holy Fathers studied the soul very much. They discovered its movements, inclinations and possibilities which can truly be called natural law, just like the immutable laws of universal gravity and attraction, of electricity and magnetism since discovered laws, if they are not respected, are denatured and the phenomenon no longer takes place in itself. Can I change things so that there is no longer day or night? It’s a law, right?
The soul has some laws too, and if they aren’t respected, it becomes perverted. Maybe in our modern epoch the phenomenon is different? No, no way! Only the décor of the scenery has changed. What can’t be changed however, is the true fire of the spiritual epic poem.
On a global level there is discussion about the “instability of the Holy Father’s canons,” along with many controversies and misunderstandings. We must be under¬stand¬ing, but not be lax and pass over the “bar” as they say today.
The so-called golden age of Christianity (beginning with the Holy Apostles and just about ending with the three great hierarchs; Basil the Great, John the Golden Mouthed and Gregory the Theologian), was when Christianity, in its battle against itself and with those outside of it, succeeded to come out into the light in all its radiance. It had in view the thirsting aspiration of true Christian life, when children became martyrs and virgins, the holy women… We, the people of today, are not worthy to stand ten steps below them.
Were they not flesh and bone in those times too? On the other hand, they had faith and much love for holy things, with the excellent self-sacrifice which is missing in us, modern people.
The withholding of the Holy Communication for one, two, seven years for different falls and sins was the supreme punishment. In other words, it meant the loss of and true distancing from intimacy with the Lord Jesus. Today, if we are forbidden by a canon, it doesn’t bother us. For some it’s even convenient. Then, can we correct our coldness with more indulgent canons?
This is where father Arseny answered me, “Those that truly love Christ must love Him according to the example of the Holy Fathers. And only then will they arrive at holiness, when they rise to their level through uncontainable love, true penance (through the respective canons) and through true self-sacrifice.”
He told me personally how as a priest he placed a few good Christians under the canons as they are in the books and he was able to deduce an amazing thing. They viewed the things of God in their true radiance and not just as some ordinary things, as they are seen today.
If as an example, Holy Communion would only be in one single place in the whole world, how much extraordinary desire would there be for many in order to arrive there at least once in a lifetime, to become worthy (to partake) of the holy things.
So, the Holy Fathers, through their more stern cannons wanted (through truly psychological observation and divine inspiration) to re-establish the yearning for holy things, carefulness to be worthy of receiving the holy things.
Many that don’t otherwise know such a spirit of things consider Arseny a fanatic. Personally, I had an intuition of the true sense of his sobriety. He isn’t “closed” since in certain instances he accepts some people more gently (as according to saint Paul), as children that must first be fed with spiritual milk, and only after that with the dry bread of spiritual perfection.
So, this is what understanding consists of: don’t scare off those who you want to bring to the Lord at the beginning. But slowly, they must arrive at the level of the holy Fathers. Otherwise Christian perfection doesn’t exist. This is not accepted by many, because they are afraid to renounce themselves in complete self-surrender to Christ to the extent that they prefer a new form of salvation, of dualism: God and the world… with its sins…
This is why father Arseny sometimes opposes this balance between the sinful world and God, because it casts the true radiance of Christianity into the shadows. The one who truly wants to be a Christian will never be, unless he does it according to the model of the Holy Fathers!
I tried to make him give his opinion about a few small concessions that others had made for those who must be brought to the knowledge of God. And because of this we were reminded of you and of the “blessings” in Campeni from an educational perspective for those few young faithful to attend a few films, which shouldn’t be too extravagant.
Well! There are a lot of difficult situations in spirituality!
Father Arseny however, has battle tactics, which are more like those of the Holy Fathers. They consist of the explanation and minute revelation of true Christian life and its clarification towards that to which it inclines. The power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of the spiritual father intervenes here and can make true miracles of conversion. It is because of this that many priests today are seen to be powerless with their spiritual gift, appealing in the ultimate instance to human methods, in other words, to education.
And here father Arseny, if he’s not understood, could be misinterpreted.
Without a doubt a spiritual father should have a lot of practical, educational knowledge. However, the measure of a priest is Yearning for Holiness, the Holy light which can kindle anew the fire that has been put out in the souls of the fallen.
A faithful man or woman resistantly opposes your spiritual advice and you, as a priest, must be stronger with your longing for God, with asceticism and continual perseverance, as the Holy Fathers prayed all night for those who were unfaithful.
Look at why father Arseny is harsh in this regard: not from a blind fanaticism (as some call it), but from a profound consciousness of certain truths.
I mean, some spiritual fathers, being poor and lazy in spiritual progress, in order to be excused from the effort of rising, make indulgences with Christians – in order to be indulgent with themselves.
The law of the spiritual is to be harsh and intolerant with yourself, so as to have the strength and power to be indulgent and tolerant with others (this is a psychological secret). It is only in this way that you can be indulgent, only through the understanding gained from your experience. It is a truth which is, practically speaking well understood, that those who are lax are on the contrary, most of the time, intolerant in a stupid way precisely when they ought to be indulgent.
One psychologist said, “The secret of strong people is that they unceasingly constrain themselves,” an extraordinary truth. It is only in this way that the understanding is gained to know how to behave in all the variety of situations, according to circumstances, being at the same time faithful to your beliefs and mission.
Father Arseny, in his sincerity and in his monastic life that he carried out conscientiously, has this very complex which I’ve just dissected above. His simple way of being a loving soul and of thirsting for perfection must be understood in order to see him in his true radiance.
So father Arseny isn’t a fanatic, but a monastic that honors his order, who bares the holiness of the Holy Fathers and has the unending light of true Christianity in its pure excellence.
He is one who I admire, with the unspeakable joy of seeing a prototype of a true monastic and Christian life. He embodies an encounter of heavenly faith and love, in the thirst for and ascension to the pure light which the Lord Christ gives.
(published in the volume
"Ghelasie Isihastul, Iubitorul de Dumnezeu" ("Ghelasie the Hesychast, the God-lover"), Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2004, pp. 34-43.
Transl. into English by Fr. John Downie)
Copyright: Platytera Publishing House.
