The Otherness of Love: The Response to the Supreme Calling of Christ

By Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou of Essex

Hardback

Monasticism is a witness of the supra-cosmic power of the humility of Christ; it is the profound awareness of being weak and in need of His help, the acknowledgement of the words of the Saviour: ‘Without me ye can do nothing’ (John 15:5). Monasticism is the extreme tension of abiding on the narrow way that leads downwards to the deep heart, that tension which, with time, will impart a universal enlargement to the heart. The gift of humility in monasticism is very great, and so is its mystical mission to witness to the perfection of the Christ-like humility. The monk who voluntarily makes himself like the dust of the earth, humbling himself to the end before God and before his brethren, receives Christ’s universal enlargement and becomes a true image of Christ with a hypostatic mode of existence. He becomes both a friend and a target of God, as he brings all creation before Him in intercession. Monasticism witnesses to the empirical truth of the divine law of humility, implied by the inverted pyramid. It testifies to the way which leads man to the bottom of hell without destroying him, but raising him instead to the heights of indestructible life.