Palestinian Patericon

The book presented — “The Palestinian Patericon” — has a truly unusual history. Its beginnings are connected with an obedience granted more than a century ago: one of the elders of the Savva Monastery entrusted the young hieromonk Feofan, who was in Jerusalem as part of the First Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, with the task of translating a large Patericon that the elder had given him as a gift. This work, requiring selfless devotion and patience, became an important milestone in the spiritual formation of the hieromonk — the future Saint Feofan the Recluse, a renowned ascetic and theologian.

At the Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, which had a rich library, the future saint, with reverence, touched the great and unbroken tradition of ancient monastic practice in the East. “Spiritual Thoughts,” “Something Concerning Life and Death,” “On Faith,” “On Accepting Food,” “On Abstinence,” “On the Eight Main Passions,” “Instructions for One Entering a Monastery” — these are only some of the section titles of the Patericon, which preserves for the modern Christian invaluable “spiritual margarites” (pearls).

For reasons that remain unknown, the translation made by the Most Reverend during his lifetime was never published. Only 116 years after that time did his wish and blessing come to fruition: all the surviving fragments of the translation, found after the saint’s repose in his cell, were published. Saint Feofan himself emphasized that what is written in these texts is “the fruit of the elders’ own experience and discernment,” not a retelling or borrowing from earlier ascetical works.