Peace in the Face of War

has now become beyond their strength, and the result is the exponential
growth of universal apostasy.
These views expressed in a private letter of 1966 are repeated in the
Epilogue to We Shall See Him as He Is published two decades later in which
Fr Sophrony speaks of :
...the extraordinarily black despair that envelops the whole universe.
People of our day, often against their will, become moral participants in
endless local and even planetary fratricide. As such – that is, as impenitent
moral accomplices – they naturally lose the grace of the Holy Spirit and
are no longer able to believe in their immortality through resurrection.
Nor do they even seek to. In this self-condemnation to evanescence lies the
spiritual essence of despair. 1
This passage’s central importance lies in the clear link it establishes between
war and the universal nature of despair.
Peace: the ‘Compassionate Heart’
Fr Sophrony approaches peace exclusively as a spiritual reality. Peace for him
is never merely the cessation of military conflict. War exists in this world,
and this world alone. Peace, on the other hand, is not of this world; it is Christ
himself. When he comes, he inspires his chosen servants with compassionate
prayers for the world, which is how he himself wishes to relate to his creatures.
When speaking of the compassionate prayer in the heart Fr Sophrony refers
to a well-known passage from St Isaac the Syrian on the compassionate heart.
It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds,
for the animals, for demons and for all that exists. At the recollection and
at the sight of them such a person’s eyes overflow with tears owing to the
vehemence of the compassion which grips his heart: as a result of his deep
mercy his heart shrinks and cannot bear to hear or look on any injury or the
slightest suffering of anything in creation. He even prays for the reptiles as a
result of the great compassion which is poured out beyond measure – after
the likeness of God – in his heart. 2
In making a reference to St Isaac, Fr Sophrony positions himself in continuity
with the great spiritual masters of the Christian East. The centrality of
1
A. Sophrony, We Shall See Him as He Is, p. 236 (modified). See also his On Prayer, p. 127.
2
Sebastian Brock’s translation in, The Heart of Compassion: Daily Readings with St Isaac the Syrian,
ed. by A.M. Allchin (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), p. 9. The central importance of
this passage for the patristic and the modern Orthodox tradition is discussed in M. Kallistos Ware,
‘Dare We Hope For the Salvation of All: Origen, St Gregory of Nyssa and St Isaac the Syrian’, in
Id., The Collected Works, Vol. I, The Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2001), pp. 193–215.
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