Who are the elders?
“Who are the elders?” - this question may arise for anyone who has recently come to the Church. Because when communicating with parishioners, he will often hear: “And the elder said this... And the elder predicted... And the elders warned in former times...” Who are these people - the elders - whose word enjoys such authority among church people, whose names are well known to every Orthodox believer, whose memory is passed on with gratitude from generation to generation.
Throughout our land, on the eve of the revolutionary upheavals and during the terrible years of the “war with God,” holy ascetics prayed for the people, and in our days - praise and thanksgiving to the Lord - there are still no shortage of intercessors for the people on our land - those about whom the Lord spoke : “I no longer call you slaves, but friends,” those whose prayers He “listens day and night” and to whom He reveals His will. One of the first in modern times to write about eldership was I.M. Kontsevich, and now he is revered as a “classic of the genre.” His famous book “Optina Pustyn and Its Time” begins with a comprehensive chapter “Definition of the concept of eldership.” We will quote excerpts from it.
“The Apostle Paul, regardless of hierarchy, lists three ministries in the Church: apostolic, prophetic and teaching.
Directly behind the apostles are the prophets. Their ministry consists mainly of edification, exhortation and comfort.
(1 Cor. 14:3). For this very purpose, as well as for guidance or warning, prophets predict future events.
Through the prophet the will of God is directly revealed, and therefore his authority is unlimited.
Prophetic ministry is a special grace-filled gift of the Holy Spirit (charisma). The prophet has a special spiritual vision - perspicacity. For him, the boundaries of space and time seem to be expanding; with his spiritual gaze, he sees not only ongoing events, but also future ones, he sees the soul of a person, his past and future.
Such a high calling cannot but be associated with a high moral level, purity of heart, and personal holiness...
The prophetic ministry, associated with personal holiness, flourished with the rise of the life of the Church and declined in periods of decline. It manifested itself most clearly in the monastic eldership.
The influence of the elders spread far beyond the walls of the monastery. The elders cared for not only the monks, but also the laity. Possessing the gift of foresight, they edified everyone, exhorted and consoled, healed from spiritual and physical illnesses, warned against dangers, showed the path of life, revealing the will of God. <…>
Those who have surrendered themselves entirely to the guidance of a true elder experience a special feeling of joy and freedom in the Lord. The writer of these lines personally experienced this. The elder is a direct conductor of the will of God. Communication with God is always associated with a feeling of spiritual freedom, joy, and indescribable peace in the soul. On the contrary, the false elder replaces God with himself, putting his own will in place of God’s will, which is associated with a feeling of slavery, oppression and, almost always, despondency... The true relationship of the elder to the disciple is called in asceticism a spiritual sacrament; it is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. <…>
So, the gracious elder, who through personal experience has gone through the school of sobriety and intelligent-heart prayer and, thanks to this, has studied spiritual-psychic laws to perfection and has personally achieved dispassion, from now on becomes able to guide the novice monk in his “invisible warfare” on the path to dispassion. He must penetrate to the very depths of the human soul, see the very origin of evil, the causes of this origin, clarify the diagnosis of the disease and indicate the exact method of treatment. The elder is a skilled spiritual doctor. He must clearly see the structure of his student, the character of his soul and the degree of his spiritual development. He must certainly possess the gift of reasoning and “discernment of spirits,” since he always has to deal with evil, striving to transform into the Angel of Light. But, as someone who has achieved dispassion, the elder usually possesses other gifts: clairvoyance, miracles, prophecy.
Eldership at its highest levels, such as St. Seraphim of Sarov receives complete freedom in his manifestations and actions, not limited by any boundaries, since it is no longer he who lives, but Christ lives in him (Gal. 2:20)…
Eldership is not a hierarchical degree in the Church, it is a special kind of holiness, and therefore can be inherent in everyone. An elder could be a monk without any spiritual degrees, as Father Barnabas of Gethsemane was at first. An elder can be a bishop: for example, Ignatius (Brianchaninov), or Anthony of Voronezh - the great contemporary of St. Seraphim. Among the priests we will name St. John of Kronstadt, Fr. Egor Chekryakovsky. Finally, a woman can also serve as an elder, such as the perspicacious blessed Praskovya Ivanovna in Christ, the holy fool of Diveyevo, without whose advice nothing was done in the monastery.
True eldership is a special gift of grace - charisma - direct guidance by the Holy Spirit, a special type of holiness.
While all members of the Church are required to obey ecclesiastical authority, elder authority is not compulsory for anyone. The elder never imposes himself on anyone, submission to him is always voluntary, but having found a true, gracious elder and submitted to him, the student must unquestioningly obey him in everything, because through the latter the will of God is revealed directly. It is also not obligatory for anyone to ask an elder, but having asked for advice or direction, one must certainly follow it, because any deviation from God’s clear instructions through the elder entails punishment.”
Eldership in Rus' flourished already in ancient times - this is evidenced by the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon. And in Ukraine, and in the north of Rus', in the “heart of Orthodoxy” - the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and its monasteries, in the Glinsk Hermitage, and in a variety of cities and villages unknown to the general public, the grace-filled service of the elderly flourished - consolation, admonition, insight, healing . This was the case before the revolutionary hard times, and this was also the case during the decades of persecution of the Orthodox faith.
The Lord protected His chosen ones - after the war, the Valaam elders returned from Finland and settled in the Pskov-Pechersky monastery, Elder Tavrion, who returned from the camps, settled in the Riga Hermitage, one of the last Optina residents, Elder Sebastian, lived in distant Karaganda, after the war the Glinsk Hermitage with its elders flourished , Elder Bishop Afanasy (Sakharov) lived in Vladimir, and Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky) lived in Simferopol; Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev) lived in Kiev under the image of the holy fool “Uncle Kolya”; Bishop Nicholas (Vladika) traveled in Alma-Ata; Elder Sampson (Sievers) traveled ), Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov) moved to Pechory to retire; St. Kuksha, St. Lawrence, Elder Theodosius. The list can be continued, but how many not so famous ascetics were there who carried out the service of elders during the years of hard times - both the last Optina monks who settled in Kozelsk next to the monastery and somewhere else in remote places of our homeland, and the “parish monks” who were for the collective farm village as a beacon of “Holy Rus'”, a reminder of it. They brought the quiet light of eldership (“the voice of the cold is thin”) to our time - already our generation was given Elder Nikolai (Guryanov), Elder John (Krestyankin), Elder Kirill (Pavlov), Elder Adrian (Kirsanov). The last three priests are still alive, and now there are other elders who console, admonish, and heal the people, but do not allow their names to be divulged. “Golden chain of holiness” - this is the image we find among the holy fathers. In the Christian, in the Orthodox confession, it is very important to preserve the spirit of continuity; the elders passed on their disciples to other elders “from one generation to another.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, priest Sergius Mansurov compiled a visual table of grace-filled succession. In the explanation to it, he writes: “In each generation, we indicate the names of those people in and around whom the spiritual life of this generation is always more clearly visible. These people sanctified the path of their contemporaries, revealed to them the will of God by example and word, around them and through them everything that was eternal and Divine in the Church was built. These are the pillars and affirmations of the church. Everything that is sung, contemplated, read as true and performed as true, is revered as sacred in Orthodoxy - all Church Tradition is connected with these names... The one grace-filled life flows unchangeably. Frozen in one place, it flares up in another, sometimes spreading wider, sometimes concentrating in a small circle of people, but it never dries up, being renewed and renewed in every generation of those who respond to the call of truth.”
Miracle is not useful for everyone
“They say that the world rests on the elders and their prayer.” Is this true or rather a cliché?
— A Russian proverb says that a city cannot stand without a saint, but a village cannot stand without a righteous man. This can be seen even in everyday life: there is a person on whom the school rests, and it is not necessarily the director; there is a person in charge of the parish - and this is not necessarily the rector. In both cases it could be Aunt Masha, the cleaning lady, who simply greets everyone kindly and quietly prays for everyone.
At the same time, it is very clearly felt how shaky and fragile everything in our life is; at one moment everything can collapse. And the Lord preserves the world with His mercy through the prayers of His saints: some of them are already in Heaven, and others still live on earth and make their way of ascension.
Elder Damascene Rosary
- Where then does the opinion come from that there are no elders in our time?
- Partly because a person wants to see in the old man some kind of, roughly speaking, magician who, with the wave of a magic wand, will solve all his problems. And, not finding something like this, people say: “No, I won’t listen to someone who tells me to do something, to work, I need a seer, a miracle worker! There are no such things nowadays...”
We must understand that not everyone benefits from a miracle - most often we need to roll up our sleeves and solve problems ourselves. If your garden is overgrown, and there are no tractors in this village that would clear it, you will have to take a shovel and hoe and do the work yourself. And if a miracle tractor does all the work for you, then you yourself will become lazy, your life will become simple, but not good.
In the days of old
The emergence of elder ministry—the care of disciples who come to him for spiritual advice by an experienced ascetic—coincides with the birth of monasticism. The founder of monasticism is considered to be St. Anthony the Great (253–356). The exploits of this saint shocked people so much that many secular works of speech and painting are dedicated to him, but they primarily depict the period of his hermit’s life, which is designated by the now popular expression “the temptations of St. Anthony.” We are interested in the time when, having endured twenty years of trial, the saint enters public service - he becomes a mentor and spiritual father of many people who try to imitate this ascetic. St. Anthony founded the monastery of Prisper and several other monastic communities in Egypt. Almost at the same time, a monastic settlement of the Nitrian desert was created south of Alexandria. Its founder was Rev. Ammon. Another great saint of antiquity is St. Macarius of Egypt founded a monastic settlement around 330, called “Skete”. Another center of monastic life in Egypt arose around St. Pachomius the Great in the middle of the 4th century in Tavenisi. The expression we are using now “emerged around” can be applied to any monastery that arose in ancient times. When some ascetic reached a high degree of dispassion (that is, he conquered the main human passion - pride, and other passions), then disciples began to gather around him, and so a “monastic family” was formed, where there was a spiritual father and his “children of obedience.” And such a father possessed all of the above-mentioned charismatic gifts of elder service and, of course, deserved the title “elder.”
The numbers that are given in all historical works on the history of ancient, primitive monasticism are amazing. In each of the Egyptian monasteries, several thousand monks labored. Monasteries, which originally arose in the desert, flourished in cities and were also populous. So, for example, in the city of Oxyrhynchus there were 20 thousand nuns, in the city of Antinoe there were 12 women’s monasteries. Historians call this phenomenon “the triumphal procession of monasticism in Egypt.”
For believers, what is important for all centuries is not external triumphs, but those inimitable images of asceticism that the ancient “Fatherland” or “Paterikon” and “Memorable Legends” have preserved for us. Let me make a personal confession: at the “dawn of foggy youth,” when the author of these lines was just beginning to get acquainted with the “treasury of the church,” it was the stories about these ancient fathers, their short teachings that became the guideline for the search for “simplicity without diversity,” which is the basis of the present spiritual life, and not just bookish dreams.
Spiritual books were rare then; we lent “Fatherland” to each other to read and made extracts from it of short stories about the “fathers of the desert” - the fathers of all Christian asceticism and the founders of the elder ministry. Let us preface our “quotation book” with an epigraph from V.V. Rozanova: “Now they can’t come up with the shortest prayer, but then they flowed in bunches, flowed incessantly, from the lips of the darkest people. There was a different heart. Another mind. We have moved, the planet has moved into bad constellations... Everything is gray, dim, people have become small. How can we not listen to what remains of other, happy centuries of the planet, when man felt golden, felt holy, close to the stars and God. Thank God that these words have been preserved and written down..."
“Abba Pamva asked Abba Anthony: what should I do? The elder told him: do not rely on your righteousness, do not regret what has passed and bridle your tongue and belly.
He said: life and [spiritual] death depend on one’s neighbor. For if we gain a brother, then we gain God, and if we seduce a brother, then we sin against Christ.
Someone, catching wild animals in the desert, saw that Abba Anthony was joking with his disciples - and was tempted. The elder, wanting to assure him that it is sometimes necessary to give some relief to the brethren, says to him: put an arrow on your bow and draw it. He did so. The elder tells him: pull it further. He still pulled it. Again he says: pull still. The hunter answered him: if I stretch the bow too much, it will break. Then the elder said to him: so it is in the work of God; If we strain the strength of the brothers beyond measure, they will soon be upset. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to give at least some relief.
Abba Anthony said: I no longer fear God, but love Him, for “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).
They said about Abba Arseny that just as at court (when he was the mentor of the children of the Emperor of Byzantium) no one wore richer clothes than him, so in the company of monks no one wore worse clothes than him.
Abba Arseny once asked an Egyptian elder about his thoughts. Another brother, seeing this, said: Abba Arseny! How do you, so knowledgeable in Greek and Roman teachings, ask this commoner about your thoughts? Arseny answered him: I know Roman and Greek teaching, but I have not yet learned the alphabet of this commoner.
The elder used to say to himself: Arseny, why did you leave the world? – After conversations I often repented, but after silence - never.
Abba Matoi said: I would rather wish for myself a task that is easy and lasting than something that is difficult at the beginning but ends soon.
He also said: the closer a person is to God, the more he recognizes himself as a sinner. The prophet Isaiah, seeing God, called himself accursed and unclean (Is. 6:5).
When I was young, I thought to myself: maybe I’m doing something good; When I get old, I see that I don’t have a single good deed in me.
Avva Pimen told. Someone asked Abba Paisius: what should I do with my soul? She is insensitive and does not fear God. The elder answered him: go, cleave to a man who fears God: when you get close to him, you become his disciple, he will teach you to fear God.
Some came to Abba Siso to receive instruction from him, but he did not tell them anything, but only repeated one thing: forgive me!
The brothers asked Abba Sisoes: if a brother falls, is one year enough for him to repent? He answered: this word is cruel! – Is six months enough? - they said. “A lot,” answered the elder. They also asked: is forty days enough? “And that’s a lot,” he answered. - How much? - they say. – If a brother falls, and soon the supper of love (the Sacrament of Communion) will be celebrated, can he come to the supper? “No,” the elder answered them, but he must spend several days in repentance. And I believe that if such a person repents with all his soul, then God will accept him in three days.
The brother asked Abba Pimen: what is faith? “To believe means to live humbly and give alms,” said the elder. He also said: people are perfect only in words, but do very little.
Abba Nilus said: if you want to pray as you should, do not grieve your soul: otherwise you will pray in vain. He also said: blessed is the monk who considers himself worse than everyone else.
Abba Macarius said: if, while reprimanding someone, you become angry, then you are satisfying your passion. Thus, without saving others, you destroy yourself.
Some asked Abba Macarius: how should one pray? The elder answers them: there is no need to talk too much, but they should raise their hands and say: Lord, as You please, and as You know, have mercy! If temptation attacks: Lord, help! “He knows what is good for us and deals with us mercifully.”
Abba John Kolov said: one of the elders, in admiration, had the following vision: three monks stood on one shore of the sea, and from the other a voice came to them, saying: take the wings of fire and come to me. Two of them took it and flew to the other side; but the third remained and wept and shouted bitterly; after that he was given wings, only not of fire, but weak and not strong, so that he plunged into the sea, with difficulty rose again and, after much sorrow, reached the other shore. So the people of this age, although they do not take wings of fire, but only the weak and powerless.
Again the elder spoke to his brother about a soul wanting to repent. In one city there lived a beautiful harlot and had many friends. One ruler of the region came to her and said: promise me to live chastely, and I will take you into marriage. She promised, and he took her and brought her to his house. But her friends looked for her and told them: so-and-so took her into his house. If we go to his house and he finds out, he will punish us; but let's go back home and whistle to her; she will recognize the voice of the whistle and come out to us; then we will no longer be to blame. But the former harlot, hearing the whistle, covered her ears, ran into the inner chambers and locked the doors. “The harlot,” said the elder, “is a soul, its friends are passions and people, its ruler is Christ; inner peace is an eternal abode; those whistling at it are evil demons. This is how a repentant soul always resorts to God!”
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the inspired spiritual writer Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus sang bold praise to the “stars of the desert”: “They have no peace in this world, because they expect it in the next. They wander with the beasts; like birds fly over the mountains. But, wandering through the mountains, they shine like lamps and enlighten with their light everyone who comes to them with zeal... Kings are bored in their palaces, but they have fun in their dungeons. The blessed fathers wear hair shirts, but they rejoice more than those who wear purple... When they are exhausted, they lie down on the ground, as if on a soft bed. They fall asleep a little - and hurry to get up in order to sing the praises of their beloved Christ.” Comparing the holy fathers with the stars of heaven, Nilus recalls the wonderful poem by A.S. Khomyakova:
At the midnight hour near the stream, look at the heavens: Miracles are happening far away in the heavenly world.
The night's faithful lamps are invisible in the brilliance of the day, the masses of unquenchable fire walk there orderly.
But look into them with your eyes - and you will see that in the distance, behind the nearest stars, the stars have disappeared into the night.
Look again - and darkness after darkness will tire your timid gaze: All the stars, all the lights of the blue Abyss burn.
In the hour of midnight silence, having driven away the deceptions of dreams, look with your soul at the Scriptures of the Galilean fishermen, -
And in the volume of the narrow Book, the endless vault of heaven will unfold before you with radiant beauty.
You will see - the stars of thoughts lead their Secret Choir around the earth; Look again - others are rising; Look again: and there in the distance
Stars of thoughts, darkness after darkness, Rise, rise without number... And their lights will light up the dormant darkness of the Heart.
Notes[ | ]
- Elder-Bishop // Newspaper “Blagovest”, September 2, 2016
- Old // Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language: in 4 volumes / author's compilation. V. I. Dal. — 2nd ed. - St. Petersburg. : Printing house of M. O. Wolf, 1880-1882.
- Elena Vasilyeva, archivist of the Joseph-Volotsky Monastery
. The royal godfather (“The Great Elder” Cassian Barefoot). - Anthony (Radivilovsky) Orthodox Encyclopedia
- Hegumen Seraphim (Kuznetsov)
. Women's monastic rules - Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov
. An offering to modern monasticism. Advice regarding spiritual monastic work. Part 2, ch. 13, ch. 12. About living in obedience to an elder
Cave life
According to the customs of Athonite monks, Father Stefan did not wash or comb his hair and beard. And at the same time, according to eyewitnesses, there was no unpleasant odor coming from him. On the contrary, his body smelled fragrant. But the beard turned into something resembling felt.
The hermit lived very ascetically. He ate little and preferred dry eating. In his pockets there was always a handful of dry vermicelli, which he chewed and fed to the birds. On Orthodox holidays, he threw a net into the sea and asked: “Mother of God, send me fish!” - and always had a catch.
To get to his cell, it was necessary to walk along a very steep rocky path, sometimes you had to pull yourself up holding on to a rope. Father Stefan built the cell with his own hands. Over the course of several decades, he erected a temple where he prayed, a small hotel for pilgrims, and outbuildings.
“I carried soil to the garden from afar. I had to walk five thousand times! And he lifted the stones from below, from the pier. I carried it at night. It's cool, the moon is shining, it's good! I was strong. Never been treated."
The elder was known for his theological works. There are several photos of him writing something with a lot of pigeons around him. The birds loved him very much.
Neither heat nor cold bothered the old man. Nothing could break his spirit. Even in the most severe frosts, he continued to live in his cave.
Eyewitnesses said that Father Stefan loved guests. He constantly repeated: “I am rich! I am very rich!”, but he did not mean material benefits, but spiritual ones.
He treated his guests to tea, which he poured from an old, smoked teapot without a handle. He took it out of the fire with his bare hands, and not a single burn appeared on his palms.
Invasion of demons
Father Stefan said that the Mother of God herself appeared to him. But the demonic world also haunted him. Demons were often his guests.
“At first I was afraid of them. And then I think: I have a cross, this is my cell. Why are they walking here? And then I see: forty demons are descending from the mountain towards me. Such as you can see on the icons of the Last Judgment: fire from the mouth, eyes burning. And they come to me. I’m hiding and thinking: I’ll let them get closer.”
As soon as the demons approached, Father Stefan began to baptize them with the cross.
“They run from the cross, get angry and shout: “You damned monks want to take our place!” The demon also sometimes lets it slip... What is the meaning of a person’s life, by and large? To acquire holiness, so that holy human souls will take the place of fallen fallen angels at the Throne of the Lord. Demons are traitors, they have fallen away from God, and they shout at the ascetic: “Do you want to take our place!”
If a person takes the wrong path, then the demons will immediately try to do everything possible to get him to join them. And if he takes the right one, then until the end of his days they will interfere, seduce and tempt him.
