Conclusion of the Conference

Spiritual formation

A question has been posed: how can the crisis of spiritual formation be remedied? The testimony of Russian and Georgian nuns, women who are often simple and feeble, has shown us that the Holy Spirit transmits the faith and tradition through what is fragile and despised in the eyes of the powerful of this world. They love, they have compassion, they show themselves to be infinitely patient in carrying the cross.

We have been reminded that monastic life is not only liturgical prayer, the canon of the cell, and asceticism. The task of spiritual fathers and mothers is to initiate their spiritual children to interior asceticism, to open a way of continual prayer and charity. To this must be added formation in reading Sacred Scripture and the fathers.

The dangers of spiritual paternity

Ever since St John Cassian and St Nilus the Ascetic the fathers have warned against “self-proclaimed or improvised spiritual fathers”. Patriarch Alexis II and bishop Savvatij have reaffirmed these warnings.
The spiritual father himself is on the road of being healed, a sick man whom the physician Christ heals through the Spirit. He has to bear and assume his limits and his misery. He is only an instrument that the living Word wants to use.
Up to what point does the authority of the spiritual father reach, on the consciences of his spiritual children, in the Church? What can be said of certain spiritual fathers who arrogate to themselves an anti-ecumenical and apocalyptic magisterium? Does not the veneration that surrounds certain spiritual fathers border on a cult of personality, on sectarianism?