Suffering and Joy: Why St. Silouan is Our Patron Saint?

​When Jesus called upon his Apostles to a new Journey, a new vocation, (Matthew 4:18, Mark 1:16, Luke 5:2, John 1:40), Christ had just started his ministry.

​He had already endured temptations in the desert, performed miracles and been cast out of his home town. Christ comes into these fisherman’s lives and through a very ordinary act of hospitality -- letting a Rabbi use their boats -- turns their entire lives upside down.  Instead of netting fish, they are called to net the hearts of men. Soon they will be rushing like windblown embers through dry brush, and setting entire nations on fire. 
 
In the powerful Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes: 

We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard You, and in the day of salvation I have helped You.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

​We hear how the righteous receive God’s grace in suffering and dishonor through patience and fasting. St. Paul continues to the Corinthians:

As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

​So much for leaving a fishing boat, this sounds like leaping into the fire!   Paul  literally saw God directly on the road to Damascus and was given the gift of miracles.  How am I, a sinner and an ordinary person, supposed to bear suffering with joy in the same way, let alone be as serious about salvation? 

Our Patron, Saint Silouan
 
​Today we celebrate the 1938 passing into eternity of Saint Silouan. Born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov in 1866 in a small village in Tambov, Russia, he died on September 24, 1938 on Mount Athos in Greece.
 
 Unlike some overly hagiographical literature, St Silouan recalls that he was a normal young man, with all of a young man’s weaknesses, hopes and joys. 
 
Yet something stirred in the twenty-seven year old Simeon Ivanovich. He abruptly left his native Russia and went to Mount Athos. He became a monk at the Monastery of St. Panteleimon and was given the name Silouan, the Russian version of the Biblical name “Silvanus.”  
 
Silouan was a rather ordinary monk. He ran a mill for the monastery as his obedience.   He was barely literate and wrote no theological treatises. He didn’t become especially well-known among pilgrims.  
 
At the time there was a revival going on in Mount Athos. Joseph the Hesychast, Arsenious and John the Hutt Dwellers, revived the Hesychastic tradition. Their spiritual children, Ephraim of Arizona, St Paisius and Porphyrios, grace many of our home book shelves.  The Way of the Pilgrim brought their vision back to northern Europe and into the Slavic monastic tradition. 
 
Hesychasm is a monastic way of life grounded in the desert fathers. The idea is a that through unceasing prayer (the Jesus Prayer is often one of the tools) and ascetic struggle, with the guidance of an elder, you can experience God directly in this life.   By contrast, most theologians, especially in the West, hold that God’s properties and power can only be analyzed and perhaps contemplated.  The centrality of the Jesus Prayer is a legacy of Hesychasm’s revival on Mount Athos.. Silouan struggled to find out who God is, but among Mount Athos’ spiritual heavyweights, he was at most a dim star.   
 
Silouan’s holiness was recognized by few. St. Nikolaj Velimirović was a frequent visitor along with many of the Russian emigres in Paris.   But the only reason we know St. Silouan – and venerate him as our patron saint --is his cell attendant and spiritual child, St Sophrony of Essex. St. Sophrony edited Silouan’s journals into a book that was eventually brought to the West, translated and published in English and French.  

Why Our Parish is Named After St. Silouan
 
Three main themes run through St. Silouan’s Life and writings. The first is the need to acquire the Grace of the Holy Spirit by self-consciously shaping ourselves in God's image and likeness.  By living righteous and holy lives, we gradually grow closer to God’s imagine – the image in which we were originally created. The idea that God is directly accessible to anyone, and can be experienced directly, is the foundation of the Hesychastic struggle and ethos.  
 
The Hesychastic themes in St. Silouan’s journals are also reflected in the Orthodox academic resurgence in Europe and the West -- and even the evangelical revival in the United States.  A relationship with God is possible; all we need to do is turn to him, and pray.
 
St Silouan received the gift of unceasing prayer at an early age. He excelled at the Jesus Prayer until it became an unending awareness of the presence of God.   Early in his monastic struggle, God gave him the grace of a vision of Christ when venerating icons of Christ while entering the church. Many believe this was a direct vision of the Uncreated Light . It's an encounter that left Silouan yearning for it for the rest of his life; he even felt that at the time he wasn't ready for it.  
 
St Silouan exhorts people to seek after God.  To him it’s worth more than anything. He writes:

I am a great sinner
and yet I saw the boundless love and mercy of God toward me.
The cheerful and gentle gaze of the Lord
drew my soul
 
Oh, the love of the Lord.
I do not have powers to describe it
for it is infinitely great and wonderous
I cannot bring myself to forget you
My soul Lord longs for you
I with tears I seek you.

The second main theme in St. Silouan’s journals is his attitude toward repentance. You repent by searching after God where he is.  And where else would God be but on the Cross and even deep in Hell’s darkest reaches -- God is in his darkest moments. “Keep your Mind in Hell but despair not,” goes the famous if confusing refrain.  A self-emptying and empathetic God has chosen to dwell with those in despair, and it is here that God's grace is palpable.  All too often we only want to move upwards, to only have good things happen to us. But as in Dante's Divine Comedy reminds us, the way to heaven is through the labyrinths of Hell. 
 
Christianity is all about victory through defeat.  It's also a tool for humility.  Often pain keeps us grounded, keeps us humble, and frees us from our destructive self-will.    Even if God blesses me, and only good things happen to me, if I love my neighbor I will also experience their hell.   In a way, God calls us to hell, both our own and the forms of hell around us suffer.  If you're willing, God will send you into the fire to be his firefighter.
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​For The Love of the World
 
The third major theme in St. Silouan’s writings is that if you truly have an inner life of peace and prayer, it will manifest itself by an outer love for the World.   We must love the world through acts of charity -- and pray for its salvation . So often this becomes an abstract concept or one of “bless those I care about,” and we end up being merely self-congratulatory. All too often I hear people talk about Orthodoxy as a self-congratulatory,  triumphal religion. “Thank God we are Orthodox”. 
 
 St Silouan is very simple. For him, loving of the world means loving everyone, including those we have a right to hate.  A monk once commented, “but those heretics will go to hell,” and St Silouan exclaimed with teary eyes, “but how could love bear that?”.   
 
St Silouan insisted that we pray for our enemies.  And he repeatedly says that it’s impossible to love your enemies without grace: "Lord, You have given the commandment to love enemies, but this is difficult for us sinners if Your grace is not with us"; "Without God's grace we cannot love enemies"; "He who does not love his enemies, does not have God's grace"; "He who has not learned to love from the Holy Spirit, will certainly not pray for his enemies.”  For St Silouan, in Christ there are no enemies -- only those who accept "the words of eternal life," and those who reject them and effectively crucify them. 
 
Am I the one of those who crucifies? If you’re a Ukrainian burying your family right now, this is a difficult question – and presents a difficult demand. In all of our lives, and even in this very church, we have had those who have wounded us, let us down, and broken our trust. 
 
As scandalous as this sounds, may God bless them. May God multiply them. May God transform them with his love.  Until we can say these words, we do not have grace, and do not have the freedom to turn to Christ. There remains some corner in our souls that keeps us from overcoming our limitations, leaving our entangling nets, and following Christ.  I may have the right to be angry, but it’s my choice to be angry or to follow after Christ. 
 
So here we are at St..Silouan the Athonite Orthodox Church, in Toronto, in 2023, right here and now.  We are surrounded by a great a cloud of witnesses, both living and those triumphant.    And once again, we need to be reminded: now is the time, now is the time to finally live.  To cast off our stupid self-willed ideas about life and live life in its fullness. To love the world.  To truly pray, both for ourselves in repentance and for everyone around us.  And if we put that love into action, maybe then people will see the fruits of the Holy Spirit. 
 
Tomorrow we will feed 50 or 60 people at our community meal. We will continue offering a liturgy, teaching those around us the true faith. But remember: all of that is nothing without an inner turning, without love grounded in prayerful repentance.    May God grant you the grace to leave the fishing boat and leap into the fire – and maybe ignite a few fields along the way.  
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--Deacon Michael Luciuk