What Is Needed for a Repentant Person: Who Has Embarked on the Good Path of Salvation
Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Treatises & Other

What Is Needed for a Repentant Person

Who Has Embarked on the Good Path of Salvation

St. Theophan the Recluse

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Что потребно покаявшемуся и вступившему на добрый путь спасения

Cover: Return of the Prodigal Son (c. 1668) by Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Wikimedia Commons (Hermitage Museum; Google Art Project), which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:chto-potrebno:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Theophan the Recluse was born Georgy Vasilievich Govorov on January 10, 1815, in the village of Chernavsk in the Oryol province of central Russia, the son of a parish priest. He was schooled where the sons of clergy were schooled—first at the district ecclesiastical college at Livny, then at the Oryol seminary—before entering the Kiev Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1841 with a master’s degree. In that same season of his life he was tonsured a monk and took the name Theophan, after Theophanes the Confessor. Ordination to the priesthood followed, and with it two decades of teaching and administration: he held professorial and rectorial posts in the Russian theological schools, served on a mission to the Holy Land and in the embassy church at Constantinople, and so came to know at first hand both the ancient monastic centers of the Christian East and the libraries in which their literature was preserved.

In 1859 he was consecrated bishop, taking charge of the see of Tambov and Shatsk, and in 1863 he was transferred to Vladimir. By every account he was a conscientious and much-loved diocesan bishop. But the administrative life was never where his heart lay. In 1866 his petition to be relieved of his duties was granted, and he withdrew to the Vysha hermitage in the Tambov province, a quiet monastery he had come to love. There he lived for the remaining twenty-eight years of his life. For the first years he still went out to the monastery’s services; but beginning in 1872 he closed his door. He cut off ordinary contact with everyone but his confessor, ceased to attend the common church, and built a small chapel in his own quarters where he celebrated the Liturgy—for a time on Sundays and feasts, and in his last years daily and alone.

This seclusion was not idleness or flight. From behind that closed door Theophan carried on one of the most productive literary lives in the history of Russian spirituality. He answered the letters that arrived by the dozens every day, counseling by post the very people he no longer met in person; he wrote and translated without pause. His enduring monument is the Russian Dobrotolubie, his rendering and reworking of the Philokalia, the great anthology of ascetical and contemplative texts of the Christian East, which he made available to Russian readers as no one had before. Alongside it stand his own works of spiritual counsel—among them The Path to Salvation and The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It — books that translated the wisdom of the desert into terms an ordinary literate Russian could act on.

He reposed at Vysha on January 6, 1894, having spent twenty-two of his years there in strict reclusion. In 1988, at the council convened to mark the millennium of the baptism of Rus, the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints, and he is commemorated in January. His life thus falls into two unequal halves—the public churchman and the hidden recluse—but the second half is what the Church remembers him for, and it is out of that hiddenness that the present book comes.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

What Is Needed for a Repentant Person Who Has Embarked on the Good Path of Salvation is one of Theophan’s shortest and most sharply practical writings. Its very title states its occasion. It is addressed to a particular person at a particular moment—not to the seasoned monk and not to the merely curious, but to someone who has repented, who has made the decisive inward turn toward God, and who now faces the plain question of what to do next. Conversion has happened; the resolve is real; and the new convert stands at the trailhead of a road he has never walked, with no idea how to take the first steps without stumbling.

To that person Theophan gives an answer of unusual concreteness. He does not offer a theology of grace or a treatise on the passions. He tells the beginner, in effect, that four things are needed and that none of them can be skipped: a guide to walk with, a rule of life to keep, a readiness to suffer, and an inner fire to sustain the whole. Everything in the book serves to lay out these four necessities and to press home that they are necessities and not counsels of perfection reserved for the advanced.

What gives the book its particular character is the reader Theophan has in view. He is not writing for the cloister. The disciplines he describes—submission to a guide, a fixed rule of prayer and fasting, the expectation of hardship, the guarding of zeal—are the disciplines the desert fathers lived by, but he assumes without argument that they are available to, and required of, any Christian who means to take the inner life seriously. This is the quiet radicalism of Theophan’s pastoral writing generally: he hands the layperson the monk’s tools and tells him they are his by right. The book belongs to the great body of counsel he produced in his Vysha years, when the whole purpose of his hiddenness was to serve, by the pen, the many souls who wrote to him wanting to know exactly this—how does one who has turned to God actually begin?

Argument & Structure

The book unfolds in four short chapters, each devoted to one of the four necessities, and each building on the one before.

The first chapter, Life Under Guidance, states the most countercultural of the four claims: that the beginner cannot be his own teacher. The newborn in the spirit, Theophan writes, is exactly like a newborn child—helpless, and in need of someone older to feed him, steady him, and keep him from the cliffs his untrained judgment would walk him over. The soul that undertakes its own healing is like a sick man treating himself, or a traveler pressing into a dark and snare-filled forest without a guide. Behind this counsel lies the ascetic tradition’s sober fear of self-delusion — prelest, the spiritual deception in which a sincere beginner mistakes the promptings of his own pride, or the enemy disguised as an angel of light, for the voice of God. Theophan fills the chapter with cautionary histories drawn from the desert literature and from St John Cassian: ascetics of long labor who, the moment they trusted their own judgment alone, were led by a demon to ruin. The remedy is to place one’s whole judgment, in complete honesty, under a more experienced guide. And because such a guide is not always to be found, Theophan makes provision for the hard case: where no living elder is available, the beginner is to construct a substitute out of Scripture, the writings of the fathers, and the counsel of a few like-minded fellow strugglers—never to fall back on himself alone.

The second chapter, Life According to Rules, supplies the next necessity. Zeal by itself, Theophan observes, is a gust of wind: it rises and dies, and when it dies nothing gets done. What converts a passing fervor into a settled life of prayer is the patient keeping of a rule — fixed times for prayer, set disciplines of fasting, a deliberate ordering of the day around the remembrance of God. A rule is “the safest fence of the salvific life.” It keeps the will working when feeling has drained away; whether one wishes to or not, one does what the rule prescribes, and by that steady friction the fire is kept alight. Theophan is careful and proportionate here. A rule must be moderate enough to be kept and demanding enough to shape the soul; it must be fitted to one’s actual circumstances rather than borrowed wholesale from another’s life; and once set, it is to be held to with the stubbornness one would bring to a vow.

The third chapter, The Narrow and Sorrowful Path, prepares the convert for what the first two disciplines will cost. Having fenced himself with rules, the ascetic has taken up a yoke that is good but laborious, and he had better know it in advance. The spiritual life, Theophan insists, is not the stream of consolations the beginner may have imagined; it is narrow, constraining, and full of pain, both the inner pain of tearing beloved sins out of oneself and the outer pain of opposition and dryness. He refuses to soften this. Quoting Macarius the Great, the Apostle Paul, and the Lord’s own words about the narrow gate, he argues that suffering is not a sign that one has strayed from the path but the surest evidence that one is on it. The convert should expect the trials that follow conversion, should even welcome them, and should be wary of a spiritual life that seems to be going entirely smoothly.

The fourth chapter, Zeal for Salvation, names the inner fire that holds the whole structure up. A guide, a rule, and a readiness to suffer are still not enough; the convert needs a living, burning desire for God, kept alive day after day against dryness, distraction, and discouragement. Theophan describes this zeal with great care, distinguishing it on one side from mere firmness of will—which is cold, calculating, and prone to self-interest—and on the other from undisciplined enthusiasm, which flares and burns itself out. True zeal is bound safely by the guidance and the rule of the earlier chapters, so that it drives one forward without rashness. It is fed by hope, by the constant beginning-again of the contrite, and by a refusal ever to consider oneself finished. The book closes on that note, in one of Theophan’s most memorable injunctions: never say to yourself, “That is enough now, I can rest,” for that thought is the most treacherous of traitors; say instead, “Why am I here, and what have I done?”—and begin again. Toil and labor, he tells the beginner, are yours until death itself; what lies ahead is not ease but ever greater exertion.

Read as a whole, the four chapters form a single closed argument. Guidance keeps the beginner from delusion; rules give guidance a durable shape; the honest expectation of suffering keeps rules from breaking the first time they hurt; and zeal supplies the fire that makes all three burn rather than merely stand. Remove any one and the structure sags—which is precisely Theophan’s point.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

The significance of this small book lies less in any single doctrine than in its faithful compression of an entire tradition into a form a beginner can hold in one hand. What Theophan hands the reader is the accumulated practical wisdom of Eastern Christian asceticism—the desert fathers, John Cassian, Macarius the Great, Isaac the Syrian, Barsanuphius, John Climacus—distilled to its working core. He is not innovating; he says as much. He is transmitting, and the authority of the book is the authority of the chorus of fathers he quotes on nearly every page.

Two emphases give the work its enduring weight. The first is its insistence on spiritual guidance and its clear-eyed account of self-delusion. In an age—his and ours—inclined to trust private inspiration, Theophan’s flat refusal to let the beginner be his own director, and his sober catalog of the ways sincere souls have been destroyed by trusting themselves, is a bracing corrective. His teaching here draws on and passes forward the Russian tradition of starchestvo, or eldership, which had been renewed in his own century largely through the labors of Paisius Velichkovsky and the elders of Optina. The second is its honesty about cost. Theophan promises the beginner not consolation but the cross, and he does so not to discourage but to inoculate: the convert who has been told the truth in advance will not abandon the road the first time it turns steep.

There is, finally, a pastoral significance in the reader Theophan chose. By addressing these monastic disciplines to the ordinary Christian in the world, he stands within a broad and enduring Christian conviction—held across the traditions—that the call to serious inner transformation is not the property of a spiritual elite but is laid on everyone who repents. That conviction is why the book has remained in use, across a full century and across the whole Russian Orthodox diaspora, as a first manual for anyone setting out.

Suggestions for Reading

This is a short book, and it rewards being read the way it was written—as counsel to oneself rather than as information. The four chapters are meant to be taken in order and taken personally: they answer, in sequence, the questions a real beginner actually asks. The newcomer to this literature will meet a handful of recurring terms — zeal, rule, remembrance of God, and the ascetic warfare against the passions—and should let them accumulate meaning across the chapters rather than pausing to define them at once. Above all, the book asks to be measured not by whether its counsel is admired but by whether it is begun; that, as its last pages insist, is the only test that matters.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents a fresh, modern English translation of What Is Needed for a Repentant Person Who Has Embarked on the Good Path of Salvation, rendered directly from St Theophan’s Russian text as it stands in the received editions of his works. It is an English-only edition, made to be read on its own.

The translation follows the conventions of this series. The author is named as the Church has always received him—St Theophan the Recluse—and those who carried his Russian into English are credited as translators, never as authors. The aim throughout has been clear, contemporary English that preserves Theophan’s plainness and force without archaizing it: his short, driving sentences, his homely images (the newborn child, the dry stick that straightens a young plant, the steamship that stops when the steam is let off, the sailor who cannot yet say he has arrived), and the many voices of the fathers he weaves into his own. Scripture references and the citations of patristic sources are given in a modern, Arabic-numeral style—for example, Psalm 30:9 and Matthew 7:7—for ease of reference. The result is meant to put into the hands of today’s reader exactly what Theophan meant to put into the hands of his: a short, concrete, truthful account of how the life of repentance actually begins.

St. Theophan the Recluse

The spiritual guide behind this treatise.

Life Under Guidance

Just as a newborn child cannot live without a mother who cares for him, cherishes him, and nurtures him, so too does one who is newborn in spirit and has turned to God essentially need at first a nurturer and nurture, a spiritual guide and guidance.

The necessity of a spiritual guide as father is self-evident. Anyone who begins to seek salvation cannot undertake this work on his own or work out his salvation according to his own understanding and will; but from the very first he must place himself under someone’s instruction in this matter. He has entered upon a new path completely unknown to him: let him therefore make use of reliable direction, and not rely on his own guesses alone. At first he walks as if in a fog, or in some dark forest, and in the midst of snares; so let him give his hand to one who can lead him out from there and set his feet in a broad place (Ps. 30:9). He is sick: how then can he resolve to treat himself in spiritual illnesses, the most subtle of all, when not only ordinary sick people but even doctors themselves do not treat their own bodies? Only that to which we are naturally born can we learn without being taught; but arts and crafts we ordinarily learn—for example, writing, drawing, singing, and so on. But the work of salvation is the art of arts and the science of sciences: how then can one manage without a teacher? Whoever acts in this way, at the very beginning of the salvific path, admits into himself the most pernicious disposition, namely: self-reliance and self-confidence. True, “there is one Teacher, the Lord” (Matthew 23:8), and “the Spirit of God always helps us in our weaknesses” (Romans 8:26), and “His anointing teaches us all things” (1 John 2:27); but the beginner is not yet capable of such interior, immediate divine guidance. There are cases when it is unavoidable to remain with it alone—and the Lord does not put to shame the one who hopes. But such cases must be reckoned among the extraordinary, the miraculous. To expect miracles for oneself in the ordinary course of things means to tempt God. When the Lord appeared to the Apostle Paul, He first sent him to Ananias (Acts 9:6), and only afterward did He Himself teach him directly (Galatians 1:12), and this Apostle, already taught by God, when he entered upon the field of preaching, resorted to the counsel of the other apostles: “lest by any means,” he says, “I should run, or had run, in vain” (Galatians 2:2). The Lord can educate even through angels, as happened in our own times in Russian America; but in ancient times it often happened that angels brought instruction, food, and even Holy Communion, as is evident from the account of Saint Pafnutius about the four youths. But all these are paths to salvation, guidance and education that are extraordinary, which it is both impious and dangerous to expect, for the reason that our enemy can also take the form of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Consequently, one must hold to the most humble part and submit to man for God’s sake, as to God.

This path is vindicated by the experiences of all the saints who shone like luminaries in the firmament of Christianity. The greatest saints of God always made use of counsel and guidance. Antony the Great, Macarius of Egypt, Pachomius, Hilarion, Euthymius, Sabbas—all of them laid the very foundation of their salvation in submission to their spiritual father and learned the ascetic life under his instruction. As a result, they matured and were perfected quickly, without deviation or dangerous stumbling. On the contrary, the other path—the self-willed one, following one’s own intellect and heart—has always been considered a path of error and destruction. How many striking examples there have been of ascetics who, as soon as they deviated from guidance, immediately fell into spiritual delusion, were ensnared by Satan, and perished! Saint John Cassian recounts the story of Heron, an elder who spent fifty years in fasting, labors, vigils, and prayer, and who amazed everyone by his strictness. But afterward, precisely because he presumed to remain with his own reason and will alone, he took Satan for an angel and at his instigation threw himself at night into an empty well in the hope that he would be taken up in the hands of angels, and was so badly injured that on the third day, after being pulled from the well, he died (Conference 2, ch. 5). He also mentions two others who, by their own will and thought, rushed into the desert, expecting that the Lord would feed them there (Conference 2, ch. 6). One of them, after his strength was exhausted, was saved by receiving food offered by wild animals; but the other perished, remaining even here with his own will. The same Cassian speaks of a certain man who received revelations from a demon, saw light in his cell, and was instructed to sacrifice his son, which, however, did not come to pass (Conference 2, ch. 7); and also of a most laborious ascetic whom a demon led astray into Judaism through dreams (Conference 2, ch. 8). A similar story is offered in the Prologue for the ninth day of January: a young ascetic willfully settled in a mountain cave, received revelations from a demon and believed him that he would be taken up to heaven—and would have perished, had not grace preserved him and inspired him, though not with a true disposition, to reveal this to the abbot.

So it is: there is no one more unfortunate, no one closer to perdition, than the person who has no spiritual guide for himself on the path of God, especially one who has only just abandoned a bad way of life. Saint Dorotheos depicted this at length and instructively in his discourse on this subject, which one may counsel everyone who is striving to keep with him and to read frequently (see Discourse 6).

Saint Peter of Damascus, in his first book in the Philokalia, surveys all people of all times, infinitely diverse in ages, constitution, callings, and conditions, and finds among them all, despite their differences to the point of opposition, both those who are being saved and those who are perishing. “Pondering this,” he says, “I was crushed in soul and in perplexity to the point of exhaustion I asked: what is the cause of this, and what is the beginning of our salvation or perdition?” For a long time he labored over this, seeking with his intellect an unfailing answer, and here is the reasoning he found among the holy Fathers: “The beginning of every good and every evil is the reason given to man, and according to reason—the will. The beginning of salvation: that a person abandon his own desires and reasonings and do God’s desires and reasonings. Before the law, under the law, and in grace, many are found who have been saved, because they preferred God’s understanding and His will above their own reasonings and desires; and again, in all those times many are found who have perished, since they preferred their own desires and reasonings above God’s. But God’s will (in particular cases) cannot be known otherwise than through discernment, and not one’s own discernment, but discernment confirmed by questioning those who have the gift of discernment and are experienced. Only in this way do we learn what practices God wants us to pursue. But if not in this way, we cannot be saved at all. Without this, even what we consider good does not turn out for good, either because it is untimely or because it is unnecessary.” Likewise, Saint John Cassian, having proved that everything must be done with discernment, in order to know what true and God-given discernment is and what is falsely named and counterfeit, diabolical discernment, speaks in the person of Abba Moses: “True discernment does not come otherwise than from true humility, when we reveal to the fathers not only what we wish to do, but also what we think, and we do not trust our own thought in anything, but in everything follow the words of the elders, considering only that to be good which they recognize as such. Such a way of acting not only enables a person to walk unharmed along the right path, but also keeps him unharmed from all the snares of the devil. For it is impossible for one who governs his life by the judgment and counsel of those who have advanced to fall through demonic spiritual delusion; because by this very act of declaring and revealing evil thoughts to the fathers, he weakens them and makes them powerless. Just as a serpent, brought out from a dark hole into the light, strives to flee and hide; so also evil thoughts, when they are exposed by confession and disclosure to the fathers, flee from a person” (Conference 2, ch. 10).

So great is the need and so incalculable the benefit of submitting oneself to the guidance of others; Yet not indiscriminately or to just anyone who happens along. “Many of the elders,” as Saint Cassian says in the same place, “instead of benefit bring harm, instead of consolation bring despair to those who question them, and this is confirmed by example.” Saint Peter of Damascus says of himself that he himself suffered harm many times from those whom he consulted. This is why he writes: “Not everyone who is old in years is already capable of giving guidance; but only one who has entered into dispassion and received the gift of discernment.” It is good not to hide one’s thoughts from the fathers; Yet they should not be told to just anyone who happens along, but to spiritual elders who possess the gift of discernment, who have grown gray not merely in years but in wisdom. Many, looking only at the advanced age of an elder, have opened their thoughts to him and, instead of healing, have fallen into despair because of the inexperience of those who heard them. Not everyone can give guidance, and this is not only because of their own lack of success and immaturity, but often because of the rapidity of their maturation. Many, because of their great simplicity and great fervor of zeal, pass through the first stages very quickly and do not experience much. The inexperienced, however, cannot help even those who are being tested. Moreover, discernment is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of which there are many, and not all are given to all, but “to each one as God wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). “Senses trained… in the discernment of good… and evil” (Heb. 5:14) are characteristic of every purified person, but to analyze every case, to decide what is customary and what is unusual, and what of that may be permitted and what must be rejected—this only those who see can do. In general, such luminaries are formed by God and brought forth by God for the work. Look in the lives of the saints: a man of God labors in the struggles of communal life, withdraws into solitude, lives hidden from all; finally, it is said of him: the Lord has revealed a luminary. One who is fit cannot remain hidden; people begin to gather around him, and a very populous monastic community is built: so it was with Antony the Great, Sabbas the Sanctified, Antony of the Caves of Kiev, Sergius of Radonezh; so it was before, so it is now.

From this it is clear that a true spiritual guide can only be one who has conquered the passions and through dispassion has become a vessel of the Holy Spirit, who teaches all things, or one who has passed through the first degree and through the inner cross and crucifixion has received God, or been received by Him, and is moved and led by Him. Only such a one can be called an experienced, undeluded, skilled, and reliable spiritual guide. Saint John Climacus compares him to Moses, in boldness before God, and to an angel, in purity and perfection in spirit. Wishing to go out and escape from Egypt and from Pharaoh, we too truly have need of a certain Moses, a mediator to God and according to God, who, standing between action and contemplation, would lift up his hands to God for us, so that guided by him, having crossed the sinful sea—that is, the passions—we might put Amalek to flight. Those who are in spiritual delusion are those who, having placed their hope in themselves, have imagined that they have no need of a guide. Those who went out from Egypt had Moses as their guide, and those who fled from Sodom had an angel. And some of them are like those who heal the passions of the soul under the care of skilled physicians, such as those who went out from Egypt; but others are like those who wish to strip off the impurity of a wretched deed: for this reason they too have need that an angel should help them, or at least, I would say, someone equal to an angel: for because of the rottenness of the wounds, we need both a physician and a healer of sores (Step 1).

What kind of person a spiritual guide should be can be seen more fully in the same Saint John of the Ladder in his instructions to the abbot. There he is called a physician, a helmsman, a teacher, one who has a book written in the heart and who was not taught by man, dispassionate, living in God, and so on. It is evident, that is, that he must be one who has reached the final degrees of perfection. Basil the Great speaks thus about this: “With much care and discernment, labor to find as the guide of your life a man free from spiritual delusion, who knows well how to instruct those going to God, flourishing in virtues, having in his deeds a witness of his love of God, understanding the divine Scriptures, free from many cares, not covetous, not acquisitive, quiet, God-loving, loving the poor, free from anger, not remembering wrongs, greatly edifying to those who draw near to him, not vainglorious, not proud, not flattering, not inconstant, preferring nothing to God” (Philokalia, Vol. 5, pp. 49–50).

Such are the perfections of a true father! Without this he will not be able, despite all his zeal, to lead to salvation the souls that have entrusted themselves to him. The path leading to God can be learned from books, from the examples and teaching of the holy Fathers, and can be pointed out to others: but a spiritual guide must not only point it out, but also lead, and not only lead, but as it were carry on himself. He must be a strong intercessor before God in prayer and a driver away of invisible enemies; and for this he must have boldness and the power of faith, treading without stumbling upon all the power of the enemy: this is given or acquired at the second degree, that is, by the perfect. Saint John Climacus appears in a dream and awakens the disciple upon whom a mountain was about to fall. Saint Barsanuphius has many experiences where disciples, through his prayers, were delivered from the torment of passions and the assault of demons. To lead, one must see all the crossroads, know them by experience, and know how they lead astray; and for this one must stand at a certain height from which it would be possible to survey both all the paths and all those walking them, and among them the one who has entrusted himself. By his word, as if by hand, he will direct him how to walk straight, without deviations, swiftly, amid all the crossroads without wandering. Those who have not been cleansed from the passions all stand on one level, whether one is learned or unlearned, whether one has read the science of ascetic struggle or has not read it. But the people making up the crowd do not see where or how to pass through, and only push one another and go as they happen to go, now here, now there, hoping that they might stumble upon the needed path to come out into the open; whereas by a voice that is outside the crowd, one can come out at once. The whole matter lies in the subjugation of the passions: one who has not conquered the passions cannot give a reliable rule for their subjugation, because he himself is passionate and judges passionately. That is why a noetic spiritual guide who has not himself experienced these things will never lead far, despite all his desire. Both he and the one he guides will talk and reason about the ways of God, yet keep treading in the same place. Beyond this, he must possess a certain natural authoritative power over the soul of the disciple, so that the soul submits to him without objection, in silence, and is led as one who is guided. But it is impossible to have spiritual power without having subdued the passions and received the Spirit of God. Without this, a word will always be powerless and fruitless, because it cannot give birth to what it does not contain within itself, as Venerable Macarius the Great teaches.

Such perfections must belong to a true spiritual guide and faithful instructor! But the one who entrusts himself to such a guide, when the Lord grants him the grace to find one, also takes on great and strict obligations.

The essence of guidance and its power consist in a covenant between the spiritual father and the disciple, made before the face of God, in which the father takes upon himself the salvation of the disciple’s soul, and the disciple surrenders himself entirely to him. In this covenant lies the essential difference between guidance and consultations or inquiries. The instruction given in the latter does not bind, but in the former every word is law: there the one who inquires still has the freedom to deliberate and examine, but here any such examination is out of place and ruinous. The disciple surrenders himself entirely. “You,” says Saint Basil the Great, “give yourself to him completely emptied, that is, so that you no longer have anything of your own or for your own share, but everything belongs to your father; otherwise this remnant of the old leaven will spoil what is newly placed in you, and the whole mixture will be tasteless, displeasing to God, repulsive.” In Saint John of the Ladder an example is given of how one man said to his instructor: “As iron is entrusted to a blacksmith, so I, most venerable father, have given myself over to you” (Step 4, §23). Like a clean canvas in the hands of a painter or like good material in the hands of a sculptor—such is the disciple in the hands of the father. He took Christ’s yoke upon himself in his resolve to please Him; but now, as Saint John of the Ladder says, “he strives to shift it from his own neck onto another’s” (ibid., §5). He is like one who “intends to cross the sea on the surface of the water, supported by the hands of others.” That is why he calls life under guidance a voluntary death, a tomb, a sleepy journey, a safe voyage. The disciple is, as it were, not acting but being acted upon.

This is from the side of the disciple. For his part, the father gives decisive assurance about the salvation of the disciple’s soul by himself, takes upon himself the disciple’s sins and the answer before God’s dread judgment. In Saint Barsanuphius this is expressed in many places and very often. For example, to one who asked, “Give me your word, my lord, that you will answer for me to God, and there will be no harm to me,” he replied: “I sweetly lay down my soul for you; only death will separate me from you” (Answer 57); to another: “Understand what I write and keep it to yourself: I will make you hear heavenly, lordly, divine rejoicing; you will be heir to my gifts” (Answer 10); to yet another: “I take half your sins,” and when he redoubled his request: “I take them all, for the sake of obedience” (Answers 163, 164). What does he even promise? “If you keep my commandment, or rather God’s, I confess that I will answer for you on that day when God will judge the secrets of men” (Answer 58). And in another place he prays: “Master, either bring me and my children into Your Kingdom, or blot me out from Your book” (Answer 110). But such a great promise is given on condition of the disciple’s resolute, willing, unquestioning fulfillment of all the father’s commandments, from the heart, as God’s commandments, so that as soon as any deviation is allowed, the covenant is broken and the promise loses its binding force. The father undertakes, as it were, to carry the soul of the disciple up to heaven on himself, but on the condition that this seeker also strives and labors. To such a seeker, according to faith, the Lord helps, and that person, in hope in God, who desires all to be saved, does not doubt that everything will be for him, both in word and in deed, unto salvation. In effect, he becomes a mediator between him and God, a mediator who is true, faithful, and safe: what is said will come to pass.

So he says to one: “Let my words be written in your heart, bind them on your hands, let them be before your eyes…”, and further: “show them also through accomplishment in deed” (Answer 11). To another he says: “I pray, day and night I strive for your soul, but you also labor with me, bestir yourself, otherwise all is fruitless. Seek salt, and I will salt you with salt” (Answers 24, 70). And again: “if you violate any of this, I am not responsible; you will see and will answer on that dreadful day” (Answer 57). As a result of this, an unbreakable, heartfelt, spiritual union is formed between them, by which the father in the son and the son in the father abide, mingled together in spirit; and this not only for the time of formation, but for all eternity. Saint Barsanuphius writes to one who was afflicted: “seeing the affliction and turmoil of the temptation that has befallen you, I fell ill so grievously as never before; especially remembering what the Apostle says: ‘who is weak and I am not weak’ (2 Corinthians 11:29)” (Answer 57). To another he said: “I am inseparably with you; when you go to serve the community, my heart goes with you in every way, as God is pleased to grant” (Answer 27). Or: “By the grace of Christ the Son of God, I do not separate myself from you, but I am always with your love in spirit” (Answer 55). Again: “Brother, I speak to you as to my own soul: for the Lord has bound your soul with mine, saying: do not depart from him” (Answer 159). And the true disciple is portrayed by Saint John of the Ladder thus: “A soul bound to its pastor by Christ’s love and faith will not depart from him even to the shedding of blood, especially when it has once been healed through him from its wounds. It remembers the words of the one who said: ‘neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers… nor any other creature can separate us from the love of Christ’ (Rom. 8:38–39). But if someone does not have it bound, woven, and attached in this way, he will spend his life in vain, behaving hypocritically and falsely before his father” (Step 4, §28). In this union of hearts lies the whole strength and essence of the covenant. Through him the entire strength of the father is poured out upon the weak disciple. For this reason the enemy tries in every way to disrupt it, and through secret suggestions and even apparitions he inspires now distrust, now suspicion, now the desire to go to another guide—as there are examples of this in Saint Barsanuphius (Answer 159 and others). Because of its great importance, this union of hearts should be the first object of the disciple’s prayer: “Open your mind to God, revealing your faith and sincere love for your spiritual father, and God will secretly inform him of your love for him, and will make him equally well-disposed and friendly toward you” (Step 4, §45).

Such a union, however, is a great spiritual mystery, accomplished by God Himself. Not every true father is for every disciple, and not every true disciple is for every father. To the one who seeks with full faith and submission, the Lord points out and leads to the one who can, by His power, bring him to salvation; and to a true worthy father He gives assurance in spirit to receive and bear the burden of this particular weak one. Thus with Saint Barsanuphius, John appeared once and then did not come for a long time. When Abba Seril thought that he would not come anymore, Saint Barsanuphius said: “He is distant in body, but with us in spirit, and he will not be separated from now until eternity” (Answer 5); and even earlier he said, “Two years ago the Lord told me that he would come” (Answer 1). One of his disciples said to him: “The Lord has sent you to me as a refuge and haven” (Answer 159); To another he said: “We believe that the Lord brought you here; do not waste the grace in vain” (Answer 163).

From this it becomes clear of itself: what the disciple ought to be in relation to his father.

Everything pertaining to this flows naturally from the spirit in which the disciple entrusts himself to the father, and from the bond that is formed between them.

A disciple must have complete and unwavering faith in his spiritual father—faith that he knows the way of God, that he can lead others along it to perfection and will indeed lead him, that he is powerful before God, and that God through him will show him the straight and unerring path; therefore all his instructions should be received as completely true, decisively salvific, and pleasing to God. This faith must be bright, pure, and not darkened by even the slightest cloud of doubt; for its weakening is a weakening of the heart’s union as well, and the weakening of the heart’s union perverts the whole work and makes it fruitless. Therefore this faith must be guarded as the apple of one’s eye. “As much as faith flourishes in the heart,” says Saint John of the Ladder, “so much does the body succeed in its ministry; but as soon as someone stumbles over the stone of faith, there is no doubt that such a person will fall; for it is true that ‘whatever is not of faith is sin’ (Romans 14:23). Those who obey in simplicity of heart, if through curiosity about the abbot’s commands they do not stir up demonic tricks against themselves, will complete their way well in the Lord” (Step 4, §§7, 9). Therefore the Fathers themselves first of all made sure of the faith in themselves of those whom they accepted under their guidance, and if they noticed its absence, they did not accept them. Thus Saint Barsanuphius did not accept one man under his guidance when he noticed unbelief in him; and when it crept in, through demonic delusion, into one who had been accepted, he hastened to heal him (Answer 161). “Those who have undertaken in the Lord the care of our salvation,” says the Ladder-writer, “we must believe without any curiosity, even if it seems to us that they are establishing something contrary to our salvation. It is then that our trust in them is tested, as in the crucible of humility. For this is the sign of true trust: when someone, although he sees something that somewhat contradicts his expectation, nevertheless, because it is ordained by his superiors, believes them without doubt” (Step 4, §104).

One must in every way honor one’s father, keeping his face honorable and radiant; not only in word and feeling, but even in thought to have nothing that darkens or diminishes this light. “If,” says the Ladder-writer, “we wish with all humility to bow our neck under the Lord’s yoke and to entrust our salvation sincerely to another, then before entering the monastery we must, if we have any discernment and understanding at all, deliberate and investigate our helmsman—we must test him, lest we end up, so to speak, with a simple oarsman instead of a helmsman, with a sick man instead of a physician, with a pleasure-lover instead of one who is blameless, in the deep instead of in a harbor, and prepare shipwreck for ourselves. But once we have entered upon the path of piety and renunciation of the world, we should no longer judge our good guide with complete severity, even though in him, as in any human being, we may perhaps see certain minor faults. Otherwise, with such strict scrutiny of the deeds of our abbot, we will receive no benefit from leaving the world. Those who wish to preserve forever an unwavering trust in their instructors must keep in their hearts, indelibly and unforgettably, their good deeds, so that by remembering them they may shut the mouths of the demons when they begin to wage war in us against trust in them. If your thought urges you to condemn or blaspheme your instructor, then flee from this as from fornication, and by no means give this serpent any hope, or place, or entrance, or any access whatsoever—but instead cry out to him: O deceiver! It is not I who have received judgment over my superior, but he who has been appointed judge over me!” (Step 4, §§6–7). This unshakable honor and reverence grows from faith and is established by it: just as, conversely, it immediately weakens as soon as faith weakens, and vice versa. Therefore the enemy directs his arrows especially at these two points. Often he even conjures up apparitions to darken the honor of the father, in order to drive the disciple away from him, as Eliseus, the disciple of Abba Isaiah, suffered. That is why, when in the Ladder a monk asks John Sabbaitēs, who had advised him to entrust himself to a father, “What if this father, through his own negligence, should err in something?”—the elder said in response: “Even if you should see him committing a sin, do not leave him, but say to yourself: ‘Friend, why have you come here?’ Then you will see how immediately every exaltation will vanish from you” (Step 4, §112). In all things one should rely on one’s father, or stand in the assurance that the satisfaction of every need will be secured by the father’s prayer, every evil averted, and every good bestowed. “Hold fast to me,” Saint Barsanuphius often says, “and I will lead you out and soon bring you into rest and present you to God.” Or thus: “You will be my heir, you will be granted my gifts,” or: “We will lie together in the same reliquary.” All this is contained in faith, in that faith that the Lord, who seeks the salvation of all, will save him through the father and will do everything for him according to his faith. The disciple hopes that the Lord, in His goodness, for the sake of the prayers of his father, will both have mercy and forgive sins and not deprive him of spiritual goods. Therefore he runs to his father as a son with complete confidence, in unwavering hope that he will receive satisfaction—and he does receive it. In Saint Barsanuphius, the disciples often say: “Speak the word, and it will be so.” “You are our refuge.” When he fell ill, they cried out: “Where shall we go?”

The natural consequence of faith, honor, and hope must be rest under the guidance of the father as under a safe shelter. By submission to him he cuts off every care for himself, every anxiety and fear. “He,” writes Saint Barsanuphius, “says from his heart to his father: I believe that the Lord will save my soul through you; do with me what the Lord inspires you to do. I am no longer myself” (Answer 57). “If anyone,” says the Ladder-writer, “with a pure conscience has forever surrendered himself to his father, such a one no longer fears his death as he would sleep, knowing for certain that at his departure from this life, not from him but from his abbot will an account be required” (Step 4, §50). Therefore he considers the matter of his salvation as though already decided. “Do not forget,” says the Ladder-writer further, “that great ascetic in your life who, though for a full eighteen years, did not hear with his bodily ears from his instructor the word: be saved; yet daily with the ear of his soul he felt from God not the word ‘be saved’, which signifies only the desire of the speaker and that an uncertain one, but the utterance: ‘this one is saved’, which signifies a precise determination of the matter and certainty” (ibid., §106). Thus the Lord Himself decisively reassures the disciple.

On his side there remains only this: willing, zealous, active obedience according to the instruction and direction of his spiritual father. For rest does not mean inactivity, but only the cutting off of all anxiety about it and its fruits or success. The disciple must always be ready, in vigilant attentiveness, and not in slackness. Saint John Climacus depicts him standing on unbound feet, one of which he extends in service, while the other he holds motionless in prayer (Step 4, §2); and he calls obedience a “sleeping journey” (ibid., §3): a journey because of the labors and progress, but sleeping because all this is arranged not by him. Saint Barsanuphius often addresses those who ask his help with these words: “labor together, advance, sweat over what I have said” (Answer 61). “I approach the Lord on your behalf,” he says, “but if you do not likewise approach, then the shame is great” (Answer 70). The spiritual father undertakes to save the disciple—but as if by the disciple’s own powers; he wants to be the worker—but in the disciple, to be his soul. And the disciple is at peace only in the comforting assurance and certainty concerning his fate; but he himself is still in sweat and labors.

Acting according to the direction of the father-instructor requires the following three actions:

a) To form nothing with the intellect and heart concerning either the past, the present, or the future: that is, not to trust oneself, one’s own intellect and heart, in anything. Not to know what things are like, not even to want to know, and to be afraid to think that things are this way or that way without the father’s instruction. Not to decide for oneself: this or that is good or bad, whether in oneself or in others, but as the father says. Not to plan or determine anything, even one minute ahead, because this depends on the father. Thus, this “non-reliance” is a decisive silencing of every voluntary inner movement of the faculties, an emptiness, an idleness from everything. It requires that nothing be determined by the intellect, tasted by the heart, or cultivated by the will; think, desire, taste when and how you are commanded; but without that, stand in an empty, expectant state. This, according to Saint John of the Ladder, is “a life without curiosity” (Step 4, §3), or “distrust of oneself in all good works even to the end of life” (ibid., §5). This silences one’s own feeling, one’s own taste in things. What is good according to the father is good; what is bad according to him is bad, even if it seems good to you. In this state the one who has been emptied stands before the face of the instructor, ready to receive what is imparted.

b) But, with all desire and effort, it is utterly impossible to place oneself in a position of silence. Thoughts, judgments, opinions, plans, desires, fears, and lusts will arise; unceasingly from within, now one thing, now another, will flow forth. Concerning all of this there is one rule: reveal everything to your instructor—both the good and the bad. By this means the inner life will always be purified. The instructor will have a basis for judging the state of the disciple; there will be no waste of time; all manner of deviations in thought and heart will be removed; under the guidance of an instructor, experience will be acquired in discerning thoughts—first one’s own, and then all others. That is why the Holy Fathers ascribe extraordinary power to this disclosure in the work of salvation, even if it is not made before a spiritual father as guide. With it, one can avoid every danger of going astray or falling, receiving counsel that warns in advance. Basil the Great commands thus: “Every one of those under obedience, if he wishes to show praiseworthy progress and acquire the habit of living unfailingly according to the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ, must not keep even a single movement of the soul secret, but must lay bare the secrets of the heart before those who are entrusted to care compassionately and mercifully for the weak brethren. In this way what is praiseworthy is confirmed, and what is not praiseworthy receives fitting healing; and through such ascesis we shall little by little grow in perfection of life” (Longer rule 26). In this connection one should not, as the same holy father teaches, excuse oneself from revealing thoughts and taking counsel on the grounds that one’s conscience is at peace and does not reproach. “Even in bodily illnesses,” he says, “it happens that the sick do not feel them, but trust the physician’s observation more than their own lack of feeling: so it is also with spiritual illnesses. Tell another, and he will determine whether you are healthy or sick, and what sickness you have. This is how the apostles acted. When the Lord said, ‘One of you will betray Me,’ then all of them, one after another, asked, ‘Is it I?’ (Matt. 26:21–22, Mark 14:18–19)” (Brief Rule 301). Saint Barsanuphius says: “Let no one hide his thoughts. Whoever conceals his thoughts, the evil spirits rejoice over him, seeing the possibility of destroying his soul” (Answer 583). “He who conceals his thoughts remains unhealed; for they are healed only by frequent questioning of spiritual fathers about them” (Answer 317). “He who hides no serpent in his bosom shows true faith; but he who conceals them still wanders outside the path of his salvation,” says St. John of the Ladder (Step 4, §46). Such a rule of disclosing everything places a great fear upon the soul not only to do, but even to say or think anything evil, reminding it of the judgment that will come from the spiritual father; it also places fear upon the demons, for in this way they can by no means hide their schemes. That is why they try to turn away from this and, fearing exposure, flee from the one who opens himself in everything, and hate and cannot bear even the very sound of openness, as Saint Dorotheos teaches (Discourse 5). And what relief this brings to the soul! For three years one man languished under the burden of lack of openness (Prologue, May 6), and then, when he overcame himself, a dark cloud came out of him—a sign that lack of openness is a work of Satan. Otherwise, how will the father benefit us when he does not know what is in us; and general instructions can be found in books. That is why Saint John Climacus teaches that just as one must reveal everything to one’s father from the very first time and recount one’s whole life, so too in all subsequent time—one must not withhold anything from one’s spiritual father, the helper of one’s salvation, but confess with humility, as to God (Step 4, §§10, 63, 66). “In one monastery,” Saint John Climacus further writes, “I saw a small notebook on the belt of the guest-master, and when I asked what it was for, I learned that he recorded in it everything he thought throughout the day, and he would recount all those thoughts to his shepherd. And not only him, but many other monks of that monastic community I saw acting in this way. This rule was established by the great father of that monastic community, as I later heard” (ibid., §39). “A good steward faithfully reckons each evening the day’s profit or loss. But how will he know this if he does not record everything hourly in his account book?” (ibid., §115).

c) But the chief task of the disciple is sincere, unreasoning, unquestioning obedience from faith and a pure heart to his teacher and father in everything, down to the smallest iota. The disciple must be like an automaton, without his own soul, which is replaced in him by the soul of his father. Discipleship, according to Saint John of the Ladder, “is the complete renunciation of one’s own soul, shown with complete precision through bodily actions, the mortification of the bodily members in a living mind, untempted movement, the renunciation of one’s own judgment—however rich in it one may be—the grave of the will. The disciple is a blessed living corpse” (Step 4, §§3, 4). One must obey in simplicity, without deliberation or examination of whether what is commanded is good or bad, difficult or easy—constantly, patiently, unflinchingly, without any cunning or doubting thoughts (ibid., §§5, 9). One must maintain such a disposition that whatever is done is done not because one has thought it up or desired it oneself, but because it has been commanded. If something is needed, ask and do it; if they do not command it, endure even with difficulty. And if you have no commands or tasks, it is better to sit idle than to act on your own, in your own way. Everything from oneself and in one’s own way is the destruction of the spirit—the same as taking poison. You have entrusted yourself to a father—so let him now make of you and in you what he knows. Otherwise it will turn out: one builds up, and another tears down. The latter makes futile both his own labor and the labor of the other, and the work of salvation is turned into idle activity. “Whoever submits at one time, but at another time does his own will,” says the Ladder, “resembles someone who at one time puts medicine in his eye, and at another time lime” (ibid., §60). Seek obedience, fulfill the will of another, and be free from care. “Blessed is he who has put his own will to death to the end, and has entrusted all care for himself to his instructor in God: such a one will stand at the right hand of the crucified Savior” (ibid., §44). Of the three ascetic practices—fasting, chastity, and obedience—the first brings one halfway to God, the second leads to the entrance, and the last places one before the very face of the Lord (Step 4, §108). What peace and tranquility he has in his soul! He is not troubled in the least by whether what he is doing is good, what others will say, what it will lead to, or whether it is pleasing to God. Even when two novices receive what seems to be an unreasonable command from their instructor, and one carries it out without hesitation while the other does not, following his own judgment—the first receives benefit, while the latter harms himself (from the Prologue).

Therefore the general rule of all the saints is this: whoever lives by himself lives fruitlessly. Even if he does well, his conscience cannot be at peace even in such a case. He must have constant indecision, confusion; and most importantly, the disposition of self-will remains the same. Do everything with counsel. Without counsel is like being without a fence. If this is unsafe, then what can be said about outright disobedience and contradiction! This is outright demonic activity. There is still hope of correction if someone contradicts an equal or an inferior, but for one who goes against his instructor, there is nothing to say. One who has broken away from obedience is given over to his own will; and from his own will—to the malice of the enemies: and he perishes. But one who is obedient in everything quickly attains the measure of childhood, or most perfect simplicity, as Saint John of the Ladder depicts it (ibid., §121). By resolute obedience some have forever destroyed the entire inner warfare with the passions; others acquired complete insensitivity and immunity to offenses; still others attained the highest degree of meekness and unforced simplicity of heart—became like infants, having nothing crafty either in their speech or in their actions (ibid., §§20, 21). An example of this is Paul the Simple. Basil the Great considers such obedience the foremost virtue (Ascetical Rules, chs. 19, 22). He teaches it by the example of those learning some craft, who carry out in every detail, precisely, what is shown to them—he sets forth as an example the silent submission of Abraham when he was commanded to leave Chaldea, and later to offer his son in sacrifice—and, by contrast, the example of the Apostle Peter, who, after great praise, for one objection, albeit seemingly well-intentioned, heard: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:22–23, Mark 8:32–33). He applies to this very subject the passages of Scripture: “obey your leaders” (Hebrews 13:17), “whoever listens to you listens to Me” (Luke 10:16).

The entire sum of lawful relations to one’s father consists in this: not to have one’s own will, one’s own understanding, one’s own taste; everything in him must be his father’s—directed by him, measured and established by him down to the slightest movement. The state of a person who acts according to this rule—that is, under guidance, under authority, not according to his own will—is the state of obedience, which has been extolled with great praise by St. John of the Ladder and by all the holy Fathers in general.

The path of obedience, or complete renunciation of one’s own mind and will, and of all self-direction, through surrendering oneself to a trustworthy and God-given guide—a father—is a short and brief path, as Saint John of the Ladder calls it (Step 4, §5). Those who enter upon it in the true spirit quickly ascend to perfection and safely pass by all deviations, wanderings, and delays. And this is true both in terms of the disciple’s own disposition and in terms of the father’s action upon him.

A disciple has nothing of his own. Like the Apostles, who said to their Divine Teacher, “Behold, we have left everything” (Matthew 19:27), he too says and feels: “I am not my own, because I should have neither thought, nor desire, nor word, nor deed of my own. Even if something were good in itself, for me it is no longer good when I do it according to my own will and understanding.” By this disposition and action he continually strikes at the very head of the serpent nesting in our heart—self-will, whose chief characteristic is to do everything in its own way and for its own pleasure. And since all the passions rest on self-will, as self-will is extinguished the passions also subside; the soul grows brighter, drawing near to purity and dispassion. By the fact that no outlet is given from the heart to anything self-made or self-initiated, every activity of self-will is starved out; by the fact that everything illegitimate is exposed, it is exhausted, deprived of nourishment through the casting out of its offspring; by the fact that everything is done not according to one’s own will, it is wounded in its very heart. Not to act according to one’s own will is salvific even in such a case when someone, not having a father, entrusts himself to another, even one who is not wise, with the sole purpose of living in renunciation of his own reason and will. And the success is both great and swift. Acacius, in Saint John of the Ladder, lived under a most self-willed elder and endured beatings and false accusations; but for the sake of patience and obedience he received the crown of a martyr, as was revealed from above (Step 4, §110). And John Sabbaites counsels one of the three who came to him: “Choose for yourself an instructor stricter and more severe than any in the human race” (ibid., §211). It is clear that the more radical the renunciation of oneself, of one’s own will and one’s feelings, the more salvific it is. That is why life under another’s will was so desired by the saints. They grieve and are troubled when they are left to their own will, for they feel that they have entered upon an unknown path. Thus the source of self-will and sin from within is stopped and blocked up. But by this same means the influx of every incitement to them from without is also repelled. Whatever the world or Satan may suggest, no consent is given to any of it; neither the intellect nor the heart agrees with it, but on the contrary it is transmitted to the father through disclosure, and by this means it is cast out and put to shame. A concealed thought is an adulterous thought; but a true novice does not commit adultery in this manner. He is dead, has become nothing, hopes neither in himself nor in his works, and through this becomes a spacious vessel and a ready receptacle of grace.

This is the good of discipleship from the side of the disposition of the disciple’s spirit. It is rewarded even without a wise, experienced father; but what an experienced father further provides by his action upon the disciple’s spirit, or by his cooperation with him and true guidance, cannot be replaced by anything. As one who sees, he immediately perceives the entire condition of the disciple, his disposition, his chief pain; and as one who is experienced, he knows what to apply and how to apply it for his healing. Every illness, once accurately diagnosed and properly treated with the right remedy, soon yields. Saint Barsanuphius noticed in his disciple John a tendency to anger and irritability, and began to act directly against it both by word and by deed (Answer 10). To Isidore, a person of princely rank, passionate, fierce, and cruel, the father to whom he had entrusted himself commanded him to stand at the gates and ask everyone: “Pray for me, I am possessed by an evil spirit”—and he soon attained the deepest humility and contrition (Step 4, §23). A person often cannot even see his own weakness, and perishes in self-satisfaction. That is why it is wise if he comes to one who sees and says: “Look, what is in me?” The one who sees will begin to act and will drive out his weakness from him. Thus Saint Barsanuphius brought one hesychast, who was drowning in self-delusion, to the awareness that he stood in pride and self-conceit, and led him to repentance, without which he would have died in his destructive thought (Answer 68 and others). Only an enlightened and seeing father will reveal what is in us—only he will guide and lead us to healing, because he acts without error.

The one who acts for salvation presses forward toward perfection; but not everything is beneficial to everyone: what helps one person is harmful to another, or at least may stop him, as a long garment hinders walking. But who will say, “Do this, but do not touch that,” explaining at the same time how this is true and salvific for us? An experienced intellect, beholding the entire structure of our formation in the spirit, from its first inception to perfection, and seeing what leads to it and what will lead to it. All this only a true father can do, and he alone. But what will a person not think up, what will he not be ready to decide upon! Is there not much that is merely plausible, but not salvific! Without warnings and directions he may exhaust himself, expend his strength without benefit, or produce unnecessary growths that will disfigure his inner man like sores.

Is it good to delve deeply into Scripture and investigate its mysteries? It is good—especially when one has the capacity, preparation, and thirst for it. Yet Saint John of Damascus was forbidden to write anything or to engage in speculation. Dorotheus endures punishments and reproach for asking questions about various passages of Scripture. Afterward it became clear that this was salvific for both of them. For one who has sufficiently pacified the passions, it is good to hasten to stillness in order to be with God; but sometimes even an action undertaken prematurely leads to no good. Saint Barsanuphius said to more than one person: “Endure a little longer… I will tell you… and all will be well”; and so it was. Water is boiled, but for one task once, and for another twice or more—so it is here too. Sometimes a thing that is indifferent can cause much hindrance. In general, the evenness of formation, the swiftness of progress toward perfection without deviations, wanderings, and all manner of delays belongs exclusively to life under the guidance of a father, and moreover, one who sees. Without that, confusion, stagnation, and excrescences are inevitable.

Finally, it happens that even those who are zealous at the beginning grow quiet, weaken, and become sluggish and lifeless, and not infrequently even fall. Why? From a lack of exercise, of experiences of labor, or of movement of the spirit living within. When a person sets rules of practice for himself, then as long as the labor of acquiring the habit occupies him, he is fervent in spirit; but afterward, when he has become completely accustomed to it, then both because this task is finished and because the spirit that has grown requires greater deeds, all the former things no longer stir him: he easily, without strain, accomplishes them as a routine matter. Who, then, will provide him with work for the exercise of his powers? Who will lay, as it were, wood under the fire of zeal? There must be an inventor of deeds, and moreover an experienced one; otherwise one might lay a stone instead of wood. So it is: the father-guide constantly keeps the disciple in a certain friction under tasks that are ever more and more difficult, and thereby preserves the spirit. Thus in the Ladder, one abbot employed various methods for this purpose: he called one away from the table and ordered him to stand without dinner; he sent another out of the church; to the third, when he prostrated, he commanded him to lie on the ground until he had read the entire rule and the rest. And then, when the Ladder-writer asked him: why do you do this? “For this reason,” the abbot answered, “to provide them with a crown and to give others an example, but more so that the spirit might not grow weak.” But one might think that this is unjust and could cause harm. “No,” the abbot remarked, “whoever is united by love with my spirit, nothing will separate him” (Step 4, §§23 and others). That is, all the fruitfulness of such practice is conditioned by the initial covenant and union of heart.

But the need for a father’s assistance is especially evident in the transition from the active life to the contemplative. The spirit matures, and when the passions are truly cleansed, it naturally soars upward. In this very soaring, without a guide, the spirit most often falls into the malicious hands of the aerial enemies and falls into spiritual delusion, and either perishes or becomes stuck in it. For this reason all the fathers decisively command not to approach this treasure without an experienced father, one who knows and has himself passed along the path to it. Here experience alone is the guide. And it is impossible to understand what is there, even though it is written in comprehensible words. The self-willed practitioner labors without fruit, and often to his own ruin. But under guidance with faith he quickly understands, enters the inner sanctuary, and sees in spirit.

These are the advantages of life under experienced guidance—irreplaceable! True, the Lord is merciful: “His mercy will surround the one who seeks and hopes…” (Psalm 31:10). But even He leaves us more to the ordinary path. Man himself always confuses things. And what could be done in a day takes a year, and is done and redone. Perhaps he does it this way, but since he is not confident in it, he starts over—and redoes it again. And time and labors are wasted. But what is especially significant—rarely does anyone escape self-conceit without being a novice. “A novice,” says the Ladder-writer, “does not see his own deeds, because he does not do them by himself or on his own, but even if he were to work miracles, he attributes everything to his father and his prayers; on the contrary, he who is alone inevitably stands in the thought that he does good deeds by himself, and falls into delusion” (Step 4, §54). A certain Euphemius, who came to Barsanuphius after a long period of silence, demonstrated this by experience. How much labor was needed to bring him to the realization that he was in self-righteousness! And God granted that at last he too said: “Wretched man that I am” (Romans 7:24) (Answer 160 and others). By contrast, what a compunctionate character is formed in one who lives under guidance! First, humility is formed in him; from humility—dispassion, quietness of spirit, and the light of God; then—simplicity, guilelessness, childlikeness; this is the “measure of the stature… of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13), as Saint John of the Ladder depicts it.

Such is guidance in its essence, such is the spiritual guide it requires, to such conditions it binds the one guided, and such great fruits it promises. All this constitutes the distinctive characteristics of guidance and is necessarily present and must be present wherever true guidance exists and is established. Being thus singular in itself, it appears in actual life in more than one form. The first, most extensive, most universally suitable, and most widespread, is ecclesiastical pastoral ministry; the second is monastic abbacy, and the third is spiritual fatherhood, or eldership.

That pastoral ministry is precisely of this character is evident from the fact that the flock is entrusted to the pastor, or entrusts itself to him, for shepherding—that is, for formation. It listens to the voice of the shepherd, follows him, and goes only where he directs. The shepherd lays down his life for the sheep he is a watchman, to whom it is said: “I will require their souls from your hand” (Ezekiel 33:6). The Apostle expresses the mutual bond and relationship between pastor and flock in the following passage: “Obey your leaders… for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account” (Hebrews 13:17). Clearly from this comes the entrusting of themselves by the flock to the pastor and the pastor’s responsibility for their souls. In other places the flock is depicted as a field, silently lying before the cultivator, and the pastor as a worker (1 Cor. 3:9). Hence the commandment: “be urgent in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2).

So it was in the beginning, so it is and must be to this day. The Lord Jesus Christ trains the twelve apostles; The apostles, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, form the Church, in which there is one heart and soul, under their guidance and direction. And afterward, when scattered over the face of the earth for preaching, wherever they sowed the seeds of faith, they everywhere left instructors and spiritual guides—pastors—and obliged the faithful to decisive obedience to them, while upon the pastors themselves they laid responsibility for their souls. It is in precisely this sense that pastoral ministry is set forth in the apostolic epistles; and in the same sense it has remained understood in the Church. Therefore, in his epistle to the Ephesians, Saint Ignatius the God-bearer exhorted them to remain in submission to the bishop and presbyter for sanctification, so that, like strings tuned in harmony, they might sing in harmony. The Master of the house sends him to manage His household; look upon him as upon the Lord. So it was done afterward as well. The bishop and presbyters are not mute witnesses of the salvation of others, nor merely verbal preachers of the way of salvation, but workers, cultivating those in their care like a field. For this reason, subsequently, by the common judgment of the Church certain rights were granted to them, with the aim of having in their hands the means to save others, as if snatching them from the fire. That the office of abbot in a monastery is of the same character is self-evident. This constitutes the essential structure of the monastic way of life and of pleasing God. One who enters the brotherhood is received on the condition that he will not have his own will or his own mind, but will live in unquestioning obedience and under the guidance of the father-abbot. Coming to the monastery, they say: I want to save my soul. The abbot is also a person who can guide to salvation; it is with this condition that he is chosen by the brethren, and with this understanding they entrust themselves to him.

Eldership consists in this: when those seeking salvation entrust themselves not to the abbot, but to another more experienced person in the monastic community, or outside it. For the most part nowadays spiritual fathers replace it in practice, and in some monastic communities elders, who are blessed to receive the disclosure of thoughts and among whom the whole monastic community is divided. The covenant between them here is invisible, a matter of conscience, but nonetheless strong and fruitful. Among desert-dwellers and hermits this is the only way of guidance, as we see from history. To it belongs everything written in the Paterikon about obedience. The power of its action depends, among other things, on the fact that, not being public and official, it calls forth greater openness and sincerity. Therefore today, if guidance exists, it manifests itself precisely in this form.

Now the question—where and how to find a spiritual guide—resolves itself. Take the one whom God has sent, and entrust yourself to him, as Saint Ignatius the God-bearer teaches. The forms of guidance described embrace the whole of Christian life. Consequently, whoever the awakened person may be, he always already has a spiritual guide over him. Whoever has been awakened in civil and social life, let him follow the guidance of his pastor; whoever is in a monastery, let him entrust himself to the abbot, or to the one whom the abbot appoints. Let each one remain in the calling in which he was called (1 Cor. 7:20) and make use of the guidance offered, not running willfully from one place and flock to another with arrogance and contempt, and especially not abandoning himself to a self-reliant, idiosyncratic path to perfection. This is very dangerous, and it is one of Satan’s snares that, having repented, a person, in the feeling of need for a spiritual guide, wants to flee from his lawful one, without discerning, without examining, without investigating. While remaining in sin, he did not think about salvation; He judged all others in the same way, placing himself on their level. Now, having repented and turned to God alone, as it seems to him, he thinks that all the others have remained where he was before—that is, in darkness, in sin—while he himself has arisen, risen up, and entered into the light of God. Whereas in reality he may have only just entered upon that arena in which others have long been active and have acquired skill, even though outwardly they moved in ordinary life alongside him. Here the snare of Satan is obvious—to leave him without guidance, alone to himself, the consequence of which is inevitably a fall and spiritual delusion, or a moving from place to place, which only disrupts and does not edify. After this, the one who has repented or who has received zeal for the salvation of his soul has only to renew the bond, or covenant, with the father who is given by God for the ordering of life in the person of a pastor, or abbot, or spiritual father. Before, he did not think about this and yet was under him, but outwardly, according to the established order; Now let him restore faith in its true significance and unite with it heartily by faith—that is, let him come and say: “Save me, I entrust myself, I will turn to you with every need, with every trouble”—and then act accordingly. On the part of those persons, however, the obligation always remains unchanging; none of them can or should refuse this. Nor should he plead impossibility: you stand in such an office because you want to, so fulfill your calling. Before the Church, before the judgment of God, and before the judgment of men, this is his responsibility. He is answerable for every soul, all the more for the one that is ready to entrust itself to him and does so. Only in this way can it truly be determined whether to remain forever with such a father. An inability to guide will immediately become apparent, and a conscientious priest or spiritual father will at once confess: “I cannot take this upon myself.” After this, even if there is a change, it will be made lawfully, and most importantly—with counsel. The one who is unable can point to one who is able, and this matter will be arranged according to God’s will, not willfully or haphazardly.

So it should be. But, nevertheless, it is beyond any doubt that very often those persons bear only the names of their calling, but not its power; often the pastor is “a thief… climbing in another way” (John 10:1) or a wolf in sheep’s clothing; often the abbot is a simple sailor instead of a helmsman, and the elder is an elder only by his gray hairs. And this happens either obviously to everyone, or very imperceptibly, deeply hidden under a respectable exterior. Therefore there is always a danger of falling upon a false guide instead of a true spiritual guide and suffering harm instead of benefit, perdition instead of salvation. An unskilled helmsman destroys the ship. “I have suffered much harm,” said Peter of Damascus, “from those to whom I turned.” “Many of the elders,” says Cassian, “instead of providing spiritual guidance, drove those who turned to them into despair”—and he gives examples of this. Such complaints can be heard and encountered at any time. A single word—“live as you’re living” or “why make such a fuss?”—will powerfully extinguish all zeal and consequently plunge the poor soul, who has only just come to his senses, back into the same state. The question arises: what should a person do in such a case—someone who recognizes the need for guidance and the extreme danger of remaining without it, who also knows the obligation to turn to this or that particular person, yet at the same time has good reason to fear lest he suffer harm or be pushed back again into his former abyss?

On the other hand, not infrequently—or even often—those who stand in the rank of spiritual guides fully recognize their significance, the full force of their obligation, and the greatness of the responsibility that lies upon them; they have zeal and burn with eagerness to be what they ought to be, yet at the same time, because of their spiritual maturity, they see that they are still far from being able to guide others without error, as they should. Because of their inexperience and ignorance of the path by which they ought to lead others, they may justly fear lest they destroy others out of zeal for their salvation, and instead of guiding them, lead them into error. The question arises: what should he do in such a case? How can one provide guidance when one is conscious of being incapable of it, of not having reached that measure?

It is obvious that both questions directly concern the present order of things. One cannot do without guidance. But in its true form, it is very lofty and is scarce in the present time. The question arises: what are we ourselves to do? Where should one turn—both the one seeking guidance and the one appointed to be a spiritual guide?

As for the first question, one can apply to it the wise rule of the holy Fathers: to do everything with patient waiting, in God-given trust. One should not turn away, as we have seen before, from appointed spiritual guides; but one need not give oneself over to them entirely and immediately; rather, one should wait for a special divine arrangement in this matter, a special sign, an inclination of the heart, while remaining in submission to the will of God, in prayerful, anguished crying out to Him, that He Himself might show us the way. So, fearing spiritual delusion, cry out with anguish to God, that He may tell you the way in which you should go, giving yourself over entirely, in firm hope, to His providential care—and the Lord will never forsake you. A priest or abbot is sometimes of no benefit to anyone, but for another person he alone is beneficial. He himself is changed in the process, whence wisdom is acquired—and salvation from the Lord is accomplished even where it is not expected. The whole power here lies in resolute submission to the will of God, who desires all to be saved. Saint Dorotheus resolves this question in precisely this manner. “If,” he says, “someone does not have a person from whom he could ask counsel, then what should he do in such a case? If anyone truly seeks the will of God with all his heart, then God will never abandon him, but will in every way guide him according to His will. But if someone does not sincerely seek the will of God, then even if he were to go to a prophet—God will inspire the prophet himself to answer him according to the desire of his corrupt heart, as Scripture says: ‘And if the prophet is deceived… and speaks a word, I the Lord have deceived that prophet’ (Ezekiel 14:9)” (Discourse 4, §6). So says the Ladder-writer as well. But even when you clearly see that the one appointed is not helpful to you, does not resolve doubts, does not give counsel, and in general does not build you up because of inexperience or inattention—do not hasten to leave him or to change. For whom will you change to? Around you everyone is just as unknown as this one, and God gave this one. He was pointed out to you by God, for all that we have is from God; but another—what is that to us! But what is to be done here? Necessity. Feel it, grieve, cry out strongly to God, asking Him not to leave you in danger and not to abandon you to spiritual delusion: “either instruct this one, or show me another,” and yourself remain under him with expectation, patience, and crying out. What then should one do under him? After all, one must act for salvation? One must. But the order of a pious life is well known; walk in it, and be at peace. This is more than enough for a start. For the one who has repented, everything is covered by the darkness of uncertainty and indefiniteness. Let him not step outside the order arranged for him by Providence. This is more humble, safer, and more secure. One who is in darkness does better to remain in one place than to run from place to place, for it may happen that he will fall into a pit. To undertake something special, distinctive, or great is very dangerous: remain humbly in simplicity. If you start changing things from the very beginning, you will never stop. In thought one may, let us say, attach oneself to another, but again to one whom God will send; one may even seek him actively, especially in prayer, that the Lord Himself may show the way, but still one must wait and endure until a decisive indication comes. Given by God: do not resist, do not judge, do not despise. Expect something else from God. The Lord will not forsake you, but will give, if necessary.

This must be accepted as a law in order to avoid self-will, inattention to the Providence of God, and the danger of being ensnared by the enemy. But here is something else: from time to time the darkness will begin to thin, the structure of life will be more and more unveiled, the vision of dangers and deviations will become clearer, and needs, perplexities, and doubts will multiply. All this requires clarification, instruction, and the calming of the spirit. The appointed instructor does not resolve matters, does not inspire confidence, does not dispose one to openness. What then should be done in such a case?

Some advise that while remaining under a given spiritual guide with respect to the general order, in particular cases that concern us personally we should do everything with discernment—discernment will determine what is beneficial and what is harmful—and they cite the Apostle’s words: “test all things, hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and especially the common opinion of all the Holy Fathers that the highest of all virtues is the virtue of discernment. But this opinion of the Holy Fathers must not be taken without the qualifications that they themselves set. Moreover, the Holy Fathers affirm that discernment is a gift acquired through long labor, humble-mindedness, and diligent prayer. Whoever has acquired this gift, let him guard it and use it for his own good and that of others. But whoever has not received it, let him not dare in any case to form his own understanding, or word, or deed. It is his task to question those who are skilled and experienced. In relation to the one who has begun, this rule must be laid down: do everything with discernment; but all your discernment must consist in one rule: to do nothing according to your own discernment, but to ask about everything—whether it is good, whether it is fitting, and whether it is fitting for you; for not everything is good for everyone, but, as Peter of Damascus points out, time, beginning, condition, age, strength, health, upbringing, and other things make much difference in this. How can you know that you will decide all this as you should, without going astray? Discernment must be set as the goal; it must be sought, and for that reason one must practice it through experience—but not by oneself; rather, one must learn discernment according to how others discern. So then, discernment is good and great; practice it, but never trust it until you are strengthened in it by experience and the counsel of others.

Others say: attend to the Divine Scripture and patristic teaching, and you will learn everything. There is no doubt that reading is placed among the foremost means of forming the Christian spirit, and is as necessary as the eye is for the body, or light for the world. Saint Nilus of Sora teaches: “Now there is one guide—Divine and patristic Scripture.” The elder Paisius likewise taught and acted in this way (his Life, pp. 39, 287). And indeed: those who see the path of salvation have become scarce, but by God’s providence they have left us descriptions of this path. Hold fast to them. Moved by the Holy Spirit, they wrote the laws of spiritual direction and guidance on the path of salvation. “If it is not possible to find an instructor,” says Elder Seraphim, “capable of guiding one to the contemplative life, then in such a case one must be guided by Holy Scripture, for the Lord Himself commands us to learn from Holy Scripture, saying: search the Scriptures…” One must also carefully read the patristic writings and strive, as much as possible, according to one’s strength, to fulfill what they teach, and thus, little by little, ascend to perfection. But again: what should one read, who should read it, and how? And then: what from what has been read and learned should one take as a rule for oneself, and what should one not take? Who will tell the unskilled and inexperienced? The rule is good in itself, but not for me; it will come to me, but not now. How many perish precisely because they want to apply everything they read to themselves! There are, they say, people of such a constitution that whenever they hear about any illness, they immediately transfer it to themselves and begin to suffer from it. The same can happen with reading that is not guided by counsel. So read, reflect, investigate, enrich yourself with spiritual wisdom, but what exactly to carry out yourself, what to establish as your rule—do not decide this on your own; otherwise, do everything with counsel, and not according to your own understanding. You have read something—go and ask how it really is, whether it applies to you and how you can fulfill it.

But the question arises: whom should you ask? The one appointed is silent, has lost your trust—you are afraid to open up to him. To remain in indecision is dangerous: it is stagnation, empty delay. What then should you do? Here is one thing: do everything with counsel, with waiting. Never decide anything suddenly—whether you have reasoned it out yourself or read it somewhere; but wait until it settles, and in the meantime seek counsel and a decision. At every time and in every place one can find people who exercise themselves in piety, who are zealous, who seek the Lord, and who are always more or less experienced. One must enter into brotherly relations with them and heartfelt fellowship, and then submit every perplexity and doubt to them. One, another, a third—somehow they will sort it out, individually or all together—and they will decide. Whatever they decide, do that, and you will act not according to your own will and understanding. Everything done in surrendering oneself to God not according to one’s own understanding is pleasing to God and salvific. Therefore, when the one appointed does not decide, and the Lord has not yet indicated another to whom you should entrust yourself, wise people counsel acting in this way: if there is something doubtful and we have no one to decide it, cry out to God about your need and go to one or another reverent and respected person, and be assured that God, who watches over all and sustains all, will not leave you without a true decision, will not let you fall into spiritual delusion, provided only that your need is urgent and your hope is firm.

This concerns particular cases, but in general one can remain under this law, for our whole life is made up of particular cases. And in this way a distinctive life will be formed, according to counsel. This is a new form of guidance, especially suited to the present time. A person, in submitting himself to God, is instructed by divine and patristic Scripture, uses his own judgment as well, but decides nothing on his own; rather, he does everything with counsel and inquiry. Here the spiritual guide is God and Scripture, the renunciation of will and reason is in counsel, and the driving force is devotion to God, with painful, anxious crying out for deliverance from spiritual delusion, error, and mistakes.

Such a life is guileless and humble; and the Lord reveals mysteries to the humble, and does not put to shame the one who hopes. “A child will teach you to say what you need,” says Saint Dorotheos, “but if you do not believe, then even a prophet will not help you.” When, on the contrary, someone asks but already desires and expects a particular answer beforehand, this is already a delusional rule of action. In such a case it is better not to ask. But when you do ask, let the scales of your heart stand level, turning neither to the right nor to the left—and the Lord will direct you. The path of truly Christian life is unknown, and one cannot walk it by one’s own judgment.

The guidance of God is hidden: walk as though in darkness, only do not tear your hand away from the hand of God. From the life of the elder Paisius it is clear that he was formed precisely by this path. He encountered a multitude of counselors and by the counsel of all he formed himself, and although he did not have one spiritual father—which, as he himself confesses, caused him great harm—he was nevertheless formed in one spirit and matured into a perfect man. The starting point for him, throughout his whole life, was a painful falling down before God. This both instructed him and unified his spirit amid all the diversity. Taught by the experiences of a whole life, he finally arrived at this law and principle of guidance. Having clarified the whole need for a spiritual guide, having depicted what he should be like, having mentioned with weeping that nowadays there is nowhere to find such a one, he concludes: “Hence, brother, we now have an extreme need to study the divine and patristic Scriptures with much sorrow and with many tears day and night, and, consulting with like-minded zealots and elder Fathers, to be instructed in the commandments of God and in the practices of our holy Fathers. And thus, by the mercy of Christ and by our own effort, we can obtain salvation” (Life of Paisius, p. 40). Thus all the Fathers counsel; This is what Saint Nilus of Sora both counseled and practiced. In former times spiritual fathers instructed everyone; but in these difficult times, which are worthy of much weeping and lamentation, such zealous guides have become exceedingly scarce. God Himself and the divine teaching of the venerable Fathers are teacher and instructor (Life of Paisius, p. 286). So this is the best and most reliable way of guidance, or formation, in the Christian life today! A life of submission to the will of God, according to the divine and patristic Scriptures, with the counsel and questioning of the like-minded. By the mercy of God, it can and should be successful, for it contains all the conditions for perfection, the cutting off of one’s own will and understanding. But it is obvious that it stands far below personal, active guidance and formation. In it there is no all-seeing eye, but only, as it were, those who guess; there is no one acting decisively, but those moving with timidity. One cannot be healed and perfected so decisively and quickly, nor sustain the spirit of zeal so successfully, nor enter into contemplation so safely. That is why there are so few nowadays who make progress and attain perfection. True, they are God’s; but whomever God perfects, He will not keep hidden under a bushel. It must be added, however, that this method proves far more fruitful if one acquires a single counselor and, united in heart, lives with him in mutual openness and instruction, or spiritual friendship. Each sees and knows the other, and thus can give counsel more quickly and reliably. Scripture in God-given tradition is a light for them. Instructing each other in wisdom, they mutually guide one another in surrendering themselves to God and the Lord, who promised to be in the midst of two gathered in His name (Matt. 18:20). In this, however, one must not separate from the one appointed by God, but every mutual decision and determination is good if it can be verified by him and carried out with his absolution. A mutual bond of love will give strength, and recourse to one’s spiritual father will bring God’s blessing. This kind of consultation, or mutual guidance—again, if it is given, for God grants a friend—is very fruitful. Remember the two monks who lived in the time of Macarius the Great, in mutual union and mutual guidance and strengthening—what a measure of perfection they attained! Elder Paisius recounts about himself that from the very beginning he diligently sought a spiritual director with painful prayer to God, and wandered here and there: both in our lands, and in Moldavia, and Wallachia, and on Mount Athos—but found none. He found only, he says, by turning to the reading of patristic writings, that he had lost very much because at first he lived without active guidance. How did he conclude? “Not having found anyone to whom I might submit,” he says, “I resolved to pass through my life by the royal way, with one like-minded and like-souled brother, in place of a father; To have God as one’s instructor, and the teaching of the holy Fathers, and to be subject to one another and to serve” (Life of Paisius, p. 289), without, however, separating from one’s spiritual father, as he says elsewhere. “Such a path,” he says, “is blessed by all the fathers.” He was a monk, and such a rule is more suited to monastic life. But it is not impossible even in social life, and, as far as can be seen, given the present course of affairs and our condition, it must be recognized as the only true path. Those who are united in zeal, instructed by the patristic writings in surrender to God, remaining peacefully and safely in the same order, walk the straight path toward Christian progress. To this may be applied the great praise of friendship sung by Sirach, which is only fully applicable here. “A faithful friend is a strong protection… he who fears God will find him” (Sirach 6:14–16).

So, concerning guidance, the following rules may be laid down: “Fear to remain without any guidance; seek it as the first good. At first, walk in the appointed order of piety under a designated father. When the Lord marks him out by evident, great, and proven benefit, that this is your guide, entrust yourself to him. If the opposite proves true, desire another: but seek him with caution, patience, and waiting, expecting God’s indication or the meeting of whomever God will send, remaining all the while in the same order of pious life and under the same father, without separating from him. Meanwhile, enter into an open union with those who are like-minded, and with their counsel walk under a spiritual father according to God, in hope. If you meet one who is like-minded, join yourself to him sincerely, without abandoning others, and live with him soul in soul, for the Lord’s sake, unto salvation. Only the main thing is this: hold to resolute devotion to God, with anguished crying out for deliverance from spiritual delusion, and never in anything follow your own reason and will, but do everything you do with counsel, and God will direct your path, invisibly, imperceptibly, intangibly, unknown to you.”

In this connection there comes to mind of itself yet another special method of guiding oneself and of formation through conversation or questioning not one, but many ascetics—fathers well known in their own time, whether in their own place or in others. Thus the venerable Antony the Great went to all and appropriated to himself the virtues of all of them. Thus Saint Basil the Great traveled through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, questioning and taking counsel with the holy Fathers of that time, and in this way both formed himself and composed a system of ascetic life, which he realized in his monasteries and flock, by which we ourselves are guided to this day. Saint Cassian the Roman composed an entire book of conferences from this; Sophronius and John did the same, composing their Leimonarion. Venerable Nilus of Sora traveled throughout the East, learned and taught others the skete life. Such a method of instruction and guidance can be employed even today. But it is obvious that it must be undertaken by a man strong in faith, already advanced, specially called, burning with love for spiritual wisdom, with a firm intellect, and in those places where an ascetic life is expected: otherwise, who knows what may be encountered? And again, among those who are truly engaged in ascetic struggle, how many are there who act differently? And not to be scandalized by this diversity, to perceive the unity of the spirit hidden beneath it—what a strong soul is required for this! This is the ascesis of wandering with the aim of becoming spiritually wise. The timid will not venture upon it; but neither will anyone else easily arrive at this thought. But whoever arrives at it and matures in it, let him act with self-abandonment to God, with resolve to accept every kind of deprivation—and God will direct his path for good. Such wanderers are needed in their own time, in order to learn the forms of present-day ascetic struggle, to see in what condition it is precisely now, and then, in accordance with the present state of Christianity and its external way of life, to clarify and establish definitively the rules of ascetic struggle that are as applicable as possible today. Although the essence of ascetic struggle is one and unchanging, its outward form can be diverse.

The answer to the second question is the same: how should someone who is conscious that he has not yet reached the measure of a true, reliable spiritual guide direct others? According to the divine and patristic Scriptures—in devotion to God. The elder mentioned above, Paisius, says: “In ancient times, many of the holy Fathers, through the illumination of God’s grace, instructed their disciples even though they were not learned in books. In the present times, however, the holy Fathers by no means permit anyone to teach from himself, but only from the Holy Scriptures and from the teaching of the venerable Fathers” (Life of Paisius, p. 287).

Crying out to God for instruction for the sake of the salvation of the souls He Himself has entrusted to him cannot remain unheard: call upon Me, and I will answer you (Psalm 90:15). This applies most of all to one who stands in the place of a spiritual guide. And another thing—most of these people already stand above others in that they have in their hands more means, have seen and heard more, have touched at least the education and experience of the spiritual life. Now, having risen to zeal for his own salvation and that of others (there is no point speaking of the negligent), he has entered the proper path and can see both backward and forward better than others. Even if the subjects are still confused and undifferentiated, he has Scripture, which describes them—he will delve deeper, reason it out, and perhaps come to know. At the same time, let him place himself in the rank of those who are guided, and with great diligence seek the counsel of one or many; and thus, advancing spiritually more and more himself, he will draw and lead along with himself all who come through him to God. When, conscious of his own weakness, he impresses upon those he guides that the path of salvation today is one—the reading and hearing of the Divine and patristic Scriptures—and disposes them toward this, there will thus be formed a union of people who study Scripture for the discovery of the saving path and for mutual guidance under the appointed head and instructor.

Here is the final definition of salvific, safe guidance in the present time. Saint Nilus of Sora was guided by it, and he says: “I do not command, but I point to the Scriptures. Whoever wishes to live with me: here is the rule for him—fulfill it; if not—depart” (Nilus of Sora, p. 39). The same is found in the Life of the elder Paisius (Life of Paisius, pp. 286–287), where it is explained in detail both by him and by his contemporary elder Michael. And the hieromonk Dorotheus, in composing a guide to ascetic struggle, placed instead of a preface a persuasive instruction on the diligent reading of and obedience to the Divine and patristic Scriptures, teaching that this is the only reliable and safe path of salvation.

In this way the first unavoidable need of the one who has repented will be satisfied, namely: guidance, nurture. The other essential need of the repentant person is rules of life, a definition of how to do what.

An iconostasis in a cave-monastery chapel

An image of the ordered rule of prayer.

Life According to Rules

We have already seen in part the need for these rules. We must not forget that this need is not such that it is merely better than others, but is essentially necessary. Rules are the safest fence of the salvific life.

Without rules it is impossible to preserve constancy of zeal, firmness of intention, and to acquire strength of will. Zeal, as a vital force, is sustained and strengthened by exercise; but in the absence of exercise it inevitably weakens and exhausts itself. When rules are established, then with their proper arrangement there is always something for pious occupation, something that reminds one of the new life and engages one’s attention with it. The transition from task to task is a continuous friction of the spirit, one and the same, in one tone, according to one pattern. By this the fire of zeal is unceasingly kindled. But without rules there will be gaps, lulls, pauses, deviations; and life will not be unified, and effort will be weakened, and zeal must grow cold. That is why Saint Isaac the Syrian says (Homily 85, p. 534) that darkening of the intellect, inner turmoil, slothfulness, and all disorders in life depend on the fact that no definite order or structure has been established for it. Otherwise everything will depend on presence of mind; but can one rely on it? It is an intermittent breath of wind. When you want to, everything is done quickly; when slothfulness attacks, you won’t accomplish even a little. But when a rule is established, whether you want to or not, you do it, and you will do it unceasingly.

Rules are necessary for the development and formation of the faculties. A new life has begun; consequently, all the faculties must be given a corresponding direction. But all these things are foreign to the soul, differently disposed, and so it is necessary to define exactly how to act with them in the new spirit, just as a new recruit is shown every little movement until he becomes accustomed.

Without rules there will be no evenness of formation and development. What a dry stick is to young plants, rules are to pious occupations. When a measure is set for everything and one follows not the inclination of the heart but the established rule, one will not occupy oneself with one thing more and another less, but as much and in the way that has been prescribed. Therefore there will be no greater success in one part than in another, but everything, proportioned to one another, will be harmonious according to one design, to the measure of the preordained perfection.

And in general, what happens without rules and a plan or design? When building a house, they draw up a blueprint; when starting a war, they write a plan; when arranging a trial, they provide a program. Every task has its own rule, measure, weight, and number. What do regulations mean—military, educational, judicial, and so on? A rule, an order, a blueprint for action. Without this, no kind of active life can be established or organized: in them the characteristic features of a particular sphere of activity are imprinted. The same is true in the ascetic Christian life. If it has its own character, then it must also have its own order. Therefore in them a special need is always felt. Anyone disposed to the work immediately requires instruction on how and what to do. Without rules he goes as if in darkness, groping his way, with indecision, with fear. With them he goes boldly, without doubting, hoping. So then, what do those seeking salvation do? They always ask: how should I live, what should I do and how? All the accounts of patristic traditions consist of them. Entire Paterikons are composed of such questions and answers—now about fasting, now about vigil, now about prayer.

However, one must also compose the rules themselves according to rules. Concerning this, it is necessary to note:

1) Whoever has a spiritual guide, for him the guide himself will draw up the rules. The disciple is a humble, unquestioning executor. Whoever is deprived of this blessing must, with all caution, immerse himself in the patristic writings and the experiences of their lives; and what is found there, after consultation with whomever one can, should be adopted as rules of practice.

2) In determining them, one must exercise great circumspection and strict discernment, so as not to inflict harm instead of benefit, destruction instead of edification: not all things are for all people. Age, strength, past life, upbringing, life circumstances, measure of abilities, character, and so on—all this must be taken into account, and rules must be set accordingly. A scholar and a soldier, a merchant and a civil servant cannot act in the same way.

3) It must be remembered, however, that these rules, for all their outward diversity, must in their totality express the spirit of life and ascetic struggle in one form or another. For example, the rules of bodily practice are various, but in their essence there must be one thing—the denial of the flesh, its constraint. What is valuable is not the outward form, but this inward reality—the spirit with which something is done.

4) The law that must be observed in applying rules is moderation, an all-round proportionality to the person’s strength. This is the universal praise given them by all: there is no price for moderate practice. It is necessary to arrange things so that there is no room in them for either laxity or excessive strictness. The latter exhausts without benefit and wears one out; while the former makes one lazy and quenches the zealous spirit. A moderate rule, however, keeps the spirit in fitting fervor.

5) From this law another flows of itself: namely, gradualness. The spirit matures and grows strong through exercise and demands more difficult tasks: the measure of the rules must increase proportionately. Fasting, prayer, and labor gradually ascend from strength to strength. The rules governing them must also be raised gradually. To stand still is almost the same as falling back—this is the greatest danger.

6) Therefore it is clear that the best guide in constructing rules is experience. Test, and hold fast to what you find profitable. Thus by experience they learn the measure of food, prayer, and so on. And one should not make a final decision until experience establishes how it is best for something to be: this is safer. There will be no theoretical arrogance or incongruity with actual life, and therefore no need to depart from the rules—which is very harmful.

7) One must only add to this sincerity and conscientiousness, keeping in view the goal—laboring for salvation and pleasing God, without any indulgence of self-pity. One must firmly hold in mind that everything lenient is spiritually delusional. The true measure of a beneficial rule is a certain difficulty in it. It sobers, strengthens, and keeps one vigilant; but as soon as laxity appears, flee from such a rule as from a plague.

8) Nor should we lose sight of the fact that rules must embrace the whole of life, in all its scope, in all its manifestations: body, soul, and spirit, both external activity and internal, domestic and civic, personal and social. The whole person must be surrounded, embraced by rules. Only under this condition will there be both the required evenness of development and the purposeful spirit of the rules, or tone.

9) Now it is already evident of itself in what mutual subordination all the rules must stand. Specifically: the bodily must be subordinated to the soul, the soul to the spiritual, and the external to all of these. These rules must stand in balance and in mutual harmony. As soon as the rule of one area interferes with another, one must immediately suspect that it is not in its proper form—that is, it must either be abolished or changed. And indeed, whoever rises to the contemplation of the whole order will rarely err in choosing a rule and determining its measure. Just as for a skilled architect or painter the measure of one part often serves as an indication for constructing the entire plan of a house or human figure, so it is with these rules. Whoever builds does not allow anything to deviate from the overall plan and style. In this lies the whole art of the rule-maker. The goal of everything is the spirit, which must be in God.

10) The totality of all such rules constitutes the rule of ascetic practice. Since ascetic struggle corresponds to the forms of actual Christian life, and Christian life appears in two forms—public and monastic—there must be a distinct general rule and a distinct monastic one, and here again—one for the cenobitic life and another for the eremitic.

11) Acting according to these rules is ascetic struggle, presupposing exertion of strength, labor; skill in them is ascetic virtue. From this it is clear that there is no Christian life that is not ascetic, not laborious, not by the sweat of one’s brow. Whoever refuses ascesis turns away from life. This habituation is the goal; in it is the fence, the safeguarding of life. Ascetic virtues are the firm, unshakable wall of the truly Christian life. They say: “a rule for a time.” No, labor in rules is for a time, but rules are unceasing. Only with time will they become flesh and blood and be fulfilled willingly, lovingly, whereas at first they are done with compulsion. This is why we must treasure the ascetic virtues! Never cast aside in negligence what you have acquired. Guard even the smallest thing: it will lead to something greater. Once you are strengthened in something, you are already secure on one side.

In order that the rules outlined in the manner shown may lead to the desired good and fulfill their purpose, you must conduct yourself in relation to them as follows:

1) When the entire plan of action has been drawn up and the whole set of rules has been defined, turn to God with fervent supplication, that He may give His blessing for their constant, beneficial, and God-pleasing fulfillment. Reject all boasting, self-conceit, and fanciful appropriation in advance of the perfection that is to come through them. Draw near with timidity, fear, and apprehension—lest you be put to shame by falling away and breaking your rule.

2) Make a covenant with your heart not to depart from the rule you have laid down, no matter what labors and sacrifices it may require. Therefore, afterward do not allow even a thought about abandoning one thing or changing another: let it stand as it is.

3) To this end, receive them with faith that they are pleasing to God, and consequently as a law of conscience, as the will of God specifically required of you, and thus consider the breaking of rules a transgression. Better not to resolve at all than to resolve and then fall away. Through this an unstable character is formed, always ready to do things one way or another.

4) Therefore struggle against temptations directed against your rules. At first the enemy especially attacks through them. And as soon as he succeeds in even a small thing, he hopes that he will succeed in other things as well. The Holy Fathers laid down their lives for them. Standing firm in them is the repulsion of the enemy, a victory. And this has already been learned by experience: that one cannot become established in any rule without struggle, as long as it is truly beneficial. A rule without struggle is useless, deceptive, false.

Christ bearing the Cross

The narrow path Theophan describes.

The Narrow and Sorrowful Path

Having surrounded himself with rules, the ascetic takes upon himself a yoke that is good and salvific, but laborious. These are bonds upon his self-will, very perceptible while it is still alive and in force; these are the markers of right activity, difficult at first because of inexperience and unfamiliarity. Walking along them, he unceasingly forces himself and fulfills them with pain. For this reason the path on which he begins to walk is always and everywhere narrow and sorrowful. Narrowness, constraint, and sorrow are the inevitable characteristics of the path of the one who is saved; this is the first thing that meets the one who enters upon it, what he must expect, what he must prepare for.

This kind of narrowness and difficulty is inevitable by the very nature of Christian life and striving in it. One must live in the cutting off of one’s own will and reason, in the struggle and destruction of the passions, or in unceasing self-mortification and self-crucifixion. To struggle against a passion is the same as tearing living flesh from living flesh, extracting the deepest and most jagged splinter. One must abandon everything pleasing to oneself, visibly deprive oneself of much, become exhausted, suffer. On the other hand, acquiring skill in what is good or in the new life requires unceasing exertion, both interior and exterior. No true good comes without cost, but is acquired through sweat, tears, and labor. The ascetic virtues—fast, vigil, prayer, and other labors—are painful until one acquires the habit, and very often even afterward. But we are not yet told to stop at these: they are means to moral dispositions. In cultivating the latter there is even more labor; but they too are means to life in God. Life in God requires labor and ascesis all the greater, insofar as this divine treasure is more exalted than bodily practice. Thus, both there and here—labors, sweat, pain. After all, we are tearing away evil, and beloved evil at that—it hurts; we plant good, unloved good—again it is painful. “Turn to God,” says Venerable Macarius the Great, “to receive your former glory. But know that in much labor and sweat of your brow you will receive this wealth. Before (in paradise) you received it without labor, but without labor you also lost it; now it is not given so. Whoever wishes to be saved, let him strive with all his strength to cleanse himself. Then, because of the violence we do to ourselves, the Lord will have mercy” (Homily 4, §10). “One must do violence to oneself and force oneself to every good thing, even when the heart does not want it” (Homily 1, §§13–14). “Great effort and hidden, invisible labor is required for the examination of thoughts, for training the weak faculties of the soul to distinguish good from evil, for strengthening and rousing toward God the weakened members of the soul. This same hidden struggle and labor we must continually maintain within the heart in every fulfillment of the commandments, until we come to perfection, where everything will be easy” (Homily 2, §§13–14).

To the inner struggle and labor are always added sorrows from without. “You are not of the world,” the Lord says, “I have chosen you, separated you from it; for this reason the world hates you” (John 15:19). “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). And indeed: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Psalm 34:19). Whoever you may be, strong or weak—just begin to act according to God, and immediately there will be afflictions, sorrows, and hardships, when you act with a pure conscience, without people-pleasing, having in view only the glory of God. That is why all the saints, especially Isaac the Syrian, regard afflictions as the distinguishing marks both of the truly virtuous person and of true virtue itself. Indeed: if you do a truly good deed, expect affliction.

And here the enemy does not sleep. He both inflames and obstructs our inner life, and makes the outer life heavy and surrounds it with barriers. And beyond that, he himself—now with phantoms, now with apparitions, now especially with certain terrifying suggestions and assaults within, as if a wind blows through you, or as if a fiery arrow pierces you—so the saints say.

Thus, as soon as someone steps onto the right path, hostility comes at him from all sides, both from within and from without, both visibly and invisibly. He is a lamb in the midst of wolves. So it is said to him at the beginning: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Psalm 34:19), “through many afflictions we must enter the Kingdom” (Acts 14:22), “there will be affliction, for to this we are appointed” (1 Thessalonians 3:3), “enter by the narrow gate” (Matthew 7:13; cf. Matt. 6:24; John 15:20; 1 Peter 4:12–13, Sirach 2:1; Matthew 5:10; James 1:12; 2 Corinthians 4:8, 17; 1 Peter 4:1; Revelation 7:14; Matthew 7:13–14 and others). We are all in darkness and the shadow of death, in the hands of enemies, malicious and cunning; the way out cannot be easy. Even those seeking external freedom undertake so much labor and sweat; so here—how many stumbling blocks and defeats, anxieties and fears! Perhaps someone will ask: but what about the Lord? Well, the fact that He seems to arrange such a sorrowful path deliberately is sometimes to make us partakers of His afflictions, and sometimes to hide us from ourselves in this comfortless state. “The Lord cannot better show His love to those who seek Him,” says Saint Isaac the Syrian, “than by subjecting them to afflictions.” That is why this is even an unmistakable sign of God’s favor, a sign that He has turned His eye upon and chosen the one who begins to suffer for righteousness’ sake, for the sake of His name. Such a person enters, as it were, into refinement, like gold into the furnace. Those who are strangers to suffering, those for whom everything is easy—are “illegitimate children,” according to the Apostle (Hebrews 12:8). Labors, tears, and sorrows are the very best purification, like beating for laundry.

That is why the Apostle surveys the righteous from the foundation of the world until now, and sees every one of them suffering, afflicted, and burdened. the patriarchs suffer; the prophets suffer; the Lord—the Author and Pioneer of our struggle — most of all; the apostles—likewise; then—the martyrs, ascetics, and all the saints, as John the Theologian sees in Revelation. “Where have they come from? …from the great affliction” (Rev. 7:13–14); they are those, as it is said there, who did not spare their souls.

Therefore, whoever approaches to serve the Lord must prepare his soul for trials. Expect not rest, not pleasures, not comforts, but toil, afflictions, and deprivations—and not only expect them, but seek them. One must know firmly that whoever practices virtues but without labor, stands in ascesis but comfortably, without painful exertion—such a person is on the path of spiritual delusion. Something is not right here. Among people, one cannot stand peacefully in righteousness. The worldly spirit is a flesh-eating vulture—it attacks immediately. That is why one must be ready for anything…

The Holy Fathers define this readiness very simply and in few words. Namely: go as though to death, and make this covenant in your heart, that you are a bondservant of death, which is being prepared for you at every moment, you know not how or from where. Only the one who walks the path of true Christian life with such dispositions, they say, will stand unshaken. For as soon as he dies in feeling and by the covenant of his heart, then whatever he may encounter will already be weaker than what he expects, that is, weaker than death. To this they apply the Savior’s parable about the king who counts his army when war approaches (Luke 14:31–33), and about the master who begins to build a house (Matthew 7:24–27, Luke 6:47–49). Count up the afflictions that await you, they say, and die in thought and feeling, because only death will constitute a sufficient sum—such is what must be expended on the way of Christ. “He cannot be My disciple,” the Lord says, “who does not hate his own soul” (Luke 14:26). To be ready as for death—this is most fully explained and often repeated in Saint Isaac the Syrian. “Whatever you encounter,” he says, “say that you have died, and it will become easier; rest and repose are the most hateful thing to God.”

This is necessary not only for those who have renounced the world; those living in the world need such a disposition even more. All this meets the true zealots of piety; for the false, it is easy. To such a covenant with your heart you must also add firm and unwavering hope in God Almighty; you must hold the faith that, despite all the darkness of the path, you are God’s—not rejected, not despised, but guarded by Him; that He is with you, holding you at the very time when you are being torn from all sides. Imagine yourself held by the hand of God, like a soiled cloth that is beaten to clean it. Hold fast to the faith that whatever trial may come, whether interior or exterior, it is within your strength, because the Lord will not let you be tried beyond what you can bear. He leads and instructs with wisdom. Remember also that His help is near, that it is ready at once, as soon as you call out, and that only with such help will you be able to overcome and not fall; and therefore ascribe every victory to Him. What is endured without calling upon God, and not referred to Him after it is endured, is displeasing to Him and fruitless, for it always leaves behind pride and self-regard.

One must not, however, throw oneself into afflictions: reckless self-reliance is opposed to God, and is always punished. Stand ready for anything, even for death itself—yet await this in firm hope in God and in entrusting yourself to Him. Wherever and however He leads, let Him lead as He wills. Do not resist, do not desire this or that, neither ease nor afflictions. Let Him lead; go with unveiled face, expecting everything afflictive, in hope and in entrusting yourself to God. Without such a disposition you will not take a single step on the true path. All who turn back do so precisely because they have not prepared themselves for ascesis and struggle, or because of self-reliance. One’s own fervor may help, but not for long. It cools naturally—and the person is left with nothing.

St. Macarius the Great

The zeal Theophan commends.

Zeal for Salvation

From this it is clear that one who enters upon the path of Christian life, still weak, sick, and disordered, must already possess great strength and fortitude; otherwise he will fall under the weight of afflictions and labors prepared for him. The power that makes him endure and makes all his labors fruitful is zeal, diligence, striving, care for pleasing God and the salvation of the soul. Just as one who seeks a sure treasure does not look at difficulties, does not delay, and is not frightened by obstacles, so also the Christian—when he has zeal, seeking—will overcome everything and pass safely through all paths. Seeking provides everything; to it the Lord gave a special promise: “Seek and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). Seeking is the vital spirit, with the quenching of which life dies. This is the fire brought by the Savior to earth; this is His light and life. A steamship stops when the steam is released: and the one running after Christ falls, or rolls back, when he grows cold. This is what one must acquire when entering into the practice of the commandments and the purification of the passions! Without it, one cannot even begin this work in the true spirit; and if someone does begin, he will labor without fruit, sluggishly, half-heartedly. This is empty going-through-the-motions. Many people practice ascesis and exercise themselves at it, but without fruit: the fruit is from the Spirit, and the Spirit of God is in zeal. The Spirit of God passes into our passionate and impure nature through the ascetic practices, or rules of life, that are akin both to Him and to us, and there He brings healing, cures, and perfects. Consequently, ascesis and practice are the conduit of grace; and the path, or thread, that conducts it is the spirit of zeal. That is why all the Fathers especially insist that this Spirit not be quenched. Saint Isaac the Syrian calls it a barking dog and commands us to provoke it unceasingly. Saint Cassian considers one who has lost this spirit to be such a person to whom the Lord said: “I will spew you out” (Revelation 3:16) because he is neither hot nor cold, but sluggish—he does or does not do, or does one thing and not another. Macarius the Great says: Seek and knock; this is the beginning; enter through this door. You only seek, and the Lord will not forget His own… One who has zeal already communes with God. Saint Barsanuphius almost unceasingly repeats the counsel to kindle within oneself the fire brought by the Lord. And in John Climacus, zeal—that is, the consuming fire that devours brushwood—is the good, reliable, and secure foundation. Therefore he also commands us to hasten to restore it when it happens to be lost in some way. Some think it better to replace zeal with firmness of resolve or will, fearing rashness from zeal; but firmness of will is dangerous. It is close to calculating reason, cold indifference, and egoistic action. In the world it is acceptable; in the Christian life it is dangerous. Zeal is also dangerous if left on its own; but whoever has guarded it with obedience or renunciation of one’s own will and reason, and bound it with rules, has nothing to fear—let him only be zealous. Zeal, it is true, presupposes swiftness of action, but not rashness and thoughtlessness. It means: go, do not delay, do not stand still, press on with diligence, but press on along the indicated and defined path, under supervision.

The whole structure of this zeal can be expressed thus: “seek in hope, without predetermination, and continually beginning anew.” This is the thought of Saint Macarius the Great, which he repeats almost unceasingly. It is evident that a deficiency in any of the elements included here either corrupts zeal or weakens it (for example, Homilies 4–18, 27, 28).

Ahead lies much labor, many dangers: go, and there will be fruit. The farmer labors in sweat and eats bread: so it is with you too. Soon you will pass through afflictions, enter into rest, and delight both here inwardly and there. You are a soldier; look to the crown and do not fear death. Soon the signs of purity will appear, the beginning of the cultivation of the heart. The more decisive, the quicker, better, and more salvific.

Press on, act, labor, but do not determine the fruit. Fruit is a gift of God for the sake of labor; but to give the gift is in the will of the Giver. Therefore, whatever you have done, do not say “I have attained” or “I will attain,” but rather “I may yet attain.” A sailor may sail three-quarters of the way, but he still has not arrived, and he cannot say whether he will arrive. So it is with you: never consider yourself to have attained, but only to be seeking. Do not trust in the diminishing of passions, do not rely on the strength of your virtues. Everything can perish in an instant. Do not look back, but forward. Everything you have, the Lord has given; and it is in His power to take it back again. Therefore we should consider nothing secure, but cry out only: “Lord, save me! By whatever means You know, save me!”

Therefore, never say to yourself: “Well, that’s enough now; I’ve labored, I can rest.” Such indulgence, such laxity, is the first enemy. The thought may seem small and weak, but it is the most treacherous traitor; it opens the gates to the enemies. Whoever yields to it will fall. The holy Fathers have noticed this thought, and to everyone who is beginning they constantly urge: watch out, do not say, “That’s enough now, I can ease up a bit,” but say instead, “Why are you here?” or “Why are you doing nothing?” Or, turning to God, pray that He may help you lay the foundation of salvation—and continually begin anew. Continually begin anew, and exert yourself; but do not even think about relief, and so resolve in your heart that toil and labor are yours until death itself, that what lies ahead is not ease, but ever greater exertion.

Here is the true structure of the spirit of one who is zealous—safe, firm, allowing neither slackness nor unbridled fervor, neither presumption nor self-conceit!

Works Cited

Sources cited in this book. Tap a chapter reference under each entry to return to the passage where the work is cited.

The Conferences (c. 420)

St. John Cassian

Twenty-four dialogues recording the spiritual teaching of the Egyptian desert fathers, foundational to Western and Eastern monastic tradition.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.8, 1.4.9, 1.4.12, 1.4.13, 1.6.15).

Discourses and Sayings (6th c.)

Abba Dorotheos of Gaza

Seventeen discourses on the foundations of the spiritual life by a disciple of Sts. Barsanuphius and John, used as a primer in monastic formation.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.5.2, 1.24.27, 1.44.11).

The Ladder of Divine Ascent (c. 600)

St. John Climacus

A guide to monastic ascent in thirty ‘steps,’ written by the abbot of Sinai; one of the most widely read patristic texts in the Eastern Church.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.8.8, 1.12.7, 1.12.10, 1.14.16, 1.14.20, 1.18.9, 1.18.15, 1.19.8, 1.19.12, 1.20.6, 1.20.9, 1.21.4, 1.21.5, 1.23.9, 1.24.25, 1.24.32, 1.24.35, 1.24.37, 1.25.4, 1.25.5, 1.25.14, 1.25.16, 1.25.17, 1.26.12, 1.26.15, 1.28.1, 1.29.12, 1.29.13, 1.30.7, 1.33.17, 1.35.10).

The Philokalia (1979–2022)

St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite & St. Macarius of Corinth (compilers); trans. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard & Kallistos Ware

An anthology of texts written between the 4th and 15th centuries by the spiritual masters of the Eastern hesychast tradition. The page references in this edition are to the five-volume English translation (Faber & Faber / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979–2022).

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.9.4).

Questions and Answers (6th c.)

Sts. Barsanuphius and John of Gaza

Spiritual correspondence of two recluses of the Gaza coenobium, comprising over 800 questions from disciples and their answers; a primary source on monastic obedience and spiritual fatherhood.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.13.4, 1.13.5, 1.13.6, 1.13.8, 1.13.9, 1.14.1, 1.14.3, 1.14.5, 1.14.9, 1.14.11, 1.14.12, 1.14.13, 1.14.19, 1.15.6, 1.15.7, 1.15.8, 1.15.9, 1.18.12, 1.20.5, 1.21.6, 1.21.7, 1.24.21, 1.24.23, 1.30.6, 1.30.10, 1.35.13).

The Longer Rules (c. 360)

St. Basil the Great

Detailed answers to questions on the cenobitic monastic life, the foundational rule of Eastern monasticism.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.24.14).

The Shorter Rules (c. 360)

St. Basil the Great

Concise answers to over three hundred practical questions on the monastic life, complementing the Longer Rules.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.24.19).

The Prologue of Ohrid (1928–1932)

St. Nicolai Velimirović (compiler)

A daily-readings collection of saints’ lives, hymnographic notes, and edifying tales from across the Orthodox calendar; widely read in Russian and Serbian Orthodox spiritual practice.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.24.29, 1.25.20).

Ascetical Rules and Discourses (c. 360)

St. Basil the Great

St. Basil’s broader corpus of monastic legislation and ascetical instruction, often cited alongside the Longer and Brief Rules.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.26.17).

The Life and Writings of Saint Paisius Velichkovsky (18th c.)

St. Paisius Velichkovsky

Autobiographical and biographical material on the great 18th-century Moldavian elder, translator of the Greek Philokalia into Slavonic, and revivalist of Athonite hesychasm in the Slavic Orthodox world.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.47.4, 1.51.8, 1.51.13, 1.51.34, 1.54.4, 1.56.5).

The Tradition of Saint Nilus of Sora and his monastic Rule (15th c.)

St. Nilus of Sora

Foundational writings of the 15th-century Russian elder of Sora, the chief representative of the non-possessing (нестяжатели) school of Russian monasticism and a transmitter of Athonite hesychasm into Slavic spirituality.

Cited in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.56.4).

The Ascetical Homilies (7th c.)

St. Isaac the Syrian

Spiritual homilies on prayer, repentance, and the inner life, beloved across the Orthodox tradition.

Cited in: 2. Life According to Rules (2.2.9).

The Fifty Spiritual Homilies (4th c.)

St. Macarius the Great

Fifty spiritual homilies on the inner life, prayer of the heart, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, attributed to St. Macarius the Great of Egypt; foundational for the hesychast tradition.

Cited in: 3. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.2.20, 3.2.21, 3.2.23); 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.2.3).

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Genesis

Genesis 3:151. Life Under Guidance (1.29.4)

Genesis 3:192. Life According to Rules (2.17.3); 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.3.2, 4.5.8)

Genesis 11:81. Life Under Guidance (1.38.4)
Genesis 19:1–171. Life Under Guidance (1.8.6)
Genesis 22:21. Life Under Guidance (1.4.12)
Exodus
Exodus 12:31–421. Life Under Guidance (1.8.4)
Exodus 12:37–421. Life Under Guidance (1.8.6)
Exodus 12:411. Life Under Guidance (1.8.7)
Exodus 14:21–291. Life Under Guidance (1.8.4)
Exodus 17:8–131. Life Under Guidance (1.8.4)
Exodus 17:111. Life Under Guidance (1.8.4)
Exodus 32:321. Life Under Guidance (1.13.9)
Numbers
Numbers 24:171. Life Under Guidance (1.47.13)
Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 4:291. Life Under Guidance (1.44.10)

Deuteronomy 5:321. Life Under Guidance (1.50.6)

Deuteronomy 31:61. Life Under Guidance (1.44.37)

Deuteronomy 32:101. Life Under Guidance (1.18.5)

2 Samuel
2 Samuel 10:121. Life Under Guidance (1.20.4)
1 Kings
1 Kings 17:61. Life Under Guidance (1.4.10)
1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 29:144. Zeal for Salvation (4.4.10)

Job
Job 32:91. Life Under Guidance (1.7.8)
Psalms
Psalms 30:91. Life Under Guidance (1.2.6)
Psalms 31:101. Life Under Guidance (1.35.2)

Psalms 34:193. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.3.5, 3.5.3)

Psalms 37:231. Life Under Guidance (1.53.13)
Psalms 118:271. Life Under Guidance (1.7.17)
Psalms 143:81. Life Under Guidance (1.44.4)
Proverbs
Proverbs 3:31. Life Under Guidance (1.14.1)
Proverbs 3:61. Life Under Guidance (1.52.8)

Proverbs 17:33. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.17)

Proverbs 28:131. Life Under Guidance (1.24.22)

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 5:191. Life Under Guidance (1.44.15)

Jeremiah
Jeremiah 2:111. Life Under Guidance (1.44.14)
Ezekiel
Ezekiel 14:91. Life Under Guidance (1.44.11)
Ezekiel 33:61. Life Under Guidance (1.37.4)
Daniel
Daniel 12:31. Life Under Guidance (1.4.1)
Sirach

Sirach 2:13. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.4, 3.7.1)

Sirach 6:14–161. Life Under Guidance (1.51.39, 1.51.40)

Sirach 32:191. Life Under Guidance (1.26.5)
Sirach 34:231. Life Under Guidance (1.25.12)
Matthew
Matthew 4:61. Life Under Guidance (1.4.8)

Matthew 5:103. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.5, 3.5.16)

Matthew 5:141. Life Under Guidance (1.7.18)
Matthew 5:151. Life Under Guidance (1.51.21)
Matthew 5:181. Life Under Guidance (1.25.1)

Matthew 6:243. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.3)

Matthew 6:25–341. Life Under Guidance (1.20.2)

Matthew 6:261. Life Under Guidance (1.4.9)

Matthew 6:341. Life Under Guidance (1.23.4)

Matthew 7:71. Life Under Guidance (1.15.3); 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.6)

Matthew 7:9–101. Life Under Guidance (1.33.9)

Matthew 7:133. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.3)

Matthew 7:13–143. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.8)

Matthew 7:24–273. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.8.5)

Matthew 8:81. Life Under Guidance (1.19.19)

Matthew 10:163. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.2)

Matthew 11:251. Life Under Guidance (1.50.2)

Matthew 11:291. Life Under Guidance (1.19.3)

Matthew 11:303. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.1.1)

Matthew 13:444. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.4)

Matthew 14:304. Zeal for Salvation (4.4.12)

Matthew 16:22–231. Life Under Guidance (1.26.18)

Matthew 16:241. Life Under Guidance (1.6.3, 1.25.3)

Matthew 16:251. Life Under Guidance (1.38.16)
Matthew 18:201. Life Under Guidance (1.51.25)
Matthew 19:271. Life Under Guidance (1.29.2)
Matthew 23:81. Life Under Guidance (1.2.12)
Matthew 25:331. Life Under Guidance (1.25.16)

Matthew 26:21–221. Life Under Guidance (1.24.19)

Matthew 26:501. Life Under Guidance (1.19.12)
Matthew 27:41. Life Under Guidance (1.44.17)
Matthew 28:201. Life Under Guidance (1.15.6)
Mark
Mark 8:32–331. Life Under Guidance (1.26.18)
Mark 14:18–191. Life Under Guidance (1.24.19)
Luke

Luke 1:793. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.9)

Luke 6:47–493. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.8.5)

Luke 9:624. Zeal for Salvation (4.4.9)
Luke 10:161. Life Under Guidance (1.26.19)
Luke 10:191. Life Under Guidance (1.10.5)
Luke 12:421. Life Under Guidance (1.38.8)
Luke 12:494. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.26)

Luke 14:263. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.8.7)

Luke 14:31–333. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.8.5)

Luke 14:331. Life Under Guidance (1.29.1)
Luke 15:201. Life Under Guidance (1.19.18)
John
John 6:381. Life Under Guidance (1.27.1)
John 10:11. Life Under Guidance (1.41.3)
John 10:111. Life Under Guidance (1.37.3)
John 10:184. Zeal for Salvation (4.4.11)
John 10:271. Life Under Guidance (1.37.2)
John 15:131. Life Under Guidance (1.13.4)

John 15:193. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.3.2, 3.3.3)

John 15:203. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.4)

John 16:333. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.3.4)

Acts
Acts 4:321. Life Under Guidance (1.38.3)
Acts 9:61. Life Under Guidance (1.2.17)
Acts 9:151. Life Under Guidance (1.8.1)

Acts 14:223. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.3)

Romans
Romans 2:161. Life Under Guidance (1.13.8)
Romans 5:51. Life Under Guidance (1.2.14)
Romans 7:241. Life Under Guidance (1.35.13)
Romans 8:141. Life Under Guidance (1.8.1)
Romans 8:261. Life Under Guidance (1.2.12)

Romans 8:35–391. Life Under Guidance (1.33.17)

Romans 8:38–391. Life Under Guidance (1.14.15)

Romans 10:111. Life Under Guidance (1.50.2)
Romans 14:231. Life Under Guidance (1.18.8)
1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 3:91. Life Under Guidance (1.37.7, 1.38.11)

1 Corinthians 5:6–81. Life Under Guidance (1.12.6)

1 Corinthians 6:181. Life Under Guidance (1.19.7)

1 Corinthians 7:201. Life Under Guidance (1.40.7)

1 Corinthians 10:133. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.9.8)

1 Corinthians 10:231. Life Under Guidance (1.31.2); 2. Life According to Rules (2.8.1)

1 Corinthians 11:121. Life Under Guidance (1.44.16)

1 Corinthians 12:111. Life Under Guidance (1.7.13)

1 Corinthians 14:201. Life Under Guidance (1.26.15)

2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 3:2–31. Life Under Guidance (1.9.2)

2 Corinthians 4:83. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.6)

2 Corinthians 4:173. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.6)

2 Corinthians 11:141. Life Under Guidance (1.2.20)

2 Corinthians 11:291. Life Under Guidance (1.14.9)

Galatians

Galatians 1:11–121. Life Under Guidance (1.9.2)

Galatians 1:121. Life Under Guidance (1.2.17)
Galatians 2:21. Life Under Guidance (1.2.17)
Galatians 2:201. Life Under Guidance (1.20.5)
Galatians 5:224. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.15)
Ephesians

Ephesians 4:131. Life Under Guidance (1.35.17, 1.51.3); 2. Life According to Rules (2.4.4)

Ephesians 5:211. Life Under Guidance (1.51.34)

Philippians
Philippians 3:134. Zeal for Salvation (4.4.6)
Colossians

Colossians 2:211. Life Under Guidance (1.31.3)

Colossians 3:51. Life Under Guidance (1.25.3)

1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 3:33. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.3)

1 Thessalonians 3:101. Life Under Guidance (1.14.2)

1 Thessalonians 5:194. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.19)

1 Thessalonians 5:211. Life Under Guidance (1.46.1); 2. Life According to Rules (2.12.2)

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 2:41. Life Under Guidance (1.13.12, 1.19.16, 1.44.7)

2 Timothy
2 Timothy 4:21. Life Under Guidance (1.37.8)
Hebrews

Hebrews 5:141. Life Under Guidance (1.7.14); 3. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.2.22)

Hebrews 12:23. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.6.4)

Hebrews 12:41. Life Under Guidance (1.14.14)

Hebrews 12:83. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.18)

Hebrews 13:51. Life Under Guidance (1.44.4, 1.44.10)

Hebrews 13:171. Life Under Guidance (1.26.19, 1.37.5, 1.38.4)

James

James 1:123. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.6)

1 Peter
1 Peter 2:81. Life Under Guidance (1.18.7)
1 Peter 2:131. Life Under Guidance (1.3.1)

1 Peter 4:13. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.6)

1 Peter 4:12–133. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.4)

1 Peter 4:193. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.10.2)

2 Peter

2 Peter 1:211. Life Under Guidance (1.47.7)

2 Peter 2:212. Life According to Rules (2.21.2)

1 John
1 John 1:11. Life Under Guidance (1.55.3)
1 John 2:271. Life Under Guidance (1.2.12)

1 John 3:162. Life According to Rules (2.22.4)

Jude
Jude 1:91. Life Under Guidance (1.19.8)
Jude 1:231. Life Under Guidance (1.38.12)
Revelation
Revelation 3:164. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.21)

Revelation 7:13–143. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.6.8)

Revelation 7:143. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.5.7)

Revelation 12:113. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.6.9)

Persons and Places

Persons and places mentioned in this book, with short notes and back-links to every occurrence.

Persons

St Antony the Great

Egyptian desert father (c. 251–356), founder of monastic eremitism. Feast day 17 January.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3, 1.7.19, 1.53.2).

St Basil the Great

Cappadocian Father (c. 330–379), Archbishop of Caesarea, monastic legislator and theologian; one of the Three Hierarchs. Author of the Longer and Shorter Rules and the Liturgy bearing his name. Feast day 1 January.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.9.4, 1.12.5, 1.24.12, 1.26.17, 1.53.3).

Christ the Savior

A title for Jesus Christ emphasizing His role as the Redeemer of humanity. In patristic literature, ‘Savior’ (Σωτήρ, Спаситель) is a common christological designation referring to Christ’s salvific work.

Mentioned in: 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.8).

St Euthymius the Great

Palestinian desert father (377–473), founder of lauras in the Judean wilderness and a leading monastic teacher. Feast day 20 January.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3).

St Hilarion the Great

Palestinian monk (c. 291–371), disciple of St Antony and a founder of monastic life in Gaza. Feast day 21 October.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3).

St Ignatius of Antioch

Bishop of Antioch and Apostolic Father (c. 35–c. 108), martyred in Rome; author of seven letters written en route to martyrdom, foundational texts on the Eucharist, episcopacy, and Christian unity. Also known as Theophoros (the God-bearer). Feast day 17 October (West) / 29 January (East).

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.38.7, 1.40.2).

Jesus Christ

The incarnate Son of God, second Person of the Holy Trinity; his name forms the centre of the Jesus Prayer and of all Orthodox spiritual life.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.24.12, 1.38.2).

St John Climacus

Abbot of Sinai (c. 579–649), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the standard manual of monastic ascesis in the Eastern Church. Feast day 30 March.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.8.3, 1.9.1, 1.10.6, 1.12.7, 1.12.10, 1.14.14, 1.18.6, 1.18.13, 1.19.3, 1.20.6, 1.20.8, 1.21.4, 1.24.25, 1.24.32, 1.24.33, 1.25.14, 1.26.12, 1.27.2, 1.28.1, 1.29.11, 1.33.11, 1.33.14, 1.35.9, 1.35.17, 1.44.12); 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.27).

St Macarius the Great

Egyptian desert father (c. 300–391), abbot of Scetis; attributed author of the Homilies on the heart and spiritual fire central to the hesychast tradition. Feast day 19 January.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3, 1.10.19, 1.51.29); 3. The Narrow and Sorrowful Path (3.2.15); 4. Zeal for Salvation (4.1.22, 4.2.2).

St Pachomius the Great

Egyptian monk (c. 292–348), founder of cenobitic monasticism and author of an influential monastic rule. Feast day 15 May.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3).

St Paisius Velichkovsky

Ukrainian-born monk (1722–1794), abbot of Neamț Monastery in Moldavia; compiler and translator of the Philokalia into Slavonic (the Dobrotolubiye), transmitting hesychast spirituality to the Slavic world. Feast day 15 November.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.47.4, 1.51.2, 1.51.30, 1.54.3, 1.56.5).

St Sabbas the Sanctified

Palestinian monk (439–532), founder of the Great Lavra near Jerusalem and a major organizer of monastic life in the Holy Land. Feast day 5 December.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.4.3, 1.7.19).

Son of God

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, who became incarnate to unite humanity with divinity. A central christological title in Orthodox theology referring to Christ’s divine nature and eternal relationship with the Father.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.14.12).

the Twelve Apostles

The twelve disciples chosen by Christ to be the foundational witnesses of the Church. In the ascetical tradition the Apostles model submission to a divine teacher—Paul going first to Ananias (Acts 9:6) and then consulting the other Apostles (Gal. 2:2)—and so illustrate the principle that even the spiritually advanced sought external guidance.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.38.2).

Places

Mount Athos

The Holy Mountain of Athos in northern Greece, an autonomous monastic republic and the spiritual centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism since the 9th century. Twenty ruling monasteries plus dozens of dependencies; women have not been admitted since 1046.

Mentioned in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.51.30).

Glossary

Theological and spiritual terms used in this book, with short definitions and back-links to every occurrence.

commandments

The divine commandments given by God, including the Decalogue and the teachings of Christ, which guide the moral and spiritual life of believers and are to be fulfilled in obedience to God.

Occurs in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.51.7).

contemplation

Direct apprehension of divine reality, distinguished by the Fathers from rational knowledge (γνῶσις) and conceptual reasoning; the highest degree of prayer in the hesychast tradition.

Occurs in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.51.19); 2. Life According to Rules (2.15.5).

Last Judgment

The final judgment of all humanity by Christ at the end of time, a central eschatological doctrine in Orthodox theology and a frequent subject of contemplation and iconography.

Occurs in: 1. Life Under Guidance (1.13.2).

Illustration Credits

Sources and attribution for every illustration in this book. Each entry lists the photographer or artist when known, the licence under which the image was released, and a link to the original page on Wikimedia Commons or the equivalent host. Images released into the public domain are listed without further obligation; images released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence are reproduced here under the same licence.

1. St. Theophan the Recluse

Photograph by P.F. Borel.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

2. Christ bearing the Cross

Image by Nikolaos Tzafouris.

Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

3. An iconostasis in a cave-monastery chapel

Image by falco on Pixabay.

Licence: Pixabay Content Licence (free for commercial use).

Source: Pixabay.

4. St. Macarius the Great

Photograph by Unknown icon painter.

Licence: Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse

Saint Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) is among the most beloved teachers of the spiritual life in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born on 10 January 1815 in the village of Chernavsk, in the Oryol province of central Russia, and given the name Georgy Vasilyevich Govorov. His father was a parish priest, and the boy was raised in the ordered piety of a country rectory. He studied first at the theological school in Livny, then at the Oryol Seminary, and finally at the Kiev Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1841. The ancient monasteries of Kiev, and above all the Monastery of the Caves, left a deep mark on him during those years.

In his last year as a student, in 1841, Georgy Govorov was tonsured a monk and given the name Theophan, after Saint Theophan the Confessor, a defender of the holy icons. He was soon ordained hieromonk and set on the path of teaching and administration in the Church’s schools: he served in the theological schools of Kiev, as inspector at Novgorod, and as an instructor in moral and pastoral theology at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. For several years he lived in the Christian East, attached to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, where in Jerusalem, Constantinople, and on Mount Athos he studied, copied, and gathered the writings of the Fathers that he would later render into Russian. In 1857 he was appointed rector of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy.

In 1859 he was consecrated Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk, and in 1863 he was transferred to the ancient see of Vladimir. As a bishop he was known for gentleness, tireless preaching, and care for the education of his people, founding diocesan schools for girls in both dioceses. Yet the labours of administration drew him away from the inner life he most desired. In 1866, at his own request, he was released from the government of his diocese and withdrew to the Vyshensky Hermitage, a quiet monastery he had come to love while at Tambov.

At Vysha, Saint Theophan gradually gave himself wholly to prayer and writing. Beginning in 1872 he entered strict reclusion: he no longer left his cell for the monastery church, received almost no visitors, and lived for the remaining years in two small rooms, celebrating the Divine Liturgy alone in a chapel he had arranged. This seclusion, far from being idleness, became the most fruitful period of his life. From it flowed the works for which he is remembered: The Path to Salvation and What the Spiritual Life Is; his translation and great expansion of the Philokalia (the Russian Dobrotolyubie) and of other monastic writings; Unseen Warfare; his commentaries on almost all the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, together with expositions of several Psalms; and an immense correspondence, in which he answered, often at the rate of dozens of letters a day, the spiritual questions of people throughout Russia. In 1890 the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy conferred on him a doctorate in theology.

Saint Theophan reposed on 6 January 1894, the Feast of the Theophany whose name he bore, at the age of seventy-nine, and was buried at the Vysha monastery. In 1988, during the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church that celebrated the millennium of the Baptism of Rus’, he was numbered among the saints. His feast is kept on 10 January.

His significance for the Church lies in the way he gathered the whole ascetical and patristic inheritance of Orthodoxy and made it speak to ordinary Christians. He wrote not for specialists but for anyone seeking God, tracing with unusual clarity the movements of the heart, the discipline of unceasing prayer, and the long work by which grace and human freedom together bring a soul to salvation. In his Scripture commentaries this same pastoral aim is at work: he reads the sacred text through the eyes of the ancient Fathers and turns every doctrine toward the reader’s own inner life. For this the Russian Church honours him as a Father in her own age and a sure guide on the path of salvation.

Colophon

What Is Needed for a Repentant Person
by St. Theophan the Recluse.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
Return of the Prodigal Son (c. 1668)
by Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Wikimedia Commons (Hermitage Museum; Google Art Project), which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Life Under Guidance
- Life According to Rules
- The Narrow and Sorrowful Path
- Zeal for Salvation
- Works Cited
- Scripture Index
- Persons and Places
- Glossary
- Illustration Credits
- The Author: Saint Theophan the Recluse
- Colophon