“Read books with all you soul!” Reading — a forgotten category of ascetical theology of St. Isaac the Syrian, Gregory of Sinai and Paisius Velichkovsky

Abstract

In the years that St. Paisius Velichkovsky stayed on Mt. Athos, between him and Athanasius Moldavanin, the Elder of one of the monastery, there was a short polemical correspondence in which Athanasius wrote to Paisius that all his mistakes were from scholarship; the monk should, he writes, ask God not for the gift of reading, but for the gift of tears. Responding in detail to other accusations, Paisius unexpectedly allots a lot of space to refute the idea that it is not necessary and even harmful for a monk to read. Reading is commanded by Christ, he writes, it is salvatory; reading the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers can take the place of the role of the spiritual father in the absence of such, it is impossible to achieve peace without reading, learn to repent, learn the will of God, protect yourself from heresy. In his answer, Paisius refers, among other things, to St. Isaac Syrian and Gregory of Sinai. The article attempts to consider the motive for reading texts of the three saints. All three call the act of reading one of the main monastic activities, describe the spiritual fruits of reading and divine thinking in the categories of mystical theology, attribute reading to the soteriological meaning, and refusingto read is considered to lead to death.