Spiritual Direction by Mail

From behind the door of his cell at Vyshа, St. Theophan the Recluse carried on one of the most remarkable pastorates of the nineteenth century: a ministry conducted almost entirely by post. He received from twenty to forty letters every day and answered all of them, discerning the state of each soul who wrote and replying with detailed, individualized direction. This epistolary eldership — a modern, mediated form of the ancient ministry of spiritual fatherhood — became, in its published gatherings, the source of much of his enduring corpus.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized 1988)

The Recluse Who Was Never Alone

The paradox of St. Theophan’s later life is that his reclusion, far from cutting him off from the Church, multiplied his reach. Having withdrawn in 1872 into the strict seclusion of the Vyshenskaya Hermitage — closing his door, building a chapel of the Theophany in his cell, and serving the Liturgy alone (see The Recluse at Work) — he became, precisely from that silence, the spiritual father of a great and dispersed flock. He continued to direct souls; only the means changed. Where once a bishop received petitioners in his audience-room, the recluse now received them by post.

The scale was not small. From his reclusion he received between twenty and forty letters every day, and he answered all of them (Saint Theophan the Recluse, Bishop of Tambov, Orthodox Church in America [OCA], Lives of the Saints; Saint Theophan the Recluse, OrthoChristian.com/76729.html; Saint Theophan the Recluse, roca.org / Orthodox America). These were not formulaic acknowledgements. His replies were detailed and individualized, each weighed to the particular spiritual state of the writer — the discernment of souls practiced not face to face but through the page. And he sought no profit from this labour or from the books that grew out of it: he hoped that his works might be sold “as cheaply as possible,” so that what he had received freely he might give as freely (OrthoChristian.com/76729.html; OCA, Lives of the Saints).

How the Letters Worked

The art of St. Theophan’s correspondence lay in its refusal of the generic. He did not dispense maxims indifferently. He read the letter before him, gauged the temperament, the circumstances, and the spiritual maturity of its writer, and shaped his answer to that reader alone — sometimes bracing, sometimes consoling, always concrete. This is the same discernment that governs his systematic works, but exercised here in its most personal mode: the direction of one soul at a time.

His counsel ranged across the whole of the Christian life — the struggle against the passions, the keeping of attention, the conduct of prayer, the bearing of illness, the approach of death. Where his correspondents touched upon the Jesus Prayer, his guidance was notably sober and cautious. He warned against the hasty adoption of physical techniques and against any practice undertaken without a guide, counselling the unhurried, humble path of attention and contrition rather than the pursuit of sensible experiences (on the whole of this teaching, see The Prayer of the Heart). The same pastoral realism that led him, as editor, to withhold the breathing methods from his readers governed what he wrote in his letters: give the soul what will help it, and keep back what, ungoverned, would harm it.

A Modern Form of an Ancient Ministry

This letter-pastorate is best understood as the practical face of an eldership conducted without a cell door open to pilgrims. The ministry of spiritual fatherhood — the starchestvo by which an experienced elder guides a disciple toward salvation — is ancient, and in nineteenth-century Russia it found its most famous expression at the Optina Hermitage, where elders such as St. Ambrose of Optina received a ceaseless stream of pilgrims and answered their questions in person (see the parallel build on St. Ambrose of Optina). St. Theophan stands in the same line, but his manner is distinct and, in a real sense, distinctively modern. Where Optina’s elders directed souls face to face, the recluse directed them by post — a mediated, written form of the same office of spiritual direction (on the practice itself, see the Orthodoxy Guide: Spiritual Direction).

The mediation did not dilute the relationship; the Russian postal network simply extended the elder’s range beyond what any audience-room could hold. The recluse could be the spiritual father of a young woman in one province and a grieving widow in another, of monastics and laypeople alike, all on the same morning’s stack of twenty to forty letters. It is a form of the ministry well suited to a literate age, and it anticipates the spiritual correspondence that would sustain countless Orthodox Christians in the century to follow.

A Pastorate Made Possible by the Modern Age

It is worth pausing on how distinctively modern this pastorate was in its very means. That a single hidden monk, who never stirred from his cell and met almost no one, could become the spiritual father of thousands of souls scattered across the breadth of an empire was made possible by the particular conditions of the later nineteenth century. The expanding railway and a regular postal service carried letters swiftly and cheaply across distances no audience-room could span, while rising literacy steadily enlarged the number of laypeople able to set their own souls down on paper and to read a reply (OCA, Lives of the Saints; roca.org / Orthodox America). St. Theophan’s daily stack of twenty to forty letters (OCA; OrthoChristian.com/76729.html; roca.org) is the visible trace of a fatherhood that the technology of his own century had quietly made possible — an eldership conducted, in effect, through the imperial mails.

The art of such a ministry was a discipline of discernment exercised at a distance. The face-to-face elder reads the soul before him in its bearing, its tone, the hesitation in its voice; the recluse had only the page. From the words a correspondent set down he had to gauge the temperament, the circumstances, and the spiritual maturity of a person he would never see, and then shape to that one reader a counsel sometimes bracing and sometimes consoling, but always particular (roca.org). This is the same discernment of souls that the ancient eldership practiced in person, transposed into a written and mediated key — no less personal for being conducted through ink.

So conducted, his postal eldership stands in instructive contrast and complementarity to the face-to-face eldership of the Optina Hermitage, where in the same decades St. Ambrose of Optina received an unceasing stream of pilgrims and answered them in person (see St. Ambrose of Optina). The two are not rivals but two forms of a single office of spiritual fatherhood: where Optina drew the world to its cell door, the recluse reached the world through the post, each extending the ancient starchestvo by the means proper to it. And the humility of the recluse’s manner was of a piece with the form: he took no payment for this immense labor, and asked only that the books which grew from it be sold as cheaply as possible, that what he had received freely he might give as freely (OrthoChristian.com/76729.html; OCA, Lives of the Saints).

From Letters to Books

The most consequential feature of this correspondence is that it did not remain private. Much of St. Theophan’s published corpus is, in fact, gathered letters: many of his “books” are collections of replies, organized after the fact around a theme or a correspondent. The letters were thus both a pastoral act and, unintentionally, a literary one. His correspondence alone was partially published in roughly ten volumes, and a large Moscow collected-works edition — commonly given as twenty-six volumes — contains much of it; these totals are best treated as approximate, since the boundaries between “letters,” “sermons,” and “treatises” in his output are not always sharp (The Writings of St. Theophan the Recluse, theophan.net/sttheophan/writings.html).

A number of these gatherings have reached the English-speaking world, and a reader should note that the precise nature of each collection varies. The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It (trans. Alexandra Dockham; St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995) is a sequence of letters to a young woman, guiding her step by step into a deliberate Christian life — the epistolary counterpart to his systematic teaching on the spiritual life (see What the Spiritual Life Is). Turning the Heart to God (trans. Kenneth Kaisch and Igumen Iona Zhiltsov; Conciliar Press, now Ancient Faith, 2001) gathers his teaching on repentance. Psalm 118: A Commentary (trans. Archpriest Gleb Wleskov; St. John of Kronstadt Press, 2014) presents his exposition of the great psalm of the law of God, and Sickness and Death (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville) collects his letters of consolation to the suffering and dying — that province of his correspondence in which his discernment shows perhaps most tenderly.

Two further volumes require a careful word. Kindling the Divine Spark: Teachings on How to Preserve Spiritual Zeal (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood / St. Xenia Skete, 1994) is sometimes spoken of loosely among his “letters,” but it is in fact a set of roughly twenty sermons preached to nuns, not correspondence. And The Path of Prayer: Four Sermons on Prayer (trans. Esther Williams, ed. Robin Amis; Praxis Institute Press, 1992) is the published form of his four homilies on prayer: the count of four is correct, but there is no standalone book literally titled “Four Homilies on Prayer” — the edition by which these reach English readers is The Path of Prayer (sainthermanmonastery.com; store.ancientfaith.com; churchsupplies.jordanville.org; praxisresearch.net; theophan.net). The distinction between a homily and a letter matters, because it marks the two channels — the few public sermons of his episcopal years and the daily flood of private direction — through which his single, consistent teaching reached the Church.

The Fruit of the Door

That St. Theophan’s most personal labour became his most widely read body of work is no accident but a kind of providence. The man who closed his door and asked only that his books be sold as cheaply as possible has in the event spoken to far more souls than any open audience-room could have admitted. The letters are the living tissue of his thought — his theology in its pastoral application, addressed not to an abstract reader but to a named one — and it is largely from them that the systematic and ascetical edifice of his published teaching was raised.

References

Saint Theophan the Recluse, Bishop of Tambov. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), Lives of the Saints. (From his reclusion he answered all the letters he received; sought no profit; hoped his works be sold as cheaply as possible.)
Saint Theophan the Recluse. OrthoChristian.com/76729.html. (Received from twenty to forty letters every day and answered all of them; the wish that his works be sold as cheaply as possible.)
Saint Theophan the Recluse. roca.org, Orthodox America. (The daily volume of correspondence and the individualized character of his replies.)
The Writings of St. Theophan the Recluse. theophan.net/sttheophan/writings.html. (Correspondence as the source of much of his corpus; the partial publication in roughly ten volumes; the approximate twenty-six-volume Moscow collected works.)
The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned to It. Trans. Alexandra Dockham. St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995. Letters to a young woman. (sainthermanmonastery.com.)
Kindling the Divine Spark: Teachings on How to Preserve Spiritual Zeal. St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood / St. Xenia Skete, 1994. Approximately twenty sermons to nuns. (sainthermanmonastery.com.)
Turning the Heart to God. Trans. Kenneth Kaisch and Igumen Iona Zhiltsov. Conciliar Press (now Ancient Faith), 2001. On repentance. (store.ancientfaith.com.)
The Path of Prayer: Four Sermons on Prayer. Trans. Esther Williams, ed. Robin Amis. Praxis Institute Press, 1992. The published edition of his four homilies on prayer. (praxisresearch.net.)
Psalm 118: A Commentary. Trans. Archpriest Gleb Wleskov. St. John of Kronstadt Press, 2014.
Sickness and Death. Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville. A collection of his letters. (churchsupplies.jordanville.org.)