Elder Vasileios of Iveron: The Spiritual Life Is Interesting Because It Is Dangerous

The spiritual life is interesting because it is dangerous. At any moment the last can become first and the first last.

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Great are not the noise-makers who raise themselves as spiritual leaders or prophets, to amaze and to asphyxiate the world. Great is the humble and "nonexistent", who have received the supplication of the Spirit and are the consolation of the world. 

Grace is enough for them. And this they emit perpetually with the radiance that endlessly feeds from the contrition of the heart and the feeling that they have polluted the land with their presence. For they themselves are a blessing for all creation while they live and though they may pass, because the Holy Spirit gives meaning and reason to their presence and absence.

On the other hand, once you believe that you are something in virtue or knowledge, then you lose everything and you become polluted, regardless of whether you - or others - think that you are a model of virtue and the renewal of spiritual life.

That which is possessed by the Saints are not human talents or qualities: wisdom, poetry or rhetoric. But all these they sanctified by offering them to God. And through them is manifested the Grace that comforts and deifies humanity.


My comment: 

Spiritual life is an adventure, it's a Church-wide journey into the life-changing Word of God.

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Elder Vasileios (Gontikakis) - (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Archimandrite Vasileios Gontikakis

ARCHIMANDRITE VASILEIOS (Gontikakis) is the head of the Iveron Monastery on Mount Athos . Previously, he was Abbot of the Stavronikita monastery.

He is the author of a well-known book translated into English under the title Hymn Of Entry (SVS Press).

Vasileios is sometimes numbered amongst a new generation of Orthodox theologians such as Metropolitan John Zizioulas, Christos Yannaras, Panagiotis Nellas etc..

But perhaps a more enlightening grouping finds him alongside Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi and others who have continued a revival among the monasteries of Mount Athos begun by such as Joseph the Hesychast (1898-1959) and St Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938).

Hymn Of Entry is remarkable in many ways, but perhaps for two prominent themes above all.

One is that “theology” is liturgical, and incarnational, that is to say, that theology is about living people at prayer, not abstract ideas.

"Today, by contrast, we often take theology out of the theanthropic mystery of the Church in which it was sung by the Fathers. We transfer it to the field of mere academic discussions, where each person, remaining an individual, an isolated authority, states his opinion and goes his way. The resultant “theology”, however, is not the very theology of the Church. If we disincarnate theology and transfer it, as a mere opinion, to a round table for discussion, it is wrong and untenable to say that this is “the truth”. (p. 32)"

The notable other theme (intimately connected with the first) is that the true monk – and by extension the true Christian – is a person from whom a heavenly peace and spiritual fragrance constantly radiates out to his fellow men.

"HE is a day of sunshine and of calm; a well of purity and fruitful virginity. His whole body, as it were, forms a laugh of silent joy. Gentleness and radiance flow from him. Like a cool and clear day in spring when the breeze is full of the scents of new life, so his words are full of the fragrance which comes from the flower-covered valleys of his heart, the slopes of his sacred and light-bearing reflections."

We understand, then, that every true theologian studies not in order to know more, but in order to love better. Such “theology” takes place not in a seminar room, but in the Body of Christ and in the house of the Lord. It does not draw attention to him, as an expert, but to those around him, as his joy.

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