The monastery as a school of universal love

Sister Magdalen ... spoke to us today about the Monastery as a school of universal love (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Patrick Comerford

I spent most of today [Wednesday, 8 July 2009] in a Greek Orthodox monastery in south Essex. The Monastery of Saint John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, near Maldon, is marking the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 1959 by the saintly Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov.

The Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist is a mixed monastic community for both men and women, has been directly under the Ecumenical Patriarchate since 1965. The Greek term σταυροπηγιον means the community is directly under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch, acknowledges him as its bishop and commemorates him in all its liturgical services.

The monastery is unusual, if not unique, in being a double monastery with a community of both nuns and monks. The community of about 15 to 20 nuns and a smaller number of monks lives a monastic life centred on the Jesus Prayer.

Elder Sophrony, a disciple of Saint Silouan, was a monk on Mount Athos and then lived in Paris before moving to England in 1959. he was anxious that the new community should focus on inner asceticism, and so the typikon of the monastery consists of the repetition of the Jesus Prayer for about four hours a day and the celebration of the Divine Liturgy three or four times a week (Sundays, Tuesdays, Saturdays, Feastdays, and sometimes on other weekdays).

The monastery is also known for its writers and publications, and two of its most celebrated writers are Elder Sophrony’s grand nephew, Hieromonk Nicholas Sakharov, author of I love therefore I am (2002) and Sister Magdalen, author of Children in the Church Today and Conversations with Children: Communicating our Faith (2001).

Mural icons on the side of the Church at the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

The visit to the monastery today was arranged for the participants in this year’s summer school of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, which is taking place in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After an early departure from Cambridge, we arrived at the monastery in time for this morning’s celebration of the Divine Liturgy, and after breakfast Sister Magdalen spoke to us appropriately on “The Monastery as a school of universal love.”

Sister Magdalen conceded that some people think of the monastery as place of “dried-up love” but she related the title of her paper to a quotation from the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton, who said: “The monastery is a school … what we have to learn is love.”

Sister Magdalen spoke of a universal love that is all-embracing, including God and all his creation. That is what it means to be a human person … to love as the love that is in the Holy Trinity.

She said the ascetic effort is not selfish or about purifying myself, but is directed towards love. Salvation involves accepting the divine gift of love in its fullness. Prayer is a mirror of the monk’s love of God.

There was an echo of the introduction to the “four loves” of CS Lewis by Metropolitan Kallistos yesterday when Sister Magdalen spoke of Father Sophrony’s understanding of four types of love: eros (ἔρως), which he said should be exclusively confined to a man and woman in marriage; affection (storge, στοργή), which cannot be universal; friendship (philia, φιλία), which cannot be shared with everyone; and agape (ἀγάπη), which is unlimited. He believed the other three forms of love needed a “good dose” of agape in order not to become destructively exclusive.

Relating love and prayer in the monastic life, she quoted Saint John Klimakos who said: “Love is greater than prayer, because prayer is a particular virtue, but love embraces all the virtues.”

The highest charismatic gift, she suggested, is to pray for the whole world as you pray for yourself. Monasteries are the lungs and engine room of the world. They are not places of escape – “if it were escape, we would be millions.”

In a humorous aside, she recalled how some children had asked why the nuns and monks of the monastery wore black. “I said it was to remind us to be sad because we are very happy.”

When we returned to the summer school in Cambridge, the Revd Professor Andrew Louth – who is Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies in the Department of Theology and Religions at Durham University – contrasted and compared two of the greatest Patristic writers on love, one from the West and one from the East, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Maximos the Confessor.

Father Andrew has been in Durham since 1996, for most of the time as Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies. Before that, he taught Patristics and Byzantine and early mediaeval history in Oxford University and Goldsmiths College, London. His research interests are mainly in the history of theology in the Greek tradition, Romanian and Russian theology and mysticism. His most recent book is Greek East and Latin West: the Church AD 681-1071 (2007).

He is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Orthodox chaplain to Durham University, editor of the journal Sobornost, and has described Archimandrite Sophrony as “one of the greatest startsi of the twentieth century.”

“Augustine doesn’t just talk to us about love, he makes us feel it,” he told us. And for Augustine, the point of the monastic life is about loving God. It was a fitting conclusion to the day.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.