| So, what is done? In the West, they carry out reforms, monastic reforms. But the reforms are put in place from above – it’s institutional reform. The discipline in monasteries is reinstated or applied more severely. For example, the Cistercians wanted to reform the Benedictine Order by applying the Rule of St. Benedict literally, but this did not last very long. They became as decadent, so to speak, as the Benedictines. The Trappists are a reform of the Cistercians, a reform of a reform. Fine. That didn’t last eternally, either. I am very skeptical of all initiatives to reform the Church internally, because one remains at the institutional level. And I believe – this is my personal conviction – that man has the right to reform only that which he has formed himself. Look at reforms that are institutional, constitutional, military, monetary, whatever you like – these are reforms of human institutions. So man can modify them when needed. But the spiritual life cannot be reformed. One can only make or create – and this is the duty of the hierarchy, of bishops and patriarchs – favorable conditions so that the Holy Spirit could, through good monks, renew monasticism from within. One can cite the example of the renaissance of Russian monasticism led by St. Paisius (Velichkovsky), but one doesn’t have to go that far back. We can turn to Greece: Mount Athos in the early to mid-twentieth century was declining towards the zero mark. This was due to external circumstances; there was also the heritage of Turkocracy. The monasteries were impoverished, the brethren no longer lived communally, and all the larger monasteries had become idiorrhythmic. Thus discipline was at its lowest level. These were not necessarily very bad monks, but it was not according to the canons. Then came the catastrophic expulsion of the Greek population from Asia Minor in the 1920s, and the large monasteries no longer had their recruiting zones, because traditionally the large monasteries had received their vocations from different parts of Asia Minor. There had been a very strong Greek population there – in Pontus, Smyrna. So, there was decline. |
| Когда мы вслушиваемся в него, то, кажется, что здесь, в горах над Лугано, оживает и древняя северная Фиваида, здесь Евагрий и Макарий Великийв стречаются с преподобными Бенедиктом Нурсийским и Сергием Радонежским, духовным наследникам которого о. Габриэль (Бунге) посвятил свою книгу о «Троице» преп. Андрея Рублева. В этом смысле весь облик, весь духовный и жизненный строй о. Габриэля дышит профетизмом и являет собой то единство, который само говорит о себе в праведниках и людях молитвы. Настоящая книга, изданная по-немецки в 1996 году, уже переведена на итальянский, французский, каталонский. В Румынии, где к сегодняшнему дню опубликовано пять книг о. Габриэля, эта работа вышла уже третьим изданием, и продается она в православных храмах. В одном из румынских монастырей ее читают монахам во время братской трапезы. Эту немощную попытку как-то представить автора «Скудельных сосудов» я закончу словами Сергея Аверинцева , взятыми из его предисловия к книге о «Троице», названной в немецком оригинале «Другой Утешитель». Представляя ее автора, С. Аверинцев вспоминает о своей встрече с ним: «Когда судьба позволила мне повстречать о. Габриэля (Бунге) не только в его книгах, но «лицом к лицу», я с восхищением слушал его слова, свидетельствовавшие не только об искренней и неподдельной любви к православной традиции, но также и о неожиданно точном понимании особенностей русского Православия и специально нынешней его ситуации, как если бы он переживал ее изнутри... И потому эта книга – победа «над враждой мира сего» и утешение для всех, чьему сердцу дело единства дороже всего, руководство на пути к цели, указанной в Первосвященнической молитве Христа: да будут все едино ( Ин.17:21 )». (Gabriel Bunge, Lo Spirito Consolatore. Ed. La casa di Matrona. 1995, La presentazione di Serghei S. Averintzev). Владимир Зелинский 2 Ср. нашу книгу AKEDIA. Die geistiiche Lehre des Evagrios Pontikos vom Uberdru, Wurzburg, 4 Aufl. 1995. 53 Евагрий. Зерцало иноков и инокинь. I. К монахам, живущим в киновиях и общинах, 92 (Цит. изд., стр. 92). |
| Further Reading An excellent reflection on this whole subject is Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer’s Life (2008).See also Fr Gabriel Bunge, Despondency: the Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus , (SVS Press, 2011). Source: The official blog of the Department of Youth, Young Adult, and Campus Ministries of the Orthodox Church in America. Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Church Burnout Archpriest John Jillions The story goes that Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great Roman Catholic saint, was complaining to God after once again being kicked out of another Spanish town by yet another bishop who did not appreciate her reforming spirit. As she sat on her suitcases she prayed aloud, “Lord, if this is how ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Donate Also by this author " Pope Francis’ Thoughts on Pastoring in the 21st Century Archpriest John Jillions On September 25, 2015, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon and I attended the multi-religious gathering with Pope Francis at the… More Today " s Articles “Le monde entier reste silencieux au… pravmir_com_team Depuis le 12 décembre 2022, la région de l " Artsakh, où vivent 120… |
| Having heard His Holiness Patriarch Kirill’s report on dioceses and parishes abroad, the Synod resolved: to release Bishop Nestor of Korsun from his duties of administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate’s parishes in Italy, thank him for his work and to appoint Archbishop Mark of Yegorievsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Administration for Institutions Abroad, acting administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate’s parishes in Italy; to release Archimandrite Isidor (Minaev) from his duties of head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, thank him for his work and send him to serve under Metropolitan Vladimir of St.-Petersburg and Ladoga. Hegumen Feofan (Lukianov), deputy head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, was appointed its acting head. to establish the Monastery of the Elevation of the Cross in Lugano, Switzerland, in the Korsun diocese. Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge), cleric of the Korsun diocese, was appointed its hegumen. to release Bishop Leonid of Argentina and South America from his duties of representative of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia to the Patriarch of Alexandria and to appoint to this post Rev. Viktor Kulaga, cleric of the Bobruysk diocese. The Holy Synod established one more commemoration day of St Matrona of Moscow – the 8th of March (New Style), the day of the finding of her relics. The participants in the meeting approved texts of prayer services, dedicated to St John the Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco and the Wonderworker, to the holy hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Vereya, and to St Simeon of the Pskov Caves. The Holy Synod approved the decisions made by the Supreme Church Council earlier in 2013, and considered a number of issues of external church activity. Source: DECR Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church concludes its spring/summer session admin July 16, 2013 On 16 July 2013, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, chaired by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, met for its concluding meeting in the spring/summer session. The participants in the meeting adopted the Patriarchal Message to Archpastors, Clergy, ... |
| Paul VI had a very strong and deep desire for reconciliation with the Orthodox Church. He was the incarnation of this Janus-face (double-face) of the Western Church. On one side, he wanted to concelebrate the Liturgy with Patriarch Athenagoros when they met in Jerusalem, and he brought a golden chalice to do so. But the ecumenists (thank God) separated these two old men, because after such an act it would have become worse than it was before. So, they did not serve together. He offered to give the Patriarch that chalice. But it is well proved that he wanted, through Liturgical reforms, to make the Latin mass become acceptable to Protestants, not thinking, not aware that it would in the same moment become completely unacceptable to the Orthodox. You can see that the Catholic Church is between these opposite positions—the Orthodox East and the Protestant West. But then the general evolution did not go towards the east, but towards the west. It became a slow self-Protestantization of the Roman Church—a self-secularization, with all the destruction, both physical and spiritual, that we have seen. This was a real historical disaster of unseen dimensions. You see, Protestantism is an inner-Catholic virus. And the Roman Catholic Church has no antibody against that virus. The antibody is Orthodoxy, which has never been, for five hundred years, tempted by Protestantism. Even if there be an Ecumenical Patriarch who has sympathies with Calvinism (as there once was), this is local. It has no influence on the Orthodox consciousness. It is just limited, and that is all. The Orthodox Church had plenty of opportunities to be infected with Protestantism and secularism, but they did not succumb—only on the surface. —A cold, rather than a cancer? —Yes, a cold, not a cancer. This is really a tragedy of historical dimensions. Many Catholics are aware of this now, because they no longer consider the Orthodox Church to be a competitor or adversary. That is why they help them in any way to establish their parishes in the West. |
| Orthodoxy in the World Last Updated: Feb 8th, 2011 - 05:50:02 Father Gabriel (Bunge) “Orthodoxy is the Fruit of My Whole Life as a Christian and a Monk” By Archpriest Pavel Velikanov Jan 25, 2011, 10:00 Discuss this article Printer friendly page Translated by Svetlana Tibbs Edited by Jacob Aleksander Brooks and Isaac (Gerald) Herrin A famous Swiss Catholic theologian, Hieromonk Gabriel Bunge, converted to Orthodoxy on August 27th 2010 in Moscow, on the Eve of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. It was Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk who received Fr. Gabriel into the Orthodox Church. We are glad to offer our readers translations of two interviews with Fr. Gabriel. The first interview “I came to the faith owing to my peers ” was conducted by Archpriest Pavel Velikanov, the editor-in-chief of the scientific theological website “Bogoslos.ru” in 2008. At the time Fr. Gabriel was still a Catholic hieromonk. The second interview “ One Can " t Learn to Pray Sitting in a Warm Armchair ” Fr. Gabriel had right after he had converted to Orthodoxy. It was conducted by a Russian Orthodox Christian Journal for Doubting Thomases – Foma. A short biographical note Gabriel Bunge was born in 1940 in Cologne. His father was Lutheran and his mother was Catholic. At the age of 22, Fr. Gabriel joined the Order of Saint Benedict in France. In 1972 he was ordained to the Holy Priesthood. For many years, Fr. Gabriel devoted himself to studying works of Evagrius of Pontus. He has been living in the Skete of the Holy Cross in Swiss canton Tichino since 1980 following the ancient typicon of Saint Benedict. He is the author of the following books: “Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition,” “The Rublev Trinity: The Icon of the Trinity by the Monk-painter Andrei Rublev,” “Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread”, “Spiritual fatherhood,” etc. En excerpt from the article “Back to Unity” by Hieromonk Gabriel Bunge My discovery of Orthodoxy wasn " t a result of some kind of scientific study, but the fruit of my whole life as a Christian and a monk. This discovery of Orthodoxy, that had started 40 years ago and is in progress up till now, has formed into a specific meaning. It let me enter and penetrate into what we can call “a mystery of the Church.” |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation One Cannot Be Anything More Than a Christian: A Conversation with Fr. Gabriel (Bunge) admin 14 December 2012 What does it mean to be a Christian? What is a real monk? Can monasticism be reformed? For whom were the works of the Holy Fathers written? Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge), renowned patristic scholar and hermitic monk, replies to these and other questions. Fr. Gabriel Bunge was born in 1940 in Cologne, Germany, to a Lutheran father and a Catholic mother. At the age of twenty-two he entered the Benedictine Order in France; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1972. He has dedicated many years to the study of the works of Evagrius Ponticus. Since 1980 he has lived in the Skete of the Holy Cross in the Swiss canton of Ticino, where he follows the ancient Rule of St. Benedict. He was received into the Orthodox Church in 2010. His books in English translation include Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition; The Rublev Trinity: The Icon of the Trinity by the Monk-painter Andrei Rublev; Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread; and Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius of Pontus. Fr. Gabriel, has your life changed since you became Orthodox? Of course, it has changed a great deal, substantially even. As I have already related several times, when telling my personal history, I became acquainted with Orthodoxy, originally with the Greek Church, at the age of twenty-one, in 1961. It’s in 2010 that I became Orthodox. I had known the Orthodox Churches very well – including the Russian Church – but it had been from the outside, which is not the same thing. I had known it apart from the essential fact of sacramental communion, which I had always lacked, and which finally became the major reason for which I took this step. Because many people said to me: “Wasn’t spiritual communion enough for you?” As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. This was not ultimately enough for me. |
| Therefore the lives of saints, which were always much read in Russia, are excellent, because you can see how the Gospel was lived out concretely. You cannot imitate them, but you can see how all this was possible in one circumstance or another. I love reading the lives of saints very much, including the lives of recent saints. And I always tell myself: if he was capable of holding out to the end in the intolerable conditions of the camps, then I, in my truly favorable conditions, must also be able to do so – even if I cannot imitate him that way. Final question: how many languages do you know? I learned English in school and have spoken it since childhood; later I lived in Belgium for seventeen years, and I speak French. I have lived for thirty-two years already in the Italian part of Switzerland, and I speak Italian. So these four languages, along with my native German. I speak a little in other languages – but, alas, too little in Russian, which I learned when I was young in the monastery. I studied the grammar ten times, but because of the other languages it all got a bit mixed up in my head. I would need to live in the country to revive everything that is in my head, but you know it is difficult to put something new into an old head. People speak it very quickly, and without paying attention to the fact that my vocabulary is limited to ecclesiastical and liturgical language. But when people talk about daily life – not even to mention literature – I am already lost. The editors cordially thank Priest Dmitry Ageev for organizing the interview with Fr. Gabriel. Photos by Julia Makoveychuk, Priest Dmitry Ageev, and A. A. Rybakov. The translator wishes to thank Subdeacon Claude Lopez-Ginisty for his editorial help. Translated from the original French . You might also like: Theological Study, the Spiritual Life, and Russia Today: A Conversation with Fr. Gabriel (Bunge) One Can’t Learn to Pray Sitting in a Warm Armchair – Interview with Fr. Gabriel Father Gabriel (Bunge): “Orthodoxy is the Fruit of My Whole Life as a Christian and a Monk” |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation Theological Study, the Spiritual Life, and Russia Today: A Conversation with Fr. Gabriel (Bunge) admin 14 November 2012 The following conversation with Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge), the renowned patristics scholar from the Skete of the Holy Cross in Switzerland, was held during his visit to Moscow in early November 2012 Fr. Gabriel, what for you is the most valuable thing in communication with another person? That depends on the depth of the communication. To speak in general terms, it is wonderful when people are able to find a common language with one another. If we are to speak of other aspects of communication, then the most valuable thing is when you can find the image of God in another person. We were all created in God’s image; in the absolute sense, this image is Christ. If we can find this image in another person, then this becomes the most valuable thing there can be in communication; this is also the basis of true friendship. That is, not just some kind of natural human sympathy, but the recognition of another as being in the image of God. How often, and how regularly, do you read Holy Scripture? I began to read Holy Scripture very early, long before I entered the monastery. Later, therefore, it seemed perfectly natural to me that in the monastery we read Scripture daily both during the divine services and in our cells. I have been a monk for fifty years already. Now, having simply memorized many texts, I often contemplate them. This allows a deeper meaning to open up than can be gotten during a simple reading. You can read a text 100 or 1,000 times and then you might read it once and suddenly see that you have never truly read it a single time, because a new depth has opened up to you that never had before. The text of Holy Scripture is like a fathomless well. It is said that one needs to read Holy Scripture in a particular disposition. Is this good advice? |
| Fr. Gabriel Bunge About fifteen years ago, I had a unique opportunity to visit the hermitage of a Catholic priest-monk and theologian in the mountains of Switzerland. He was well known for his writings on the holy fathers of the early Christian Church, and no less well known for his unusual—from the modern, Western point of view—monastic lifestyle. Somewhat familiar with how Catholic monasteries generally look today, I was not expecting to feel so at home as an Orthodox monastic in his Catholic hermitage. After ascending a wooded mountain path to a small dwelling among the trees, we were greeted by an austere looking, elderly man, his gray beard flowing over black robes. His head was covered by a hood bearing a red cross embroidered over the forehead. It was as if we had been transported to the Egyptian desert, to behold St. Anthony the Great. As he and his co-struggler Fr. Raphael treated us to tea, we talked about the Church, East and West, and about the Russian Orthodox Church. But there was no talk of them joining that Church—it would have been uncomfortable to even mention it. We felt that we had come into brief contact with a monk who was one with us in spirit, although he was not in our Church, and we parted with joy at this pleasant revelation while Fr. Gabriel made the sign of the cross over us in the Orthodox manner. The Monastery of the Holy Cross, Roveredo, Swizterland. Fr. Gabriel never had and still does not have electronic communication with the outside world, and we heard very little from or about him after our visit. Nevertheless we did not forget him, and in the intervening time we never ceased to think how good it would be if he were in communion with us, the Orthodox. But never would we have tried to approach this subject with him—we somehow felt that God was guiding him as He sees fit. Fr. Raphael, a Swiss, has since passed away, and Fr. Gabriel is the abbot and sole monk of what is now the Monastery of the Holy Cross, part of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was baptized Orthodox on the eve of the Dormition of the Theotokos in Moscow, August 2010. He is now Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel. |
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