Conclusion of the Conference

Spiritual paternity/maternity as obedience to God’s Word

Like Jesus, the spiritual father teaches by his life (his example) and by his doctrine (bios kai didaskalia; praxis et logos). Spiritual father and son together live in obedience to the Word of God, which they confront in Sacred Scripture.

The Bible presents to us models of spiritual fatherhood and sonship: Moses and Joshua, Elias and Eliseus, Jesus and his disciples, Paul and his disciples. Life lived in common is one of its determining dimensions. Where Jesus Christ is at the center of a lived communion, there the Holy Spirit transforms the baptized more and more, conforms him to Christ crucified and glorified. Several times we have been shown how the living tradition of spiritual paternity played a providential role in the Orthodox Churches during the Turkocracy and during the period of communist persecutions.

The Word of God heard together in Sacred Scripture renders fruitful the relation between spiritual father and his spiritual child (St John Chrysostom and St Olympias). St Nil Sorskij reminds us that in a time of crisis and spiritual indigence it is necessary to seek replies in Sacred Scripture, to read and meditate on it continually, to interpret it with the aid of the fathers. St Ambrose of Optina, St Ignatius Brjanchaninov, St Theophan the Recluse in the nineteenth century employ the same approach. Listening to the Word of God and to the fathers requires also a mental exertion: it is necessary to translate, to publish, to study, and to comment. This is the great lesson of St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and of the Optina elders. This has permitted intellectuals, writers, and artists to find or rediscover faith in Christ.

It can be asked whether our congress should not have studies more closely one or more examples of a concrete adaptation of this tradition in a specific spiritual and intellectual context, to draw lessons for us today.
One example: the fathers of the desert in the fourth and fifth centuries were not all Egyptian fellahs without learning. Some of them for the sake of discernment and with the desire to clarify the rules of spiritual combat did not hesitate to adopt the techniques of analysis of psychic life from pagan philosophers (considered as masters of wisdom). They borrowed certain techniques of spiritual guidance from what we today call human sciences. What could we do today in this domain, without betraying the uniqueness of Christian revelation?