Members of One Another (Part III) ‘My soul longs for the whole world to be saved…. Divine love desires the salvation of all…. The Lord’s is such that He would have all men to be saved…. Our one thought must be that all should be saved…. The merciful Lord sometimes gives the soul peace in God but sometimes makes the heart ache for the whole universe, that all men might repent and enter paradise. According
Members of One Another (Part II) Despite the striking parallels between the Russian novelist and the Athonite monk, it is highly unlikely that St Silouan had ever read Dostoevsky. More probably, the similarities arise because both are shaped by the same living tradition, and both are drawing on the same sources. St Silouan (almost certainly) and Dostoevsky (possibly) have been influenced by a Mesopotamian hermit of the seventh century, St Isaac the Syrian, who writes
By Seraphim Danckaert St. Silouan the Athonite (1866–1938) is one of the most beloved recent saints, having been canonized in 1987. A simple monk who nonetheless attracted pilgrims from all over the world, his teaching emphasized the absolute necessity of love and humility for authentic Christian life. As is evident from the story below, the saint believed these virtues should guide all aspects of Christian witness, including how we interact with and preach the truth
We were created naked but clothed with light, light that shone upon the world to transfigure it. But at the Fall God clothed us with ‘garments of skins’ (Genesis 3.21) to protect us from a world become hostile. And now, in our fallen state, our own skin has become a barrier setting us apart from the universe, and signaling that the organism hidden within is a machine for consuming everything outside until its inevitable death.
St Silouan’s consuming desire for the salvation of all stands out in yet sharper relief when we take into account his teaching about what may be termed the ‘total Adam’. This is not, I think, a phrase that he himself employs, but it accurately sums up his point of view. For St Silouan, Adam is ‘our father’, the ‘father of all mankind’. Following St Paul (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45), the Starets sees Adam the first-formed
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