Sophrony (Sakharov)

Archimandrite Sophrony

Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (23 September 1896 in Moscow – 11 July 1993 in Tolleshunt Knights), also Elder Sophrony, was best known as the disciple and biographer of St Silouan the Athonite and compiler of St Silouan's works, and as the founder of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Maldon, Essex, England.[1]

Timeline

Early life

On September 23, 1896, Sergei Symeonovich Sakharov (Russian: Серге́й Семёнович Са́харов) was born to Orthodox parents in Russia. As a child, Sergei would pray daily, later recalling that he would pray for 45 minutes without stress. Even as a child, Sergei claimed to have experienced the Uncreated Light. He read widely, including such Russian greats as Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Pushkin.

Due to great artistic talent, Sergei studied at the Academy of Arts between 1915 and 1917, and then at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture between 1920 and 1921. Sergei used art as a "quasi-mystical" means "to discover eternal beauty", "breaking through present reality ... into new horizons of being". Later, this would help him to differentiate between human intellectual light and God's Uncreated Light.

It was around the time of his study at the Moscow School that Sergei would see Christianity's focus on personal love as being necessarily finite; he falls from the Orthodoxy of his youth and delves into Indian mystical religions based on the impersonal Absolute.

In 1921, Sergei left Russia: partly to continue his artistic career in Western Europe, and partly because he was not a Marxist. After first going to Italy, he went to Berlin, and then settled in Paris in 1922.

Paris

Frustrated by inability of art to express purity.
Saw rational knowledge as unable to provide answer to the biggest question, the problem of death.
St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute begins. Sergei among first students. Was lectured by Fr Sergius Bulgakov and Nicholas Berdyaev; however, while both influenced Sergei, problems with each (sophiology and anti-asceticism, respectively), meant that influence on Sergei was limited.

Mt Athos

The Second World War was a time of such intense prayer that Fr Sophrony's health was affected, teaching him the interdependence of all mankind.

Paris revisited

The faculty of St Sergius allow Elder Sophrony to sit the examinations of the whole course, providing for his needs; however, upon arrival, this is blocked by faculty insistence on Elder Sophrony denying by silence the grace of the Moscow Patriarchate, which he refused to do.
Elder Sophrony settles in Russian House, an old-age home, in St Genevieve-des-Bois, assisting the priest and acting as father confessor. He has a major operation on a stomach ulcer.

Essex, England

Events of and after his death

The monastery had been informed that the only way that it could bury people on its property was to build an underground crypt, which it proceeded to build, and in which Elder Sophrony said that he would not die until the crypt was ready. Then, having been told of the expected completion date of 12 July 1993, Elder Sophrony stated that he "would be ready". On 11 July 1993, Elder Sophrony died, and on the 14th was his funeral and burial, attended by monastics from around the world. At the time of Fr Sophrony's death, there were 25 monastics in the monastery, a number that has grown since then.

Mother Elizabeth, the eldest nun, died soon after, on the 24th. This was in accordance with Elder Sophrony's words that he would die first, and she would die soon after.

On Prayer, a book containing Elder Sophrony's writings on prayer - particularly the Jesus Prayer - was published posthumously.

Books

Biographical

Quotes

"No one on this earth can avoid affliction; and although the afflictions which the Lord sends are not great men imagine them beyond their strength and are crushed by them. This is because they will not humble their souls and commit themselves to the will of God. But the Lord Himself guides with His grace those who are given over to God's will, and they bear all things with fortitude for the sake of God Whom they have so loved and with Whom they are glorified for ever. It is impossible to escape tribulation in this world but the man who is given over to the will of God bears tribulation easily, seeing it but putting his trust in the Lord, and so his tribulations pass."

"There are three things I cannot take in: nondogmatic faith, nonecclesiological Christianity and nonascetic Christianity. These three - the church, dogma, and asceticism - constitute one single life for me." - Letter to D. Balfour, August 21, 1945.

"If one rejects the Orthodox creed and the eastern ascetic experience of life in Christ, which has been acquired throughout the centuries, then Orthodox culture would be left with nothing but the Greek minor [key] and Russian tetraphony." - Letter to D. Balfour.

"There are known instances when Blessed Staretz Silouan in prayer beheld something remote as though it were happening close by; when he saw into someone's future, or when profound secrets of the human soul were revealed to him. There are many people still alive who can bear witness to this in their own case but he himself never aspired to it and never accorded much significance to it. His soul was totally engulfed in compassion for the world. He concentrated himself utterly on prayer for the world, and in his spiritual life prized this love above all else." -- St Silouan the Athonite, p. 228.

"In my young days ... I had been attracted to the idea of pure creativity, taking the form of abstract art. ... I derived ideas for my abstract studies from life around me. I would look at a man, a house, a plant, at intricate machinery, extravagant shadowscapes on walls or ceilings, at quivering bonfire flames, and would compose them into abstract pictures, creating in my imagination visions that were not like actual reality. ... Fortunately I soon realised that it was not given to me, a human being, to create from 'nothing', in the way only God can create. I realised that everything that I created was conditioned by what was already in existence. I could not invent a new colour or line that had never existed anywhere before. An abstract picture is like a string of words, beautiful and sonorous in themselves, perhaps, but never expressing a complete thought ..."—Preface to St Silouan the Athonite

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Orthodoxwiki Archived June 14, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.

Online sources

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