My favorite Spiritual Direction tradition

My class in spiritual direction sparked an interest in me to re-read The Brother's Karamazov. When my first Spiritual Director asked me what I imagined a Spiritual Director was like I thought of Zossima, the staretz from one of my favorite Dostoevsky works.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary “obedience” which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.

The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one such novice, failing to fulfil some command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr’s death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon’s exhortation, “Depart all ye unbaptised,” the coffin containing the martyr’s body left its place and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder’s absolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent instance.

A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia: “There is the place for thee and not here.” The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the Oecumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as of distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom.

Orthodox Spiritual Direction

Here in the monastery library I found a book called, “Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East,.” It has a forward by Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware which discusses the concept of staretz or fathers in the Russian Orthodox tradition.

He describes a “golden chain,” a sort of secondary apostolic succession happening as these spiritual fathers who helped form the disciples of the next generation.

From what he wrote I get the impression that these fathers teneded to be very directive. They administered penance, not, Ware points out, as punishment, but as a doctor prescribing a remedy (xii). In addition to doctor, Ware also uses the images of counsellor, intercessor and mediator.

“Healer, teacher, man of prayer - the spiritual fathers is all these things, and yet he is something more.... anadochos denotes ... standing surety for his obligations” (xxiii).

While the spiritual director in the Orthodox tradition may be more authoritarian one may also expect to be dearly valued by their spiritual director. They stand before God responsible for their directees. They take upon themselves the responsibility of their directees spiritual formation - a kind of cosigner in their covenant with God.

I haven’t had any experience with a directive approach to spiritual direction. I have neither been wounded by it or could speak to its power. Since reading Dostoevski’s accounts of startsi in the Russian Orthodoxy, I have found myself drawn to submitting myself in obedience to a holy man.

Perhaps it is the romance of
Buddhist monks learning martial arts from a wise old master. Or the mystique of the orient and the draw of the hermitage.