Saint Sophrony

Saint Sophrony (born Sergei Simeonovich Sakharov on September 22, 1896) was a Russian-born Orthodox Christian archimandrite who wrote a well-known biography of St. Silouan the Athonite. He also founded the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England. The following quotations are from His Life is Mine by Archimandrite Sophrony, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977. These quotations are merely a sampling of this deeply profound book, and the reader is encouraged to acquire the new edition published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (revised with a new cover to reflect the canonization of the author to sainthood).

Chapter 1 - Knowledge of God

There can be no doubt that for us, for the whole Christian world, one of the most important happenings recorded in the chronicles of time was God’s manifestation of Mount Sinai where Moses received new knowledge of Divine Being: “I AM THAT I AM” (Exos. 3.14) - Jehovah.  (17)

So for us Christians the focal point of the universe and the ultimate meaning of the entire history of the world is the coming of Jesus Christ.  (19)

This habitation of the Holy Spirit is the Church, which through centuries of tempest and violence has watched over the precious treasure of Truth as revealed by God. (22)

The revelation of God as I AM THAT I AM proclaims the personal character of the Absolute God which is the core of His life. (23)

Chapter 2 - The Enigma of I AM

From the time of the apostles the faithful have lived in their prayer the single reality of One God in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Human language has never found satisfactory logical terminology for expressing spiritual experience and cognition of God as proclaimed by God Himself. All the words which new knowledge and new life have passed on from generation to generation have to some extent or another clouded genuine contemplation of God. (27-28)

The Church surmounted the inadequacy of our language by employing negative modes - teaching us to live the Persons of the Trinity - “neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance.” (28)

Contemplation is a matter, not of verbal statements but of living experience. In pure prayer the Father, Son and Spirit are seen in their consubstantial unity. (28)

Chapter 3 - The Risk in Creation

In the beginning God creates our spirit as pure potential. What follows does not depend altogether on Him. Man is free to disagree, even to resist Him. (33)

Born as pure potential, our spirit must go on to actualize our being as hypostasis. We need to grow, and this growth is linked with pain and suffering. However strange it may seem, suffering is imperative for the preservation of life created from nothing. (33) 

We Christians accept the wondrous gift of life with thanksgiving. Called by Christ, we strive for the fullest possible knowledge of the Primary Source of all that exists. From our birth onwards we gradually grow and enter into possession of being. Christ is for us “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6). (35)

When He took on our nature in its fallen state Christ, the Logos of the Father, restored it as it was and is for ever in the creative will of the Father. The incarnation of the only-begotten Son is the manifestation of the Divine in our form of being. Now is revealed the mystery of the way to salvation. (36)

Chapter 4 - The Tragedy of Man

The tragedy of our times lies in our almost complete unawareness, or unmindfulness, that there are two kingdoms, the temporal and the eternal. We would build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, rejecting all idea of resurrection or eternity. (37)

By opting for knowledge of evil - in other words, by existentially associating with evil, by savoring evil - Adam inevitably broke with God. (37)

In refusing to accept Christ as Eternal Man and, more importantly, as True God and our Savior - whatever the form the refusal takes, and whatever the pretext - we lose the light of life eternal. “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). There, in the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, must our mind dwell. We must hunger and thirst to enter into this wondrous Kingdom. (39)

Chapter 5 - Contemplation

… true contemplation begins the moment we become aware of sin in us. (41)

Sin cuts us off from the God of Love made manifest to us as Light in whom there is no darkness at all (cf. 1 John 1.5).  (41)

Repentance does not come readily to carnal man; and none of us fathoms the problem of sin which is only disclosed to us through Christ and the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit is an event of supreme importance.  (42)

The soul comes to know herself first and foremost face to Face with God. And the fact that such prayer is the gift of God praying in us shows that the persona is born from on High and so is not subject to the laws of Nature. (43)

When our spirit contemplates in itself the “image and likeness” of God, it is confronted with the infinite grandeur of man, and not a few of us - the majority, perhaps - are filled with dread at our audacity. (44)

Christian faith is the result of the presence within us of the Holy Spirit, and the soul knows Him. (45)

Only sin can stifle the Divine breath within us. (45)

Chapter 6 - Prayer of the Spirit

The Holy Spirit comes when we are receptive. He does not compel. (49)

St Gregory of Sinai goes so far as to say that prayer is God Himself acting in us. (49)

… (Matt. 6.6). True prayer operates in our innermost depths which we learn to hide from outside eyes. (50)

Prayer at Daybreak (see pp. 52-55)

I once heard the following story of a professor of astronomy who was enthusiastically discoursing in a planetarium on the nebulae and like marvels. Noticing an unpretentious priest who had joined his group of students, the professor asked him: “What do your Scriptures say about cosmic space and its myriad stars? Instead of giving a direct answer the priest in turn posed a question. Tell me, Professor,” he said, “do you think that science will invent still more powerful telescopes to see even farther into the firmament?” “Of course progress is possible and science will always be perfecting apparatus for exploring outer space,” replied the astronomer. “There is hope, then, that one day you will have telescopes that can show all there is in the cosmos, down to the last detail?” “That would be impossible - the cosmos is infinite,” replied the scientist. “So there is a limit to science?” “Yes, in that sense there is.” “Well, Professor,” said the priest, “where your science comes to a full stop, ours begins, and that is what our Scriptures tell of.” (56-57)

Chapter 7 - The Bliss of Knowing the Way

In our day non-Christian mysticism attracts many who despair at the banality and emptiness of the contemporary scene. They are ignorant of the true essence of Christianity. Christianity entails suffering; but through suffering we penetrate the mysteries of Being. Suffering makes it possible to comprehend one’s own humanity and freedom. In times of distress the Christian remembers that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain” (Rom. 8.22) and his spirit is conscious of the same life flowing through all of us. To extend the range of our consciousness makes us kin with millions of fellow-beings scattered over the face of the earth. An enhanced recognition of human suffering begets intense prayer which transfers all things into the realm of the spirit. (59)

I once read a newspaper account of an engineer testing the jet engine of a plane who carelessly stepped into the air stream which caught and lifted him high off the ground. Seeing what had happened, his assistant quickly switched off the engine. The mechanic fell to the ground, dead. Something similar happens to the man of prayer: after being caught up into another sphere he returns to earth “dead” to much that is of this world. A new life full of light has manifested itself in him, and now the infantile pastimes which occupy the vast majority cease to hold any interest or attraction for him. If we assess the quality of life not by the sum of agreeable psycho-physical sensations but by the extent of our awareness of the realities of the universe and, above all, of the First and Last Truth, we shall understand what lay behind Christ’s words, “My peace I give unto you” - said to the disciples a few hours before His death on the cross. The essence of Christ’s peace lies in His perfect knowledge of the Father. So it is with us: if we know the Eternal Truth all the torments of this life will be confined, as it were, to the periphery of our being, while the light of life proceeding from the Father will reign within us.” (59)

When we are so overwhelmed by the feeling of our own nothingness, the uncreated light transfigures and brings us like sons into the Father’s house. (60)

Even remote contact with the Divine release the soul from all passions, including envy, that vile offspring of pride. The man who continues with a humble opinion of himself will be given greater knowledge of the mysteries of the world to come. He will be delivered from the power of death. United through prayer with Christ, he realises that in eternity the whole content of being will belong to him, too, through perpetual dwelling in him of the Holy Spirit - of the Trinity, it would be truer to say. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will make Their abode in him. (60)

Let us not forget, however, that the way to this superabundant love lies through the depths of hell. We must not be afraid of this descent since without it plenitude of knowledge is unobtainable. (61)

Chapter 8 - The Struggle in Prayer

Sometimes prayer seems to flag and we cry, “Make haste unto me, O God” (Ps. 70.5). But if we do not let go of the hem of His garment, help will come. It is vital to dwell in prayer in order to counteract the persistently destructive influence of the outside world. (64)

Chapter 9 - Concerning Repentance and Spiritual Warfare

The whole of our earthly life, from birth to our last breath, in the end will look like one concise act. Its content and quality will be seen like a flash. (71)

The most transitory reflex of heart and mind leaves its mark on the sum total of our life. (71)

And if for a fleeting moment I have been held by an evil thought, where is the guarantee that this moment will not be transmuted into eternity? Therefore, in so far as we can see ourselves we must thoroughly confess our sins, less we carry them with us after our death. (71-72)

Prayer offered to God in truth is imperishable. Now and then we may forget what we have prayed but God preserves our prayer for ever. (72)

Chapter 10 - Through Dark to Light

O Holy Spirit, mysterious Light;

O Light inscrutable, Light beyond all name:

Come and abide in us.

Deliver us from the darkness of ignorance;

And fill us with the stream of Thy knowledge.  (79)

Chapter 11 - Experience of Eternity Through Prayer

Stay your mind upon God, and the moment will come when you feel the touch of the Eternal Spirit in your heart. (81)

Chapter 12 - Liturgical Prayer

The Liturgy in its eternal reality is the Lord’s Passover permanently present with us. (88)

The fulness of knowledge of the Most High God has not vanished from the face of the earth. The Church has preserved and from generation to generation hands on this knowledge and this spirit which are the quintessence of Sacred Tradition. The same Lord’s Supper is celebrated day after day. The same prayer is offered up to God by His priests. (90)

In the Eastern Church, before receiving the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ the faithful pray, “Of Thy mystical supper, O Son of God, accept me this day as a partaker.” This day - NOW - speaks of divine eternity, in which there is no past, no future, but only the now. (90)

Chapter 13 - The Prayer of Gethsemane

Christ’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane is the noblest of all prayers by its virtue and power to atone for the sins of the world. (91)

Victorious in eternity, Christ’s love on the earthly plane spells extreme suffering. No one has ever known such suffering as Christ endured. He descended into hell, into the most painful hell of all, the hell of love. This is a sphere of existence which can only be apprehended through spiritual love - how far we can penetrate the mystery depends on the measure of love that it has been granted to us to know from on High. It is vital to have experienced, if only once, the heavenly fire which Christ brought with Him; to know with our entire being what it is to be even a little like Christ. (91)

To attain knowledge of Truth demands far more effort than it takes to acquire practical and scientific learning. Neither the reading of a vast number of books, nor familiarity with the history of Christianity, nor the study of different theological systems can bring us to our goal, unless we continuously and to our utmost calling cling to the commandments of Christ. (95)

When, as I have said, a shadow of a likeness to the Gethsemane prayer is granted him, man transcends the boundaries of his own individuality and enters into a new form of being - personal being in the likeness of Christ. By participating in the suffering of His Divine love, we, too, in spirit can experience a little of His death and the power of His resurrection. (95)

Part 2, Chapter 1 - The Jesus Prayer

Great is the Name I AM; great the Name of the Holy Trinity; great also the Name of Jesus whose content is inexhaustible. (107)

The Name Jesus as His proper Name is ontologically connected with Him. For us it is the bridge between ourselves and Him. It is the channel through which divine strength comes to us. Proceeding from the All-Holy, it is holy and we are sanctified by invoking it. With this Name and through this Name our prayer acquires a certain objective form or significance: it unites us with God. It it, in this Name, God is present, as in a vessel full of fragrance. Through it God becomes perceptibly immanent in the world. (107-108)

There is nothing automatic or “magic” about the Jesus Prayer. Unless we labour to keep His commandments, we call upon His Name in vain. (110)

Thus is it with the Name of Christ Jesus. Gradually, our interest captured, we uncover fresh aspects of Him through His Name; and are ourselves impregnated with the reality, the knowledge contained in His Name. And this knowledge is essential to eternal life, as He said: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent (John 17.3)  (111)

Part 2, Chapter 2 - The JESUS PRAYER: Method

Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (113)

First, it is a verbal matter: we way the prayer with our lips trying to concentrate our attention on the Name and the words. Next, we no longer move our lips but pronounce the Name of Jesus Christ, and what follows after, in our minds, mentally. In the third stage mind and heart combine to act together: the attention of the mind is centered in the heart and the prayer is said there. Fourthly, the prayer becomes self-propelling. This happens when the prayer is confirmed in the heart and, with no especial effort on our part, continues there, where the mind is concentrated. Finally, the prayer, so full of blessing, starts to act like a gentle flame within us, as inspiration from on High, rejoicing the heart with a sensation of divine love and delighting the mind in spiritual contemplation. This last state is sometimes accompanied by a vision of Light. (113)

A gradual ascent into prayer is the most trustworthy. (114)

The practice of mental prayer may for a while be associated with the hesychastic method - in other words, it may take the form of rhythmic or a-rhythmic articulation of the prayer as described above, by breathing in during the first half and breathing out during the second part. This can be genuinely helpful if one does not lose sight of the fact that every invocation of the Name of Christ must be inseparably coupled with a consciousness of Christ Himself. (114)

We must never seek to hurry in our ascetic striving. It is essential to discard any idea of achieving the maximum in the shortest possible time. God does not force us but neither can we compel Him to anything whatsoever. Results obtained by artificial means do not last long and, more importantly, do not unite our spirit with the Spirit of the Living God. (114)

In advising against being carried away by artificial practices such as transcendental meditation I am but repeating the age-old message of the Church, as expressed by St. Paul: “Exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” (115) - quoting from 1 Tim 4

He is deluded who endeavors to divest himself mentally of all that is transitory and relative in order to cross some invisible threshold, to realise his eternal origin, his identity with the Source of all that exists; in order to return and merge with Him, the Nameless trans-personal Absolute. Such exercises have enabled many to rise to supra-rational contemplation of being; to experience mystical trepidation; to know the state of silence of the mind, when mind does beyond the boundaries of time and space. In such-like states man may feel the peacefulness of being withdrawn from the continually changing phenomena of the visible world; may even have a certain experience of eternity. But the God of Truth, the Living God, is not in all this. It is man’s own beauty, created in the image of God, that is contemplated and seen as Divinity, whereas he himself continues within the confines of his creatureliness. This is a vastly important concern. The tragedy of the matter lies in the fact that man sees a mirage which, in his longing for eternal life, he mistakes for a genuine oasis. This impersonal form of ascetics leads finally to an assertion of divine principle in the very nature of man. Man is then drawn to the idea of self-deification - the cause of the original fall. The man who is blinded by the imaginary majesty of what he contemplates has in fact set his foot on the path to self-destruction. He has discarded the revelation of a Personal God. (115-116)

Our prayer must always be personal, face to Face. (116)

I have lingered on the dogmatic justification for the Jesus Prayer largely because in the last decade or so the practice of this prayer has been distorted into a so-called “Christian yoga” and mistaken for “transcendental meditation.” Every culture, not only every religious culture, is concerned with ascetic exercises. If a certain similarity either in their practice or their outward manifestations, or even their mystical formulation, can be discerned, that does not at all imply that they are alike fundamentally. Outwardly similar situations can be vastly different in inner content. (119)

Through prayer in the Name of Jesus in its ultimate realisation unites man with Christ fully, the human hypostasis is not obliterated, is not lost in Divine Being like a drop of water in the ocean. “I am the light of the world . . . I am the truth and the life” (John 8:12; 14:6). For the Christian - Being, Truth, Life are not “what” but “who”. (119-120)

To acquire prayer is to acquire eternity. When the body lies dying, the cry “Jesus Christ” becomes the garment of the soul; when the brain no longer functions and other prayers are difficult to remember, in the light of the divine knowledge that proceeds from the Name our spirit will rise into life incorruptible. (120)

Part 2, Chapter 3 - The JESUS PRAYER as the Prayer for all Conditions of Man

When the Jesus Prayer with all its theological content is so grafted on to our heart and mind, it can replace all other prayers. Thus, we may well be concerned with our own condition, and then we pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner.” On another occasion, it is nearest and dearest to us who preoccupy our thoughts, and we cry, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us.” (In praying for other people, we do not speak of “us sinners”, since I may only confess that I myself am a sinner - it is for God alone to judge other people.) Perhaps we are troubled about events concerning our fellow citizens, our country, the world at large. And then we implore, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us and upon Thy whole world.” (121-122)

Prayer in the Name of Jesus gradually unites us with Him. (122)

For the practice of prayer to lead to the results of which our fathers and instructors speak with such rapture, it is essential to follow their teaching, which stipulates, firstly, complete faith in Christ as God and Savior, and, secondly, recognition that we are in mortal danger. The humbler our opinion of ourselves, the more swiftly our prayers rise to God. (123)

The Jesus Prayer will incline us to find each human being unique, the one for whom Christ was crucified. Where there is great love the heart necessarily suffers and feels pity for every creature in particular for man; but our inner peace remains secure, even when all is confusion in the world outside. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon us and upon Thy world. (127)

Love that is directed towards the world is inevitably subject to vicissitudes, constantly affected by the shifts in the surrounding scene. Liturgical prayer uses appropriate working for its vision but in private prayer we may keep to the one formula: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us and upon Thy world. (127)

Eternal Life in the bosom of the Holy Trinity is the root-meaning of the New Testament summons. Our urgent need is to conquer sin which strikes death into our hearts. Not everyone by a long way responds entirely to the Divine appeal. But there have been not a few witnesses in the past, as there are in the present, to declare that hardly has the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit touched our hearts before all our difficulties and suffering appear quite insignificant compared with the opulence of the gift, and in an indemonstrable but very real fashion we realise that we have passed from death into divine eternity. Christ is risen from the dead. By His death He overcame death; And to us He has given eternal life. (128)