Reading the lives of the saints

  • (I’ve started read­ing “The Diary of a Russ­ian Priest,” a col­lec­tion of short excerpts from the diary of Fr. Alexan­der Elchani­nov, who emi­grated out of Rus­sia dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion and died in 1934. I find his writ­ings to be the best of both worlds. He has the wide per­spec­tive of Church Fathers who seem to have one foot in eter­nity; he has the rel­e­vance of some­one who lived through some of the most dire times of the 20th cen­tury and knows the faith issues that plague mod­ern man. I’ve just started so I’ll prob­a­bly have many more of these gems to pass along, but I thought this one was a good start.)

    “Why is it so impor­tant to read the Lives of the Saints? — In the infi­nite spec­trum of the paths lead­ing to God, which are revealed in the lives of the var­i­ous saints, we can dis­cover our own; we can obtain guid­ance to help us emerge from the jun­gle in which we have become entan­gled through our human sin­ful­ness, and we gain access to the path which leads towards the light.”
    – Fr. Elchani­nov “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest”

    I would have saved myself a lot of time if I had read that before I started read­ing “Daily Lives” two years ago. The short hagiogra­phies they offer — one a day — are an easy way to start learn­ing about the men, women and chil­dren the Church com­mem­o­rates through­out the year. I think when I started it was out of a sense of oblig­a­tion, or per­haps just another box I could check on my men­tal inven­tory. (“Read­ing about St. Simeon the Stylite today. What a good Ortho­dox girl I am!”) Or, if I was going to give myself more credit, I might have thought that I would have daily meet­ings with “friends of God.”

    Now that I’ve been doing it for two years, though, the checked box fails to impress me any­more (thank good­ness!), and I know that the hagiog­ra­phy I read today or tomor­row might be any one of a num­ber of things. It could be inspir­ing, cer­tainly, but it could also be gru­el­ing. It could be dif­fi­cult to put into a con­text I can under­stand. It could leave me with more ques­tions than answers. But I miss it when I have to skip for some rea­son. It helps, as Fr. Elchani­nov says, with my own struggles.

    The lives of the saints seem like they tell a story of all the gospel, the Ortho­dox thought, the ascetic labors put into practice.


    Related posts:

    1. The Daily Lives etc. Calendar
    2. God doesn’t desire sorrow
    3. Rec­om­mended read­ing (and a rant)
    4. Home sick, read­ing about spice
    5. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox

    October 27th, 2006 | Grace | 7 Comments |

7 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 10.27.2006

    Thank you for post­ing this, Grace. I too some­times fall into the “check­box” rea­son for read­ing the Pro­logue. Thank you for remind­ing me.

  • Cather­ine K.

    It seems to me almost impos­si­ble to NOT falling into the “check­box” rea­son for read­ing the Pro­logue or other com­pi­la­tions, at least for those of us who con­verted past age 10. Per­haps if one grows up in an Ortho­dox house­hold where a reg­u­lar expo­sure to saints lives gets us past that, I don’t know, but I do wonder.

    That being said, it doesn’t mean we have to STAY with that rea­son, but that we have to “go through” that par­tic­u­lar temp­ta­tion on our way to learn­ing the true value of read­ing the Lives of the Saints — whether com­pi­la­tions or books based on one life.

    Thanks for your post, and for the reminder.

    Wish me a good trip, I am head­ing for Ten­nessee for 2 weeks :)

  • Grace

    Have a lovely time in Ten­nessee. I’m a lit­tle jeal­ous. I’ve never been but I’m bet­ting it’s beau­ti­ful right now.

    Pro­logues: Yep, I do it too. On the one I just started, I’ve been doing shorter morn­ing reflection-type read­ings, and so I started the pro­logue and the “real” book at the same time. That way I don’t have that nag­ging feel­ing that I’m miss­ing con­text, but I get to jump right in.

    There are worse rea­sons to do things than just out of “check­box” oblig­a­tion. I just need to remind myself all the time not to men­tally hand out brownie points to myself for things I’m not doing from the best motives.

  • Cather­ine K.

    You mean I don’t get brownie points? Aww shucks… :)

    Seri­u­ously though, that does seem to be some­thing that we need to always look out for. If a check­box “oblig­a­tion” is what it takes to get us started, well then, that’s great — it got us started — and hope­fully we can avoid stay­ing there. I sus­pect that there will always be the temp­ta­tion to hand out “brownie points”… sigh.…

    Have a good two weeks!

  • Karl Thienes

    I am read­ing “The Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” right now too. Very good stuff.

  • Grace

    Isn’t it just a great book? I had to work hard not to gush about it (and maybe I did anyway.)

    The other hard part is not reprint­ing a lot more of it here. A blog­ger could do a lot worse than just pass along Elchaninov’s insights on a reg­u­lar basis.

    And the hard­est part is keep­ing myself to a Spar­tan diet of a cou­ple pages a day. Because once it’s done, there ain’t no more. (But there are 6 Harry Pot­ter nov­els and another one on the way. Where’s the justice?)

  • Karl Thienes

    Totally agree — I’ve been read­ing just two pages a day just to savor it.

    And July ’07 can’t come fast enough. I told my wife I might end up being one of those freaks in line at the book­store at mid­night on release night to stay up all night read­ing book 7. :)

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