Community Life

It has been a few months since I have published anything for this blog.  We go through periods when many demands come our way, so there is nothing we can do but submit to what God sends and meet the immediate priorities.  I have recently visited the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in England.  After returning from my previous visit in September of 2019 I wrote an article speaking about community life.  I referred to my experience there and quoted their spiritual father, Archimandrite Zacharias.  Here I will again say something about community life and introduce this by referring to a brief interchange with a sister there.  During a conversation I commented: “The closest expression of the community life of the first Apostolic community we can find today is here in your monastery.  And it has its source in the love of God that was experienced by St. Silouan and St. Sophrony.” 

Allow me to explain this comment.  In order to accomplish this I will have recourse to St. Sophrony in his book Saint Silouan the Athonite.  Therein he writes:

“ ‘Our brother is our life,’ the Staretz often said.  Through Christ’s love all men become an inseparable part of our own individual, eternal existence.  The Staretz began to understand the commandment, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ as something more than an ethical imperative.  In the word as he saw an indication, not of a required degree of love but of an ontological community of being.” (p. 47)

“Through Christ’s love all men become an inseparable part of our own individual, eternal existence.”  St. Sophrony taught that such a love should be established among his brethren and from there to become universal.  Now I will move on to write something about cenobitic monasticism

I have once seen a statement from a monastery giving information to lay visitors about cenobitic monasticism. What was stressed is that we do things in common: we get up at the same time do our cell rule at the same time and go to church together. We eat together the same food we wear the same clothes, and have the same work schedule at our various tasks for the community. This is an external look at monasticism.

On my first visit to Athos I learned something more profound.  Cenobitic monasticism is community life.  Community life is a life of sacrifice. We live for others more than ourselves. We live for the good of the community. Our work is called diaconima which means a service, our work is a service for the community.  We live in relationship with others, we cut off our will before others and we both see our faults and those of others—these things help us to be humble and to love.  We are humble in denying our will and seeing our own faults and in bearing with the faults of others we learn to love.  Our program should not be to seek to have time for ourselves to do what we want but rather to help others whenever asked without any resistance and with a smile. This might be called community life in action.

What is the essence of this?  St. John the Theologian tells us the essence of this when he writes: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us; that which we have seen and heard we declare unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

The fellowship or community life is, a co-participation in the life of Christ. By being co-participants in the life of Christ we are united to God and each other. We have fellowship with God and one another. This must first be established among the members of the monastics and then it reaches out to those who visit the monastery.  Everyone becomes included in the fellowship that exists among the monastics because its source is God and God is not prejudice nor can
we set boundaries for God.  Each and every one of us should hold each other in our hearts in a spirit of Christian love.  Thus the community life, as St. Anthony the Great said when honoring St. Pachomius, is a re-establishment of the apostolic community life that we read of in the Acts of the Apostles.  All things were in common and there was one heart and soul among them even though they did not live and work in the same place. 

What I write here is nothing of my own; it is nothing other than what I have learned from my contact with the community of St. John the Baptist in Essex.  It should be noted that their community life is not the result of the virtue of any particular individual among them.  It is the result of their founder, St. Sophrony, pointing them to Christ with His self-emptying love as their guiding rudder and having love and prayer for enemies—as criteria for truth.  This is actually one subject that St. Sophrony wanted his spiritual children to write or speak about, that is, “prayer for enemies and love for enemies as criteria for truth”.  Fr. Zacharias has commented that if one is developing this, it shows that he is progressing properly on the path of spiritual life.  He also expressed the opinion that a heretic cannot attain this.

Through the prayers of St. Sophrony the Athonite may God help us to establish this life.  Amen.