Conclusion of the Conference

Sacraments and spiritual paternity

A fundamental question was posed during the conference: the relation between the sacraments of Christian initiation (baptism, chrismation, eucharist), as also the sacrament of confession, and spiritual fatherhood. Spiritual fatherhood, in the Spirit, of a bishop or a priest as mystagogues should bear and carry the charism of spiritual fatherhood.

This relation, which potentially can lead to conflict, has often been harmonized in the course of the history of the Church by identifying spiritual direction with sacramental confession. St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, in a time of pastoral crisis, is one example of this. It was no different in the Latin West.

This confusion, if it is confusion, is already present in the first exposition that we have of a systematic nature on the priesthood. St Gregory the Theologian in his Second Oration (in 362), in sketching the portrait of an ideal priest, sketches in fact the portrait of a spiritual father. He barely alludes to the liturgical aspects of the priestly ministry. Twenty-five years later St John Chrysostom in his treatise On the Priesthood to a great extent will follow the same way. Perhaps we should not separate, but accept the work of the Holy Spirit in both charisms. But this only brings back the question: what is the place of spiritual paternity within the church koinonia? Attention has been drawn to the danger of individualism, atomization in the relation of a father and his spiritual children to the detriment of ecclesial communion.

Doubtless this reproach can be made with regard to a certain ambiguity in the way the people of God look upon the charisms of spiritual fatherhood. Dostoevsky presents a good fictional example of this in his Brothers Karamazov with its contrasting figures of starec Zosima and starec Ferapont.