Hieromonk Adrian (Pashin). “The Way of a Pilgrim” and Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov’s) Teaching on Prayer".
Basing himself on the legacy of St
Ignatius of the Caucasus, Alexey Ilyich Osipov, the well-known Professor
of the Moscow Theological Academy, reflects on the issues of spiritual
practices in Eastern and Western Christian traditions, as well as the
place of the book The Way of a Pilgrim in Christian spiritual life.
Hieromonk Adrian (Pashin):
Alexey Ilyich, your booklet on the Jesus Prayer was published recently.
What prompted you to tackle this exclusively (as it might seem) monastic
subject?
Alexey Ilyich Osipov:
The thing is that I was invited to give a lecture in Italy, at the
famous Bose monastery, where they hold conferences on various topics
every year. Representatives of different Churches are invited – not only
from the Catholic Church, but from the Orthodox and even the Protestant
Churches as well. That was in September 2004. The topic of the
conference was prayer and, I think, even the Jesus Prayer, but I don’t
remember for sure. How did the theme for my talk come up? The Chancellor
of one of the Pontifical Institutes in Rome visited our Academy about
twenty years ago. During his talk in the conference hall he said, in
particular, that Catholic monastics are currently very interested in
Hindu meditation practices and The Way of a Pilgrim, where a quite
peculiar teaching on the Jesus Prayer is expounded. That is why I
decided to write a talk on the subject of “The Teaching on the Jesus
Prayer according to Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and The Way of a
Pilgrim”. I thought that the subject would be of interest both to
Catholics and to me because I had read The Way when I was 16 or 17 and
it had made a very inspirational impression on me back then. I remember
trying to practice the Jesus Prayer for a day or two, using the
Pilgrim’s method – I could not do it for much longer; later, when I took
up work on my talk, I understood that that had been fortunate. I gave
my talk at the conference. The Orthodox showed interest while the
Catholic audience received it in silence. However, one of the famous (I
am not going to name him) secular scholars from St Petersburg (not a
theologian), a regular participant at all the Bose conferences,
expressed his displeasure at my talk. The talk was then translated into
Italian and published both in Italy and Russia. Such is its background.
