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Optina Elders #4
Elder Ambrose of Optina
The Elders of Optina Monastery have had a tremendous impact on Russian society. During the course of a century, their prophecy and God-illumined counsel attracted spiritual seekers from far and wide.
Elder Ambrose is considered the pinnacle of Eldership in Optina. He embodied the virtues of all the elders in the highest degree--divine humility, purity of mind and heart, overflowing love, and total self-sacrifice for the salvation of his fellow man. Because he had attained the depths of humility, the Lord blessed him with spiritual gifts by which to heal suffering souls. He read human hearts, was granted to know the past, present and future of people, and spoke to them the direct, revealed word of God. So great were his gifts that hundreds of people flocked daily to his humble cabin in central Russia. Among these were the writers Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Leontiev and Solovyev. Dostoyevsky was so moved by his pilgrimage to Optina and Elder Ambrose that he wrote his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, with the specific intention of depicting the spiritual image of Optina Monastery and the Elder. The well-known character of Elder Zosima in his book was modeled after Elder Ambrose, whose words of counsel Dostoyevsky put directly into the mouth of his unforgettable character.
This edition of Elder Ambrose's life is a faithful English translation of the original Optina edition, printed in Russia in 1912. Through its pages we enter the world of a heavenly man, an angel in the flesh who beheld the mysteries of the future age: the perfect love and silent oneness of immortal spirits.
472 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1997
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January 26, 2022
I'm going to let the book's conclusion speak for itself:
"Christian love also co-suffers with external grief, but it sees and feels infinitely deeper; it pierces to the very soul of a man and there sees its fundamental suffering—that suffering which is not cured by external measures, but demands the spiritual influence of sincere, revivifying, salvific love in the name of the God of love. Fr. Ambrose possessed this gift to a high degree. As we have seen, he also relieved material human sorrow with external methods, but together with this he embraced the whole soul of a man with his loving feeling. He knew how to comprehend one's innermost spiritual sorrow and precisely upon it pour out the healing oil of his compassionate solicitude and kindness, raising it up to Heaven, to God. This is why people who came to him with shattered souls and, as it seemed, dead forever, came away from him resurrected, revived, joyful, saved and believing.
[...]
Russian society understood this feature of the spiritual makeup of Elder Ambrose. It understood that he was neither a strict hermit, nor a rigid exposer of human shortcomings and weaknesses, nor an abstract theologian. He was living love itself, having the ability to stand in the immediate proximity of any grieving and burdened soul, take upon himself his infirmity and sorrow, warm him, console him, and call him to a new, vigorous, pure and joyful life. And that is why he became a spiritual center, attracting to himself not only simple people who flocked to him as to a man of God, a man of holy God-pleasing life, but even the educated came seeking in him a guide of life who would indicate the path to true happiness of soul, who would teach then to know and love God."
"Christian love also co-suffers with external grief, but it sees and feels infinitely deeper; it pierces to the very soul of a man and there sees its fundamental suffering—that suffering which is not cured by external measures, but demands the spiritual influence of sincere, revivifying, salvific love in the name of the God of love. Fr. Ambrose possessed this gift to a high degree. As we have seen, he also relieved material human sorrow with external methods, but together with this he embraced the whole soul of a man with his loving feeling. He knew how to comprehend one's innermost spiritual sorrow and precisely upon it pour out the healing oil of his compassionate solicitude and kindness, raising it up to Heaven, to God. This is why people who came to him with shattered souls and, as it seemed, dead forever, came away from him resurrected, revived, joyful, saved and believing.
[...]
Russian society understood this feature of the spiritual makeup of Elder Ambrose. It understood that he was neither a strict hermit, nor a rigid exposer of human shortcomings and weaknesses, nor an abstract theologian. He was living love itself, having the ability to stand in the immediate proximity of any grieving and burdened soul, take upon himself his infirmity and sorrow, warm him, console him, and call him to a new, vigorous, pure and joyful life. And that is why he became a spiritual center, attracting to himself not only simple people who flocked to him as to a man of God, a man of holy God-pleasing life, but even the educated came seeking in him a guide of life who would indicate the path to true happiness of soul, who would teach then to know and love God."
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