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

Theology Today, Apr 2004 by Ware, Bishop Kallistos

What, in the third place, of social and philanthropic work? This is certainly more important in Orthodox monasticism than scholarship or evangelism. "I will serve humankind," St Pachomios promised at his conversion. Yet, if the monk's "service of love" is extended simply to the other members of his community, is this not too narrow? What about the hungry and the naked in the world outside? One response to this is that cenobitic monasticism, western and eastern alike, has always seen the giving of hospitality to pilgrims as an integral part of the monastic vocation. Monastery guests, as St Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.550) wrote in his Rule, are to be received "as Christ himself."26 In similar terms, the fourth-century Egyptian Abba Apollo insisted, "We should bow down before those who come to see us, for we are bowing down not before them but before God. As the saying goes, You have seen your brother, you have seen the Lord your God. This we learn from the story of Abraham."27

Through this ministry of hospitality, each monastery can act as an oasis of apostolic fellowship in a society that is growing ever more cold and lonely. Visitors are healed simply by sharing for a period in the ordered framework of daily prayer; time recovers its meaning and life its sense of direction when punctuated by the ringing of bells and the beating of the simantron.28 The community in its totality serves, in this way, as spiritual guide.

Nor is this all. St Basil the Great urged that monasteries not only should extend hospitality to occasional visitors but also should undertake organized charitable work on a long-term basis, maintaining hospitals, orphanages, refuges for the aged, and hostels for the homeless. Even the hermit was expected to supply the needs of the sick and the destitute through the money he earned from his own handicraft. Thus, it is recorded of Abba Agatho (4th century): "Coming to the city one day to sell his wares, he found a traveler lying ill and neglected in the market-place, with no one to look after him. The old man rented a room and lived with him there, working with his hands to pay the rent and spending the rest of his money on the sick man's needs. he stayed there for four months until the sick man recovered. Then he returned to his cell in peace."29 The Basilian model of organized charitable and social work has been followed in more recent times by the Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow, founded by St Elizabeth the New Martyr (1864-1918), sister-in-law of the Emperor Nicholas II. It has been justly claimed, "She gained a charisma equal to that of Mother Teresa in modern Calcutta."30

On the whole, however, charitable work has not been seen in the Christian east as the primary function of monasticism. Yet, there is a fourth form of service to the world that is much more central to the Orthodox monastic vocation: providing spiritual guidance. Orthodox Christians do not usually expect from monasteries works of scholarship, missionary campaigns, or major charitable enterprises. But they do hope to find within monasteries men and women of prayer, wisdom, and holiness who will supply, at moments of crisis, a healing word of counsel and who will intercede for them before God. A figure characteristic of Orthodox monasticism at all periods is the geron or charismatic elder (in Slavonic, staretz), who is not necessarily old in years, but who is mature in spiritual insight and the gift of discernment. These elders are not necessarily priests; indeed, there are not only spiritual fathers in Orthodoxy, for this is a ministry also exercised by women.