On Social Justice by St Basil the Great, Reviewed

Although I can’t remember for sure, when Bishop Savas offered to send out a number of free copies of Fr Paul Schroeder’s translation of St Basil’s homilies on wealth and poverty—On Social Justice—I believe His Grace made it a stipulation that one must agree to read the book. [1] Well, despite it being a slim volume (the Popular Patristics Series volumes are typically quite digestible) it’s taken me some four months now to finish it. But finish it I did. In the meantime, I know my good friend, the Orthodox blogger at The Ebb & Flow of Consciousness, had a couple of very insightful posts on the book (here and here).

There are four authentic homilies, and one believed to be ‘Pseudo-Basilian’. The first, entitled ‘To the Rich’ [2], is on Christ’s words to the rich young man in Matthew 19.16-22. It sets the tone for the book very nicely. St Basil teaches that if one cannot divest oneself of wealth, one has not fulfilled the law of love for one’s neighbour. He writes:

Thus, those who love their neighbor as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbour; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love. [3]

St Basil responds to those who ask how they will live and how it could be possible for everyone to sell all, ‘Do not ask me the rationale behind our Lord’s commands. The Lawgiver knows well how to bring what is possible into agreement with the Law.’ [4] To those who say they cannot give, St Basil says: ‘How many could you have delivered from want with but a single ring from your finger? How many households fallen into destitution might you have raised? In just one of your closets there are enough clothes to cover an entire town shivering with cold.’ [5] He concludes, ‘You showed no mercy; it will not be shown to you. You opened not your house; you will be expelled from the Kingdom. You gave not your bread; you will not receive eternal life.’ [6]

The second homily is on the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12.16-21, and is entitled ‘I Will Tear down My Barns’ [7]. St Basil addresses such people: ‘You have been made a minister of God’s goodness, a steward of your fellow servants. Do not suppose that all this was furnished for your own gullet! Resolve to treat the things in your possession as belonging to others.’ [8] To the notion of storing and guarding one’s wealth so that one might take one’s ease, he says, ‘Therefore, let the end of your harvesting be the beginning of a heavenly sowing.’ [9] St Basil elabourates:

[If you scatter your wealth,] God will receive you, angels extol you, all people from the creation of the world will bless you. Your glory will be eternal; you will inherit the crown of righteousness and the Kingdom of Heaven. All these things will be your reward for your stewardship of perishable things. [10]

This homily contains one of St Basil’s most moving attempts ‘to humanize and personalize the plight of the poor’, in Fr Schroeder’s words. [11] The great Hierarch paints a picture for his wealthy audience, to bring the suffering of poverty vividly into their imaginations:

How can I bring the sufferings of the poverty-stricken to your attention? When they look around inside their hovels, . . . [and] find only clothes and furnishings so miserable that, if all their belongings were reckoned together, they would be worth only a few cents. What then? They turn their gaze to their own children, thinking that perhaps by bringing them to the slave-market they might find some respite from death. Consider now the violent struggle that takes place between the desperation a rising from famine and a parent’s fundamental instincts. Starvation on the one side threatens a horrible death, while nature resists, convincing the parents rather to die with their children. Time and again they vacillate, but in the end they succumb, driven by want and cruel necessity. [12]

The third homily, ‘In Time of Famine & Drought’ [13], beginning with Amos 3.8, deals with exactly the situation it names. St Basil explains frankly the reason that God has allowed famine: ‘See, now, how the multitude of your sins has altered the course of the year and changed the character of the seasons, producing these unusual temperature.’ [14] He continues:

. . . [T]he reason why our needs are not provided for as usual is plain and obvious: we do not share what we receive with others. We praise beneficence, while we deprive the needy of it. . . . For this reason we are threatened with righteous judgment. This is why God does not open his hand: because we have closed up our hearts towards our brothers and sisters. This is why the fields are arid: because love has dried up. [15]

St Basil actually tells us that just business will cause our prayers to be heard: ‘Tear up the unjust contract, so that sin might also be loosed. Wipe away the debt that bears high rates of interest, so that the earth may bear its usual fruits.’ [16] He responds to the Ayn Rands of the world, ‘who account greed a virtue’, by demanding that they demonstrate what good their money and possessions are in the face of natural disaster. ‘Will your purse not be buried together with you? Is not gold earth? Will it not be interred like worthless clay together with the clay of the body?’ [17]

Interestingly, however, in this homily St Basil actually addresses the poor as well. He says: ‘Are you poor? Do not be discouraged. . . . Place your hope in God. Can it be that He does not understand your difficult position?’ [18] He also encourages the poor to give to those who are poorer: ‘Are you poor? You know someone who is even poorer. . . . Do not shrink from giving the little that you have; do not prefer your own benefit to remedying the common distress.’ [19]

But for the rich, St Basil again humanises the plight of the poor by describing the effects of starvation in vivid terms. It is interesting to note that he considers aiding such people a natural duty, and by no means a case of supernatural Christian love, for he writes: ‘Let not we who are reasonable show ourselves to be more savage than the unreasoning animals. For even the animals use in common the plants that grow naturally from the earth.’ And then, ‘We should be put to shame by what has been recorded concerning the pagan Greeks. For some of them, a law of philanthropy dictated a single table and common meals, so that many different people might almost be regarded as one household.’ [20] St Basil ends with a reminder of the threat of hell and the Judgement, which is ‘not myth, but reality foretold by the voice of truth’. [21]

The fourth homily is taken from St Basil’s homilies on the Psalms, and taking Ps 14.5 LXX as its text, is entitled, ‘Against Those Who Lend at Interest’ [22] St Basil begins by recounting a few other places in Scripture where the sin of usury is denounced, telling us, for example, that Ezekiel ‘accounts the taking of interest and receiving back more than one gave as being among the greatest of evils’. [23] Then St Basil explains:

For in truth it is the height of inhumanity that those who do not have enough even for basic necessities should be compelled to seek a loan in order to survive, while others, not being satisfied with the return of the principal, should turn the misfortune of the poor to their own advantage and reap a bountiful harvest. [24]

Of usurers, St Basil asks, ‘Do you not know that you are taking in an even greater yield of sins than the increase of wealth you hope to receive through interest?’ [25]

Again, there is the humanising of the poor in vivid descriptions of the wretchedness and anxiety of the debtor—

If he lies down, in his sleep he sees the lender as a nightmare floating over his head. If he wakes up, the interest consumes his thoughts and is a constant source of worry. [26]

If you knock at his door, the debtor is underneath the bed in a flash. His heart pounds if someone enters the room suddenly. If a dog barks, he breaks out in a sweat, seized with terror, and looks for someplace to hide. [27]

No boxer avoids the blows of an opponent as a borrower avoids chance encounters with the creditor, hiding his face among the shadows of buildings and alleyways. [28]

But in this case, St Basil means to warn the would-be debtor nearly as much as the would-be usurer. He quotes Prov 5.15, ‘Drink water at your own cistern.’ In other words, ‘It is better to take care of your needs little by little with your own devices, than to be raised up all at once by outside means, only to be completely stripped of everything you have.’ [29]

But St Basil does not suppose that all borrowers are truly desperate. He observes that usually, ‘it is not those who are truly deprived who come to procure a loan’, but ‘rather people who devote themselves to unconstrained expenditures and useless luxuries’. [30] Nevertheless, he still reminds the rich to listen ‘to the kind of counsel I am giving to the poor on account of your inhumanity: to remain in dreadful circumstances’. [31] For, St Basil says, ‘The one who weeps in despair at the rate of interest is plainly before us, but the future of the one who is about to enjoy the wealth received from them is uncertain. It is unclear whether you will not rather leave this joy behind for others, while storing up an evil treasure of injustice for yourself.’ [32]

Finally, the ‘Pseudo-Basilian’ homily, ‘On Mercy & Justice’, is placed in an appendix. Here, the emphasis is on the necessary connection of these two virtues, for, ‘Acts of charity made from unjust gains are not acceptable to God, nor are those who refrain from injustice praiseworthy if they do not share what they have.’ [33] The author introduces the teaching that while some are called to sell all of their property to follow Christ, to others He ‘ordained allotment and sharing of what they have, so that in this way they might be seen as imitators of the kindness of God, showing mercy and giving and sharing.’ [34]

Great things are promised from these homilies. In his ‘Foreword’, Gregory Yova tells us that for him personally, ‘reading the writings of St Basil the Great in the following chapters was one of those experiences: life-changing and indescribable.’ [35] Yova elabourates a bit:

There is no way to describe the power, simplicity, wisdom, and freedom of his words; . . . I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you.

When you read Basil’s words, you will think they were written yesterday—not 1,600 years ago! It’s unbelievable how precisely he describes our modern struggle with material wealth, our responsibility to our fellow man, and how to live life in balance. [36]

While I wouldn’t have described the experience for me personally as ‘life-changing’, I certainly believe the homilies live up to the promise. St Basil’s teachings on these matters will no doubt stay with me, providing guidance throughout my life. Fr Schroeder’s translation is quite readable, as well, and the Popular Patristics Series format is ideal for this little collection. Translator and publisher are to be applauded for making this teaching more accessible to the general reader.

I do find the title Fr Schroeder has given to the homilies somewhat questionable. While St Basil certainly deals with issues that are typically referred to nowadays as ‘social justice’, I believe such a title can create the misconception that St Basil is advocating some kind of social activism—marches, legislation, etc. I do not read him as telling Christians to go out expressly to ‘change the world’, but rather to treat others justly and help those in need. If we all did this, I’ve no doubt the world would be changed.

I would also like to have had a Scriptural index. There are footnotes with the citations of Scripture, which is good, but it is nice to be able to see all such citations laid out and to be able to track them down quickly.

But my main criticism is directed at Fr Schroeder’s introduction. While he is understandably enthusiastic about St Basil’s teaching on these matters, Fr Schroeder feels inexplicably that he must compare the teachings of other Fathers in other contexts with those of St Basil—castigating the former for ‘addressing the spiritual condition of the [rich] young man [of Matthew] in almost exclusively individual terms.’ [37]

Thus, Clement of Alexandria emphasises that the most important lesson of the parable is that one not be attached to one’s wealth, and that our Lord is prescribing ‘the stripping off of the passions from the soul itself and from the disposition, and the cutting up by the roots and casting out of what is alien to the mind.’ [38] Similarly, the early monastic approach of concentrating on the ridding of ‘oneself of the burden of worldly possessions’ rather than on ‘the aid that is rendered to the poor by giving one’s property to them’. Thus, St Anthony and the Desert Fathers are criticised for treating the poor as ‘nameless and faceless, little more than a cipher, a receptacle for discarded possessions.’ [39]

Furthermore, Fr Schroeder is not happy with the conclusion—anticipated by Clement and St Anthony and found explicitly in the Pseudo-Basilian homily—that those in the world ‘are enjoined not to become overly attached to their material possessions’, while it is the monks who ‘fulfill the commandment in its literal sense, which is regarded as the way to true perfection.’ [40] He calls this the ‘two-tiered approach’, and suggests that it somehow makes the commandment to the rich young man inapplicable to non-monastics. [41]

By contrast, Fr Schroeder claims that St Basil interprets the parable ‘in primarily social rather than individual terms’, [42] that he ‘explicitly rejects any attempt to formulate a two-tiered approach to the commandment’, [43] and that St Basil’s humanising descriptions of poverty are superior to the treatment of the poor ‘found throughout much of the monastic literature’. [44]

It is just this readiness to criticise the Fathers that troubles me so much in so many St Vladimir’s publications. It is not enough for Fr Schroeder to appreciate the particular emphases of St Basil’s homilies, apparently he must also proffer some impious argument that those writings which do not appeal to him to the same degree are somehow inferior or deficient. Never mind that St Basil is addressing a very different audience in a very different context to the other writings mentioned. Is it necessary that a poor monk, who is most likely well acquainted at first hand with poverty, be given a detailed description of it in a saying or homily addressed just to him? Can we not recognise social and individual dimensions in Christian ethics, and allow each their proper place? Is it not obvious that the monastic divesting of the ‘burden of worldly possessions’ is but a prerequisite for attaining a deeper, truer love for all? Is it not, furthermore, an imitation of the Apostles’ forsaking all to follow Christ—precisely what He was commanding the rich young man to do?

But Fr Schroeder also seems to miss those areas of convergence that appear in St Basil’s writings themselves. Thus, it is clear in the very first homily that St Basil too sees the inner passions as the fundamental problem. He describes the young man as ‘darkened by the passion of avarice’, [45] and addresses such people, ‘But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation. of one of your limbs. . . . Had you determined long ago to give to those in need, how would it be unbearable now to distribute whatever was left?’ [46] So it seems that St Basil does not ignore, but rather presupposes the detachment and ‘stripping off of the passions’ that Clement and the Desert Fathers emphasise. Furthermore, when in the homily on famine, he addresses the wealthy audience, ‘If you do not want to give everything to the better cause, at least divide your possessions equally between [the poor and yourself]’, [47] then it seems to me that St Basil is coming very close to the so-called ‘two-tiered approach’. And what else are his threats of damnation and promises of heavenly reward but appeals to an individual ethics?

Fr Schroeder’s treatment of ‘Pseudo-Basil’ is even worse. He actually suggests that this author teaches that the ‘commandment to aid the involuntary poor is . . . superseded by the requirement to render assistance to the voluntary poor’, [48] which the author never actually says! The closest statement is, ‘Eagerness to serve holy people is accounted as reverence for Christ, and the one who eagerly ministers to the poor is shown to be a companion of Christ.’ [49] Although I think in context it is clear that he is encouraging people to give to poor monks, I see no claim whatsoever that this ‘supersedes’ the commandment to help the ‘involuntary poor’.

I complained in a previous post (here) about the obsession among so many ‘scholarly’ writers, even Orthodox ones, with looking, first, for ‘handy but oversimplified classification schemas that cater to modern intellectual fashions, and second, [for] the “originality” and “uniqueness” of the various patristic authors’, to the point that the consensus Patrum gets neglected or even denied altogether. The Church has passed down the Lives and writings of all of the Saints for our instruction. Rather than picking the ones that we like and criticising the others, why don’t we find a way to learn even—or perhaps especially—from those that seem odd or uncomfortable to us. As C.S. Lewis has said, in his incredible 1941 sermon at the 12th-c. Oxford University Church of St Mary the Virgin, ‘The Weight of Glory’, ‘If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which coneals what we do not yet know and need to know.’ [50]

Addendum: At the time I originally wrote this post, I had a tendency, like many other conservative-minded Orthodox in the US it seems, to become immediately suspicious of some sort of 'liberal agenda' whenever I encountered words like 'social justice'. I tried to be very cautious about my comments on this in the post, but I think my sentiments are clear. I believe it is important to state that I have since revised my opinion on the matter. I think there is definitely a place for the terminology of 'social justice', that this terminology is a legitimate if somewhat anachronistic way to describe the theme of St Basil's homilies, and that even the idea of going beyond personal acts of justice is not such a bad one, somehow tainted by the ideology of the 'liberal', or worse, 'socialist' agenda. That is to say nothing about Fr Schroeder's personal agenda, of which I know nothing and on which I therefore cannot comment, just to say that I think the title itself is innocent enough and that my feelings about such things have indeed undergone an evolution.


[1] St Basil the Great, On Social Justice, tr. Fr C. Paul Schroeder (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2009).

[2] The standard designation is Homily 7.

[3] St Basil, p. 43.

[4] Ibid., p. 46.

[5] Ibid., p. 49. I was actually reminded here of the ending of Schindler’s List, when Schindler realises:

I could have got more out. I could have got more. . . . I threw away so much money. You have no idea! This car! O God, what about the car? Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. . . . This pen—two more people. This is gold—two more people. . . . I could have got one more person, and I didn’t. I didn’t!

[6] St Basil, p. 49.

[7] Homily 6.

[8] St Basil, p. 61.

[9] Ibid., pp. 62-3.

[10] Ibid., p. 63.

[11] Ibid., p. 25.

[12] Ibid., p. 64.

[13] Homily 8.

[14] St Basil, p. 75.

[15] Ibid., p. 76.

[16] Ibid., p. 78.

[17] Ibid., p. 79.

[18] Ibid., p. 81.

[19] Ibid., p. 83.

[20] Ibid., p. 86.

[21] Ibid., p. 88.

[22] Homily 2 on Ps 14.

[23] St Basil, p. 89.

[24] Ibid., p. 90.

[25] Ibid., p. 91.

[26] Ibid., p. 91.

[27] Ibid., p. 94.

[28] Ibid., pp. 95-6. These observations remind me of the figure of Raskolnikov, who, when he is introduced, ‘was over his head in debt to the landlady and was afraid of meeting her’ (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky [NY: Knopf, 1993], p. 3).

[29] St Basil, p. 92.

[30] Ibid., 96.

[31] Ibid., 97.

[32] Ibid., 99.

[33] Ibid., p. 103.

[34] Ibid., p. 107.

[35] Ibid., p. 9.

[36] Ibid., pp. 9-10.

[37] Ibid., p. 23.

[38] Ibid., p. 22.

[39] Ibid., p. 23.

[40] Ibid., p. 23.

[41] Ibid., p. 25.

[42] Ibid., p. 24.

[43] Ibid., p. 25.

[44] Ibid., p. 25.

[45] Ibid., p. 42.

[46] Ibid., p. 43.

[47] Ibid., p. 87.

[48] Ibid., p. 102.

[49] Ibid., p. 107.

[50] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory & Other Addresses, ed. Walter Hooper (NY: Touchstone, 1996), p. 31.

Albion Giveaway Results!

Well, yesterday was the Sunday of St Mary of Egypt, which means the big day has arrived! It is time to announce the winner of the first-ever Logismoi book giveaway contest! Participation was not as good as I’d hoped, but there were some strong entries which actually exceeded my expectations (Jonathan Barker actually withdrew his entry when he saw some of the others!). I shall name the winner, and then explain how I went about judging (just know that any protests are at this point entirely ineffectual!), posting all of the entries beginning with the winner, and continuing in the order in which I discuss them. So without further ado, the winner is:

Subdeacon Lucas!

The good minor cleric has submitted an entry which most closely matches what I was looking for. His argument is abstruse and his conclusion humourous. There is absolutely no way that Blake intended Albion’s error to be dry humour, and yet it fits the bill. Kudos, Subdeacon Lucas!

Blake himself has cryptically supplied the answer to the question of Albion’s error in acrostic fashion within his verses. The beginning of each line spells: T-O-R-R-T-H-J-B.

Now, we understand that in Greek, ‘H’ is an eta, usually transcribed as an ‘I’, and ‘B’ is pronounced as a ‘V’; we come to the following:

‘TORRTIV’ (recall, that the Germans have caused no end of grief with transcribing ‘I’s as ‘J’s for which we have ‘J’erusalem and ‘J’acob in English. therefore, the J more properly elides into the ‘I’)

‘Torr’ is Swedish for ‘dry’, and the clear reason for his use of Swedish here is because of his connection to the work of Emanuel Swedenborg.

The second word, ‘Tiv’, is Romanian for ‘hem’. (The connection here is Romania’s inclusion of Blake on one of their stamps). ‘Hem’ is homophonic with the sound made when politely clearing one’s throat after hearing a particularly bad joke, which leads us to Blake’s own answer to the question of Albion’s (England’s) Error:

Dry humour.

Ivan Tarter was probably the 1st runnner-up on the criterion of conformity to my assignment. I also really like the pretense of consulting manuscripts. But his entry lacked the directness and firm conclusion of the winning entry. Sorry, Ivan! You can always borrow the hardcover edition from me….

After much consultation of all the primary manuscripts and extensive parlay with the world’s most prestigious scholars of eighteenth century English literature (and in particular, the Blake scholars), I have concluded the following:

Albion is fictional English fellow who has journeyed to Ulro, the mythical ‘land of clowns’ (cf. co-ulrophobia, fear of clowns). The modern circus originated in the eighteenth century in London, and this passage deals profoundly with the ethical issues raised by the existence of the ‘clown’ figure. Like the manager of the modern Western world, the clown was the figure whose societal role typified the English persona of that time. A counterbalance to the Enlightenment bourgeois university student, the clown signified accentricity, unstability, and errationality.

To interpret the passage: Albion ‘erred’ (read: wandered) into the country of Ulro, seeking, as the English are apt to do, the comforts of its married women (Beulah). However, his licentious tastes are accompanied by equally potent dangers. If he does not remove himself, a lengthy stay risks his becoming a clown himself, thus losing hope of passage to heaven (since clowns do not have souls). They are, as the passage later states, ‘dead.’

The harrow (read: ‘rake’) refers metaphorically to one of the dissolute, married women in Ulro. While her sisters are taking Albion into bed (where, with women on either side, he will be unable to reason clearly), she will run to the male clowns and rally them into a mob. By them, Albion will be captured and tortured. Their motive? Malice, I suppose.

The very name ‘Albion’ (lit. ‘I’ll be on [top]’) suggests a close relationship between a sexuality governed solely by instinct and animal desire, and the symbolic irrationality of the clown. In this passage, England’s infamous profligacy of this time period is being weighed, and found wanting (or rather, wanton). The cost is too great; the very soul of England is at stake.

Fortunately, Albion chooses to refuse the wiles of the voluptuous clown women, and instead to leave Ulro forever. He is neither captured by the clown men, nor does he become a clown himself, but rather turns away. The English writer the considers the clown’s portent and urges his countrymen to turn away and walk, in a manner of speaking, the higher road.

Fr Mark Christian’s answer should be applauded for its poetic format. But more importantly, it is his answer which resonates most with me, if I were to diregard the intentio auctoris as well as the intentio operis and simply respond honestly to the question. But it is much too serious for the purposes of this contest!

For in the Last Day his error was revealed:
Passionately aiming
For the courtly grandeur of Logres,
Once-noble Albion missed his mark
And endured great shame... reformed? renewed?
Nay, diminished and mired!
Pinned and withering in the soul-stunting
Environs of Lilliput and Blefesco...

Christopher Orr has produced more lines than Fr Mark did, and while I can’t say his response resonates with me quite as much, it cannot be denied that it is probably closer to the mark, or at least more penetrating, from a spiritual perspective. If there had been more entries, no doubt Orr’s would not have been second-to-last.

An answer, in anarchic metre, perhaps delusionalia:

Blake’s perswasive
Prophet’s voice,
Alba’s Jonah’s jeremiad.
‘Arise’, he heard, ‘and go;
‘Go to Albion and cry:
‘Against! against your wickedness
Your sin, your multitud’nous sin
It’s risen up on high!’
Blake’s prelest, accidental truth proclaims:
‘Turn, turn Brittania chosen!
One Error not remov’d
Destroys the fully human.
Believe in God,
Proclaim a fast,
From greatest to the least.
Cry to God in dynamis!
Turn ye full away
From your evil way!
Who can tell if God, yet, too,
Will turn away today;
Turn away his anger fierce
Our Judgment to allay!’
Error great and error small, errors of all kind.
Suggestion lone is error not,
Passion, Action be;
Error, e’en attachment, too,
Is error ’nough to damn;
Unremov-ed sympathy destroys humanity.
The human Soul’s destroy’d,
Dying, dead, again.
Alas, too, Nations be composite
Of her Souls she be,
Its sum of Error(s) and of Fall(s):
Last Judgments final be–
Forewarned, ye all!

Finally, last but not least, Atychi’s entry is, I am almost certain, the ‘correct’ one. I think he has discovered what Blake himself truly meant. But I’m afraid he must be disqualified for precisely that reason. Nevertheless, the entry stands as a testimony to a gifted interpreter of poetry.

I believe the answer is found at the very beginning of Chapter 2, ‘Jerusalem’ (Plate 28):

‘Every ornament of perfection, and every labour of love,
In all the Garden of Eden, & in all the golden mountains
Was become an envied horror, and a resemblance of jealousy:
And every Act a Crime, and Albion the punisher & judge.

And Albion spoke from his secret seat and said

“All these ornaments are crimes. They are made by the labours
Of loves: of unnatural consanguinities and friendships
Horrid to think of when inquired deeply into; and all
These hills and valleys are accursed witnesses of Sin.
I therefore condense them into solid rocks steadfast! . . .”’

This is his ‘Error’. He was too harsh and ripped the land out of its ‘post-lapsarian’ Edenic existence. He’s being asked to repent from his overly harsh judgment so that the hills and valleys return, so that a proper sense of sensuality can return. Away with the sublime and turn back to the Beautiful.

Thank you all for your participation. I very much enjoyed reading your entries. If I had consolation prizes, I would send them. Subdeacon Lucas, e-mail me your shipping address and I will send the book—this week, I hope!

Finding St Mary of Egypt

I’ve already put up my usual daily post today, but I noticed on StatCounter that it looked like someone may have had difficulty finding last year’s post for the feast of St Mary of Egypt—a post which may have some interest since today is the Sunday of St Mary of Egypt. Anyway, I thought I would post a link to it (here), as well as a hymn or two from the Vigil for those like me who unfortunately missed it:

Sessional Hymn
Tone Eight

All the rebellious impulses of the flesh thou hast subdued by thine ascetic labours, showing the many courage of thy soul. Desiring to behold the Cross of the Lord, O honoured Mother, in sanctity thou hast crucified thyself unto the world, and thou hast sought with eagerness to emulate the angels in their way of life. Therefore with faith we honour thy memory, O blessed Mary, and we pray that full remission of our sins may be given to us through thine intercessions. [1]

And here is the final sticheron from Lauds. Let us take it to heart as we prepare for the final week of the Great Fast:

Tone One

The Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and abstinence with holiness: and so the rich shall not enter into it, but those who entrust their treasures to the hands of the poor. This is what David the Prophet teaches us, saying: The righteous man shows mercy all the day long; his delight is in the Lord, and walking in the light he shall not stumble. All this was written for our admonition, that we should fast and do good; and in exchange for earthly things may the Lord reward us with the things of heaven. [2]

One final thing: today I will choose the winner of the book giveaway! I shall make the announcement tomorrow and post all of the entries.


[1] The Lenten Triodion, tr. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon’s Seminary, 1994), pp. 452-3.

[2] Ibid., p. 461.

The Joys of Icelandic

In his ‘biography’ of Lewis, Tolkien, & Co.—The Inklings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979)—Humphrey Carpenter points out how important the Icelandic language was to Tolkien, and how the bond between him and Lewis formed through a club devoted to the reading of Icelandic literature:

Tolkien had decided to from a club among the dons to read Icelandic sagas and myths. Among his proposals for syllabus reform [in Oxford’s English School] was the suggestion that Old Icelandic, also known as Old Norse, should be given a more prominent place among early and medieval studies, at least for the specialists; and he thought that the best way to proselytise would be to show his colleagues how enjoyable the reading of Icelandic can be. So the Coalbiters came into existence.

Their Icelandic name was Kolbítar, a jesting term meaning ‘men who lounge so close to the fire in winter that they bite the coal’. (p. 27)

Hearing of such an ‘ivory-tower’-sounding pastime, however, it is interesting to read a down-home take on the modern language—very little changed since the Middle Ages—by the American poet, Bill Holm (1943-2009), a grandson of Icelandic immigrants who maintained a second home in his ancestral country. I first learned of this poem from the audiobook of Garrison Keillor’s anthology, Good Poems. I have taken the text from this blog:

The Icelandic Language

In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.

But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.

The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.

In this language, you can’t chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.

Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.

I thought this not only a powerful evocation of the particular delights of a particular language, but also an equally powerful pæan to the beauty of traditional rural life. What an effective inducement to learn Icelandic!

The painting above is Áning (‘Repose’—1910), by the Icelandic artist, Þórarinn B. Þorláksson (1867-1924).

'The Harp of the Seraphim'—St Philaret & Pushkin

In a paper on ‘Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic’, Robert L. Nichols says of St Philaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow, ‘Filaret of Moscow (1782-1867) is arguably the greatest Orthodox churchman in modern times. His name is inextricably linked with the reawakening of Orthodox life in Russia and abroad in the past two centuries.’ [1] As Nichols notes, he was an ascetic who thought that ‘the only adequate means for combating a new irreligious and secular age could be found in the healing power of the Holy Spirit most effectively mediated through those perfected by asceticism, prayer, and silence.’ [2] But he did not have a narrow-minded, combative view of the secular or extra-ecclesiastical world. As Fr Florovsky has observed, even behind the troubling currents of contemporary ‘spirituality’, St Philaret ‘could recognize a vital need for religion, a thirst for religious instruction and enlightenment’, [3] and he was able to ‘find a common language’ with such seekers. [4]

I can think of no better illustration of this capacity than in St Philaret’s dealings with Pushkin. The icon above depicts the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, in poetic dialogue with St Philaret. According to an account of the latter’s life (here) at the website of St John the Baptist Cathedral (ROCOR) in Washington, DC:

In May 1828, a despondent Pushkin wrote the famous stanzas: ‘A gift in vain, a gift by chance.’ [5] Elizabeth Khitrovo, a spiritual child of the Metropolitan, gave them to him. The Moscow Hierarch, who appreciated the poet’s talent, read in those verses ‘the cry of a lost soul, the murmuring of self-destructive despondency’, and as a spiritual physician, he responded with an uplifting missive:

Not in vain and not by chance
Was life granted me by God
And not without God’s hidden will
Has it been condemned to death.

I myself through willful power
Summoned evil from the dark abyss
And my soul I filled with passion,
Stirring up my mind with doubts.

Remember Him whom I’d forgotten
Pierce through with light the gloom of thoughts
Then it will be, through You created
A heart that’s pure, a mind that’s clear.

This inspired outpouring of prayer for the poet suffering from gloomy thoughts is a living expression of the needs of a soul which has not yet entered into the life-giving light of God it has forgotten, and which [is] therefore tortured by the gloom of bewilderment and error. At the same time, it points to the main source of healing. Pushkin understood this. Moved and brought to his senses, he expressed his gratitude to his healer with the following poem:

In hours of amusement or idle boredom,
Once upon a time, I used to confide
To my lyre the cosseted sounds
Of madness, indolence and passion.

But even then I would arrest
The vibration of the treacherous string
When your majestic voice
Suddenly struck me.

I poured forth streams of sudden tears,
And to the wounds of my conscience
The balsam of your fragrant words
Was a pure delight.

And now from a spiritual height
You extend a hand to me
And with meek and loving strength
Becalm restless dreams.

Set afire by your flame my soul
Has thrown off the darkness of earthly cares,
And in a state of holy awe
The poet listens to the harp of the seraphim. [6]

I thought this a fascinating instance of the Church’s frequent interaction with secular culture, as well as an eloquent testimony to the power of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘the penetrated word, that is, a word capable of actively and confidently interfering in the interior dialogue of the other person, helping that person to find his own voice.’ [7] Clearly, St Philaret was not merely a great ‘churchman’, but something like a God-bearing elder working in the world.


[1] Robert L. Nichols, ‘Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic’, The Legacy of St Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia, America, ed. Fr John Breck, Fr John Meyendorff, & E. Silk (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1990), p. 81.

[2] Ibid., p. 83.

[3] Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Pt. 1, tr. Robert L. Nichols, Vol. 5 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979), p. 206. Yes, Nichols is both the author of the article and the translator of Fr Florovsky—a funny coincidence I didn't notice until I started to write this citation!

[4] Ibid., p. 205.

[5] The first line of the poem, ‘On My Birthday’ (tr. Eugene Mark Kayden, The Sewanee Review 50.4, Oct.-Dec. 1942, p. 530):

Gift of chance, a favor aimless,
Why the gift of life to me?
By what law divine or nameless
Doomed in dark infinity?

Who, and why, without compassion
Called me out of nothingness?
Filled my soul with doubt and passion,
Wasted me with loneliness?

All my ways are dim and dreary;
Vain the mind, the heart is bare;
Days monotonous and weary
Trouble me with dull despair.

[6] Rather than the unknown translation of nine lines from the St John Cathedral page, I have taken a translation of the full poem from Andrew Kahn, Pushkin’s Lyric Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford U, 2008), p. 60.

[7] Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & tr. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994), p. 242.

On the Teachings of Evagrius

While acknowledging that the Church has not recognised him as a Saint, in a previous post (here) I cautiously honoured the life of the 4th-c. ascetic theologian, Evagrius Ponticus. I also expressed my hope to revisit some of the controversial issues surrounding his teaching and influence, and that is what I intend to do in this post. This was initially prompted by a comment I received on a post back in January (here):

St Basil is ‘sidelined’ as the father of monasticism because he is the father of that monasticism that finally condemned Origen, Evagrius, Didimus [sic], that the ‘West’ annointed as the fathers of ‘Christian mysticism and ascetics’. [1]

Now, we all know that the speculative teachings of these three writers were anathematised at the Fifth Œcumenical Council, some of the most obvious problems in them being the preexistence of souls and universalism. But it is also clear that the Orthodox Tradition has not dismissed them entirely. Ss Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian themselves compiled a collection of passages from Origen’s works called the Philokalia, both were early mentors of Evagrius, and the latter’s influential ascetic works were much later incorporated into the more well-known Philokalia compiled by Ss Macarius of Corinth and Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (though some of Evagrius’s writing was passed down under the name of St Nilus the Ascetic). (Most of Didymus’s works were apparently lost and as far as I can tell seem to have had little subsequent influence.)

But these observations hardly do justice, on the one hand, to the simple diligence of countless Orthodox scribes, monks, and even Saints in copying the words of these writers, without which none of their work would have survived, and on the other, to the well-documented influence they exercised on subsequent Orthodox Fathers throughout the centuries in their terminology, patterns of thought, and even their exegetical and spiritual teaching. All of this suggests that, while we accept the discernment of our Fathers in condemning the heretical teachings of these writers, there is yet something worthwhile in them from which we can profit. While I personally can’t say much about Origen, I have read quite a bit of Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345-399), and I would like to respond to what reads like a sneering dismissal of his writings in the above comment. As St John the Prophet of Gaza writes in response to the question, ‘Should we not, then, read even the works of Evagrius?’, in Letter 602:

Do not accept such doctrines [e.g., apokatastasis] from his works; but go ahead and read, if you like, those works that are beneficial for the soul, according to the parable about the net in the Gospel. For it has been written: ‘They placed the good into baskets, but threw out the bad’ (Mt 13.48). You, too, should do the same. [2]

Thus, Jean Leclerq, OSB, notes, ‘The writings left by Evagrius have contributed to the building of the spiritual tradition from which we all draw’, [3] and according to Fr Placide (Deseille), ‘The Greek hesychast tradition follows entirely in its wake.’ [4] Similarly, Fr Andrew Louth observes that Evagrius’s ‘mystical theology’, which ‘clearly arose out of his own participation in the lived tradition of the Desert Fathers, out of his own experience of the eremitical life’,

was gratefully accepted by Eastern monasticism and his most important works on the monastic way of prayer (as opposed to speculation about the metaphysical presuppositions of that way)—the Praktikos and On Prayer—were preserved in Greek, and exercised an enormous influence on Eastern Orthodox spiritual and mystical theology. [5]

Of course, this influence was not absolute. The editors of the Faber edition of the Philokalia note that St John Cassian, ‘transmitted the “practical” aspect of Evagrios’ teachings to the Latin West’, but abandoned ‘the suspect theories that Evagrios derived from Origen’. [6] Fr Andrew Louth sketches ‘the Evagrian pattern’ as it influenced St Maximus the Confessor, then observes:

But it is not present in Maximus’ writings unchanged. To begin with, behind Evagrius’ teaching on prayer and ascetic struggle there lay his ‘Origenist’ metaphysic, with which Maximus profoundly disagreed, and of which he was its greatest critic. But he was a critic with great sympathy for what he criticized, and extremely anxious not to throw out the baby with the bath-water. At the level of ascetic theology, Maximus is able to preserve most of what Evagrius taught, and he does. But he thinks it through again, and though many of the concepts and terms he uses are clearly Evagrian, what is expressed is no less distinctively Maximian. [7]

But both of these comments assume an absolutely Origenist reading of Evagrius’s Kephalaia Gnostika, a reading which also calls the framework of the Pontian’s other writings into question. This reading has, however, itself been called into question. Fr Placide observes:

Nowhere has Evagrius given a systematic exposition of this cosmology, nor of the Christology integral to it. Rather than accepting it as a literal doctrine, he undoubtedly understood it as a ‘myth’ in the Platonic sense, refracting it through the thousand facets of his Gnostic Chapters. Reduced to a system by later agitated disciples of Evagrius in the first half of the sixth century, the doctrine was first condemned in 543, then in 553, at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. [8]

Augustine Casiday has gone even further in discussing the lineaments of this Origenist reading of Evagrius. He notes that the contention of Antoine Guillaumont that the more Origenist of the two texts of the Kephalaia Gnostika was the original and, furthermore,

was directly responsible for the Christological controversies that resulted in the anathemas promulgated against Origen in 553 . . . relies on configuring Evagrius’ disconnected utterances in a specific way and (perhaps more troublingly) claiming that hostile statements resolving the Second Origenist Controversy provide the correct template for this reconfiguration. What justification have we for thinking that the later crisis provides us with the best pattern for Evagrius’ beliefs? [9]

Casiday notes that there are, in fact, ‘multiple traditions—some in direct competition with each other—that look back to Evagrius for inspiration’, thus contradicting ‘the idea that a privileged insight into his thinking was preserved by a single school of thought.’ Confronted with the task of interpreting Evagrius’s work as a whole, Casiday argues that ‘it is surely better to rely on the core of undisputedly authentic texts’. [10] He concludes:

In the light of how trenchantly orthodox Evagrius is shown to have been by his letter On the faith [Epistula fidei]—in which, incidentally, he has already begun to use the categories for the mystical contemplations that are found in his Great letter [Ad Melaniam] and Gnostic chapters [Kephalaia Gnostika]—it seems more sensible to begin our attempts to understand his admittedly obscure writings from the presumption of Cappadocian orthodoxy rather than to work backword from the presumption of Origenist heresy. This is not to cast doubt on the claim that Evagrius himself drew inspiration from Origen, which is beyond dispute. It simply means that we are now able to work forward from Origen (via the Cappadocians and Egyptians) to Evagrius and reconstruct Evagrius’ thinking with reference to a reasonably large corpus, without having to rely upon subsequent interpretations or evaluations of Evagrius’ writings. [11]

The ‘presumption of Cappadocian orthodoxy’ is greatly helped of course by the letter ‘On the faith’. Indeed, William Harmless recalls Palladius’s comment that Evagrius was ‘most skillful in confuting all the heresies’, noting: ‘The accuracy of this assessment has become clear with the discovery that a famous letter probing subtle aspects of Trinitarian doctrine, a letter long attributed to Basil, was in fact composed by Evagrius.’ [12] In other words, if Evagrius was capable of writing such a letter, was he capable at the same time of teaching that Christ is ‘different to all other rational beings only insofar as the human soul of Christ is further along the spectrum of spiritual progress that all rational beings must inevitably make’? [13]

I do not offer the opinions of Fr Placide and Casiday to say that I accept them whole-heartedly, but merely to call attention to the fact that there is another approach to be considered. To tell the truth, I have rather avoided looking into the Kephalaia Gnostika precisely because of its ‘suspect’ nature. What little I have seen confirms Harmless’s evaluation:

Unlike most literature of the desert, Evagrius’s works are not easy reading. . . . We know that he consciously cultivated a certain obscurity, at least on some matters. . . . This studied obscurity poses a real challenge for contemporary commentators. One has to decode Evagrius. [14]

One point that I do feel I can pronounce to be right on target, however, is that made by Marcus Plested in the chapter on ‘Macarius & Evagrius’ in his study of the Macarian Homilies. Plested notes the tendency, apparently initiated by Irenee Hausherr in a 1935 article, to bifurcate the entire history of Eastern spirituality into ‘Evagrian’ and ‘Macarian’ traditions. Thus, Fr John Meyendorff claims ‘writers can rightly be classified as disciples of Evagrius or of Macarius’. [15] Plested points out that Fr Alexander (Golitzin) has been one of the few ‘to seriously detract from what we might call the “dichotomist viewpoint”’. [16] Fr Alexander sees the Evagrian/Macarian dichotomy as perpetuating a false dichotomy between Hellenistic and Semitic traditions in Christianity—a dichotomy he has eloquently dismissed in the note I have quoted here, as well as in the following passage quoted by Plested:

The contradistinction of ‘mind’ and ‘heart’ reflects the Medieval Western opposition between ‘intellective’ and ‘affective’ mysticisms a little too much for my comfort. Evagrius is not an Eckhardt, nor is Macarius a Bernard of Clairvaux […]. Then too, the contrast implicit in this definition between a ‘biblical’ and a ‘platonizing’ Christianity strikes me as very questionable. Plato and company were quite as much involved in first-century Palestine as they were anywhere else in the Graeco-Roman world, and the ‘Greeks’ thus had a say in the formation of both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. I do not, in short, believe that Evagrius’ nous and Macarius’ kardia are all that different from each other. [17]

But Plested finds Fr Alexander’s closing statement ‘too simple’. He agrees, ‘It is debatable whether either of the authors with whom we are dealing perceived any opposition between “head” and “heart”, between “intellective” and “affective” mysticisms.’ But then Plested adds, ‘In fact, Evagrius’ nous is contained within Macarius’ kardia—as we shall see.’ [18] Having considered the ‘intellectual-immaterial element in Macarius’, including the statement in Collection 1, 3.6.1 ‘the soul has been overpowered by material and unclean thoughts’ and that it must ‘rise out of such materiality’, [19] Plested writes:

It is misleading to depict Evagrius’ nous as straining to be released from the material creation—the body and soul are there to help the intellect and not to hinder it. Evagrius insists that to denigrate the body is to blaspheme the Creator and to deny the workings of providence. Evagrius has, in his own way, a unified understanding of the human person. Intellect, soul, and body form a whole: the intellect is directly linked to the rational part of the soul, the body to the irascible and desiring parts of the soul. Thus the soul constitutes the bond uniting the human person, taking a comparable role to that of the heart in Macarius. Furthermore, the quest for apatheia does not ential the quenching but rather the harnessing of the passionate parts of the soul—a Platonic insight—so that the soul desires knowledge and virtue and is angry and fights against the thoughts. . . . The spiritual life is not a struggle to transcend but to transform body and soul. This process is fulfilled in the eschaton. [20]

As promised, Plested has a number of things to say about Evagrius’s use of the words nous and kardia. He notes that in the Kephalaia Gnostika, Evagrius writes, ‘According to the word of Solomon, the nous is joined with the heart.’ [21] But Columba Stewart, OSB, believes that Evagrius ‘read “heart” as the biblical equivalent to “mind”’, [22] citing a comment from the Commentary on the Psalms: ‘it is customary in Scripture to have kardia instead of nous’. [23]

But at any rate, Plested’s conclusions are quite enlightening. He argues that ‘both may be seen as groping towards the expression of the same spiritual reality’, and notes: ‘In this light the Byzantine reading of Macarius and Evagrius (often under the guise of Nilus) becomes more readily comprehensible. Far from distinguishing ‘currents of spirituality’ the classical Byzantine approach was one of synthesis.’ [24] Finally, Plested concludes:

This interaction [between the Evagrian and Macarian teachings] was not one of opposing—or even sharply contrasting—spiritual currents, but rather the interplay of distinctive yet complementary insights into the nature of the Christian life. Despite coming from very different angles, the teachings of our authors—both of whom have nourished many generations of Christians . . . –are far from incompatible. [25]

I wish Plested’s approach was more common among patristic scholars, particularly those who claim to be working within the Orthodox Tradition. Alas, it seems so many are more interested in finding, first, handy but oversimplified classification schemas that cater to modern intellectual fashions, and second, the ‘originality’ and ‘uniqueness’ of the various patristic authors, that they are completely blind to that truth noted by St Ignatius (Brianchaninov):

When on a clear autumn night I gaze at the clear sky, sown with numberless stars, so diverse in size yet shedding a single light, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When on a summer day I gaze at the vast sea, covered with a multitude of diverse vessels with their unfurled sails like white swans’ wings, vessels racing under a single wind to a single goal, to a single harbor, I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! When I hear a harmonious, many-voiced choir, in which diverse voices in elegant harmony sing a single Divine song, then I say to myself: such are the writings of the Fathers! [26]

[1] Of course, attributing this ‘sidelining’ to Western scholars is an over-generalisation, and was not meant to be pressed too far in my initial post. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, even in the middle of his ‘Introduction’ to Evagrius, uses a footnote to discuss the monasticism of St Basil in some detail (see The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, by Evagrius Ponticus, tr. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), p. xxxvii, n. 56). Furthermore, it is by no means clear that he in any way prefers Evagrius's to St Basil's.

[2] Ss Barsanuphius & John, Letters, Vol. 2, tr. Fr John Chryssavgis (Washington, DC: Catholic U of America, 2007), p. 183; see Fr Louth on St Maximus, p. 38

[3] Jean Leclerq, OSB, ‘Preface’, The Praktikos, p. vii.

[4] Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008), p. 18.

[5] Fr Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, Early Church Fathers Series (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 113.

[6] G.E.H. Palmer, et al., tr. & ed., The Philokalia, Vol. 1 (London: Faber, 1983), p. 30.

[7] Fr Louth, pp. 37-8.

[8] Fr Placide, p. 18.

[9] Augustine M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus Early Church Fathers Series (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 28.

[10] Ibid., p. 29.

[11] Ibid., p. 30.

[12] William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (NY: Oxford U, 2004), p. 313.

[13] Casiday, p. 28.

[14] Harmless, pp. 321-2.

[15] Qtd. in Marcus Plested, The Macarian Legacy: The Placeof Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 60.

[16] Ibid., p. 61.

[17] Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin), ‘Hierarchy vs. Anarchy? Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos, & Their Common Roots in Ascetical Tradition’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38,2 (1994), p. 153; qtd. in Plested, pp. 61-2.

[18] Ibid., p. 62.

[19] Ibid., p. 65.

[20] Ibid., p. 66.

[21] Qtd. in ibid, p. 67.

[22] Columba Stewart, OSB, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford U, 1998), p. 42.

[23] Ibid., p. 166, n. 13.

[24] Plested, p. 70.

[25] Ibid., p. 71.

[26] Qtd. in Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life & Works (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), p. 464.

'A Lover of Knowledge'—St Mark the Ascetic

Today, 5 March on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Mark the Ascetic (5th c.), also known as St Mark the Monk. Although St Mark wrote some very important hesychastic treatises which have been included in the Philokalia, very little is known about his life. Here is the account in the Prologue:

An ascetic and wonderworker, he was made a monk at the age of forty by his teacher, St John Chrysostom. Mark spent sixty more years in the Nitrian desert in fasting, prayer and the writing of instructive books. He knew the whole of the Holy Scriptures by heart. He was very merciful, and wept for the distress of any one of God’s creatures. He was once weeping for the blind whelp of a hyena when the whelp received its sight. In gratitude, the mother hyena brought him a sheepskin, and the saint forbade the hyena in future to slaughter the sheep of poor people. He received communion at the hands of an angel. His homilies on the spiritual law, on repentance, on sobriety and so forth fall into the first rank of ecclesiastical literature; the great Patriarch Photius himself them in high esteem. [1]

Although it focuses mainly on his writings, here is what St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain has to say about St Mark in the ‘Brief Biography’ introducing the latter’s treatises in the Philokalia:

Our holy Father Mark the Ascetic flourished about the year 430. He was a disciple of St John Chrysostom, according to Nikephoros Kallistos (Vol. 2, Book 14, Chapter 53), and a contemporary of Ss Neilos and Isidoros of Pelusion, famous ascetics. Being industrious and having devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, he wrote many discourses full of every kind of instruction and profit.

Thirty-two of his discourses are mentioned by Nikephoros Kallistos as teaching the entire ascetic way of life. But they are not to be found now. There survive only eight of his discourses, different from these. Kallistos himself and the discerning Photios (Reading 200, p. 268) mention these eight discourses.

The first discourse is Concerning Spiritual Law, the second is On Those Who Think that One is Justified by Works. Both are divided into brief chapters that are easily taken in at a glance. The third is addressed To the Monk Nicholas. These three discourses have been selected for inclusion here, as being more useful than the others and having reference to spiritual law

The writings of Saint Mark are mentioned by the Hosiomartyr Peter Damascene, St Gregory (Palamas) of Thessaloniki, St Gregory the Sinaite, the most holy Patriarch Kallistos, Pavlos Evergetinos, and many other Fathers. Having read these works, they exhort us also to read them.

The Holy Church of Christ, honoring St Mark, commemorates him on the 5th of March, and proclaims his ascetic struggles, the wisdom contained in his discourses, and the gift of miracles which was granted to him from Above. [2]

To this, Fr Placide (Deseille) adds only that he ‘had undoubtedly been a hermit and then hegumen (superior) of a monastery during the fifth century’, [3] and the editors of the Faber Philokalia that this monastery may have been near modern Ankara, in Asia Minor. [4]

Two other things, however, are also worth pointing out. First, looking back to St Mark’s predecessors, Fr Placide notes the close relationship between his teaching and that of the Macarian Homilies. Fr Placide writes:

Like Diadochus of Photike, he stands in the spiritual lineage of Macarius of Egypt and the early Fathers of monasticism, whose teaching he transmitted to new generations: ‘Everyone baptized in the Orthodox fiath has received all grace secretly. But he only receives full certainty of it by fulfilling the commandments […]. Nothing is more powerful than prayer to grant us divine energy […]. The entire practice of the commandments resides in prayer. For nothing is stronger than the love of God.’ ‘Full certainty’ and ‘energy’—these terms certainly express the vocabulary of the spiritual experience in Macarius. Here it appears as the unfolding of the grace of baptism, obtained by practicing the commandments and unceasing prayer. [5]

Second, looking forward to St Mark’s successors, we note that his work played a major rôle in the life of the 11th-c. hesychast, St Symeon the New Theologian. Speaking of himself as about someone else, the latter tells us:

This young man, then, made the acquaintance of a holy monk who lived in one of the monasteries in the city [Constantinople]; and to him he opened his soul and from him he received a short rule which he had to keep in mind. He also asked him for a book giving an account of the ways of monks and their ascetic practices; so the elder gave him the work of Mark the Monk, On the Spiritual Law. This the young man accepted as though it had been sent by God Himself, and in the expectation that he would reap richly from it he read it from ened to end with eagerness and attention. And though he benefited from the whole work, there were three passages only which he fixed in his heart.

The first of these three passages read as follows: ‘If you desire spiritual health, listen to your conscience, do all it tells you, and you will benefit.’ [6] The second passage read: ‘He who seeks the energies of the Holy Spirit before he has actively observed the commandments is like someone who seels himself into slavery and who, as soon as he is bought, asks to be given his freedom while still keeping his purchase-money.’ [7] And the third passage said the following: ‘Blind is the man crying out and saying: “Son of David, have mercy upon me” (Luke 18:38). He prays with his body alone, and not yet with spiritual knowledge. But when the man once blind received his sight and saw the Lord, he acknowledged Him no longer as the Son of David but as the Son of God, and worshipped Him’ (cf. John 9:38). [8]

On reading these three passages the young man was struck with awe and fully believed that if he examined his conscience he would benefit, that if he practised the commandments he would experience the energy of the Holy Spirit, and that through the grace of the Holy Spirit he would recover his spiritual vision and would see the Lord. [9]

It remains to offer a passage or two from St Mark’s writings. One which has stuck with me, although unlike St Symeon I have not put it into practice, is a brief ‘chapter’ from On Those who Think They are Made Righteous by Works. In Cavarnos’s more literal translation, it reads, ‘7. Being a lover of knowledge, become also a lover of toil. For bare knowledge (psili gnosis) puffs up man (1 Cor. 8:1).’ [10] The editors of the Faber edition—the first one I read—have expanded it a bit to try to interpret St Mark’s meaning: ‘7. If you love true knowledge, devote yourself to the ascetic life; for mere theoretical knowledge puffs a man up (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1).’ [11]

But in the interests of offering something a bit lengthier, here is another passage that struck me on my first reading, this one from the Letter to Nicolas the Solitary:

Eventually your intellect, at a loss where to turn, is overwhelmed by dejection and laziness and forfeits all its spiritual progress. Then in deep humility it sets out once more on the path of salvation. Labouring much in prayer and all-night vigils, it uproots the causes of evil within itself through humility and confession before God and our neighbour. In this way it begins to regain the state of watchfulness and, illumined with divine grace and understanding of the Gospels, it perceives that no one can become a true Christian unless he gives himself up completely to the cross in a spirit of humility and self-denial, and makes himself lower than all, letting himself be trampled underfoot, insulted, despised, wronged, ridiculed and mocked; and all this he must endure joyfully for the Lord’s sake, not claiming for himself in return any human advantages: glory, honour or praise, or the pleasures of food, drink or clothes. [12]

Let this be a fruit-bearing Lenten message to all of us who call ourselves Christians.


[1] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, tr. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 250.

[2] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, ‘Brief Biography of our Holy & God-bearing Father Mark the Ascetic’, The Philokalia, tr. Constantine Cavarnos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 2008), pp. 247-8.

[3] Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008), p. 21.

[4] The Philokalia, Vol. 1, tr. & ed. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 109.

[5] Fr Placide, p. 21.

[6] St Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law 69; Palmer 1, p. 115; Cavarnos, p. 258.

[7] St Mark, On Those who Think that They are Made Righteous by Works 64; Palmer 1, p. 130; Cavarnos, p. 287.

[8] St Mark, On the Spiritual Law 13-4; Palmer 1, p. 111; Cavarnos, pp. 250-1.

[9] The Philokalia, Vol. 4, tr. & ed. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1998), pp. 16-7.

[10] Cavarnos, p. 278.

[11] Palmer 1, p. 124.

[12] Ibid., pp. 149-50.