Concluding remarks of the conference

 

Theological thought that allows itself to be guided by the Spirit, hence, is called to a creative asceticism in order to overcome the sterile and abstract opposition between tradition and modernity, each of them prisoners of a history that self-sufficiently is wrapped up in itself: in an idealized past or in a present that is not awaiting transfiguration.

How can one discern in the tradition of the fathers (but up to where does this reach?) what is authentic reception (obedience) to the Word of God and what is not? The problem, which was that of St Basil of Caesarea, has been voiced very clearly from many angles. A monasticism, a church that no longer await the Lord of history have lost their flavor. Thus, there always lurks the temptation to have ecclesial communion coincide with self-sufficient isolation, a sectarian closure that seeks to be different by isolating itself instead of opening itself by integrating and interpreting diversity, becoming in this way a live stimulus —the yeast of the evangelical parable — which announces the transfiguration of human relations and of the cosmos itself.

The authentic “ecclesial” dimension of the dynamic between solitude and communion opens instead in God’s today the irruption of eschatological newness: the definitive communion of God “all in all”, which inscribes communion in the center of the personal relation between man and God. This is all the more present in postmodern times of the atomization of the subject. The Christian notion of “person” — the names of Berdjaev and Bulgakov, as well as of Zizioulas and Yannaras were mentioned — constitutes a point of encounter and of overcoming the potentially destructive opposition between the antagonistic impulses of the subject and the aspiration towards oneness by the collectivity.

What the is the person? A wonder that is gratefulness, a marvel that trusts. It is a liberty that gives oneself, the profound liberty, disconcerting at times, that is born of love and only of love, the freedom acquired at great price by authentic inhabitants of today’s desert, such as father Cleopa of Sihastria, “a man for other”, or father Porfyrios of Kafsokalyvia, who was used to burn every stiff habit of him in the fire of his love. In their solitary struggle against evil, moral, physical and spiritual, the depth of the love of God embraces the solitude and desperation of every man. It is the energy of hope that shines even in the hell of isolation and of being far from God, as saints like Seraphim of Sarov or Silvan of Mount Athos have shown.

A gap in the topics treated this year was perhaps the absence of a reflection on the contribution of human sciences concerning this very complex tension between the isolation of the I and opening to relations with others and, in parallel, of an accurate reflection on the aids to maturity, human and spiritual, that permit one to learn to live solitude and to practice communion.

Nevertheless, we have been able to listen to monks and nuns of East and West speak of the concrete daily living in communion and living in solitude, the search of God in the silence of the cell, discernment of the face of God in the meeting with one’s brother and sister.

Solitude is an art that needs to be learned, it requires an apprenticeship that isolation avoids. It is always a solitudo pluralis. For this reason the fathers required that the arduous path of solitary life, in which, as w have heard the expression of St Seraphim of Sarov, the monk does battle against lions and tigers, be undertaken only after a long initiation to common life.

Silence and contemplation make room for the life of the Word in the community of brothers and sisters, in listening to one another. Then it is learned that solitude is an art, friend and teacher on the way of love, a love of living concretely, daily, as a horizon towards which one tends within the monastic fraternity, but also and above all within the Church and among the Churches and for all the human community. Solitude is the depth of common life, communion is the fruit of interior purification, but the end is always agape.

ADALBERTO MAINARDI
monk of Bose
in the name of the scientific committee of the Conference

XVIII International Ecumenical Conference
on Orthodox spirituality