St Anthony of Optina was one of the first of Russia’s great elders, and began his ministry in the early nineteenth century. It was a troubled time for the faith. Russian society, especially the educated classes, was turning away from God and from the Orthodox Church, looking instead for meaning in worldly affairs and secular success. Yet the elders of that age did much to keep the faith alive, helping many who had gone astray to return to God. St Anthony’s elder brother, Elder Moses of Optina, gave counsel to leading figures in Russia’s literary and intellectual life, among them Nikolai Gogol and the writer and thinker Ivan Kireyevsky.
St Anthony was born in 1795 into a God-fearing family in the town of Romanov, in Yaroslavl Province. As a young man he fought in the Patriotic War of 1812, was captured by the French, and escaped to rejoin his family. In 1820 he was tonsured a monk, and a year and a half later he and his brother founded a skete at Optina Hermitage. At thirty he became its head. He later served as abbot of the Cherno-Ostrovsky Monastery in Maloyaroslavets, until failing health compelled him to lay down this obedience and return to Optina Hermitage.
The saint became known as a great man of prayer and a living example of true humility, and for these virtues God granted him many spiritual gifts. Seeing these gifts in him, thousands came to him for counsel. He guided many of his spiritual children by letter, and a great number of these letters have come down to us. They have lost none of their freshness: to read them today is to feel that one is speaking with the elder himself. We offer several of these letters here. May they help the faithful – and all who reach out for wisdom, comfort, and a deeper understanding of the Christian life – find guidance amid the questions and anxieties of our own age.
“…You write that you live carelessly and are often prone to irritability. There is one answer to laziness and carelessness: which of us is not guilty of them before God? As for irritability, I advise you to guard against it as you would against a deadly poison. It plainly ruins your health, makes medicines useless, and shortens life itself. The same thing can be said without bitterness, for a gentle word has greater power. Therefore, my beloved, if you desire life, and love many days, that you may see good, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit; for both do harm, above all to yourself.”
“Having read your lines, my heart has ached deeply for your sickness and the suffering of your soul. May the Lord God forgive you and bring peace to your soul and heart; and I, unworthy as I am, forgive and absolve you with all my soul. I am not in the least hurt that you thought ill of me, for a servant is not greater than his master. When many reproached Him, who am I? Why is there no peace in our bones, in our soul, and in our heart? Because of our sins. Because we do not learn humility at all; because we dearly love to argue and prove that we know everything better than others; because we do not break off our conversation with our own thoughts, which torment us without ceasing like executioners. So all this misery comes from ourselves, and not from outward causes. Therefore, lamb of Christ, so far as you are able, follow the Lamb of God, Christ our Saviour, of whom it is said: “He will not quarrel nor cry out, Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets” (Matt. 12:19). You can see from your own experience what good comes from yielding and humility, and what harm comes from argument and stubbornness, which bring your soul into such torment that it is painful even for others to look at you.
If it is hard for you to live under guidance, then, being dependent on no one, you may easily lose the true path and wander like a blind man.
And so, forgive me, my beloved child. May the peace of God rest in your heart, and may the joy of salvation gladden your meek and humble soul. This I, I. A., prayerfully wish you with all my soul.”
“As for your questions, my beloved N. N., I hardly know what to answer. You accuse yourself of having become dull-witted. This may be because your finances have grown very thin. If you had plenty of money – money, and more money – then you would be Minister of Public Education… But without money even clever people, like you, sit with their heads hanging down and their hands folded, doing nothing.
As for reading spiritual books, I advise you not to give it up. Sometimes a single line, read at the right moment, is valued more highly than a whole year’s worth of publications, and remains in the memory for ever. Chess is only a waste of time, and we lose enough of it as it is. Better, when you have nothing to do, to relieve your boredom at the piano. I myself have sometimes bought spiritual music for it and given it to young ladies. If I were in Moscow, I would buy you a very good and moving piece: “Thinking upon the multitude of my evil deeds, wretched as I am, I tremble at the dread day of judgement…” You could play it and weep to your heart’s content; and perhaps through it you might even come to the fear of God, which you say you do not have.”
November 1859
“My beloved spiritual child in the Lord,
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
I send you my most heartfelt greeting for the present feast of Holy Pascha, now already half spent, and I warmly wish you to complete the feast in joy and peace of soul. I also sincerely wish you to reach many more such feasts in good health, and to celebrate them with gladness.
After this I humbly ask your kind forgiveness for not writing to you last time, when I wrote to your younger sister. Even then I felt you might be displeased that I had preferred her to you. I did this not because I love her more than you, but because I did not wish to leave her without a personal greeting for her name-day; and I did not have the strength to write to both of you at once. So I ask you to place this offence under that merciful word so often proclaimed in church during these bright days: “Let us forgive all things by the Resurrection.”
When I read your letters and see in them your account of the sufferings of your soul and body, my heart always suffers with you, and every day I pray to the Lord God for His help and protection for you, and for the healing of all your infirmities. My heart aches over this too: that with you, in a single hour, there is both a wedding and a funeral – that is, both joy and sorrow. You take both upon yourself at once, and then suddenly everything falls apart; afterwards come vexation and inward turmoil, blasphemous thoughts and despair, and anger against everything and everyone, beginning with Nadia and ending with God… Because of this you cannot find peace. But when a good desire comes to pray to God and to read this or that, then pray and read in a quiet spirit. If, through weakness, you do not fulfil your desire, say in a quiet spirit: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.” If you fail to fulfil good desires through laziness and negligence, again say in a quiet spirit: “Lord, do not enter into judgment with Your servant.” If bad thoughts come, again say in a quiet spirit: “Lord, deliver me from them.’ If you have grown angry with someone or judged them for something, turn again to the Lord in the same quiet spirit and say: “I have sinned, Lord; forgive me, proud and impatient as I am.’ If, all at once, like a cloud, despondency and despair come over you, turn again to the Lord and say to your downcast soul: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God...” (Psalms 42:5). And in this way, in every circumstance, try to keep your heart at peace and free from turmoil, which comes from a hostile spirit.
You ask me about coffee: should you drink it or not? But how can one part with it, since it is our dear friend? With it we are cheerful and at ease; when it is absent, even on a bright day everything feels like bad weather, and everything begins to ache. Yet this same coffee is your slanderer and enemy… As I observe, it is poisoning your health, for year by year you are clearly growing weaker and losing strength. But just as for an intemperate man it is easier to die than not to drink wine, so it is with you and me: to part with coffee is to part with life itself. To cut off the passions is like cutting off one’s own limbs; it is unbearable. For this a firm will is needed, and we have none in anything. What, then, are we to do? The same as before: having prayed to God, let us drink coffee without turmoil.
You complain that all worldly hopes have vanished for you. But is it possible to place hope in the world? Whom has it not flattered? To whom has it not lied? It promises much and gives very little. Only those who hope in the Lord, according to the word of holy David, will not be mistaken; that is, they will not be deceived in their hope. I. A.”
More than a century and a half after his repose, the letters of Venerable Anthony continue to guide and enlighten Christians, for the ailments he treated have not changed – only their outward forms. His warning against irritability as a “deadly poison” speaks directly to an age of quick tempers, sharp online exchanges, and words sent off without thought. His teaching that our turmoil comes “from ourselves, and not from outward causes” – from pride, from argument, from our ceaseless conversation with our own thoughts – describes with striking accuracy the anxious, self-absorbed inner life of many today, and offers the same remedy: humility, yielding, and quiet converse with the Lord instead of with ourselves. In these letters the elder of Optina still reaches out his hand to us.
Venerable Anthony reposed on 7/20 August 1865, having received the final Holy Mysteries from the abbot of Optina Hermitage, Venerable Isaac.
Commemoration days: 20 August (7 August according to the Old Style), in the Synaxis of All Saints Who Shone Forth in Optina Hermitage, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl.
