Why did St. Silouan feel pain when tearing a leaf? In this rare audio recording of a sermon delivered to his monastic brotherhood at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist (Essex), St. Sophrony explains how our lives are connected like leaves on a single tree.
Essex Monastery, May 14th, 1990
English translation adapted after the Romanian version of Fr. Rafail Noica, Cuvantari Duhovnicesti II (5).
St. Sophrony:
The Lord saith to the Apostles: “If ye be one in love, then all shall know that ye are Mine, that is, Christ’s disciples.” When reading the Gospel, please remember these words of Christ, and fashion our life such that we love one another, that our life may be one life. Endeavour to apply these words to every instance of our interaction. Then salvation will come to all of you, and then you will become capable of helping others also, bearing to them the word of salvation. But one must begin by living the commandment of God oneself with great labour: in fastings and prayers, in sorrows and sicknesses.
We must all perceive the fullness of the revelation concerning God and man. At present, it seems to us that we are immeasurably far from this. But perhaps it only seems so to us, whereas for Christ Himself it is not difficult to come and converse with us, as He spoke with Luke and Cleopas on the road to Emmaus.
There are strange words in the Fathers: “If anyone is in God, he hath no need to read books,” for life is received directly from God, without books, as authentic reality. We are given such an example in our spiritual father Silouan. Before he began to read books, the Lord appeared to him. And Silouan already lived—like the Lord—the whole of humanity as something bound up with himself.
Two or three days ago I was standing with the fathers near a tree at Ambergate, and I said to them: “Look, a huge tree! And every leaf is imbued with power, and the whole tree is healthy.” Humanity is like a tree: if I am a leaf on this tree, the leaves of which are full of life, then I too am full of life. But now the tree is sick. And in its sickness, it is natural for us Christians to pray as the Lord Himself prayed for the whole world—with the feeling that this is my life. And then cosmic life passes through me in its massive torrent. For this consciousness—that we are an inseparable part of humanity—is natural to the Christian.
I feel myself before the face of this being, which the Lord reveals to us, as before a phenomenon exceedingly great, of which one knows not how to speak, nor in what words. But I would like to convey to you this “fire.” Not that fire which consumes in hell, but the fire of which Christ speaks: “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?”
In the teaching of Symeon the New Theologian concerning the three forms of prayer, there are very important words to the effect that he who prays must, according to the commandment of Christ, guard his conscience before God, before his brother—his neighbour—and even in relation to things. You have read in Silouan: “There is a leaf on the tree; and you plucked it without need?” For him, to tear a leaf from a branch meant to deprive it of life: even the life of a leaf was painful for him to destroy. This is by no means sentimentality, but a totally different perception of all being: both Divine and human, when we keep our conscience clear even in relation to material things.
And indeed, simply by human logic, what are all these things? The Lord has so ordered it: the animal world lives only by that which nature produces, but man must produce everything for himself. Herein lies his difference. And whatever “thing” we take—it is all the labour of man. And realizing this, we shall be very attentive toward every object: we shall not break it in vain. The Lord Himself, Who blessed the five loaves and satisfied the five thousand, afterwards said: “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”
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