Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings

I loved this selection of St. Maria’s writings so much. As a former communist, turned unconventional nun she is quite the character but what comes through most of all is a deep love of Christ in the world she finds herself in.

A most challenging read, especially the last chapter where she calls out all the types of religious lives we lead as humans, that lack the true sacrificial love Christ ultimately calls us to.

In 1998 Orbis Books launched its Modern Spiritual Masters Series, a collection of the writings of important spiritual masters of our age. Each "Master" is made available in readable and inexpensive formats. Each is edited with an introduction about the master's legacy, along with relevant biographical information and commentary. To date there are some 36 volumes as diverse as Albert Schweitzer, theologian, doctor, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Caryll Houselander, English Catholic laywoman, artist, and visionary; Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof; Howard Thurman, minister, philosopher, and civil rights activist; Flannery O'Connor the great southern writer whose distinctive spiritual voice covered topics on Christian Realism, the Church, the relation between faith and art, sin and grace, and the role of suffering in the life of a Christian; Rufus Jones, who won a Nobel Prize as cofounder of the American Friends Service Committee and Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri le Saux) a Breton-born Benedictine monk who hoped to Christianize India but instead became deeply influenced by Hindu spirituality.

In this brief space I can only give you a glimpse of some of the masters, editors and their thoughts.

Maria Skobtsova was a promising poet, a gifted amateur painter, a theological student in St. Petersburg, and a mayor all before becoming an Orthodox nun in 1932. She served a community of Russian expatriates in France during World War II and rescued hundreds of Jews before being captured and taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Jim Forest provides an illuminating overview of her unusual life and ministry. She wrote, "In our time Christ and the life-giving Holy Spirit demand the whole person. The only difference from state mobilization is that the state enforces mobilization, while our faith waits for volunteers. And, in my view, the destiny of mankind depends on whether these volunteers exist and, if they do, how great their energy is, how ready they are for sacrifice."

Anthony de Mello was a world renowned spiritual director and retreat leader. His mysticism was rooted in story and imagination. He taught spiritual practices and exercises designed to silence the mind and give expression to the yearnings of the heart. Born in India he helped bridge the gap between Eastern and Western Spirituality
His stories from many cultures and traditions help us to find God behind our words, concepts, and religious formulas. Story to de Melllo was the shortest distance between a human being and truth: How would spirituality help a man of the world like me? said the businessman. It will help you to have more,' said the master. 'How?' 'By teaching you to desire less.

Clarence Jordan founded the interracial community of Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia. Jordan was a man of radical ideas who once defined faith as not belief in spite of the evidence but a life in scorn of consequences. He translated the New Testament into the well known "Cotton Patch" version. Jordan was against rampant materialism in America and while visiting a fancy house of a wealthy person, he responded by saying, Nice piece of plunder you got here. Jordan founded the Fund for Humanity, which evolved into Habitat for Humanity. He also instituted "a cow library" in which families in need of milk could check out a cow free of charge. His efforts to assist two African-American students apply to a formerly segregated business college led to shooting, bombings, and vandalism against the Koinonia Farm. He wrote, With Jesus, peacemaking involved not merely a change of environment, but also a change of heart. God's plan of making peace is not merely to bring about an outward settlement between evil people, but to create people of goodwill.

Dorothee Soelle was a German theologian who escaped Nazi Germany and became a professor of a theology at Union Theological Seminary in NYC. Her writings were shaped by the memory of war, the Holocaust, and totalitarianism. She wrote scathing critiques of capitalism, consumerism, nuclear arms buildup, Vietnam, and a Christian theology that created the space for Auschwitz. Soelle emphasized experience. For example, she finds the question, Do you believe in God? to be superficial and off the mark. Instead one should ask Do you live out God? She commends Judaism for the idea of human beings as the image of God, which she takes to mean we can act like God: Just as God made clothes for Adam and Eve, we can clothe the naked. Just as God fed Elijah through a raven, so to we are to feed the hungry.

In this awesome collection you will find your rich spiritual heritage, a legacy of teachings and guidance that have their roots in the Bible. You will find Christian models and mentors whose words can serve as the stimulus for new spiritual maturity, and for the courage to realize our calling and potential as disciples of Jesus.

Let me close with the poignant words of Dorothy Soelle: If the most essential element of Christian faith is sin and not our capacity for love, if the first thing that should come to our minds in church and in our religious life is our impotence, our weakness, our guilt, our repeated failures, then the die is already cast. Then we cultivate our own fears and coddle our own need for security. We deny that human beings are capable of making peace; we abandon the unarmed Christ and run away just as the disciples did when Jesus was taken captive and when it became clear that protection and weapons were useless now. We are tempted to look for other masters who offer more protection and security.

Mother Maria provides the theological foundation of the love for God paralleling the love for others, both of which are expressed in doing good for others. She remains an enigmatic and problematic character, yet her life serves as an example of monastic living in the world, not apart from it.

A very important book for our times. I felt like I was reading a commentary on the current world news!!!
This book provides a good balance to the purely intellectual side of the faith and presents a wonderful and powerful call to action. This call is centered on and fueled by the need to love others deeply as icons of Christ, because each person bears His image.

A really easy 5 stars. The essay “On The Imitation of The Mother of God” was really surprising and especially moved me.

Here are some of the writings of a modern Orthodox saint, working mostly in Paris, then dying in a concentration camp in 1945 for sheltering Jews. A refugee from Russia (with French ancestry on mother's side), who came to Paris in 1923, and became a nun in 1932, she kept a soup kitchen and a center of Orthodox thought, and later a haven for persecuted Jews after German occupied France. Her background was in revolutionary action, but unfortunately with those who were rejected by those revolutionaries who ultimately got the hold on power, so had to flee. She gradually came back to her faith, but kept some of her activist zeal within it.

This means that she developed great inspiration and action from Jesus' secoond Gospel commandment, "love one another", placing much importance on active charity others, with less focus on keeping one's self. She got some inspiration in 1915 also from Tagore's works (having found her fellow revolutionaries' ideals anemic and lacking action). She was a woman who wasn't afraid of looking dirty, a cigarette hanging from her mouth as she sought for food to fill her soup kitchen in Parisian markets. There might be some similarities in her career, to the career of Dorothy Day, but also the differences.

The introduction(s) are great in this book, and I found the number of essays sufficient for me. There is some helpful notes at the end, especially for those that don't know much about the Orthodox church or its history. The essays have good variety yet don't stray far from her ideas' core. She explains why she prefers active life, Mary's influence (in her sufferings) - lots of new viewpoints for me here, how the service of the neighbor is grounded in love of God, how the revolution in Russia got things wrong and how the Christians could have some use of its good points, how to have tradition and a new life in exile conditions (and not grow all stiff and non-Christian in the conditions), upsides of being an exile (surprising freedoms), and how to view the times of war and death (as this was the time of sliding into and being in, WWII), and finally her views of five religious types, on which I go a little next:

The last one of the types, evangelical (not the Protestant type), is her ideal, though least interesting to read for me even if right. She explains each type's background, good sides, and bad sides (only the last one being free of the bad). The first one, the synodal type, made me think of if the present situation in Russia makes its church slide back into this - the goverment-controlled, undaring, etc. type.

The criticism of Valaam and Athos monasteries in the "ritualistic type" category seemed a bit much, though. I think the situation might have changed in these in time after the writing (c.1937). It's true that they are somewhat cut off from showing some forms of charity and care towards the layman neighbors due to the isolation, but at least in Athos there are now the workers and visitors that can be taken care of, plus of course the fellow monks are there. The less-active side does have its selfishness-temptation, but it can be also just 'different'. But Skobtsova is very inside and into her type of work and the active care of the neighbor, so there might be some blind corners for her in her mind, who knows?

In the end, these essays were revealing to me, and an inspiration. I learned much more about the Russian church and its history. I did remain thinking of how far can you take your self-giving without wrecking yourself, and how the introverts would/could deal with the duty of following this second Gospel commandment (beyond donating money etc. to charities). Criticism made me consider this work around 3/3.5 stars, but this book is well worth the read.

"Essential Writings" is a marvelous and edifying little book.

St. Maria, not yet officially glorified at the time of publication, can be a polarizing figure in Orthodoxy, and it's not hard to see why. Her criticism of some within the Church, including its hierarchs and monastics, can seem brash, harsh and even reckless. But within are deep truths with which we all must come to account; namely, that to be Orthodox, to be Christian, is to embrace unbridled, radical love for God and neighbor. However, this is easier said than done, and beneath all the external beauty of liturgical worship lives a mass of humanity. This is humanity in all its reality: flawed, weak and, at times, not what we expect, especially in the case of converts.

That being said, I think it's important to remember the context of her words, and the fact that her criticisms come more as loving rebukes than venomous censures. After all, the same Church whose leadership she sometimes found fault with recognized her as a modern saint and martyr while still in living memory. In fact, St. Maria's uncompromising love of neighbor is reminiscent of that of St. John Chrysostom, who drew the ire of Constantinopolitan nobility with his unceasing devotion to the poor. St. John, like St. Maria, reminds us that we must strive to clothe the poor even as we clothe the altar, for as the former said, "if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice."

That being said, please consider reading this book in particular with some consultation from your priest if you're new to Orthodoxy. What is meant as a critique of hypocrisy of some individuals, even from a place of deep love, can come across as a rebuke of the Church. The Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ, is infallible because the Holy Spirit works through its members when they join together in unison, but those members are themselves human. This includes St. Maria herself, the people with whom she found issue, ourselves and the people we see each week in our own churches. I hope this book is received in the spirit it was intended, and not as a cudgel to wield against others or the Church.

St. Maria, pray for us!