Description
In the autumn of 1892 a young peasant – his name was Simeon – from the province of Tambov reached Mt. Athos.
He had done his military service and now came to the Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon, to embark on long years of spiritual combat lasting until his death in 1938. Although he was unlearned and ignorant in the ordinary sense – two winters at the village school were all he could boast of in the way of scholarship – tireless inner striving gave him a personal experience of Christianity identical with that of many of the early ascetic Fathers.
Orthodox monasticism comprises three degrees – the Novitiate, during which the habit is worn though no vows have been taken; the Lesser Schema, when the postulant pronounces vows which he will renew in a slightly altered form on being invested with the Great Schema of the third and strictest rule. When an Orthodox monk is professed he is given another name. Thus the novice Brother Simeon became Father Silouan.
A staretz – elder [cf. Matt. xv:2; Mark vii:3] – is a monk whose experience of the spiritual struggle brings wisdom and insight and the ability to guide others.
Archimandrite Sophrony went to Mt. Athos in 1925 and there, at the Monastery of St. Panteleimon, became amanuensis to Staretz Silouan whose writings were pencilled in laborious, unformed characters on odd scraps of paper.
In 1988 Staretz Silouan was placed in the canon of saints by the Oecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church.
BLESSED STARETZ SILOUAN, PRAY FOR US SINNERS!
