This article shows why the Paterikon, the Philokalia, the Lives of the Saints, and the ascetic writings cannot be replaced by podcasts, Telegram fragments, or sentimental religious literature.
Reading the Fathers is not an intellectual luxury, but a daily ascetic labor: a little, slowly, with attention, prayer, and the desire to put what is read into practice.
The paradox of the contemporary Orthodox
We live in a time which, seen from the outside, ought to be a golden age of Orthodox spiritual reading. Never before in the history of the Church have we had such wide access to the writings of the Holy Fathers. Father Dumitru Stăniloae translated the twelve volumes of the Philokalia between 1947 and 1991.1 Deisis Publishing has systematically released the Sinai Fathers and St. Gregory Palamas. The PSB collection (Romanian Fathers and Church Writers) puts St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Maximus the Confessor within easy reach. Doxologia publishes the Paterikon in critical editions. Sophia prints St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and St. Theophan the Recluse. We have The Ladder of St. John Climacus, the Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, Unseen Warfare of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, the teachings of Abba Dorotheus, the Lives of the Saints month by month — all in Romanian, accessible, inexpensive, much of it free online.
And yet: people read less and less. Including Orthodox Christians. Including those who consider themselves serious in their faith.
In place of the Paterikon read by candlelight in the evening, the podcast listened to in the car has appeared. In place of St. Isaac the Syrian — the twenty-minute sermon of some random priest, taken out of context by whoever does the editing. In place of the Philokalia — Telegram posts with "miracles of today" and "prophecies of contemporary elders." The books still in the hands of believers, when they exist at all, are often sentimental volumes: testimonies about healings, stories with tearful endings, biographies of recent "elders" built on improvised hagiographic register.
This article asks a single question: why must we return to reading the Holy Fathers, rather than to their modern substitutes? (We are not speaking here about reading Scripture, the Psalter, and akathists — that has another regime, being prayer, not spiritual study, and deserves a separate article. We are speaking about the Paterikon, the Philokalia, the Lives of the Saints, patristic and ascetic writings.)
Because the objection raised by many today is not new. It goes like this: "Before the invention of printing, people did not read. They lived as Christians, were saved, became saints — without opening a book. Why should it be otherwise today?" The question seems good. The answer, however, shows exactly the opposite of what the questioner believes.
The historical objection and why it is exactly backwards
The objection assumes that the printing press changed nothing essential — that, if pre-modern Christians could be saved without books, so can we. This assumption is, historically speaking, mistaken. Printing did not separate the layman from the Fathers. It brought him closer to them. For the first time in the history of the Church, the layman could have the Fathers in his own house — and precisely today, when he has them closer than ever before, he refuses to open them.
Let us take the facts in order.
How people "read" in the pre-modern era
Before the invention of printing and before the Orthodox printing presses of the 17th–19th centuries, reading the Holy Fathers was a reality almost exclusively monastic and clerical. Manuscripts were expensive objects: parchment, manual copying, and binding required time, materials, and trained people. For the ordinary layman, such a book was practically inaccessible. Books were kept in the libraries of monasteries — Stoudion, Athos, St. Sabbas in Palestine, later Neamț Monastery. The monk had natural and constant access to books. The ordinary layman, however, very rarely — of course, there were also lettered boyars, merchants with books, families connected to monasteries, but these were the exception, not the rule.
St. Theodore the Studite (759–826), the reformer of Byzantine monasticism, made the monastery of Stoudion one of the most important centers for copying, preserving, and transmitting patristic manuscripts in the Christian East. The Studite Typikon, drawn up around 825, prescribed that the scriptorium and the library be the heart of monastic life, alongside the church. The monks copied the Fathers daily and read what they copied. In the refectory, during meals, the Paterikon was read aloud. At vigils, homilies of St. John Chrysostom. The Studite monk received patristic teaching in the very fabric of his liturgical day.
In Moldavia, this line was taken up with extraordinary vigor by St. Paisius (Velichkovsky) of Neamț (1722–1794). Under his abbacy, Neamț Monastery became one of the most important centers for translating and copying the Holy Fathers in 18th-century Orthodoxy. Hundreds of monks translated, copied, and read the Greek patristic writings into Slavonic and Romanian. In the Paisian milieu of Neamț intensive work was done on the Slavonic translation of the Greek Philokalia of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite; the translation, linked to St. Paisius and his school, was printed in Russia in 1793 under the title Dobrotolyubie.2 From there it nourished the entire Russian spiritual renaissance of the 19th century.
But all these centers were monastic. The monk read. The layman, as a rule, did not.
What the layman still received
This does not mean that the medieval layman was completely cut off from the Fathers. He received from Tradition indirectly, through the Church, not directly through reading. At Matins the Synaxarion was read — the life of the saint of the day and the moral teaching drawn from it. During Great Lent, in monasteries, The Ladder of St. John Climacus was read. On Lazarus Saturday, the life of St. Mary of Egypt. On feasts, homilies of St. John Chrysostom. The layman who went on pilgrimage to a monastery — to Neamț, to Putna, to Tismana, to Athos for the more daring — heard read at the refectory from the Paterikon or from St. Basil the Great. The bishop, the priest, the monk read for him.
This is the historical reality: the medieval Orthodox layman rarely read the Fathers himself, but received them liturgically through the Church. Direct reading of the Fathers was, as a rule, a monastic and clerical reality; for the ordinary layman, access was indirect, liturgical, and occasional. Tradition read for him.
What printing changes
Here intervenes the inversion which overturns the modern objection. Beginning in the 16th–17th centuries, through Deacon Coresi in Wallachia,3 through Metropolitan Antim Ivireanul, later through Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi who developed the press at Neamț and translated the Lives of the Saints into Romanian,4 printing did something without precedent in the history of the Church: it placed the Fathers in the hands of the layman. For the first time in two thousand years, a peasant, a craftsman, a merchant could have the Paterikon in his own house. He could read alone, in the evening, by candlelight, what before had been read only at the refectory of monasteries.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, this democratization accelerated dramatically. Printed books became cheap. Literacy became general. Father Stăniloae translated the entire Philokalia into Romanian — twelve volumes which, in Byzantium or in Paisian Moldavia, would have required access to a monastic library to read through. Today they are found in any Orthodox bookstore, and most of the Fathers are available digitally and for free.
The conclusion is the inverse of the usual objection. Before printing, the layman did not read the Fathers because he could not. Tradition supplied this lack through the liturgy, through pilgrimage, through preaching. Today the layman can read any Father, anytime, almost for free — but refuses to. At the same time, the tradition that used to compensate for individual reading has weakened dramatically: at Matins in the ordinary parish the Synaxarion is no longer read, The Ladder is no longer heard during Great Lent outside of certain monasteries, contemporary sermons are rarely as charged with patristic citations as those of the Fathers of past centuries.
Printing did not abolish the role of the Church in transmitting the Fathers, but it did something new: it placed upon the layman’s hand a responsibility he could not bear alone before. What he once received chiefly through the liturgy, the sermon, the monastic refectory, and pilgrimage, today he can also receive directly, through reading. That is why the refusal of reading is no longer a simple historical limitation, but a choice. And the layman who refuses to read while claiming that "before, no one read either" is deceiving himself: before, people did read — but in monasteries; for him, reading was done liturgically; now neither happens. And he remains fed by podcasts.
The case of Father Cleopa: the greatest Romanian spiritual father was not formed otherwise
Because the historical argument might seem distant, let us take a close Romanian example. Father Cleopa Ilie (1912–1998) is, beyond any doubt, the greatest Romanian spiritual father of the 20th century. To Sihăstria Monastery came tens of thousands of believers from all over the country for a word from him. Bishops, priests, professors of theology asked his counsel. Metropolitan Antonie Plămădeală called him "a Chrysostom of Romanian monasticism." Today, more than twenty-five years after his repose in the Lord, Father Cleopa Speaks to Us — the twenty volumes of his sermons and answers — remain among the most read spiritual books in Romanian Orthodoxy.
How did Father Cleopa become what he was?
Not through a theology degree. He never had one. He only finished primary school in his native village, Sulița, Botoșani County.5 At seventeen he entered as a novice at Sihăstria Skete, where he was assigned to shepherd the monastery’s sheep — an obedience he carried out, with small interruptions, for approximately twelve years, until 1942.
Not through conferences. They did not exist. Not through podcasts, obviously. Not through sentimental books — in the brotherhood of Sihăstria, under the guidance of Protosyngellos Ioanichie Moroi, nothing soft was admitted.
How then?
The answer is given by Father Cleopa himself, recounting his years with the sheep: "I prayed much and read the Holy Scripture and many other writings of the Holy Fathers, such as: the Paterikon, the Ladder of St. John Climacus, the books of St. Theodore the Studite, of St. Isaac the Syrian, of St. Ephraim the Syrian, the Well of St. John Chrysostom, the Hexaemeron of St. Basil the Great, and others."6
Let us read this list carefully. The Paterikon. The Ladder. Theodore the Studite. Isaac the Syrian. Ephraim the Syrian. John Chrysostom. Basil the Great. And "others" — which, according to other biographers, included Macarius the Egyptian and Macarius of Alexandria, whom he carried in his satchel from childhood. This is the reading program of a semi-literate shepherd who, thirty years later, would become the most famous spiritual father of the country.
Father Cleopa did not read "religious books" in some vague sense. He read the Holy Fathers, systematically, for years, in the harsh conditions of the mountain. He had the Paterikon in his satchel alongside his bread. He read at the sheepfold, after milking the sheep, by the light of an oil lamp. He read in winter in his cell, when the snow blocked the path. And he continued to read his entire life.
The testimony is confirmed from the outside. Metropolitan Antonie Plămădeală, who knew him closely, writes about Father Cleopa: "He spoke as in the old printings of Neamț, in the speech of the Paterikon, of the Pedalion, and of the Lives of the Saints, just like Chesarie and Damaschin."6 This is the surest test of a deep patristic reading: the man begins to speak in the language of the Fathers. Not mimicking — thinking that way. The categories, the examples, the associations, the rhythm of the sentence — everything comes from what he has read. Cleopa counseled a layman of the 1990s in the same language with which Abba Poemen counseled the brethren of the Egyptian desert in the 5th century, because he had assimilated the Paterikon so deeply that it had become part of how he thought.
This is the central point: if Father Cleopa, while at Sihăstria, having Father Paisie Olaru as his spiritual father, having daily services, having the Divine Liturgy every day, having the abbot Ioanichie Moroi alongside — still read the Fathers day and night for years on end, and without this reading would not have become what he became — how much more we, who have neither Sihăstria, nor Paisie Olaru, nor daily services, nor an abbot to read aloud at the refectory from St. Theodore the Studite? If the one who received the most needed to read so much, what shall we say, we who receive almost nothing of what he received?
And Cleopa’s case is not isolated. St. Joseph the Hesychast (1898–1959), the Athonite elder from whom six of the twenty monasteries of the Holy Mountain today derive, had throughout his life the Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian as his constant book — and made daily reading of it a rule for all his disciples. St. Paisios the Athonite, an indirect disciple of his hesychast school, continuously read the Paterikon and the Lives of the Saints. Father Arsenie Papacioc, Cleopa’s friend, read intensively from the Fathers and recommended to his lay spiritual children the daily reading of the Paterikon. Father Cleopa and Father Paisie Olaru entered monastery life with the Lives of the Saints in their satchels. The authentic hesychast line — whether Athonite or Romanian — has never existed without intensive patristic reading. Whoever claims he can continue it without reading is deceiving others, or deceiving himself.
Diagnosis: what replaces the reading of the Fathers today
We can now ask the most painful question: if reading the Fathers is so necessary, what has taken its place today? And why are its substitutes not equivalent?
Podcasts and conferences
These are the most widespread form today. Someone has an hour’s drive to make, starts up a YouTube channel of sermons, listens, gets home pleased that he "did something spiritual." But what did he do, in fact?
He listened to someone talking about the Fathers. Not to the Fathers themselves. The difference is important. The preacher, however good, is a filter. He selects what he quotes. He sets the emphasis. He applies it to the situation in his own head (not yours). He leaves out what does not seem relevant to him. He deprives you, above all, of the context of the citation — the passage it comes from, what follows it, the polemic it is connected to, the level of spiritual life it was addressed to. Listening to ten sermons about St. Isaac the Syrian does not give you knowledge of St. Isaac the Syrian. You know ten interpretations, often contradictory, of preachers who, for the most part, have not themselves read him in full.
Worse: a podcast cannot be truly returned to. You can replay minute 23, but you cannot "insist" on a phrase the way you insist on a page. Attentive reading requires stopping, re-reading, going back, comparison. Audio flows — and the mind flows with it. At the end you have the impression that you understood, but in fact you hold no phrase in hand that remains. Ask someone who listened to an hour-long sermon yesterday what he remembers. He will say two or three vague things. Read half a page of Abba Dorotheus and you will remember exactly what you read, weeks later.
There is another problem, which the Orthodox believer underestimates. Not every listening to a preacher is dangerous. But when the believer comes to seek the voice, the style, the humor, and the personality of a man more than the criterion of the Fathers, a subtle religious dependency is born. It is not yet prelest in the grave sense of the word, but it is the ground on which prelest easily grows. Affective attachment to a religious personality, in place of ascetic formation through Tradition — this is one of the most widespread, and least recognized, deformations of contemporary spiritual life.
"Testimonies" and sentimental books
The second great category of substitutes is sentimental literature. Books with titles like "the miracles of Monastery X," "testimonies of a spiritual traveler," "Elder Y and his disciples" — often written by people with good intentions, but without patristic discipline, without historical verification, with much sentimentalism and little discernment.
What is the problem with these? Not that they are all false (though many are). The problem is what they feed. They feed religious emotion, not spiritual nepsis (sobriety, watchfulness). They teach the believer always to seek the miracle — healing, vision, prophecy, sign — instead of seeking the struggle with his own passions. They teach that spiritual life is a series of extraordinary moments, instead of what it actually is: daily, slow, unremarkable struggle in the eyes of the world.
Read the Paterikon. Read a hundred sayings of the Fathers of the Egyptian desert. You will notice immediately something important: the Paterikon does not make the miracle the center of spiritual life. There are miracles, visions, revelations, charisms — but even when they appear, they are placed in the shadow of repentance, of obedience, of silence, and of the struggle with the passions. The center is labor, humility, weeping for sins, discreet love for one’s neighbor. That is Orthodox spiritual life. Religious sentimentalism distorts it profoundly, because it turns it into a kind of moving theater — in which the believer waits for something spectacular to happen, instead of striving himself to do something unspectacular.
Patristic books form a different kind of man: one quiet, attentive, suspicious of himself, capable of discerning the spirits. Sentimental books form a man who is agitated, dependent on "signs," scarcely capable of distinguishing psychological enthusiasm from the working of grace.
Telegram, "Orthodox" YouTube, short posts
The third category — and the most recent — is the fragmentary consumption of "Orthodox content" on social networks. Short posts with quotations taken out of context. Two-minute videos with "the word of the day." Telegram channels with alarmist titles about "the signs of the times." Forwards from forwards from forwards of the same apocalyptic text, alternately attributed to five different "elders," with no source indicated.
This form of reading can become, spiritually, a slow poison: not because each short quotation is bad, but because it accustoms the mind to the fragment, not to the whole. It forms: fragmentation (the inability to follow a long argument), permanent polemic (everything reduces to "who is right"), apocalyptic anxiety (the end of the world is always "six months away"), and — worst of all — the illusion of knowledge. Someone who has read a hundred quotations on Telegram believes he "knows the teaching of the Fathers." In fact, he knows no Father. He knows a hundred torn phrases, many of which are false or wrongly attributed.
The common underlying problem
What do all these substitutes have in common? One thing, but a fundamental one: they all demand passivity. You listen to the podcast, you listen to the conference, you watch the short video, you read the post — and you receive something. You do nothing. You do not wrestle with the text. You do not stop to understand. You do not re-read. You do not compare one Father to another. You do not integrate.
Reading a Father is, by contrast, ascetic struggle. It requires attention. It requires silence. It requires re-reading. It requires fighting the mind that flees. It requires the effort of integrating what you have read into your life. For this reason, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov called the reading of the Fathers "an ascetic labor" — alongside prayer and fasting. St. Theophan the Recluse urged laymen to daily reading of the Fathers as a basic discipline of spiritual life, not as a luxury for monks or intellectuals.
All the modern substitutes for reading bypass precisely the struggle. And without struggle, there is no Orthodox spiritual life. This is the issue, not an aesthetic preference for the book over the screen.
The remedy: how to read a Father
If the diagnosis is correct, what shall we do? Here are some practical principles, grounded in patristic tradition and in the counsel of our nearby Romanian Fathers.
Reading as a daily rule, not occasional
St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, in his Ascetical Essays, considered the reading of the Fathers one of the daily rules of the Christian who desires salvation, alongside prayer and self-examination. Not "when I have time," not "when I feel like reading" — but daily, even a little. One page a day of the Paterikon, read with attention, is worth many conferences heard. By the end of the year you will have read the Paterikon twice. By the end of ten years you will know the Fathers of the desert better than most priests.
St. Joseph the Hesychast (1898–1959), the Athonite elder who refounded the hesychast tradition on the Holy Mountain in the 20th century, had a simple rule, which he recommended without exception to all his disciples: a page or two a day from St. Isaac the Syrian. That was all. Throughout his life, the Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac were his constant book — he often kept it under his pillow, so that it would be the first thing he saw upon waking. He counseled: "Let no day pass without reading at least a page from Abba Isaac. I love him very much, considering him my spiritual father. And at each word read, stop, asking yourself within: am I doing this? Thus you will be pushed to pass from reading to putting into practice what you have read."7 And one more thing: St. Joseph considered reading ‘a necessary condition of the monk’ — he called it "a kind of prayer." Not an intellectual ornament. A part of the daily rule, like prostrations and the prayer of the heart.
Look carefully at what St. Joseph is doing here. He does not ask for much — a page. He does not ask for speed — he tells you to stop at each word. He does not ask for erudite reading — he asks for reading that leads to the question "am I doing this?" This is patristic reading in its purest form: a little, slowly, with self-examination, with the intention of putting it into practice. And it was enough. St. Joseph the Hesychast formed through this simple discipline six great Athonite elders and an entire generation of spiritual fathers who today hold the Holy Mountain.
The minimum rule that I can recommend without exaggerating: between half an hour and an hour a day, before the evening prayer. As much as you normally spend on your phone before going to sleep. Replace the scroll with the page. That much. Less than that is not spiritual reading, it is nibbling. And the believer who claims he has no time for half an hour of Paterikon a day, but listens to two hours of podcast in the car, must be honest with himself: the problem is not time, it is choice.
The hierarchy of reading: from simple to deep
One does not begin with St. Maximus the Confessor. One does not even begin with the Philokalia. Whoever opens the Philokalia without prior patristic preparation will remain bewildered — because the vocabulary, the presuppositions, the spiritual stage presupposed will overwhelm him. The natural hierarchy of Orthodox patristic reading is approximately as follows:
- The Lives of the Saints — especially the short ones, of the desert Fathers. They accustom you to the spiritual world, to the faces of the saints, to the way spiritual things are "spoken of."
- The Egyptian Paterikon — the second Bible of any serious Christian. Short, accessible, profound. Returned to throughout one’s life.
- The Lives of the Romanian Saints — St. Calinic of Cernica, St. Joseph the New of Partoş, St. Paisius of Neamț, the Saints of the prisons.
- The Teachings of Abba Dorotheus — the first great ascetic manual, very accessible, gentle, penetrating.
- The Ladder of St. John Climacus — step by step, with long pauses.
- The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian — deeply, slowly, with prayer.
- The Philokalia — only after the first six have been assimilated. And for the Philokalia there are wiser reading paths than the simple order of the printed volumes. Some guides recommend beginning with the texts more directly linked to prayer and nepsis — the introduction of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, then Nikephoros the Solitary, Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, Gregory of Sinai — and only later moving on to the more technical and difficult authors. This path is detailed in a separate article on OrtodoxWay: How to Read the Philokalia: The Path of Initiation Tradition Recommends. I recommend the reader go through it before opening any volume of the Philokalia.
This is not a rigid rule. But it is the order of common sense. Whoever skips stages either does not understand, or understands wrongly. Whoever respects the order, after ten years, has a solid patristic foundation.
Reading slowly, with stopping, with prayer
One does not read the Fathers the way one reads a novel. One does not "finish" a Father. Father Cleopa read the Paterikon his entire life — and always found something new. Patristic reading is done slowly, with pauses on phrases, with re-reading of passages, with short prayer between pages. If in one evening you read a single phrase and it remains in your mind the whole next day — you have read well. If you read fifty pages and remember nothing — you have read as on Facebook.
St. Theophan the Recluse advised: when you come across a passage that touches you, stop. Stay there. Re-read. Let it enter. Do not hurry to move on. Spiritual reading is not a speed sport, it is the labor of the heart.
Reading as a former of discernment
Here is the last reason — and the most practical. Today, in Romanian Orthodoxy, there are dozens of "voices" who present themselves as spiritual guides. Some are authentic. Many are not. How do you tell them apart?
You do not tell them apart through other podcasts. You do not tell them apart through "the WhatsApp group that tells you whom to trust." You do not tell them apart by how many followers someone has on YouTube. You tell them apart by a single criterion: if you have read St. Isaac the Syrian, you recognize immediately when someone is speaking on his line and when he is speaking past it. If you have read St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, you recognize prelest when you hear it admiringly described as "a gift of grace." If you have read Abba Dorotheus, you recognize pride disguised as "zeal." If you have read The Ladder, you know what true humility is and what theatrical self-abasement is.
Something must be said here, however, with great care, lest we be misunderstood. Reading the Fathers does not make you a judge over your spiritual father. It does not give you the right to treat him suspiciously after you have read two pages. It does not place in your hand an authority parallel to the Church. What reading the Fathers gives you is something else: it guards you from blind obedience, from idolizing a man, and from confusing the temperament of a guide with the Tradition of the Church. It gives you criteria for discernment, not warrant for permanent suspicion. If it forms you as a man twisted in on himself, ready to correct everyone, then you have not read rightly — you have read with pride. If it forms you as a man more humble, more attentive, more capable of distinguishing the essential from the accidental, then reading has done its work.
This is, moreover, the very logic of Orthodox obedience rightly understood. The Fathers distinguish between the confessor (the one who absolves your sins, a sacramental relationship) and the spiritual father (the one who guides you spiritually, a charismatic relationship) — and total obedience, the surrendering of one’s will, is given only before the second, and only when he himself speaks in the spirit of the Fathers. How do you recognize this spirit? By reading the Fathers. Only the one who has read the Fathers can recognize someone who speaks from them. For a detailed treatment of these distinctions — and for the theological limits of the "unconditional obedience" that some contemporary priests demand of laymen — see our article Whom Must We Obey?.
Without reading, the modern Orthodox believer is heavily dependent on whoever falls into his hands. And what falls into his hands, usually, are the loudest — not the safest. Reading the Fathers does not replace the Church, the spiritual father, or liturgical life. It accompanies them. It is the antidote against their modern deformations, not a substitute for them.
Conclusion
St. Paisius of Neamț made the largest monastery of Moldavia a center of reading. St. Theodore the Studite made Stoudion one of the greatest libraries of the East. Father Cleopa, a shepherd of sheep at seventeen, semi-literate in the eyes of the world, read the Paterikon, The Ladder, Isaac the Syrian, Ephraim the Syrian, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Theodore the Studite — and became Father Cleopa.
Everything our Fathers left behind comes from reading.
And we, today, with Stăniloae translated in full, with the PSB collection in bookshops, with St. Isaac the Syrian three clicks away, choose the podcast, the conference, the sentimental "testimony," the Telegram post. Before, the layman could not read — and the Church read for him. Today the layman can — and no one reads for him as fully as before. And we wonder why spiritual life slips through our fingers, why we have no discernment, why we cannot tell an authentic spiritual father from a comedian, why every "new elder" carries us off with him for a few months and then leaves us empty.
The solution is not complicated. It does not cost money, it does not require degrees, it does not require special blessings. It requires only between half an hour and an hour a day and the right order: begin with the Paterikon. Read slowly. Re-read. Insist. After a year you will be a different person. After ten, you will have what no podcast can give you: a mind formed by the Fathers, capable of discerning for itself what is right and what is not.
Father Cleopa, who received much, read much. We, who receive little, have no right to read less than he did. Whoever wishes to follow his line must begin where he began: with the Paterikon, with The Ladder, with the Lives of the Saints, with a book carried close at hand and with half an hour wrested daily from the wastefulness of the world.
The rest comes slowly. But it comes.
Notes
- The Philokalia of the Holy Fathers of the Desert, translated by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, twelve volumes published between 1947 (the first volume, in Sibiu) and 1991 (the twelfth volume). For the history of transmission and differences between versions, see on OrtodoxWay the article Why Not All Philokalias Are Alike. Back
- Dobrotolyubie — the Slavonic version of the Philokalia, translated in the Paisian milieu of Neamț by St. Paisius Velichkovsky and his disciples, printed in Moscow in 1793. It comprises 24 of the 36 writings of the Greek Venice edition (1782) and lay at the foundation of the Russian spiritual renaissance of the 19th century. Back
- Deacon Coresi (16th century) — Romanian printer active in Brașov, author of the first books printed in Romanian (the Catechism, the Tetraevangelion, the Liturgicon, the Psalter, etc.), with a decisive contribution to the formation of Romanian literary language. Back
- Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi (1768–1846) — Metropolitan of Moldavia, supporter of patristic translations and printings, who developed the press at Neamț Monastery. Under his direction the Lives of the Saints were printed in 12 volumes, alongside numerous patristic writings in Romanian. Back
- For the biographical data on Father Cleopa Ilie (1912–1998), see Archim. Ioanichie Bălan, The Life of Father Cleopa, Sihăstria Monastery Publishing House, as well as the biographical entry on Doxologia.ro. Back
- Both quotations — Father Cleopa’s testimony about his readings as a shepherd, and Antonie Plămădeală’s characterization — come from Archim. Ioanichie Bălan, The Life of Father Cleopa, Sihăstria Monastery Publishing House. The full text is accessible online at sfaturiortodoxe.ro. Back
- Archim. Ephraim of Philotheou, My Elder Joseph the Hesychast, translated from Greek by Hieroschemamonk Ștefan Nuțescu, Evanghelismos Publishing, Bucharest, 2010. The source attests both the daily rule of reading ("not a day would pass without reading at least a page") and St. Joseph’s conviction that reading is "a necessary condition of the monk" and "a kind of prayer." Back