Le combat spirituel dans le monde contemporain

Three sombre themes

Turning now to the second part of my address, I would like to single out six aspects of the spiritual struggle in the contemporary world. My list is not systematic, and it makes no claim to be exhaustive. I shall speak in terms of both darkness and light. Three of my chosen aspects have at first sight a sombre character, three evince a more luminous spirit; but all six are in the last resort not negative but eminently positive.

(1) Descent in hell.

Hell, may be regarded as the absence of God, the place where God is not (it is true that, viewed in a more subtle perspective, hell is not empty of God, for – as saint Isaac the Syrian insists – God’s love is everywhere). It is not surprising that Christians in the twentieth century, dwelling in a world marked by the sense of God’s absence, should have therefore interpreted their vocation as descensus ad inferos. Paul Evdokimov develops this idea in connection with the sacrament of baptism, which forms indeed the foundation of the Christian’s spiritual struggle (as brother Enzo insisted in his opening address). “Speaking of the ceremony of immersion at baptism”, observes Evdokimov, “saint John Chrysostom remarks: «The action of descending into the water and then rising out of it again symbolizes the descent of Christ into hell and his return from hell once more». To undergo baptism, then, means not only to die and to rise with Christ: it means also that we descend into hell, that we bear the stigmata of Christ the priest, his sacerdotal care, his apostolic anguish for the destiny of those who chose hell”. Evdokimov’s line of thought has much in common with the ideas of Hans Urs von Balthasar. But it must not be forgotten, as archbishop Hilarion Alfeev has demonstrated in a recent book, that Christ’s descent into hell is above all an act of victory.

An Orthodox saint of the twentieth century who particularly emphasized descent into hell is saint Silouan the Athonite. “Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not”, it teaches, adding that this is the way to acquire humility. His disciple father Sophrony insists, “he was referring to a real experience of hell”. In his meditations, saint Silouan recalls the cobbler in Alexandria, whom saint Antony visited, and who used to say: “Everyone will be saved – I alone shall perish”. Silouan applies this words to himself: “Soon shall I die and take up my abode in the dark prison of hell. And I alone shall burn there”.
Yet it would be a mistake to interpret Silouan’s standpoint in purely negative and gloomy terms. Full weight should be given to both parts of his statement: not only does he say, “Keep thy mind in hell”, but he adds at once, “and despair not”. Elsewhere he maintains that belief in one’s own damnation is a temptation from the evil one. There are, he says, two thoughts that come from the enemy: “You are a saint” and “you will not be saved”. Silouan was profoundly influenced by saint Isaac the Syrian’s teachings about the invincible character of divine love. “If love is not present”, he states, “everything is difficult”. Conversely, if love is present, everything is possible.
Christ’s descent into hell and his triumphant resurrection from the dead form one undivided event, a single and unified action.

(2) Martyrdom.

The particular form which descent into hell has taken during the twentieth century in the spiritual struggle of Orthodox Christians has been the experience of persecution and martyrdom. Truly for the Christian East the past century has been for excellence a century of martyrdom. Let it be remembered, moreover, that although communism has fallen in Russia and eastern Europe, there are still many places in the world where Christians – Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike – continue to undergo persecution (think of Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, China, …). In the words of a Russian priest of the emigration, father Alexander Elchadimov, who died in 1934, “the world is crooked and God straightens it. That is why Christ suffered (and still suffers), as well as all the martyrs, confessors, and saints – and we who love Christ cannot but suffer as well”. Saint Silouan points out, martyrdom can be inner as well as outer: “Praying for people”, he says, “means shedding blood”. At the same time, as in his apophthegm, “Keep thy soul in hell, and despair not”, he insists on the concurrence of darkness and light, of despair and hope. Thus the suffering of martyrs is also a source of joy: as it puts it, “extreme suffering is a line to extreme bliss”.
One martyr whose spiritual struggle has particularly captured the Orthodox imagination, in the last sixty year, is saint Maria Skobtsova, who died in the gas chamber of Ravensbrück on 13th March 1945, possibly taking the place of another prisoner. If this was indeed the case, then it indicates how the martyr – like the Christ himself, the protomartyr – fulfils a vicarious role, dying on behalf of others, dying that others may live. The martyr fulfils, in an ultimate and final way, saint Paul’s injunction, “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2). This, indeed, was a theme, that mother Maria stressed in her own writings. In an anthology of saints’ lives that she compiled, she records a story about saint Ioannikios the Great and a possessed girl: “He placed his hand on the suffering patient’s head and said calmly: «By the power of the living God, I, his unworthy servant Ioannikios, take upon myself your sin, if you have sinned … because my shoulders are stronger than your shoulders; because I want to accept your trial for the sake of love». The girl was cured; Ioannikios entered into her agony and came closer to death before emerging, victorious, from his contest with the power of evil”.
This, then, is a all-important aspect of the spiritual struggle: to endure martyrdom, visibly or inwardly to shed one’s blood for the sake of others.

(3) Kenosis.

Closely linked with the two elements of which we have been speaking, descent into hell and martyrdom, is a third, kenosis or self-emptying. The one who engage in the spiritual struggle identify himself with the humiliated Christ (here I recall a remarkable book, written seventy years ago by a Russian author, Nadegda Gorodetsky, The Humiliated Christ in Modern Russian Thought; it is still well worth reading). Before her imprisonment, saint Maria Skobtsova displayed this kenotic spirit in a striking way, displaying a costly solidarity with the destitute, the outcast, with all those marginalized by society, and – when the second world war came – with the Jews. “The bodies of our fellow human beings”, she wrote, “must be treated with more care than our own. Christian love teaches us not only to give our brethren spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece pf bread must be given to them. Personal almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary”.
A saint from the Greek tradition who has displayed this kenotic spirit is a notable degree is Nektarios of Pentapolis, who died in 1920. Stories abound concerning his humility. As a young bishop in Alexandria, when unjustly attacked by others, he refuses to retaliate or defend himself against slander. When he was director of the Rizareion theological school in Athens, the cleaner fell hill; to prevent the man’s post being given to someone else saint Nektarios rose day by day in the early hours of the morning and himself swept the passages and cleaned the lavatories, until the man was ready to return to work. In his later years visitors who met him working in garden of the monastery that he had founded mistook him for a workman, never guessing that he was bishop. In these and many other ways saint Nektarios obeyed Paul’s words: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus … He empted himself” (Phil 2:6).