08 — The Teaching
The common spiritual teaching of the Optina elders — humility, obedience, the Jesus Prayer, and love — and the published inheritance through which Optina gave the fathers to the whole Church: the editions of St. Isaac the Syrian, the Paisian corpus, and the letters of the elders.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Optina synaxis glorified 1996 local / 2000 general)
Though the Optina elders differed in temperament and left no single systematic treatise, they taught one thing across four generations, and they left one great body of published work. The first file gathers the common teaching — the small number of things the elders said over and over, in counsel and in their letters. The second describes the published inheritance: the Optina editions of the ascetic and hesychast fathers, above all St. Isaac the Syrian and the Paisian corpus, and the printed letters of the elders themselves, through which Optina’s influence outlasted the monastery.
Navigation
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-optina-spiritual-legacy.md | The common teaching — humility, obedience, the Jesus Prayer, love, and the bearing of sorrows |
| the-published-inheritance.md | The Optina editions of Isaac the Syrian and the Paisian corpus, and the letters of the elders |
See Also
- Startchestvo and Spiritual Direction — the practice within which the teaching was given
- St. Macarius and the Publishing Work — the origin of the publishing enterprise
- Orthodoxy: The Jesus Prayer