† IC XC
NI KA

Cell¹ of the Honorable Cross,
March 19, 1973

Sister Eldress Philothea, bless!

I wrote this letter, stitched into a notebook², to send to Athens to young people who wish to become monks and who many times
asked me for help, because, besides the difficulties arising from the lamentable worldly environment and the worldly mindset of their parents, even greater harm was done to them by their Protestant ideas by certain lay spiritual fathers, repeating all sorts of nonsense from certain modern monasteries and monks of our time. In the end, however, I did not send this letter, and one of the most serious reasons for this was the fear of making Kapsala³ a place of spiritual tourism.

I decided to burn it, but I had pity on it, because I had labored three days to write it, and also because I saw in it something good that might help the sisters in their daily struggle.

I hope that you will understand me rightly and will not condemn me for the puzzle I have set, because it was necessary to show what Orthodox monasticism is, so that these modernists, seeing their own poverty, might be ashamed and in the future cease to speak Protestant nonsense.

Rejoice⁴!
Your brother, the monk Paisios⁵.

↑1 A cell is a monk's dwelling, a small house, sometimes with a church, in this case — in honor of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. — Editor's note.

↑2 The Elder wrote a letter to the novices in a notebook he had made himself. — Greek editor.

↑3 Kapsala is a locality on the Holy Mountain near the Monastery of Stavronikita, where the Elder lived for eleven years in the cell of the Honorable Cross of the Lord. — Translator's note.

↑4 A greeting frequently used in Greece upon meeting and parting.

The first week of the holy Forty Days of Lent, 1973.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit
Before my unskilled hand begins to write, it would be good to ask forgiveness of all the devout readers because I,
an illiterate man, dare to write, when I do not even know the Greek language well enough. Perhaps what I am doing shows that something is not right with me, but I, alas, do not know the cause of this. It seems to me that I write out of compassion for the novice monks; yet how am I to know whether the cause of this was not my enormous hidden egoism, which I myself was unable to discern? Therefore I ask you: if this is so, pray that God may have mercy on me.
That I feel compassion for the novice monks and anxiety for them is true, because, having been a novice myself, I suffered much before I obtained what I desired. Of course, no one was to blame for my suffering except the multitude of my sins (I suffered in order to pay off at least some of them) and, in equal measure, my own unpolished state, which was the second cause of my suffering, for I entrusted myself to the first person I met. I thank God for everything, because everything was very profitable for me. Besides the rust of my old self, which these blows knocked off, and the experience they left me, they softened my hard heart, and with compassion I pray for the novices, that they may at once find suitable conditions and become perfect in the virtues according to their calling.
Thus, one of the chief reasons why novices suffer is that they do not find suitable elders who could help them, since most of us, alas, are old men, not elders. Naturally, the judgment of novices is also childish, and so they err.
For example, a novice is at once moved to emotion when he sees a frail monk, because he thinks the man is a great ascetic; or, if the monk has a long gray beard, he seems to the novice very venerable, and the novice, on the basis of these criteria, at once entrusts himself to him and, although the beginning of his path was good, sails in the wrong direction. Having been saved from the
stormy sea of worldly life and having set a course toward the harbor, but not knowing how to be discerning, he often boards a decrepit ship and suffers shipwreck, or entrusts himself to an inexperienced captain who sinks him in the depths of the sea.
Forgive me for speaking sharply, and for every still harsher word you may meet further on, as well as for all my
coarseness, which I probably have, for it is not easy for a person to see it in himself, but usually others, from the outside, see it more clearly. I would also like you to pray that God may have mercy on me and that I might be able to live, at least in part, as I write, because I have only formed for myself a notion of all this. And may God strengthen me to make a beginning, because I, alas, still belong to the rank of the old men, and not of the elders. But I do not lose hope, because I have many acquaintances who pray for me, and the Good God will help me through their prayers.