During Great Lent it is a profitable practice to put away worldly reading and entertainment and instead increase our reading of the Scripture and other spiritual works by the holy fathers and mothers. However, such a pursuit requires our spiritual attention and care so that we are not led astray by the devil even in pursuing this laudable activity. Following is a selection of writings relating to spiritual study and spiritual reading taken from a number of sources. These selections are drawn from a compilation originally put together by the nuns of the Skete of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Moss Beach, California in 1993 called “A Guide to Spiritual Study.”
On those who think they are made righteous by works – St. Mark the Ascetic
Even though knowledge is true, it is still not firmly established if unaccompanied by works. For everything is established by being put into practice.
Often our knowledge becomes darkened because we fail to put things into practice. For when we have totally neglected to practice something, our memory of it will gradually disappear.
Grace has been given mystically to those who have been baptized into Christ; and it becomes active within them to the extent that they actively observe the commandments. Grace never ceases to help us secretly; but to do good – as far as lies in our power – depends on us.
On discretion in reading the patristic books in monastic (Christian) life – St. Ignatii Brianchaninoff in The Arena
The books of the holy Fathers on the monastic (Christian) life must be read with great caution. It has been noticed that novices (laymen) can never adapt books to their condition, but are invariably drawn by the tendency of the book. If a book gives counsels in silence and shows the abundance of spiritual fruits that are gathered in profound silence, the beginner invariably has the strongest desire to go off into solitude, to an uninhabited desert. If a book speaks of unconditional obedience under the direction of a spirit-bearing father, the beginner will inevitably develop a desire for the strictest life in complete submission to an elder.
God has not given to our time either of these two ways of life. But the books of the holy Fathers describing these states can influence a beginner so strongly that out of inexperience and ignorance he can easily decide to leave the place where he is living (his parish) and where he has every convenience to work out his salvation and make spiritual progress by putting into practice the spiritual commandments, for an impossible dream of a perfect life pictured vividly and alluringly in his imagination.
St. John of the Ladder says in his chapter on Silence: “In the refectory of a good brotherhood there is always some dog watching to snatch from the table a piece of bread, that is, a soul; and taking it in its mouth, it then runs off and devours it in a lonely spot.”
In the chapter on Obedience this guide of monks says: “The devil suggests to those living in obedience a desire for impossible virtues. Similarly to those living in solitude he suggests unsuitable ideas. Scan the mind of the inexperienced novices (laymen) , and there you will find distracted thought: a desire for solitude, for the strictest fast, for uninterrupted prayer, for absolute freedom from vanity, for unbroken remembrance of death, for continual compunction, for perfect angerlessness, for profound silence, for surpassing purity. And if by divine providence they lack these in the beginning, they rush in vain to another life and are deceived. For the enemy urges them to seek these perfections before the time, so that they may not persevere and in due time attain them. But to those living in solitude the fraud extols hospitality, service, brotherly love, community life, visiting the sick. And the deceiver’s aim is to make the latter as impatient as the former.”
The fallen angel tries to deceive monks (Christians) and drag them to perdition by suggesting to them not only sin in its various forms but also the most exalted virtues unsuited to their condition. Do not trust your thoughts, opinions, dreams, impulses or inclinations, even though they offer you or put before you in an attractive guise the most holy monastic (Christian) life. If the monastery (parish) in which you are residing gives you the possibility of living a life according to the commandments of the Gospel … do not leave your monastery (parish). Endure courageously its defects, both spiritual and material. Do not think you can find a sphere of activity not given by God to our time.
How to read the Holy Fathers – Orthodox Word #60 1975
The Blessed Elder Macarius of Optina (+1860) found it necessary to write a special “Warning to those reading spiritual Patristic books and desiring to practice the mental Prayer of Jesus”. Here this great Father almost of our own century tells us clearly what our attitude should be to these spiritual states: “The holy and God-bearing Fathers wrote about great spiritual gifts not so that anyone might strive indiscriminately to receive them, but so that those who do not have them, hearing about such exalted gifts and revelations which were received by those who were worthy, might acknowledge their own profound infirmity and great insufficiency, and might involuntarily be inclined to humility, which is more necessary for those seeking salvation than all other words and virtues.” Again, St. John of the Ladder (6th century) writes: “Just as a pauper, seeing the royal treasures, all the more acknowledges his own poverty; so also the spirit, reading the accounts of the great deeds of the Holy Fathers, involuntarily is all the more humbled in its way of thought (Step 26:25).” Thus, our first approach to the writings of the Holy Fathers must be one of humility.
Again, different Patristic books on the spiritual life are suitable for Orthodox Christians in different conditions of life: that which is suitable especially for solitaries is not directly applicable to monks living the common life; that which applies to monks in general will not be directly relevant for laymen; and in every condition, the spiritual food which is suitable for those with some experience may be entirely indigestible for beginners. Once one has achieved a certain balance in spiritual life by means of active practice of God’s commandments within the discipline of the Orthodox Church, by fruitful reading of the more elementary writings of the Holy Fathers, and by spiritual guidance from living fathers – then one can receive much spiritual benefit, from all the writings of the Holy Fathers, applying them to one’s own condition of life.
One test of whether our reading of the Holy Fathers is academic or real is indicated by St. Barasnuphius in his answer to a novice who found that he became haughty and proud when speaking of the Holy Fathers (Answer no. 697): “When you converse about the life of the Holy Fathers and about their answers, you should condemn yourself, saying: Woe is me! How can I speak of the virtues of the Fathers, while I myself have acquired nothing like that and have not advanced at all? And I live, instructing others for their benefit; how can there not be fulfilled in me the word of the Apostle: ‘Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?’ (Rom 2:21).” Thus, one’s constant attitude toward the teaching of the Holy Fathers must be one of self-reproach.
Finally, we must remember that the whole purpose of reading the Holy Fathers is, not to give us some kind of spiritual enjoyment or confirm us in our own righteousness or superior knowledge or contemplative state, but solely to aid us in the practice of the active path of virtue. Many of the Holy Fathers discuss the distinction between the active and the contemplative (noetic) life, and it should be emphasized here that this does not refer, as one might think, to any artificial distinction between those leading the ordinary life of outward Orthodoxy or mere good deeds, and an inward life cultivated only by monastics (or the clergy) or some intellectual elite; not at all. There is only one Orthodox spiritual life, and it is lived by every Orthodox struggler, whether monastic or layman, whether beginner or advanced; action or practice (praxis) is the end. Almost all the Patristic writing refers to the life of action, not the life of vision; when the latter is mentioned, it is to remind us of the goal of our labors and struggles, which in this life is tasted deeply only by a few of the great Saints, but in its fullness is known only in the age to come.
Zeal not according to knowledge (Romans 10:2) – Orthodox Word, #65, 1975
There is also a quite unspectacular form of “zeal not according to knowledge” which can be more of a danger to the ordinary serious Orthodox Christian, because it can lead him astray in his personal spiritual life without being revealed by any of the more obvious signs of spiritual deception. This is a danger especially for new converts, for novices in monasteries – and, in a word, for everyone whose zealotry is young, largely untested by experience, and untempered by prudence.
This kind of zeal is the product of the joining together of two basic attitudes. First, there is the high idealism which is inspired especially by accounts of desert-dwelling, severe ascetic exploits, exalted spiritual states. This idealism in itself is good, and it is characteristic of all true zealotry for spiritual life; but in order to be fruitful it must be tempered by actual experience of the difficulties of spiritual struggle, and by the humility born of this struggle if it is genuine. Without this tempering it will lose contact with the reality of spiritual life and be made fruitless by following – to cite again the words of (Saint) Bishop Ignatii – “an impossible dream of a perfect life pictured vividly and alluringly in his imagination.” To make this idealism fruitful one must find out how to follow the counsel of (Saint) Bishop Ignatii: “Do not trust your thoughts, opinion, dreams, impulses or inclination, even though they offer you or put before you in an attractive guise the most holy monastic life.” (The Arena).
Second, there is joined to this deceptive idealism, especially in our rationalistic age, an extremely critical attitude applied to whatever does not measure up to the novice’s impossibly high standard. This is the chief cause of the disillusionment which often strikes converts and novices (and overzealous laymen) after their first burst of enthusiasm for Orthodoxy or monastic life has faded away. This disillusionment is a sure sign that their approach to spiritual life and to the reading of the Holy Fathers has been one-sided, with an over-emphasis on abstract knowledge that puffs one up, and a lack of emphasis or total unawareness of the pain of heart which must accompany spiritual struggle. This is the case with the novice who discovers that the rule of fasting in the monastery he has chosen does not measure up to that which he has read about among the desert Fathers, or that the Typicon of Divine Services is not followed to the letter, or that his spiritual father has human failings like everyone else and is not actually a God-bearing Elder; but this same novice is the very first one who would collapse in a short while under a rule of fasting or a Typicon unsuited to our spiritually feeble days, and who finds it impossible to offer the trust to his spiritual father without which he cannot be spiritually guided at all. People living in the world can find exact parallels to this monastic situation in new converts (or overzealous laymen) in Orthodox parishes today.
The reading of the Holy Fathers is, indeed, an indispensable thing for the one who values his salvation and wishes to work it out with fear and trembling; but one must come to this reading in a practical way so as to make maximum use of it.
