“What is the spiritual life, and how do I begin?”
In the 1870s a young woman of Moscow society put that question to one of Russia’s greatest spiritual directors, and received eighty remarkable letters in reply.
St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), bishop, hermit, and translator of the Philokalia, answers her with warmth, humor, and startling directness: what body, soul, and spirit are; why worldly amusement leaves the heart empty; how grace works and how to give it room; how to pray without distraction, practice the Jesus Prayer and the remembrance of God, fight passionate thoughts, and order an ordinary day in the world around the one thing needful.
A beloved classic of Eastern Orthodox spirituality and a masterpiece of practical spiritual direction, this course in the interior life was written not for monks but for a laywoman with a household, a social calendar, and doubts of her own — which is why it still reads as if addressed to you.
This edition is a complete new translation of all eighty letters, made directly from the Russian text of 1878, with an introduction and a translator’s preface on the key terms of Theophan’s teaching.