神父马克西姆访谈：当代教会长老——西蒙诺佩特拉的艾米里亚诺斯

[Fr. Josiah] It is a tremendous blessing to be able to interview Father Maximus Constas today. Father Maximus, welcome to St. Andrew Church. We are in the sacred 40-day period after the repose of the highly esteemed and deeply respected elder of Mount Athos, Father Aimilianos, the one-time abbot of the Holy Monastery of Simonopetra, who fell asleep in the Lord on the ninth of this month on the feast day of the Great Martyr Christopher and the Holy Prophet Isaiah. Father Aimilianos has had a tremendous, edifying influence on Orthodox Christians and many beyond the Church throughout the whole world, on my life and many of my fellow priests’ lives, and I know especially on your life, Father Maximus.

[Fr. Josiah] Most of our viewers of this interview will know you well, but for the sake of some who might not, I would like to make a small introduction of Father Maximus. Father Maximus is a priest and archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese here in America. He is an esteemed patristic scholar and resides next to Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston, where he has taught for years, following a distinguished career as a professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School. He is also a tonsured monk of the Monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, where he spent many years as a monk.

[Fr. Josiah] We are in great debt to you, Father, for the gargantuan labor of translating so many of the works of Father Aimilianos into the English language, as well as your incredible work translating St. Maximus the Confessor. Really, we are in your debt. We are tremendously in your debt. And I thank you for entertaining this brief interview on the life and influential teachings of Elder Aimilianos. Would you share with us, Father, a little bit about the life of Father Aimilianos and help us have a sense of his own personal biography?

[Father Maximus] Sure, I would be happy to. I suppose the first thought that comes to mind is that it is really difficult to take the measure of a man’s life. That is true, I think, even for what we might call an ordinary human life, and how much more difficult in the case of someone like this, who is just an outstanding, towering figure who did so much amazing work and influenced so many people. I think it will be a long time, and a blessed long time, before we, as we continue to, come to terms with the Elder and his contribution.

[Father Maximus] He was born in the 1930s and entered monastic life in the 1960s, and very quickly attracted a devoted circle of students and disciples around him who ended up becoming monks and nuns in monasteries that he established. I think around 1973, his brotherhood moved from Meteora in central Greece to the Monastery of Simonopetra, while the nuns were established in the Convent of Ormylia, which, as many people know, is one of the more outstanding monastic houses in Greece, with well over a hundred nuns and committed to all kinds of really great work.

[Father Maximus] I suppose around 1995, the Elder began to show signs of an illness that would eventually require him to retire, and in 2000 he was replaced by the current abbot, Elder Eliseos, which is the Greek way of saying Elisha. Elisha, of course, was the disciple and successor of the prophet Elijah, so we do have this nice continuity between the Elder and his successor, Elder Eliseos.

[Fr. Josiah] How is it that Americans like myself could be familiar with Elder Aimilianos? How is it that a man who has retired to the monastery, so to speak, could have such a profound influence on contemporary Orthodoxy?

[Father Maximus] Well, it is like the way in which icons do not have walls or ceilings on them. The events that took place indoors are not boxed in inside of houses; they are depicted as having taken place outside. Something similar happened here. The grace that this man bore, the energy that God gave him, and the torrent of divine speech that poured forth from his lips was something that could not be contained within the confines of the monastery. It is also the case, of course, that he was an extraordinary speaker, a mesmerizing speaker with large eyes and very expressive features, with an incredible command of the language and of rhetoric. While he wrote very little, he spoke quite prolifically. The monastery archive has a series of recordings of his talks that number around 3,000.

[Fr. Josiah] Incredible.

[Father Maximus] 3,000 talks, which means he was giving about 100 or so formal or semi-formal talks every year for 30 years.

[Fr. Josiah] Incredible.

[Father Maximus] So through his preaching in Greece and Cyprus, and later on through the transcription and publication of his works, he has become increasingly known to a larger public.

[Fr. Josiah] What was his pedagogical schedule? Did he have fixed days on which he would deliver talks? How do you deliver a hundred substantial talks every year for 30 years?

[Father Maximus] Well, you do not. It is really a remarkable thing. I think, again, we are talking about somebody who was really on fire with God, and his strength, abilities, and powers as a speaker, as a pastor, and as a monastic leader go beyond anything that we could consider to be normal or ordinary. But as far as your question goes, most of it followed the typical monastic routine. The Elder was a born teacher; he was gifted with the gift of speech. And as in many monastic traditions or orders, he would speak to the community on…

[Father Maximus] Sundays in the refectory or later on in the afternoon, or always on great feast days or on the days where vigils were celebrated, later on in the day after rest was taken, these were always opportunities for teaching. It’s a catechism in a sense. It’s an ongoing education of the brotherhood. It’s an ongoing initiation, not simply into monastic life, but an ongoing initiation into the life of the Church, which means into the life of Christ.

[Fr. Josiah] Am I right to think, Father, that he also left the monastery in order to missionize, preach, and interact with laypeople? It seems that in the reading I’ve done of him, he also speaks about many very contemporary, relevant themes to the lives of laypeople.

[Father Maximus] Well, there’s not a whole lot of reason to leave a place when 10,000 to 20,000 visitors a year go to that place. He did leave the Holy Mountain in response to invitations from local hierarchs throughout Greece. He would travel to different cities—Greece is a small country—and maybe sometimes give two or three talks in the same city, sometimes on the same day while he was there. He was also beloved by people in Cyprus and undertook trips there as well. So, through visitors at the monastery and his own presence in the Church of Greece and elsewhere, he became known to many people.

[Fr. Josiah] I’ve also heard that he played a fundamental role in the rejuvenation of Athonite monasticism in the 20th century. Is that accurate?

[Father Maximus] It is. This is a fascinating phenomenon, and a number of very good things have been written about it. But in broad brushstrokes, around the early 1960s, the monastic population of Mount Athos appeared to be at an all-time low. Most of the monasteries had only a small number of very old monks, and there were no new novices on the horizon. I don’t remember the year exactly—1961 maybe, or ‘62, ‘61—there was the 1,000-year Anniversary of Mount Athos. That was the 1,000-year anniversary of the establishment of the Great Lavra, which was the first cenobitic monastery established there. This was a huge celebration. The King of Greece was there, Orthodox patriarchs were there, heads of Orthodox states were there, and the inside joke among the participants was that they had, in fact, come to celebrate the funeral of Mount Athos.

[Fr. Josiah] To bid farewell.

[Father Maximus] To bid farewell. And right around that same time, the first novice showed up after none had shown up in a very long time. So things began to change. In other words, at this nadir in the history of the mountain, things unexpectedly turned around because the Greek state had been planning to move all of the remaining monks into one monastery and turn the rest of the peninsula, the rest of Mount Athos, into a tourist destination. The only thing that prevented them from doing it in the time of the war was the sheer logistics of securing and guarding a place of that size. That never happened, and in the meantime, new monks began to show up.

[Fr. Josiah] Among whom was Father Aimilianos, about ten years after that, you said? In the early…

[Father Maximus] 70s? Right. It’s really a very interesting phenomenon, and it gives witness to the activity of God in His Church and the Spirit moving within history, because we essentially had two sources from which the Holy Mountain was rejuvenated or repopulated: an internal source and an external source. The most important internal source were the disciples of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, who became abbots of multiple monasteries and attracted new young monks to those monasteries. Among the abbots who came from outside of the mountain are people like Elder Aimilianos, Elder Alexios of Xenophontos, and Elder George of Grigoriou. So again, we had new life emerging within the mountain and new life coming from outside of the mountain, the two coming together to create this phenomenon, a kind of renaissance of life on the Holy Mountain.

[Fr. Josiah] The writings and teachings of Father Aimilianos are so saturated with Holy Scripture. His insight, especially into the Old Testament, and his devotion to the Psalms drips from the pages of the stenographers who wrote down his texts—or I don’t know if he wrote them himself or not. But am I right to think that he had a special connection with the Psalter, and that he was actually able to pass it on to the monastery and to the world?

[Father Maximus] Yes, the Elder was a deeply learned man. He had a degree in theology from the University of Athens, but beyond that, he was a devoted reader and spent much of his time studying the writings of the Fathers of the Church, Byzantine monastic foundation documents, and everything relevant to the life of the monastery. He often commented on these readings. Among his beloved books was the Old Testament. He had a very special and deep devotion to the Old Testament. Part of that can be seen in one of his works, which is available in English: his commentary on a number of select psalms, which I consider to be a masterpiece of Orthodox spiritual exegesis. On the one hand, they are informed by…

[Father Maximus] Let’s say the best of the historical critical tradition, because he was aware of that level of literature, but his audience, of course, is a monastic audience, and the aim is to edify and to inspire. His interpretation, his exegesis of these Psalms, really has to be read to be appreciated. There’s really nothing quite like it. Also related to his interest in the Old Testament was the revival of the singing of the Psalms in the monastic liturgy. Ancient monks spent most of their time reciting the Psalter. The Psalter is still read once a week in its entirety in a monastery that’s able to do that. But they were no longer sung. Through the very talented chanters that were in the monastery, the Elder encouraged the revival of Psalm singing. One of the musical books that the monastery has published is a very large collection of Psalms that are set to music. Most people are familiar with the Hymn to the Virgin, the Agni Parthene, but the Psalms also deserve to be better known. Some of them have been translated into English and they’re being sung in different places.

[Fr. Josiah] Could you share with us a bit about his lectures on the Psalms, because you, in fact, made the English translation yourself of that book. Would you tell us about particularly that book and other books that you’ve translated of Elder Aimilianos’s work so that our English readers would have an avenue to explore him more?

[Father Maximus] It would be very hard to pick a favorite work of his, but certainly the commentary on the Psalms is high on the list. If you didn’t think the Psalms were relevant to you, if you thought the Psalms were somehow archaic or stilted or just lacked life, then you should buy a copy of this book and sit down and read it, because he really makes these Psalms come alive. This is one of the things that helped me to re-appreciate the power of the Psalter, which has always been the prayer book of the Church. Sometimes you need a little help in realizing that. People say it’s a bit of a cliché and not entirely true, but they say that in the rest of the Bible, God speaks to man, but in the Psalter, man speaks to God, which is why it was the prayer book of the Church. The whole range of human emotion and feeling is present there in the Psalter: praise, thanksgiving, glory, glorification, confession, sorrow, lament, pain, fear, anxiety, stress, suffering—it’s all there. This is why it’s been, as I said, the prayer book of the Church. Maybe one of the more significant things that stands out is what we might call the theology of suffering or illness that the Elder articulates in these commentaries on the Psalms. He basically argues that the pain that we experience and the suffering that we experience in life, whether it’s psychological or especially physical, because the Psalmist often speaks about physical illnesses and ailments… his argument is that this pain is not so much my pain, but it’s the pain of God who is seeking to find me. That sounds a little odd at first, but he uses an image to illustrate it. He says to imagine God as a great runner who has been racing to catch up with me my whole life. He’s been running so long and running so hard to catch up with me that his limbs ache and his muscles are sore, and he’s parched. You know how painful that can be when you’re completely dehydrated. God, as it were, has somehow exhausted himself trying to find me before I go over the edge, before I go over the abyss. So the pain that I feel is not my pain, but it’s the pain of God who is seeking to find me and who has been seeking to find me since all eternity. To this he adds a beautiful image from St. Gregory the Theologian, who says that God thirsts to be thirsted for. In other words, God desires to be desired. The word “thirsts” is the same word that Christ uses on the cross when he says, “I thirst.” So his thirst for us, his desire for us, his love for us, is so great that death on the cross is the length he’s willing to go to for the sake of that love. That’s how he understands pain and suffering. I’ve never seen anything actually quite like this. I’ve always thought it was very striking, but also very beautiful and very helpful in moments of difficulty, this biblical idea that God comes to you in that dark cloud.

[Fr. Josiah] You’ve just released a new text through New Rome Press, which is your translation of Elder Aimilianos’s lectures on spiritual life according to St. Maximus the Confessor. It’s a beautiful book, very well done by the press. Could you tell us just a little bit about this book, and would you suggest this to a believer who wants to get to know both the Elder and St. Maximus?

[Father Maximus] This is actually a good example of some of the work that the Elder did in the monastery. He would read and study various texts by spiritual and ascetic writers, and then he would offer commentary on them to the monks. These would typically unfold over a period of weeks or sometimes even longer, where he would just give one talk at a time, and over the course of several days or months, as I said, a commentary would emerge. So, for example, he has a fantastic commentary on Hesychios of Sinai, who appears in the first volume of the Philokalia, on Abba Isaiah, and other spiritual and ascetic writers.

[Father Maximus] The chapters in this book are his talks, his running commentary on select passages from St. Maximus the Confessor’s Chapters on Love. He must have selected these excerpts very carefully, because there are 400 chapters, and he doesn’t comment on all of them, only a small number. He must have obviously chosen them very well and very wisely, because he manages to use this commentary to offer a consummate introduction to the Orthodox spiritual tradition. He does it in a way that’s very simple, straightforward, and effective. It’s not expository, academic, or intellectual, but much more experiential. Most people who have read the book tell me that they find it very convicting. It grabs them by their lapels, shakes them up a bit, and opens their eyes to the spiritual life and their relationship to God.

[Fr. Josiah] I found it that way myself. I felt that he was standing right in front of me, discombobulating me in order to reassemble me, very engaging in the interior. Elder Aimilianos just amazes me. I’m a married priest. I have children and grandchildren. Yet when I read him about matters that I think most would assume a monk would not be an expert on, I am flabbergasted. I have two particular teachings that he’s given that have deeply impressed me and left me nonplussed. How could this be? His incredible teaching on marriage, the great sacrament, and his fascinating small article on technology, which was so prophetic and so timely at the time, I think in the early 80s when he wrote or spoke it, but even more applicable today. How is it that Father Aimilianos could see so penetratingly and offer such incredible practical guidance for people living in the married state, for people working with technology, though a monk?

[Father Maximus] You’re right to emphasize the essay on, or the talk on marriage, which a lot of people have read and really profited from. I think it’s a combination of things. Everybody has a mother and a father, and mostly everybody grew up in some kind of a family, so an unmarried person having insights into a marital relationship shouldn’t be too surprising. The other side of it is that, in addition to the Elder’s natural intelligence, which he cultivated through education and reading, he had the grace of the Holy Spirit that was able to build on his own natural intelligence. If you read Maximus the Confessor, it says that God will not give wisdom to a person who has no love of knowledge, and the Holy Spirit will not give the gift of healing to someone who doesn’t love his fellow man. So God takes our natural gifts and builds on them. I think the Elder was a very intelligent and insightful person whose natural gifts of insight, discernment, and knowledge were enriched, expanded, and magnified by the grace of the Holy Spirit. This is why all the saints are able to be the teachers that they are, not simply on the basis of their own intelligence, but because of the gift of the Spirit. It’s also maybe an implicit correction to this idea that we have in our culture today that if I’m not your race or your gender or whatever it might be, I’m somehow incapable of understanding anything at all about you. I think that is a little extreme. We have a lot more in common as human beings than we do in terms of what divides us.

[Fr. Josiah] Yes, I agree. I find Elder Aimilianos’s answer, especially in his article on marriage, the Great Sacrament, as an answer to those who think, how can a monk, or a church father who was celibate, speak to me about the married state? I have often answered that by pointing out, as you did, that they had families in which they grew up. They witnessed marriage. St. John Chrysostom, for instance, had his most beautiful mother and saw how tender it was. But also, the emphasis is that they were in the archetypal marriage, the mystical marriage themselves, and were able to apply from their own deep interaction with God in this love relationship with him, the things that are most important to see in the earthly perspective of marriage. I find Father Aimilianos’s work just inspiring, and I hope that if those who are watching this interview haven’t read his article on marriage, that they will. Would you end, Father, by suggesting some of his works to our watchers? If someone wanted to go buy a book today and get to know Father Aimilianos, learn about his life, how should they proceed?

[Father Maximus] Well, in 2014, the periodical The Orthodox Word devoted an entire issue to the life of Elder Aimilianos, and that remains the most complete biography of the Elder in English. It would be great one day if we had a full-scale biography, but until that happens, there is this very nice issue of The Orthodox Word from 2014. In terms of reading the Elder’s writings, we have about four books so far in English: The Authentic Seal, The Church at Prayer, Psalms and the Life of Faith, and The Mystical Marriage.

[Father Maximus] I think the best place to start to get used to the elder’s voice, the way he thinks, and the way he teaches would be either the book on the Psalms, which I understand is a very popular book that many people have read, or the newer book on mystical marriage. I think it is also a very good place to start because it is a very cohesive work and provides a very solid introduction to the basic points of Orthodox spirituality.

[Father Maximus] All the other books are good too, but they tend to be collections of talks on different subjects, so they don’t have quite the same cohesiveness as the book on the Psalms or the Mystical Marriage. I think those would be better places to start.

[Fr. Josiah] Would you share which of those books you were the translator for?

[Father Maximus] All of them, I think.

[Fr. Josiah] And did you find it difficult, Father, to translate Elder Aimilianos? How does he compare to translating St. Maximus?

[Father Maximus] Well, it’s really apples and oranges. It was never difficult. It was always a tremendous joy and a blessing to be able to spend my time in the company of his thought. It has always been striking to me that, even though I’ve translated four books so far, it’s never gotten old. He doesn’t repeat himself, and there is essentially a revelation on every page. I am just struck time and again by what the elder was able to generate from his experience of God and how he had the gift of articulating that in simple and yet very penetrating language.

[Fr. Josiah] I think God, who loves us so much as to give us a love gift like Father Aimilianos, knows how much He loves us. And I thank God also for your work, Father. I am very selfish, and I know I speak for many people who have benefited in their souls from all your love and labors. I ask God to please keep you in good health of body and soul for many years to come so that your work on behalf of the church and for the advancement of our Savior’s gospel continues. Thank you.

[Father Maximus] And I should say that who I am, what I am, and what I’m able to do is something that I owe entirely to Elder Eliseos of Simonopetra and the Brotherhood of the Monastery, who in their way brought me to birth in Christ and initiated me into the mystery of the Church. I can only be grateful to them for their presence in my life.

[Fr. Josiah] Thank you for this interview. We ask your prayers, Father.

[Father Maximus] And I yours. Thank you.