Hieromonk Nikolai Sakharov
All Articles by Hieromonk Nikolai Sakharov
Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, Essex, England
St Sophrony’s ‘Testament’: The Trinity as a model for monastic community
The article examines various implications of the ‘Testament’ that St Sophrony bequeathed to his monastery, where he puts forth his idea of the Holy Trinity as a model of monastic community. Man is created in the image and likeness of God the Trinity, not as an isolated individual, but as a communal being. The principles of life within the Holy Trinity are set out as the main principles of cenobitic monastic life, when ‘the Trinity becomes our ascetic project’. Monastic vows, such as obedience and poverty, are explained through the prism of the teaching on the Holy Trinity.
Towards the end of our life, we dwell on what is most important, while all other ‘details’ remain behind. Christ, in his earthly sojourn, expressed his final wish in Gethsemane, as the completion of his ‘work’ (Jn 17:3): ‘Let them all be one as we are one’ (Jn 17:21–22). The same message is contained within St Sophrony’s final Testament: ‘That all should be one as God the Trinity is one’.
It is striking that a monk in his final ‘Testament’1 should apparently bypass such monastic virtues as humility, obedience, poverty, prayer, etc., and focus exclusively on the dogmatic foundation of monastic cenobitic life. St Sophrony’s Testament shows to what extent all our ascetic tradition, with all the virtues we aspire to obtain, is based on our vision of God, the Divine prototype in the image of Whom we are created (Gen. 1:26). Without this undistorted vision of our Divine model, it is impossible to have a perfect and holy life, as St Sophrony reiterates on many pages of his writings. Dogmas of the Church for him are the supreme articulation of the Divine Revelation, the voice of God which translates Divine truths into human language, the heavenly reality into our human life. Therefore, St Sophrony writes: ‘I consider any act imperfect that does not proceed from a dogmatic mind’.2
See: Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, ‘Testament’, in Dukhovnye Besedy [: Spiritual discourses (in Russian)], Volume 1 (Moscow: Palomnik, 2003), 326–327.
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, Perepiska s Protoiereem Georgiem Florovskim [: Correspondence with Protepresbyter Georges Florovsky (in Russian)], (Sergiev Posad: St Trinity Lavra, 2008), 55–56.