Concerning Life in Obedience to an Elder

What has been said of solitude and reclusion must also be said of obedience to elders in the form in which it was practised in ancient monasticism - such obedience is not given to our time.

Saint Cassian of Rome says that the Egyptian Fathers, among whom monasticism especially flourished and produced astonishing fruits, "affirm that it is good to give spiritual direction and to be directed by those who are really wise, and they state that this is a very great gift and grace of the Holy Spirit."

An indispensable condition of such submission is a Spirit bearing guide, who by the will of the Spirit can mortify the fallen will of the person subject to him in the Lord, and can mortify all the passions as well. Man’s fall and corrupt will implies a tendency to all the passions. It is obvious that the mortification of a fallen will, which is effected so sublimely and victoriously by the will of the Spirit of God, cannot be accomplished by a director’s fallen will when the director himself is still enslaved to the passions.

‘If you wish to renounce the world and learn the life of the Gospel,’ said St. Symeon the New Theologian to the monks of his time, ‘do not surrender (entrust) yourself to an inexperienced or passionate master, lest instead of the life of the Gospel you learn a diabolic life. For the teaching of good teachers is good, while the teaching of bad teachers is bad. Bad seeds invariably produce bad fruits. Every blind man who undertakes to guide others is a deceiver or quack, and those who follow him are cast into the pit of destruction according to the word of the Lord, If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a hole (Mat. 15:14).

Those elders who take upon themselves the role - we use this unpleasant word which properly belongs to the language of the world in order to explain more exactly a matter which is essentially nothing less than soul-destroying acting and the most deplorable comedy - elders who take upon themselves the role of the ancient holy Elders without having their spiritual gifts should know that their very intention, their very thoughts and ideas concerning the great monastic activity of obedience, are false; let them know that their very outlook or way of thinking, their reason or understanding and their knowledge, are self-deception and diabolic delusion which cannot fail to give birth to a corresponding fruit in the person guided by them. Their wrong and defective attitude can only for a time remain unnoticed by the inexperienced beginner under their direction, if this beginner has but a little understanding and occupies himself with holy reading with the pure intention of finding salvation. In due time it is bound to be discovered and this unpleasant discovery will lead to a most unpleasant separation, to most unpleasant relations between the elder and his disciple and to the spiritual derangement and confusion of both.

It is a terrible business, out of self-opinion and on one’s own authority, to take upon oneself duties which can be carried out only by order of the Holy Spirit and by the action of the Spirit. It is a terrible thing to pretend to be a vessel of the Holy Spirit, when all the while, relations with satan have not been broken and the vessel is still being defiled by the action of satan! It is disastrous both for oneself and one’s neighbour; it is criminal in God’s sight, blasphemous.

It will be useless to point out to us that Saint Zachariah, who was living in obedience to an inexperienced elder, his natural father Karion, attained to monastic perfection, or that Saint Acacius found salvation while living with a cruel elder who drove his disciple with inhuman floggings to an untimely grave. Both were in obedience to incompetent elders, but they were guided by the counsels of Spirit-bearing Fathers and the most edifying examples which were in abundance before their eyes. Therefore, they could only have remained in outward obedience to their elders. These cases are outside the general rule and order. ‘The mode of action of Divine Providence,’ said St. Isaac the Syrian, ‘is completely different from the common human order. You should keep the common order.’

Perhaps you retort: A novice’s faith can take the place of an incompetent elder.

It is untrue. Faith in the truth saves. Faith in a lie and in diabolic delusion is ruinous, according to the teaching of the Apostle. They refused to love the truth that would save them, he says of those who are voluntarily perishing. Therefore, God will send them (will permit them to suffer) a strong delusion, so that they will believe a lie, that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth but delight in falsehood. (2 Thess. 2:10-12)

"Let it be to you according to your faith," said the Lord, the Truth itself, to two blind men and He healed them of their blindness. Falsehood and hypocrisy has not the right to repeat the words of Truth itself for the justification of its criminal conduct: whereby liars and hypocrites subvert their neighbours.

There have been instances (they are very, very rare) when faith, by the special providence of God, has operated through sinners and achieved the salvation of these sinners. In Egypt, the robber chief Flavian, intending to rob a certain women’s convent, put on the monastic habit and went to the convent. The nuns took him for one of the holy Fathers, conducted him to the church and asked him to offer prayers for them to God, which Flavian did against his will and to his own amazement. Then food was set before him. After finishing his meal, the nuns washed his feet. In the convent one of the sisters was blind and deaf. The nuns brought her and gave her some of the water to drink with which the stranger’s feet had been washed. The patient was immediately healed. The nuns glorified God and the holy life of the strange monk, and they spread the news of the miracle that had taken place. The grace of God descended upon the robber chief. He offered repentance and was changed from a chief of robbers into a renowned father.

In the life of St. Theodore, Bishop of Edessa, we read that a harlot, forced by her desperate partner Ader, offered a prayer to God for her dead son, and that the child arose at the harlot’s prayer. Terrified at what had happened, the harlot at once left her sinful life, entered a monastery, and by an ascetic life attained to holiness.

Instances of this kind are exceptions. As we contemplate them, we shall act correctly if we wonder at the ways of Providence and the inscrutable judgments of God and are strengthened in faith and hope. We shall act very wrongly if we take these instances as models for imitation. As our guide to conduct we have been given by God himself the Law of God, that is to say Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers. The Apostle Paul says decisively: "We command you, brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to separate yourselves from every brother whose conduct is disorderly and not in accordance with the tradition you received from us." (2 Thess. 3:6) By a tradition here is meant the moral tradition of the Church. It is expounded in Sacred Scripture and in the writings of the holy Fathers.

St. Poemen the Great ordered that a penitent should immediately break with an elder if living with him proved to be harmful to the soul. Evidently this meant that the elder in question was breaking the moral tradition of the Church. It is another matter when no harm is done to the soul, and one is only disturbed by thoughts. Disturbing thoughts are obviously diabolic. We must not yield to them. They operate just where we receive spiritual profit, which is what the demons want to snatch from us.

Monastic obedience in the form and character in which it was practised by the monks of old is a lofty spiritual mystery. Its attainment and full imitation has become impossible for us. We can only examine it reverently and intelligently and appropriate its spirit. We show right judgment and evince salutary intelligence when, in reading about the rules and experiences of the ancient Fathers and of their obedience - equally amazing both in the directors and in those who were being directed - we see at the present time a general decline of Christianity and recognize that we are unfit to inherit the legacy of the Fathers in its fullness, and in all its abundance. It is a great mystery of God, a great blessing for us, that it is left to us to feed on the crumbs that fall from the spiritual table of the Fathers. These crumbs are not the most satisfying food, but they can prevent spiritual death, though not without a feeling of need and hunger and nostalgia.