Following on from the last post about the monk Silouan, who I see is canonised and so Saint Silouan, I came across this talk on him, split in the two videos, which I thought very impressive. Goes into Siouan’s own very intense struggles of self-overcoming, and how to reach whatever devout state he became firm in was no simple matter of “Oh, this is just who he was. A lovely man.” No, not that easy!
The second half of the talk focuses on an incredible and very unexpected line of Silouan’s, or which he said was imparted to him when wrestling with the deepest issues of self: “Keep your mind in hell and despair not.” The spiritual isn’t comfortingly and complacently abstracted from life and its darknesses - though it’s dealt with much better in the video than tritely summed up by me here.
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