"SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM": Orthodox Monasticism and Its Service to the World

Theology Today, Apr 2004 by Ware, Bishop Kallistos

Makarios's words need, of course, to be qualified by what was said earlier: Monastics do not define themselves in terms of any supposed "benefit" that they are conferring upon others; they see themselves not as strong but as weak. Yet, in this instance, a sentinel is not necessarily a hero; what is required is to be watchful, not to be faultless and invulnerable. And watchfulness or vigilance-in Greek, nepsis-has always been regarded in the Christian east as a primary monastic virtue.

A FIVEFOLD MINISTRY

From these three examples, I have begun to appreciate how monasticism is indeed a "sacrament of love." The monk is one who loves God above all else (Antony), who expresses love for neighbor through acts of service to his fellow monks (Pachomios), and who ministers in love to society at large through unceasing prayer (Makarios). Can we be more precise? In what more particular ways does the monk, "poor man" and "mourner" though he is, fulfill an ecclesial and social role? At least five possibilities come to mind.

First, how far does the monk or nun help others by engaging in scholarly and educational work? The answer is: only to a limited degree. Eastern monasteries were not required to act as preservers of the cultural and literary heritage of antiquity, as was done by the Benedictine movement in the west in the early Middle Ages. Most Orthodox monks were (and are today) not priests but laymen, who work with their hands in agricultural tasks or some form of craftsmanship. They also copied manuscripts before the invention of printing; but this was seen as manual labor rather than scholarly research. In more recent times, they often have maintained printing presses. But there is no parallel in the east to the ambitious work undertaken by, for example, the Maurist Congregation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France. The schools for children attached to Orthodox monasteries usually have been relatively small, intended primarily for future monks.

Should monasteries be seen, in the second place, as contributing to the life of the wider church through evangelism and missionary work? There are certainly many cases, alike in the eastern Mediterranean and in Russia, when solitaries, living in the desert or forest among non-Christians, have converted those around them through their personal holiness; but this was not their deliberate intention when they first withdrew into solitude. A few monks, it is true, have made missionary work their primary aim: St Nikon the Preacher of Repentance, for example, who in the tenth century reconverted the inhabitants of Crete to the Christian faith after the expulsion of the Arabs; St Stephen of Perm who worked among the Zyrians in fourteenth-century Russia; or St Kosmas the Aitolian (1714-79), who set out from Mount Athos on a series of highly successful missionary journeys, preaching to the Greek and Albanian Christians who were in imminent danger of apostatizing to Islam.25

Such monk-missionaries, however, are the exception rather than the norm. Evangelism has never been undertaken by Orthodox monasteries in a systematic way, nor have there ever been in the Christian east religious "orders" devoting themselves specifically to missionary work. Indeed, within Orthodoxy there are no organized "orders" of the western type. Each monk or nun is attached to a particular monastic house, but otherwise they simply belong to the one all-embracing spiritual family that includes everyone who adopts the monastic way.