Father André Scrima emphasised in his works the importance of monasticism as an inward phenomenon of the church, and he even believed that the Orthodox Church can be considered a ‘monastic’ church, given that monasticism is itself ecclesial. Trying to explain this ecclesial function, Father Scrima developed a unique, fresh vision regarding the role that the monk had throughout history, and this article sought to summarise some of these observations as they emerged from the writings of Father Scrima.
The article focuses on Father Scrima (1925–2000) and argues that this remarkable Romanian theologian is often overlooked. He was gifted with an incredible memory and an outstanding capacity to bring together information from different fields of knowledge – the so-called classical culture – with universal cultural elements, patterns, traits or institutions that are common to all human cultures worldwide, presenting them in a theological interpretation.
As a student at the Faculty of Philosophy (and in parallel at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics), André Scrima was noted for his contributions to the field of optics, but his life took a strange turn when he met Father Ivan Kulîghin. Father Kulîghin was a refugee hieromonk who between the years 1945 and 1947 animated the spiritual adventures of the Christian Association as ‘The Burning Bush’ (Ică
A series of unexpected encounters would lead him out of Romania on a very winding journey to India (1957–1959). The experience he acquired traveling the world, encountering other cultures, and the inner strength and disposition to see the common traits of the geographical, spiritual and cultural spaces of other religions made him always and everywhere mindful of the signs of the same universal calling, which is addressed to all humankind. He acted as the personal representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras to the Second Vatican Council (1963–1965), and afterwards he spent almost 20 years in Lebanon teaching at the French University of Beirut (1968–1989). He was also the founder of the Deir El-Harf Monastery in Lebanon. In 1995 he returned to Romania for good, spending the last five years of his life there.
A monk, professor of religious comparative studies, he was first a traveller on the path of the Eastern Christian tradition seeking the boundlessness of God but also a traveller through the geographical, spiritual and cultural spaces of other religions. He was always and everywhere mindful to the signs of the same universal calling, which is addressed to all humankind.
Impressed by the requirements (Buda
As an Orthodox monk and spiritual traveller, Scrima considered that scientific rigor, critical thinking and careful investigation sustain and prepare the astonishment before which divinity sheds its meanings. For André Scrima, researching the path of hesychasm and the history of monasticism was to research and penetrate the meaning of his own commitment as a monk. It meant researching the experience (spiritual, intellectual, existential) of a very long line of prayer ‘professionals’, of travellers in God. The landmarks André Scrima invokes are relevant to the way that he conceived, built and assumed his destiny. That is why it can be said that monasticism remains the discreet foundation of his entire existence. Over time, it becomes a way of being, a key to understanding the great spiritual traditions. Monasticism could be seen as the special rhythm of his own life, a recurring subject of his writings. Thus, the theoretical texts of Father Scrima on monasticism can be seen both as a confession of his own life and as an example of an integral, radical commitment to spiritual itinerancy (Tofan
This itinerancy and preoccupation with embodying the monastic life are combined in Scrima’s work of spiritual guidance for the small monastic community reborn in the monastery of Saint Georges de Deir-el-Harf, 34 km east of Beirut. Here, he became involved in reorganising the community, dedicating himself to the formation of the young monks of this monastery.
Concerned with highlighting the monk’s place in the world and the meanings of monasticism in a society strongly affected by the hostile attitude of the communist regime towards the religious phenomenon (Toroczkai
Before presenting the place of the monk in his particular vision, it is necessary to clarify what or, better said, who is the monk for Father Scrima. In all the mentioned texts, André Scrima tries to capture the essence of monasticism as a spiritual phenomenon, offering a series of definitions that describe the monk starting from a certain attribute or requirement. Such an explanation starts from the etymological notion (Scrima
The monk is, by definition, the unitary creature: his very name ‘monos’ – the one – shows us. He is destined for simple life, in the integrity of his being, like angels who are simple creatures who do not suffer the breaking of their lives by living in lust. (p. 52)
To be a monk means
Therefore, the emphasis is not on loneliness or seclusion but on unity, and ‘the monk knows the intimate secret of his name, he knows that he is not fully himself except in the new unity – so personal – with all’ (Scrima
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In Father Scrima’s vision, this vocation is universal, proper to every Christian because he ‘testifies that he is destined for unity with his brothers insofar as he clings to Christ’, and from the moment he ‘dedicates himself to this union, to the always expandable limits of his freedom, he will become a living sign of union,
In fact, this is an idea that Scrima (
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Therefore, the monk embodies in a much more intense way the universal vocation of the church, the call to become a child of God by grace. Thus (Scrima
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As a result of Christ’s redeeming work, the ‘new man’ is called to exercise his mission of intercessor, which was given to him at the creation of the world, but its realisation was interrupted by the original sin. The Christian has the vocation to reiterate (but in reverse order) the five mediations already accomplished by Jesus Christ: between the sexes, between paradise and the inhabited world, between heaven and earth, between intelligible and sensible, but also between God and his creation (Thunberg
And the convergence towards unity, constitutive of the monk, will coincide in its point of fulfilment, as expected, with the mystery in which it has its origin: it is the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ for the unity of all (Scrima
Therefore, the inner unity of the Christian in general and of the monk in particular is based on the sacrifice on Golgotha (Scrima
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However, to participate in these ‘rights’, every Christian and especially the monk must harmonise their external manifestations with the inner experience, achieving even at this level a unity (Scrima
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Father Scrima (
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Moreover, by unifying the self (the maximum coherence of facts with spiritual convictions) he achieves simplicity (
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As a result of this effort, the monks become ‘fellow-citizens with the angels, but not angels themselves’. This is the ideal of monastic life, and that is why every monk (Scrima
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Father André Scrima highlights this emphasis that Eastern spirituality lays on the ‘angelic likeness’ adopted by the monks when they take the three vows, which are seen (Tofan
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Therefore, the monks are considered ‘in the Orthodox Church primarily as
They are men, and their irony does not spare those who claim to have become angels. They know very well that man is ‘neither an angel nor a beast’ and that ‘he who wants to pretend to be an angel turns out to be more of a beast’. (p. 36)
In the Eastern tradition this βίος ἀγγελικῶς refers to the integration of the monk’s life into the liturgical life of the church. The voluntary commitment to the three vows and the inner unification transforms the monk into a ‘“liturgical being” par excellence, one who glorifies God incessantly and is incorporated with all his being into the death-resurrection of Christ’ (Scrima
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Somewhat complementary, by virtue of his resemblance to angels, the monk of Eastern traditions is also considered ‘a hymnological and contemplative being by definition, whose “noetic sky” (as the Sinaites say) is reached in the balance of his inner discourse and the liturgy of the Church’ (Scrima
This idea is even better highlighted by Scrima (
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From a chronological point of view, the emergence of monasticism took place soon after the end of the Great Persecution of Diocletian, although the existence of ascetic communities has been attested since the middle of the 3rd century (Chifăr
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Therefore:
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If we were to understand the withdrawal from the world strictly as a means of satisfying the thirst for herosim (Scrima
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This vision is presented a little more clearly by Scrima (
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On the other hand, not even the desert is for the monk ‘the physical guarantee of solitude, isolation or the most suitable place for contemplation, but a battle arena’, a space of confrontation with one’s own shortcomings, but also ‘the continuation of the Quarantania desert, the almost compulsory meeting with the prince of this world’ (Scrima
That is why we must not have the impression that the monks (Scrima
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Therefore, for Father André Scrima (
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The central place of monasticism in the church is apparent from the very fact that monastic life clearly and beyond doubt reveals the attributes of the church. That is why Father Scrima (
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The connection between monasticism and the church is even more clearly highlighted by Father Scrima (
Monasticism will therefore always retain its function in the Church, a function which is not related to a certain need that arose in a specific era of Church history, nor is it likely to disappear or transform; the monks will have their role in the life of the Church as long as it is on earth: that of keeping open the gate of communication between heaven and earth, the gate through which angels enter and leave, through which the Church attends and participates in the liturgy and the life of the heavenly city. (p. 49)
The intensive character with which the monk lived the Christian life in the desert is seen by Scrima (
Since most members of the Church are at the same time members of the earthly city and exercise in it their rights as citizens – of course, legitimately – the role, the function of monasticism in the Church seems to us to be this: to assert the membership of Christianity in the city of angels, to assert here its rights there, implementing them. As long as the Church is on earth in its members, the monks have a certain task – they, who, without ceasing to belong to the Church, are now members of the city of angels – to keep the Church open to the city of angels, to keep it in communication with the Church of Heaven and the New Aeon. It means not understanding anything about monasticism if you believe that the monks are running away from the Church of the faithful because it no longer satisfies their aspirations for perfection or heroism. (p. 47)
Placing monasticism at the confluence of the two cities – earthly and heavenly – Father André Scrima also focuses on the itinerant condition of the monk and considers that monastic life began as a kind of variation on the theme ‘to become a stranger to this world’, when the church and the world became too familiar with each other, the church becoming sedentary and Constantine the Great accustoming the world to its presence as a social, if not political, institution. Then came ‘the exit towards the dimension of the strange and the stranger: the monk was essentially a stranger of this world’ (Scrima
The idea of itinerancy reflects even better the ‘apostolic’ dimension of monasticism, which ‘finds its fulfilment in the apostolate, and moreover, the monk turns out to be the “apostolic man” in the highest degree’ (Scrima
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To further emphasise the idea of itinerancy, Father Scrima (
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This itinerancy seems to be for Father Scrima (
The monk, the foreign envoy, is simultaneously a traveller and a sedentary, a ‘standing person’: that is, exactly the hesychastic position, which opens to others and, above all, opens itself to the zenith. Such a reading actualizes the very position of the hesychast:
Or, as Scrima (
Therefore, the monk is by definition a perpetual traveller, who has here no ‘abiding city’ (Heb 13:14) but is always on the way; he is a ‘nomad’, a wanderer, a gyrovague.
Although Father André Scrima was a monk and a connoisseur of monastic life, it was difficult even for him to define monastic spirituality because it largely overlaps with that of the church. What is certain is that ‘[
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Through their vocation, monks emphasise the mystery of the church (Scrima
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
D.B. is the sole author of this article.
This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author.