Research project and scientific committee

After recalling the intrinsic and always valid good of the spiritual life and of the Church’s sacraments, it will be necessary to examine the concrete ways of initial monastic formation today, of the long years of perseverance with their ups and downs, of the monk on his way to deification.  It will not be possible to do this without also looking at the ecclesial and personal trials that we are called upon to traverse. The correspondence between John Chrysostom in exile and the deaconess Olympias speaks eloquently to us of the struggle against discouragement (athumìa). Tixon of Zadonsk reflects on the physical weakening provoked by age and the renewal of the interior man. Can the Orthodox monastic tradition provide us with useful indications on the relation between the successive ages of human life (cf. Jm 3,6) and the ages of the spiritual life? What relation is there between youth and spiritual fervor (cf. Diadochus of Photica), between middle age and service to one’s neighbor (cf. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II), between old age and Christian hope, in sickness and death? These are so many questions that will require attention.

The great Biblical and patristic tradition ought to guide us still today. But we cannot but ask ourselves how and by whom it can and should be transmitted to our contemporaries who believe and/or are seeking sense and God.

Bose, 5 November 2012