FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS REVIEWS

© 1999

Spiritual Instruction and Discourses, volume 1: The Authentic Seal. By Archimandrite Aimilianos. Ormylia, Halkidiki: Ormylia Publishing, 1999. 400 pages. Price h/b £00.00. ISBN 960-85603-3-0.

In December 1999 forty-six writers--including poets, novelists, historians, literary critics, and philosophers--were asked by the Times Literary Supplement to choose their 'book of the millennium'. The King James Bible came first, followed closely by Shakespeare and Dante. Those who selected the Authorized Version justified their choice by citing the indelible impression it has made on the English language. Some went even further and recalled the common culture with which it endowed past generations of English speakers. All three choices are deeply rooted in a God-infused world, even if those who selected them tended to appreciate them only for their style, psychological perceptions, and emotive force. Another popular book was Darwin’s On the Origin of Species which, together with a smattering of other post-Enlightenment works, represented the current of secularism that ran through what nearly all of these intellectuals had to say. One writer opined that 'if they [people of the third millennium] accomplish this thorough-going secularization … Darwin will be honored for having given his species greater self-reliance and greater self-respect.'

The end of the second millennium has seen the publication of three volumes in Greek by the Archimandrite Aimilianos, formerly Abbot of Simonopetra. They are books none of the TLS’s commentators will have heard of, or even have imagined to exist in this day and age. Now the first volume of the series has been translated into English, a daunting task since the Greek of the Gerontas is subtle and allusive, operating simultaneously on many registers in a way almost impossible in today’s English. In his use of words one hears the echo of countless hours spent in church offices, liturgies, vigils, and refectory meals during which saints’ lives are read aloud. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for its style alone Fr Aimilianos’s work will earn a place as one of the monuments of modern Greek literature. Volume 1 of the Greek edition is indeed prefaced by an essay on the Gerontas’s language by the philologist George Babiniotis, Professor of Linguistics at Athens University. But what makes this book great is, of course, that its style cannot be separated from the ideas conveyed. Spiritual Instruction and Discourses vol. 1: The Authentic Seal presents Fr Aimilianos’s teachings in various different forms--formal documents, published lectures, and transcribed homilies delivered over the course of several decades to his spiritual children. As a message to increasingly secularized human society, these writings could be seen in part as reflections on the deeper meaning of the self in 'self-reliance' and 'self-respect', produced in a world not completely alien from that of Shakespeare and Dante. One of the most important aspects of this book is its profound and adamant witness that this God-infused world still thrives.

The first part of The Authentic Seal assembles writings which help retrace the early progress of the monastic revival in Greece that began in the 1970s. As Abbot of the Great Meteora, Aimilianos was a member of a special committee for the promotion of monasticism in Greece, organized by Archbishop Hieronymos of Athens. Three lectures he delivered in this context between 1970 and 1973 are reprinted here. These are followed by four texts that witness to the growth, both spiritual and material, of monastic revival. First come two addresses made at the inauguration of new communities under Fr Aimilianos’s guidance: the monastic sisterhood at the Monastery of the Saints Theodore at Meteora (the community that would move in 1975 to Ormylia) and the brotherhood newly installed at Simonopetra on the Holy Mountain, where they took refuge from the Meteora's 'Son et Lumière' in 1973. After these, the Gerontas’s introductory essays to the spiritual life of each community are reprinted from Simonopetra and Ormylia, the handsomely illustrated volumes that brought familiarity with these monasteries to a wider public. Finally, the Gerontas’s rule that he designed for the Holy Coenobium of the Annunciation at Ormylia is published in full.

Fr Aimilianos’s writings derive their authority from his many years of experience and reflection, but especially from his deep and conscious rootedness in the biblical and patristic tradition. The revival of Athos in which he played a pivotal role is arguably the most important development in Orthodox monasticism since the Kolybades movement in the eighteenth century. Fr Aimilianos’s writings are a precious record of how this recent revival came about. But their historical significance reaches beyond the particular developments they describe. What we see in these pages is the constant struggle, inherent in the monastic experience across time, to find a balance between episcopal influence and monastic independence, between openness to the world and preservation of silence, between hierarchy and obedience within the community and that 'seemly and legitimate freedom' which enables each monk or nun to 'have the perfect joy of Christ within them'. From this point of view, the first part of The Authentic Seal will be of interest to historians as well as theologians.

The strength of these writings lies in their harmonious fusion of the theory and practice of monastic life. For example, from his personal experience Aimilianos addresses practical issues such as the integration of the older pre-revival Athonites who lived in simple piety and the new generation of monks who often hold advanced degrees and have grown up in a world with increasingly secularized views of the Church and monasticism. The energy that has charged this integration derives from a shared understanding of monasticism as 'an embodiment of the Gospel ideal of tranquillity, cleansing and deification'. The pursuit of this common goal is buttressed by obedience, a quality carefully cultivated in both the public and the private life of the community. While a contentious manner proffers nothing good, 'the monk should not be a spineless creature, without opinions…Education should be encouraged, while obedience should be tempered with discretion, freedom and a great deal of love.' Through his or her education, as with all coenobitic activities, the monastic should aspire to polish his or her 'self' so as to become a 'spotless mirror of God', ready to receive the 'radiance of the Holy Spirit'. Quoting from Gregory the Theologian, Fr Aimilianos describes the coenobium as a community of individuals 'struggling in the solitary and pure life'. The reader comes away with a powerful sense of this solitary effort, the enormous and ceaseless acts of will required not to travel further towards fragmentation, but to be 'drawn by the vision of the Kingdom of God and live with their gaze fixed on precisely this aim of deification'.

The rule describes the denial of the old self that is required for entry into the monastery; the catechesis that follows describes the transformation of the self that is required to enter fully into the presence of God. What one must come to terms with is the mavrila, the blackness, almost sootiness, that threatens to asphyxiate our being. This blackness is one the Gerontas’s great concerns, addressed directly in the extraordinary 'Catechesis on prayer' in which his vibrantly demotic style is the perfect vehicle for the paradoxes he wants to convey. Prayer leads us out of our own blackness into the profound darkness where we may encounter the divine presence, the Light of the World. One also encounters God through his saints, whose presence is felt on every page as not only imitators of Christ, but as those who struggled with God and 'did whatever they wanted with God'. Fr Aimilianos teaches through the example of the saints--the everyday conversations of the married village priest Papa-Dimitris Gangastathis with the archangels, the Athonites who have borne witness to the spiritual rhythm of the Holy Mountain as they sojourn in the world. The refectory talk on St Nicholas contains the most penetrating description of the relationship of saints and their relics to the Holy Trinity that this reader has ever found.

Fr Aimilianos cannot be accused of living and writing in isolation from the increasingly secularized world and its problems. Rather, this volume reveals a deep engagement with non-monastic society and the results of its growing distance from the spiritual ideals of the Gospels, the Fathers, and the Lives of the Saints. What he offers is not some utopian vision to be easily dismissed by the cynical, but a 'continuous and gladdening reality' that exists and deserves consideration from those concerned with the diverse communities of today’s 'global village'. What is so radically different about this God-infused world is that, unlike the secular global village, it has a single centre. In the short 'Walk in Newness', Aimilianos describes the monastery as a place where '"like eagles", the monks flock together from various nations, with different languages, local traditions, levels of education, social status and so on, in order to experience in one Body, "in one place", the presence of God; and so the monastery where they gather is transformed automatically and permanently into the upper room of Pentecost and into a New Jerusalem'. What draws us to this centre is prayer. Using an image which painfully sums up the values of our contemporary society, the Gerontas writes that a 'heart which does not have that Prayer seems to me to resemble a plastic bag, into which you can put something now, but it will soon tear and be thrown away. What gives meaning to our whole life and existence, because it gives us God, is our prayer.'

ELIZABETH KEY FOWDEN

Limni, Euboea