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To: Kolokotronis; kosta50
Monasticism teaches the opposite. Devoting your life to God leaves no room for earthly community and material priorities."

Not so, Kosta. The monastic community, like the parish community, is a Eucharistic community, though one far outside the world we live in, where the members work with each other to strengthen individual theosis of the monks. Only the most powerful, spiritually speaking, are ever allowed to go off on their own and live a life of a hermit.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of my Greek cousin, I agree with kosta. While very few can manage a solitary path to theosis, even within a community the path is a singular one. I know you stated as much in a different manner, but kosta made some good points in the last couple of posts. As material and emotional attachments are stripped away, community will be of little comfort.

70 posted on 04/17/2005 8:54:30 PM PDT by Canticle_of_Deborah
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To: Canticle_of_Deborah

Well theosis is always a personal thing, but we generally work on it within a community and as I said, only the most powerful, spiritually speaking, of monastics are allowed out alone. Maybe we are saying the same thing, but somehow I doubt it.


72 posted on 04/17/2005 9:00:50 PM PDT by Kolokotronis ("Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips!" (Psalm 141:3))
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To: Canticle_of_Deborah; Kolokotronis; kosta50
Orthodox monasticism is not about service to the community or humanitarian projects. One becomes a monastic in order to seek personal salvation -- this much is true, and I suspect that this is what kosta was getting at (although I may be wrong.)

But on the other hand, the way that this salvation is sought and worked out is through life in community.

The Orthodox Church lives by the words of the Scriptures: "It is not good for man to live alone." There are two paths recommended by the Church to seek theosis: marriage and monasticism. Both are lived out in community. While solitary life in the world certainly happens, this is a reflection of the world's falleness. Orthodox parishes tend to bend over backwards to reach out to those who are alone (widowed, never married, etc...), knowing that everyone needs a family.

There are, as Kolokotronis points out, isolated cases of people going straight to the hermetic life (such as St. Mary of Egypt), but for every case of this in the Orthodox tradition, there are several examples of people who were deeply deluded, and who sometimes lost their salvation because they tried this too soon. Within community, strong efforts are made for monastics essentially never to be alone, certainly not alone with their own thoughts. Daily confession of thoughts to an elder is a hallmark of Orthodox monasticism, and this is because of the dangers of spiritual delusion.

Only when someone is extremely accomplished in the coenobitic life is solitary life even contemplated. Only when one able to be in the "communion of the saints" (in which case one is still really not alone), is the life of a hermit blessed by a spiritual father. Before this, it is too dangerous. If we can't learn to survive the temptations of rubbing shoulders with others, we won't survive the demons in the desert...

74 posted on 04/17/2005 9:19:12 PM PDT by Agrarian
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