Father Justin
We, a group of 22 people are here for a mere 7 days and at the best possible time of year. The monks and their helpers are here all year (except when they travel maybe home to see an elderly or sick parent). We go in to the services held three times a day for just this week, we try to absorb the atmosphere created by chanting and incense and processing monks but we can’t understand the words which maybe let’s them by pass our minds. For the monks who start at 4.00 am and spend up to 9 hours there, the novelty factor might not be there although Father Justin tells us that even repeating the psalms (all of them every week) he gains new insights into what they are saying. He tells us about the aim of the Monastic life expressed by the desert fathers and by an early Abbot and Saint from here called St John Climacus who wrote the Ladder of Divine Ascent. He told us how he, as a student in university in Texas came across the sayings of the Fathers of the Desert and really and truly wanted to become one. He said he rather irritated his friends by always talking about the Desert Fathers. This would be in the 1960s when students turned to flower power and transcendental experimentation, perhaps turning away from the rather Bible based religion of their parents and grandparents. Father Justin was also seeking was to transcend by following a distinct path prescribed by the Saints of old. What I found interesting about him was how nearly 50 years of combining his natural born self with this practice has made him a pure souled human being with a single goal of becoming like the Saints of old and their goal of becoming Christlike. We all start somewhere and mostly get a bit careworn and grubby along the way until we meet an inspiring example which might make us see that everything we thought would bring us joy has a limit and eventually we might find a different but well trodden path opening up which we might just start moving towards.
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