33 from the Transfiguration of St. Sophronia of Essex: Explained Orthodox Spirituality to the Contemporary Secularized Worldtranslated

Saturday marks the 33rd anniversary of the transfer to the Lord of St. Sophronius of Essex, the disciple of St. Siluan the Athonite and the author of a book about his life that breathed a new spirit into the spirituality of the 20th century and the Western secularized world: "The Life and Teaching of Abbot Siluan the Athonite" (1948).

The saint's biography published on the web page of the Essex Monastery mentions his date of birth as September 22, 1896, in Moscow, his parents giving him the baptismal name of Serghei. He was a child who read a lot, prayed a lot and had artistic talent. He studied Fine Arts in Moscow, in search of an ideal of beauty that went beyond purely aesthetic beauty.

During the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, he was arrested twice in the infamous Liubianka prison, but in 1921 he managed to leave Russia.

Spiritual quests In the latter part of his adolescence he researched Eastern spirituality. Settled in Paris, he attracted the attention of the French press with a few exhibitions, but did not feel his spiritual quests satisfied by art.

Due to the inability of his mind to understand the mystery of death, on Holy Saturday of 1924, he returned to Christianity, renouncing Eastern ideas. In…