Commentary
This remarkable narrative provides us with a rare glimpse of how a young monk was transformed into a charismatic elder. Embedded within this same narrative, moreover, is the foundation upon which the elder reconstructed the spiritual tradition Simonopetra. The story of the monk, therefore, is a document bearing a double significance: on the one hand, it describes what is arguably the central moment in the life of Elder Aimilianos, and, on the other, it contains a kind of diagram for the vision of monastic life he put into practice, first at Meteora, and later on the Holy Mountain. Given its importance, then, it will be worthwhile to spend a few minutes carefully considering its basic features.
Perhaps the first thing that strikes us about this story is its biblical character. The progressive unfolding of the monk's experience closely corresponds to the pattern of divine revelation recorded in the Bible. This pattern, with which our story is deeply marked, is essentially a progression from darkness to light, followed by the revelation of God's word.
The darkness with which our story begins is both physical and spiritual. In it we see a solitary figure descending into the dark night of divine abandonment. This is therefore a kind of passion narrative, a crucifixion scene, during which the sun is blotted out, and we are enfolded in a thick, impenetrable darkness, such as that which settled on Sinai as a prelude to the establishment of God's covenant with Moses.
In the story of the monk, the darkness is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a divine, unearthly light. In the language of the Bible, this light is the divine 'glory' (kavod, doxa), which typically manifests itself prior to the revelation of God's word. And this is what we see once again in the Sinai theophany, and in the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, namely: a progression from the vision of glory to the hearing of the word. This same pattern continues in the New Testament, pre-eminently in the Transfiguration of Christ, where the vision of the divine light precedes the sound of the voice of the Father (cf. Mk 9:2-7; Mt 17:1-9; Lk 9:28-36). And again in the conversion of Paul, which begins with a blinding light flashing from heaven, after which Paul hears a voice (Acts 9:3-4). Our story's narrative structure, then, which will continue to occupy us, is a movement from primal darkness to the light of revelation, measured in the distinctive cadences of sacred scripture.
The second thing that strikes us about this story is its deeply ecclesial character, which brings us to the question of charisma and institution. The movement from darkness to light does not terminate in the revelation of the word, but rather culminates in the communal celebration of the Divine Liturgy. The monk's experience, therefore, should not be construed as an instance of 'private mysticism', set in motion by a psychological struggle resolved by the stars in a mystical union with nature. Like the conversion of Paul, what our monk undergoes is not simply an event in the life of a particular individual, but is rather an ecclesial event with far-reaching implications. The subject who receives God's revelation is always, and can only be, the Church in its fullness. God's glory may be revealed to a particular individual, but always for the sake of the larger community: 'for if one member is glorified (doxazetai), all the members rejoice with it' (1 Cor 12:26).
That the narrative begins in the privacy of a monastic cell, of course, can hardly be denied. Such cells have long been understood as a symbolic projection of the monk's body.13 Thus the monk's departure from his cell represents the burgeoning ecstasy of his mind; it marks a going outside of himself. (Much in the same way that the figure of Abraham, sitting outside of his tent, was interpreted by the church fathers as an image of the mind in a state of ecstasy, awaiting the manifestation of God as Trinity.) Entering into the space of the courtyard, the monk sees the night overtaken by a light brighter than day. He beholds, as we said, the glory of God, the glorious majesty, which St Paul said is visible in creation as a whole, for those who do not darken their heart by turning away from the truth (Rom 1:19-23; cf. Wis 13:5).
Precisely at this very moment, however, the divine light flooding the courtyard becomes newly manifest to him, and at a much deeper level. Vision yields to hearing, and the monk listens in amazement, for he hears all of creation praising the divine name, singing the words of the Jesus Prayer. The glorious light of God, which lately dispelled the monk's darkness, is now revealed to be Jesus Christ himself, the 'light of the world' (John 8:12).
In response to this revelation, the monk's heart opens, and joins in the chanting of the prayer. The saving name of Jesus Christ, the name that is 'above all names' (cf. Phil 2:9), now comes to dwell deep within the centre of the monk's beings. He has received the gift of the Prayer of the Heart.
But even this is not the end of the story. As the monk's progression from his cell to the monastery church suggests, the revelation of the Prayer of the Heart is an event that does not stand on its own but is connected to the liturgy. The gift of the Jesus Prayer functions, not as an end in itself, but rather as a prelude, an overture, a rite of passage to the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. The courtyard event, in other words, functions as a kind of matins service, in which creation literally responds to the call of the Psalmist: 'Praise Him all you stars and light - Let everything that has breath praise the Lord' (Ps 148:3; Ps 150:5, i.e., the lauds, read or chanted at every matins service).
This liturgical interpretation of the courtyard event finds support in a series of comments the elder made in 1975 regarding the daily celebration of the matins service (orthros). The meaning of that service, he believed, was summed up in the words of its initial, psalmic hymn:
In this passage, the inner meaning of the matins service becomes clear in light of the vision of God. Here, instead of undermining or invalidating the rituals of the Church, mystical experience confirms and authenticates them. If we think of the charismatic individual as an anti-institutional radical or revolutionary, we are forgetting that, more often than not, his radicalism is balanced by an equally strong conservatism. In and through his religious experiences, the mystic rediscovers the inner meaning of the sources of traditional authority. In seeking to understand and convey the content of his experience, the mystic finds his way back to language, to devotion, and to liturgy, which is also the way to community.
It was thus one of Elder Aimilianos's most deeply held convictions that mystical experience and liturgy are dynamically related. The liturgy of the church always implies and includes the living liturgy of the individual's existence, and thus there can be no ultimate separation of charisma from institutions, of spirituality from organized religion, or of private from corporate forms of prayer. In the elder's own words: 'It is pointless for me to go to church if I am not continuously at prayer. And it is pointless for me to pray if I have no part in the liturgy and the sacraments... There is no church without prayer and no prayer without church.' Indeed, prayer and liturgy are not simply interdependent, but like 'faith' and 'works', neither can be said to exist in separation from the other.15
This principle is closely related to the elder's remarks on the meaning of the daily matins service. There, as we saw, the experience of God in prayer was directly related to liturgy, because liturgy in various ways represents that experience, and in a certain sense is that experience. Liturgy and worship grow directly out of the experience of revelation, because the revelation of God's glory is always necessarily answered by the glorification of God. As in the eucharist, God's gift to man, and man's return of that gift to God, become inseparable.
ENDNOTES
13. See St. John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent 27: 'Strange as it may seem, the hesychast is a man who fights to keep his incorporeal self shut up in the house of the body... The cell of a hesychast is the body that surrounds him, and within him is the dwelling place of knowledge' (PG 88.1097CD). See also the response of St. Silouan of Athos, when asked why he did not relocate to a cave, in order to avoid the trouble and noise created by visitors to the monastery: 'I do live in a cave: my body is the cave of my soul, and my soul is a cave of the Holy Spirit' (cited in the Athonite periodical: Hosios Gregorios 30 [2005]: 24). Following Elaine Scarry, the cell/body analogy can be extended to include the furnishings of the cell, which are themselves 'forwardings' or 'projections' of the self outward: 'The simple triad of floor, stool, and mat, for example, makes spatially and therefore steadily visible the collection of postures and positions the body moves in and out of, objectifies its need continually to shift within itself the locus of its weight, objectifies, finally, its need to become wholly forgetful of its weight, to move weightlessly to a larger mindfulness', The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985), 39.
14. 'Preparation for Worship' (a spiritual talk given to the priest-monks of Simonopetra, 5 January 1975) (= KL 4:116).
15. 'Catechism on Prayer' (given at Simonopetra, on 4 February 1974, shortly before the beginning of Great Lent) (= KL 1:227, 230; SIAD 1:196, 198; and The Church at Prayer, 9, 44).
This remarkable narrative provides us with a rare glimpse of how a young monk was transformed into a charismatic elder. Embedded within this same narrative, moreover, is the foundation upon which the elder reconstructed the spiritual tradition Simonopetra. The story of the monk, therefore, is a document bearing a double significance: on the one hand, it describes what is arguably the central moment in the life of Elder Aimilianos, and, on the other, it contains a kind of diagram for the vision of monastic life he put into practice, first at Meteora, and later on the Holy Mountain. Given its importance, then, it will be worthwhile to spend a few minutes carefully considering its basic features.
Perhaps the first thing that strikes us about this story is its biblical character. The progressive unfolding of the monk's experience closely corresponds to the pattern of divine revelation recorded in the Bible. This pattern, with which our story is deeply marked, is essentially a progression from darkness to light, followed by the revelation of God's word.
The darkness with which our story begins is both physical and spiritual. In it we see a solitary figure descending into the dark night of divine abandonment. This is therefore a kind of passion narrative, a crucifixion scene, during which the sun is blotted out, and we are enfolded in a thick, impenetrable darkness, such as that which settled on Sinai as a prelude to the establishment of God's covenant with Moses.
In the story of the monk, the darkness is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a divine, unearthly light. In the language of the Bible, this light is the divine 'glory' (kavod, doxa), which typically manifests itself prior to the revelation of God's word. And this is what we see once again in the Sinai theophany, and in the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel, namely: a progression from the vision of glory to the hearing of the word. This same pattern continues in the New Testament, pre-eminently in the Transfiguration of Christ, where the vision of the divine light precedes the sound of the voice of the Father (cf. Mk 9:2-7; Mt 17:1-9; Lk 9:28-36). And again in the conversion of Paul, which begins with a blinding light flashing from heaven, after which Paul hears a voice (Acts 9:3-4). Our story's narrative structure, then, which will continue to occupy us, is a movement from primal darkness to the light of revelation, measured in the distinctive cadences of sacred scripture.
The second thing that strikes us about this story is its deeply ecclesial character, which brings us to the question of charisma and institution. The movement from darkness to light does not terminate in the revelation of the word, but rather culminates in the communal celebration of the Divine Liturgy. The monk's experience, therefore, should not be construed as an instance of 'private mysticism', set in motion by a psychological struggle resolved by the stars in a mystical union with nature. Like the conversion of Paul, what our monk undergoes is not simply an event in the life of a particular individual, but is rather an ecclesial event with far-reaching implications. The subject who receives God's revelation is always, and can only be, the Church in its fullness. God's glory may be revealed to a particular individual, but always for the sake of the larger community: 'for if one member is glorified (doxazetai), all the members rejoice with it' (1 Cor 12:26).
That the narrative begins in the privacy of a monastic cell, of course, can hardly be denied. Such cells have long been understood as a symbolic projection of the monk's body.13 Thus the monk's departure from his cell represents the burgeoning ecstasy of his mind; it marks a going outside of himself. (Much in the same way that the figure of Abraham, sitting outside of his tent, was interpreted by the church fathers as an image of the mind in a state of ecstasy, awaiting the manifestation of God as Trinity.) Entering into the space of the courtyard, the monk sees the night overtaken by a light brighter than day. He beholds, as we said, the glory of God, the glorious majesty, which St Paul said is visible in creation as a whole, for those who do not darken their heart by turning away from the truth (Rom 1:19-23; cf. Wis 13:5).
Precisely at this very moment, however, the divine light flooding the courtyard becomes newly manifest to him, and at a much deeper level. Vision yields to hearing, and the monk listens in amazement, for he hears all of creation praising the divine name, singing the words of the Jesus Prayer. The glorious light of God, which lately dispelled the monk's darkness, is now revealed to be Jesus Christ himself, the 'light of the world' (John 8:12).
In response to this revelation, the monk's heart opens, and joins in the chanting of the prayer. The saving name of Jesus Christ, the name that is 'above all names' (cf. Phil 2:9), now comes to dwell deep within the centre of the monk's beings. He has received the gift of the Prayer of the Heart.
But even this is not the end of the story. As the monk's progression from his cell to the monastery church suggests, the revelation of the Prayer of the Heart is an event that does not stand on its own but is connected to the liturgy. The gift of the Jesus Prayer functions, not as an end in itself, but rather as a prelude, an overture, a rite of passage to the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. The courtyard event, in other words, functions as a kind of matins service, in which creation literally responds to the call of the Psalmist: 'Praise Him all you stars and light - Let everything that has breath praise the Lord' (Ps 148:3; Ps 150:5, i.e., the lauds, read or chanted at every matins service).
This liturgical interpretation of the courtyard event finds support in a series of comments the elder made in 1975 regarding the daily celebration of the matins service (orthros). The meaning of that service, he believed, was summed up in the words of its initial, psalmic hymn:
The first part of the matins services is strongly marked by the expectation to see God in the darkness. And this is the case until the moment when the words of that beautiful hymn break forth: 'The Lord is God and has appeared unto us' (cf. Ps 117:27). We must love this hymn, and intensely experience it when we hear it chanted, but within our hearts, because this is the meaning of matins: the vision in light: of the God who can be seen.14
In this passage, the inner meaning of the matins service becomes clear in light of the vision of God. Here, instead of undermining or invalidating the rituals of the Church, mystical experience confirms and authenticates them. If we think of the charismatic individual as an anti-institutional radical or revolutionary, we are forgetting that, more often than not, his radicalism is balanced by an equally strong conservatism. In and through his religious experiences, the mystic rediscovers the inner meaning of the sources of traditional authority. In seeking to understand and convey the content of his experience, the mystic finds his way back to language, to devotion, and to liturgy, which is also the way to community.
It was thus one of Elder Aimilianos's most deeply held convictions that mystical experience and liturgy are dynamically related. The liturgy of the church always implies and includes the living liturgy of the individual's existence, and thus there can be no ultimate separation of charisma from institutions, of spirituality from organized religion, or of private from corporate forms of prayer. In the elder's own words: 'It is pointless for me to go to church if I am not continuously at prayer. And it is pointless for me to pray if I have no part in the liturgy and the sacraments... There is no church without prayer and no prayer without church.' Indeed, prayer and liturgy are not simply interdependent, but like 'faith' and 'works', neither can be said to exist in separation from the other.15
This principle is closely related to the elder's remarks on the meaning of the daily matins service. There, as we saw, the experience of God in prayer was directly related to liturgy, because liturgy in various ways represents that experience, and in a certain sense is that experience. Liturgy and worship grow directly out of the experience of revelation, because the revelation of God's glory is always necessarily answered by the glorification of God. As in the eucharist, God's gift to man, and man's return of that gift to God, become inseparable.
ENDNOTES
13. See St. John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent 27: 'Strange as it may seem, the hesychast is a man who fights to keep his incorporeal self shut up in the house of the body... The cell of a hesychast is the body that surrounds him, and within him is the dwelling place of knowledge' (PG 88.1097CD). See also the response of St. Silouan of Athos, when asked why he did not relocate to a cave, in order to avoid the trouble and noise created by visitors to the monastery: 'I do live in a cave: my body is the cave of my soul, and my soul is a cave of the Holy Spirit' (cited in the Athonite periodical: Hosios Gregorios 30 [2005]: 24). Following Elaine Scarry, the cell/body analogy can be extended to include the furnishings of the cell, which are themselves 'forwardings' or 'projections' of the self outward: 'The simple triad of floor, stool, and mat, for example, makes spatially and therefore steadily visible the collection of postures and positions the body moves in and out of, objectifies its need continually to shift within itself the locus of its weight, objectifies, finally, its need to become wholly forgetful of its weight, to move weightlessly to a larger mindfulness', The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985), 39.
14. 'Preparation for Worship' (a spiritual talk given to the priest-monks of Simonopetra, 5 January 1975) (= KL 4:116).
15. 'Catechism on Prayer' (given at Simonopetra, on 4 February 1974, shortly before the beginning of Great Lent) (= KL 1:227, 230; SIAD 1:196, 198; and The Church at Prayer, 9, 44).
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