On 1 August 1990, an Orthodox monastery was established in France under the protection of St Silouan, two years after the canonization of the saint. After receiving the blessing of his bishop, the Right Reverend Vladimir, now of Kiev, and of Archimandrite Sophrony of blessed memory, its hegumen and founder, Fr. Symeon, began this spiritual adventure. Two novices, a man and a woman joined with him.

The monastery was situated on an old farm, of which all the buildings were in need of renovation. First came the former barn, which was turned into a church, then gradually the rest of the buildings: a house for the monks, another for the nuns; common rooms- refectory, kitchen, library, workshops... The community has grown: together with the hegumen there are a hieromonk, a monk and a novice; and there are four nuns (one a hermit) and two female novices, making a total of ten persons at the present time.

Liturgical prayer brings the whole community together and lends rhythm to its daily life: in the morning, at midday, and for vespers. All the offices are celebrated in French, the Divine Liturgy four times a week, and the Jesus Prayer, recited collectively on Monday morning. Our monastery is of a cenobitic (communal) type, living within tradition handed down by the Fathers. It strives, of course, to inspire itself particularly by the teaching of St. Silouan, bequeathed to us by our Fr. Sophrony, his disciple. In a country that is not of Orthodox tradition, the patronage of St. Silouan, whose spiritual radiance goes far beyond confessional frontiers, is especially important.

Our hegumen has welcomed those men and women who have asked to be received into the monastery. Thus our community includes both monks and nuns. This in not the result of premeditated choice. But such has been God's will for this place, and for others born with the blessing of Fr. Sophrony and under his inspiration. The monastic life is one and ferments unity. It has always been prophetic, an affirmation of the Kingdom and a sign of opposition to this world. Our specific nature is perhaps a prophetic sign for our time.

Becoming God's New Creation
Like every Christian, but in radical fashion, the monk witnesses to the new life inaugurated by baptism (Rom 6:4) "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). But it is in the epistle to the Galatians that St Paul's teaching is more explicit: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is ... neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27-28). Saint John the theologian, in his account of Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, developing a baptismal catechesis echoes this Pauline theme: "... unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (Jn. 3:5-6), for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50).

To put on Christ is to participate in the realization of the divine plan in which Adam was called to collaborate: the uniting of creation with its creator. This reflection has been particularly developed by St Maximus the Confessor. The process of unification, realized finally by Christ, includes that of human nature, putting an end to the principle of the separation of the sexes. The "ontological origin of man is not found in his biological being but in his being in Christ" (1) ; (reference is made to this work in what follows). For Christ "has unified humanity , by mystically abolishing in spirit their difference as masculine and feminine, and by instituting for both the reason of their nature which is free with regard to passionate particularities". (2) It is a question here not of an emptying of the difference between the masculine and feminine principles, but of their integration in a new synthesis realizing the integral human being anthropos, which the fathers made explicit as deification.

Panayiotis Nellas emphasizes : "By becoming truly man the Lord endowed human nature with a fresh start with 'the beginning of a second form of generation" (3), that is, with spiritual birth through baptism, which is not only a deliverance from the consequences of original sin but is also for each believer a realization of the work which Adam failed to achieve' (4).

Monastic life, "angelic life", in its eschatological tension participates in this effort to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God. The advent of a new creature, the effort to become a person, this difficult "new birth" (Jn 3:3), demands the abandoning of one's own will and necessitates the voluntary crucifixion of oneself to the world and of the world to oneself (Gal. 6:14). It is accomplished in submission to God and to the hegumen who represents Him in the community. It is the aim of the life of every Christian, but it is emphasized by the rite of monastic tonsure which repeats that of baptismal tonsure. Tonsure is the eminent sign of personal consecration to God. Monasticism recalls that the eschatological transfiguration of the Christian is inaugurated here and now.

The Whole Adam
When St Silouan had his vision of Christ, he was given this prayer: "I pray Thee, O merciful Lord, for all the peoples of the earth, that they may come to know Thee by the Holy Spirit". A monk is someone who prays for the whole world, who weeps for the whole world; and in this lies his main work. (5) This is one of the essential aspects of St Silouan's thought, of which we already find testimony in St Macarius: "For those to whom it has been given to become children of God, and to be born from above of the Spirit... are as if in weeping and lamentation for the human race; and in supplication for the whole Adam they take up a mourning and a weeping, being consumed by the love of the Spirit towards humankind". (6) This is the prayer of the Mother of God at the foot of the cross, interceding for the whole world, as the fathers have always been sharply aware. A disciple, having seen Abba Poeman in ecstacy, questioned him: "Tell me where you were". He was forced to answer: "My thought was with Saint Mary, the Mother of God, as she wept by the cross of the Saviour. I wish I could always weep like that" (7) The Mother of God is the perfect icon of the monk... Consciousness of the unity and consubstantiality of the human race gives the most personal prayer a universal scope.

Spiritual Priesthood
Ever since Christ "dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14) God has been present in the "tent of meeting" (Ex. 40:2, 34) which is the heart of the human being, the sanctuary in which the internal and spiritual liturgy is accomplished, the hidden eucharist of the human person celebrating their Creator. "In purity become an altar to God, imposing incense ceaselessly morning and night through the inner priest, so that the altar will never be without incense" (8)

The human being, according to St Basil of Caesarea (as reported by St Gregory of Nazianzus in his funeral oration for St Basil), "has received the commandment to become God", and the effort of personal sanctification establishes him, or better, re-establishes him in his liturgical function, which is constitutive for him. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9). " Recovering the inner roots of priesthood and of sacrifice as the offering up and sanctifying of one's own being and a permanent intercession for the world" wrote Fr Boris Bobrinskoy which allows participation in the Divine liturgy to take on its full dimensions. There a profound relation between the Kyrie eleison of the liturgy and our inner Kyrie eleison. The ecclesial Kyrie eleison must be appropriated personally in our own Kyrie eleison. That is the 'spiritual cult": offering oneself as "a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God" (Rom. 12:1) which cannot be separated from the liturgical celebration. The eucharistic synaxis takes on a personal meaning and an existential value if we associate the offering up of ourselves with that of Christ. This integration enlarges it to ecclesial dimensions and, beyond that, to the cosmic dimensions of the sacrifice of Christ. Through it all the faithful gathered in church are able to be the Church to be particpants in the truth and co-liturguists.

The Philocalic Path
The teaching of the neptic fathers (nepsis=vigilance) inspires these last reflections. Its actuality in the life of our Church and in the response she must give to the thirst and seeking of our world is clear. God grant that the interest shown in numerous recent translations be a proof of it. The treasures of the Philocalia are not reserved for monastics,. "Come, all you who share the orthodox vocation, laity and monks..." (preface by Nicodemus the Hagiorite to the first edition). But perhaps the vocation of monasteries is constantly to recall these dimensions of Christian anthropology and prayer. Their humble experience is placed at the service of the Church. "Power" is a word which sometimes has a reality, and yet has no meaning in the Church. In the Church, there is only that service of the community, to the glory of God and for the salvation of the world, which in monasteries bears the beautiful name of diakonia.

1... Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ, Crestwood N.Y. 1987, p.41
2... Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassius, 48, in Migne Patrologia Graeca 90, 436A; cf. Nellas p.81 our italics.
3... Ibid., Maximus the Confessor, p.61.
4 ...Ibid., pp.81-2; our italics
5 ...Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, Essex, 1991, p.407.
6... St Macarius the Great, Homily XVIII, Fifty Spiritual Homilies, Willets (Cal.), 1974, pp.154-155.
7... No. 144, from the alphabetical collection of Sayings of the Desert Fathers,London 1975, p.157.
8 ...Abba Isaiah of Gaza, Ascetic Compendium, logos 5:25).
9... Boris Bobrinskoy,'The Ecclesial Dimension of the Prayer of the Heart according to the Philocalia," Service Orthodoxe de Presse, no.176 March 1993)