October 23/10 – Council of the Reverend Elders of Optinatranslated

“To Optina for experience,” people used to say about pilgrimages to this monastery in the Kaluga province. Advice emanating from the blessed experience of the spiritual and practical life of the Optina elders was received by people of various ranks, including great Russian writers and public figures. In the 19th-20th centuries, the monastery increased the ladder of eldership, which elevated entire generations of Russian people into the Kingdom of Heaven. The elders Leo, Macarius, Moses, Anthony, Hilarion, Ambrose, Joseph, Anatoly (the Elder) and Anatoly (the Younger), Barsanuphius, Nektarios, Isaac (the Elder) and Isaac (the Younger), Nikon were healers, seers, comforters, and accusers. “The broad ideas of the younger generation about great activities for the benefit of all mankind are similar to someone who, without finishing a high school course, dreams a lot about himself that he could be a professor at a university... We must avoid evil, and then take care of the benefit of our neighbors,” Elder Ambrose wrote at the end of the 19th century.

These words, like almost everything said and written by him and other Optina elders, sound surprisingly timely in our days. They taught to live not according to passions, but according to commandments. “Jealousy, which wants to destroy great evil, is itself great...