Peace in the Face of War

heart reaches the limits of our physical endurance, then the invocation
of the Name of Jesus Christ brings PEACE which alone keeps us alive. 1
In a sense, inasmuch as they offer a summary of his own spiritual journey, his
words here are an epilogue to his own life. The fact that a human being could
live with such intense levels of pain and still experience the consolation
of divine peace became for Fr Sophrony a window into a greater mystery.
This mystery is our unique value as persons who become Christ-like by
transporting ourselves into universal dimensions ‘whenever we suffer
tribulation’. 2
It is important to emphasize that war and peace clearly stand out as two
important preoccupations in the forefront of Fr Sophrony’s spiritual
consciousness. Let us examine them in turn to see how he gives to each a
new meaning, and how they contribute to his overall theological vision.
War or ‘Blessed Despair’?
Fr Sophrony speaks of the lives of millions taken away with ‘incredible
ferocity’. Christ had said that even the hairs on our heads ‘are all numbered’
(Matthew 10:30). But this statement and the affirmations that ‘God is love’
and that brotherly love is to be the governing principle of human life (1 John
4:8, 1:5), were now rendered meaningless by the massacres on the front
lines and the m ass murders in concentration camps. What is only hinted
at in the opening page of St Silouan receives a fuller treatment in his main
autobiographical work We Shall See Him as He Is, published in 1985 when
he was nearly 80 years old. The first chapter contains an extensive reflection
on his experience of war. This is set in the context of a discussion on the
remembrance of death as the first step on the way to ascetic renunciation and,
ultimately, true prayer. 3 What we are given is in fact a theological framework
supporting the practice of prayer as an antidote to the ‘black despair’ caused
by the tragic reality of war. This emphasis is mirrored by references to the
First World War and the Russian Revolution.
I frequently speak of ‘pain’ and am often worried that not everyone will
rightly understand this ascetic term. The pain I write of is the leitmotiv of
my life in God. I cannot ignore it…. It is the pain of the love of God which
detaches the one who is praying from this world to transport him into
another. The fiercer the spiritual pain, the more vigorous the attraction to
God. The more dynamic our plunge into the depths of suffering, the surer
1
A. Sophrony, Тайнство христианской жизни [The Mystery of Christian Life], ‘Epilogue’, pp.
260–261. See also, We Shall See Him as He Is, p. 88; Видеть Бога, p. 85.
2
Ibid., p. 76.
3
A. Sophrony, We Shall See Him as He Is, pp. 10–18.
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