Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings

Modern Spiritual Masters

by Maria Skobtsova, Richard Pevear (Translator), Jim Forest (Introduction)

Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945), a Russian emigree, Orthodox nun, and martyr under the Nazis, is fast gaining recognition as one of the most fascinating religious figures of the twentieth century. In becoming an Orthodox nun in Paris she was determined to pioneer a new form of monasticism, engaged in active charity and the challenge of social justice. Her home in Paris was at once a soup kitchen for the needy, a center for the renewal of Orthodox thought, and -- during the Nazi occupation -- a haven for the rescue of Jews. For the latter cause she ended her life in a Nazi death camp. In her writings -- ere translated in English for the first time -- he roots her spiritual vision in the gospel mandate, which unites love of God and love of neighbor.

Genres: Religion, Theology, Christianity, Christian, Nonfiction, Church, Russia

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Maria Skobtsova (Russian: Мать Мария (Скобцова)) was a Russian noblewoman, poet, nun, and member of the French Resistance during World War II.
Also known as Mother Maria, Saint Mary of Paris, or Mother Maria of Paris, she has been canonized a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and is remembered with a Lesser Feast in the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Church of Australia.

Reviews

[7jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here are some of the writings of a modern Orthodox saint, working mostly in Paris, then dying in a concentration camp in 1945 for sheltering Jews. A refugee from Russia (with French ancestry on mother's side), who came to Paris in 1923, and became a nun in 1932, she kept a soup kitchen and a center of Orthodox thought, and later a haven for persecuted Jews after German occupied France. Her background was in revolutionary action, but unfortunately with those who were rejected by those revolutionaries who ultimately got the hold on power, so had to flee. She gradually came back to her faith, but kept some of her activist zeal within it.

This means that she developed great inspiration and action from Jesus' secoond Gospel commandment, "love one another", placing much importance on active charity others, with less focus on keeping one's self. She got some inspiration in 1915 also from Tagore's works (having found her fellow revolutionaries' ideals anemic and lacking action). She was a woman who wasn't afraid of looking dirty, a cigarette hanging from her mouth as she sought for food to fill her soup kitchen in Parisian markets. There might be some similarities in her career, to the career of Dorothy Day, but also the differences.

The introduction(s) are great in this book, and I found the number of essays sufficient for me. There is some helpful notes at the end, especially for those that don't know much about the Orthodox church or its history. The essays have good variety yet don't stray far from her ideas' core. She explains why she prefers active life, Mary's influence (in her sufferings) - lots of new viewpoints for me here, how the service of the neighbor is grounded in love of God, how the revolution in Russia got things wrong and how the Christians could have some use of its good points, how to have tradition and a new life in exile conditions (and not grow all stiff and non-Christian in the conditions), upsides of being an exile (surprising freedoms), and how to view the times of war and death (as this was the time of sliding into and being in, WWII), and finally her views of five religious types, on which I go a little next:

The last one of the types, evangelical (not the Protestant type), is her ideal, though least interesting to read for me even if right. She explains each type's background, good sides, and bad sides (only the last one being free of the bad). The first one, the synodal type, made me think of if the present situation in Russia makes its church slide back into this - the goverment-controlled, undaring, etc. type.

The criticism of Valaam and Athos monasteries in the "ritualistic type" category seemed a bit much, though. I think the situation might have changed in these in time after the writing (c.1937). It's true that they are somewhat cut off from showing some forms of charity and care towards the layman neighbors due to the isolation, but at least in Athos there are now the workers and visitors that can be taken care of, plus of course the fellow monks are there. The less-active side does have its selfishness-temptation, but it can be also just 'different'. But Skobtsova is very inside and into her type of work and the active care of the neighbor, so there might be some blind corners for her in her mind, who knows?

In the end, these essays were revealing to me, and an inspiration. I learned much more about the Russian church and its history. I did remain thinking of how far can you take your self-giving without wrecking yourself, and how the introverts would/could deal with the duty of following this second Gospel commandment (beyond donating money etc. to charities). Criticism made me consider this work around 3/3.5 stars, but this book is well worth the read.

[Stian Ødegård]

Det er synd boka ser så kitsch ut. Maria Skobtsova var tidligere bolsjevik som konverterte til Den ortodokse kirke og måtte flykte til Paris når revolusjonen begynte. Selvom ho forlot kommunismen var ho fortsatt sosialt radikal, og i Paris startet ho en ny form for monastisisme der nonnene ikke isolerte seg selv, men dreiv med sosialt arbeid i en organisasjon som het Orthodox Action. Ho ble kjent som "nonnen som røyket", og var veldig kritisk til monkene på Athos og andre klostre som ikke tok verdens problemer innover seg. Tilslutt ble ho tatt i konsentrasjonsleir for å lage falske døpsbevis til jøder så de ikke skulle bli arrestert av Gestapo. Ho døde 31. mars 1945. Tekstene hennes er ikke faglig tunge, og ho skriver i forlengelse av den russiske tradisjonen med Dostojevskij, Soloviev, Bulgakov (som var hennes åndelige far), osv. Kan minne om en slags ortodoks Edith Stein, og er en stor kontrast til både Moskvapatriarkatet idag og den asketiske og isolerende bølgen som er i Den ortodokse kirke nå

[Elliot Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In reading this book, I was reminded again and again of Nietzsche's remark: "I am no man, I am dynamite.” I found myself thinking, "Oh my god... Mother Maria was no (mere) woman. She was dynamite!"

Mother Maria knew at the most profound level what it meant to see Christ in her neighbors. Its implication and call seized her (not as two separate acts, the perception containing already a summon to live differently) and provided her with a really extraordinary sense of unity and intensity that I found so admirable and healing. Here is an individual whose heart and mind had turned to flame!

In reading a book like this, I find it most necessary to take her at her words. She wrote that she saw Christ in the drunkard, the debaucherous, and the murderer. Though I do not share in her vision and can only imagine and desire to participate in it, I believe her words: The glory of the maker and the sustainer of the universe, his majestic freedom and transcendent beauty seen on the face of every neighbor! This was a vision that bound her more deeply to both her God and her neighbor as every encounter with the presence of Jesus in her neighbor reminded her of God's humility, His "emptiness." To be a Christian is to call Jesus "lord and savior." But why? What moves us? What moved her? For Mother Maria, it was the humility, the lowliness of Jesus...

I spent most of my adult life grieving over my life's apparent meaninglessness. I did not know what my life was for. I wonder now, without blaming myself, about my culpability in all this. The "meaning of life" stares at me every time I encountered a neighbor, and I did not know it ("God is here but I did not know it.").

Mother Maria wrote simply about her transformed vision and the awe it inspired:

"The way to God lies through love of people. At the Last judgement I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked. About every poor, hungry and imprisoned person the Savior says "I": "I was hungry, and thirsty, I was sick and in prison." To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone in need... I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe."

And its costly implications:

"Worldly people are essentially separated from the world by an impenetrable wall. However much they give themselves to the joys of the world, whatever bustle they live in, there is always an impassable abyss in their consciousness: “I” and the world, which serves me, amuses me, grieves me, wearies me, and so on. The more egoistic a man is, that is, the more he belongs to the world, the more alienated he is from the authentic life of the world, the more the world is some sort of inanimate comfort for him, or some sort of inanimate torture, to which his uniquely animate “I” is opposed…

When hermits wove mats and fashioned clay pots, it was a job. When we peel potatoes, mend underwear, do the accounts, ride the subway, that is also a job. But when the monks of old, by way of obedience, buried the dead, looked after lepers, preached to fallen women, denounced the unrighteous life, gave alms—that was not a job. And when we act in our modern life, visiting the sick, feeding the unemployed, teaching children, keeping company with all kinds of human grief and failure, dealing with drunkards, criminals, madmen, the dejected, the gone-to-seed, with all the spiritual leprosy of our life, it is not a job and not only a tribute to obedience that has its limits within our chief endeavor—it is that very inner endeavor itself, an inseparable part of our main task. The more we go out into the world, the more we give ourselves to the world, the less we are of the world, because what is of the world does not give itself to the world…

In His worldly obedience He emptied Himself, and His emptying is the only example for our path. God who became a child, God who fled into Egypt to escape Herod, God who sought friends and disciples in this world, God who wept from the depths of His Spirit over Lazarus, who denounced the pharisees, who spoke of the fate of Jerusalem, who drove out demons, healed the sick, raised the dead, who finally, and most importantly, gave His Flesh and Blood as food for the world, lifted up His Body on the cross between the two thieves—when and at what moment did His example teach us about inner walls that separate us from the world? He was in the world with all His Godmanhood, not with some secondary properties. He did not keep Himself, He gave Himself without stint. “This is my Body, which is broken for you”—that is, given without stint. “This is my Blood, which is shed for you”—shed to the end. In the sacrament of the eucharist, Christ gave himself, His God-man’s Body, to the world, or rather, He united the world with Himself in the communion with his God-man’s Body. He made it into Godmanhood. And it would sound almost blasphemous if He had wanted to isolate some inner, deep Christ who remained alien to this God-man’s sacrifice. Christ’s love does not know how to measure and divide, does not know how to spare itself. Neither did Christ teach the apostles to be sparing and cautious in love—and He could not have taught them that, because He included them in the communion of the eucharistic sacrifice, made them into the Body of Christ—and thereby gave them up to be immolated for the world. Here we need only learn and draw conclusions. It might be said paradoxically that in the sense of giving Himself to the world, Christ was the most worldly of all the sons of Adam. But we already know that what is of the world does not give itself to the world."

These words leave me in a place of terrible clarity with no excuses.

[Garrett Paschal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will convict any Christian, whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox to live life in service to God. Most modern writers only have words to share but St Maria lived the life of a true servant. As a monastic, she didn’t escape the world to seek salvation but rather plunged herself into its depths, putting on Christ all the way to the end as she earned a martyrs crown.

“The more we go out into the world, the more we give ourselves to the world, the less we are of the world, because what is of the world does not give itself to the world”

“In communing with the world in the person of each individual human being, we know that we are communing with the image of God, and, contemplating that image, we touch the Archetype — we commune with God”

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1998 Orbis Books launched its Modern Spiritual Masters Series, a collection of the writings of important spiritual masters of our age. Each "Master" is made available in readable and inexpensive formats. Each is edited with an introduction about the master's legacy, along with relevant biographical information and commentary. To date there are some 36 volumes as diverse as Albert Schweitzer, theologian, doctor, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Caryll Houselander, English Catholic laywoman, artist, and visionary; Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof; Howard Thurman, minister, philosopher, and civil rights activist; Flannery O'Connor the great southern writer whose distinctive spiritual voice covered topics on Christian Realism, the Church, the relation between faith and art, sin and grace, and the role of suffering in the life of a Christian; Rufus Jones, who won a Nobel Prize as cofounder of the American Friends Service Committee and Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri le Saux) a Breton-born Benedictine monk who hoped to Christianize India but instead became deeply influenced by Hindu spirituality.

In this brief space I can only give you a glimpse of some of the masters, editors and their thoughts.

Maria Skobtsova was a promising poet, a gifted amateur painter, a theological student in St. Petersburg, and a mayor all before becoming an Orthodox nun in 1932. She served a community of Russian expatriates in France during World War II and rescued hundreds of Jews before being captured and taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Jim Forest provides an illuminating overview of her unusual life and ministry. She wrote, "In our time Christ and the life-giving Holy Spirit demand the whole person. The only difference from state mobilization is that the state enforces mobilization, while our faith waits for volunteers. And, in my view, the destiny of mankind depends on whether these volunteers exist and, if they do, how great their energy is, how ready they are for sacrifice."

Anthony de Mello was a world renowned spiritual director and retreat leader. His mysticism was rooted in story and imagination. He taught spiritual practices and exercises designed to silence the mind and give expression to the yearnings of the heart. Born in India he helped bridge the gap between Eastern and Western Spirituality
His stories from many cultures and traditions help us to find God behind our words, concepts, and religious formulas. Story to de Melllo was the shortest distance between a human being and truth: How would spirituality help a man of the world like me? said the businessman. It will help you to have more,' said the master. 'How?' 'By teaching you to desire less.

Clarence Jordan founded the interracial community of Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia. Jordan was a man of radical ideas who once defined faith as not belief in spite of the evidence but a life in scorn of consequences. He translated the New Testament into the well known "Cotton Patch" version. Jordan was against rampant materialism in America and while visiting a fancy house of a wealthy person, he responded by saying, Nice piece of plunder you got here. Jordan founded the Fund for Humanity, which evolved into Habitat for Humanity. He also instituted "a cow library" in which families in need of milk could check out a cow free of charge. His efforts to assist two African-American students apply to a formerly segregated business college led to shooting, bombings, and vandalism against the Koinonia Farm. He wrote, With Jesus, peacemaking involved not merely a change of environment, but also a change of heart. God's plan of making peace is not merely to bring about an outward settlement between evil people, but to create people of goodwill.

Dorothee Soelle was a German theologian who escaped Nazi Germany and became a professor of a theology at Union Theological Seminary in NYC. Her writings were shaped by the memory of war, the Holocaust, and totalitarianism. She wrote scathing critiques of capitalism, consumerism, nuclear arms buildup, Vietnam, and a Christian theology that created the space for Auschwitz. Soelle emphasized experience. For example, she finds the question, Do you believe in God? to be superficial and off the mark. Instead one should ask Do you live out God? She commends Judaism for the idea of human beings as the image of God, which she takes to mean we can act like God: Just as God made clothes for Adam and Eve, we can clothe the naked. Just as God fed Elijah through a raven, so to we are to feed the hungry.

In this awesome collection you will find your rich spiritual heritage, a legacy of teachings and guidance that have their roots in the Bible. You will find Christian models and mentors whose words can serve as the stimulus for new spiritual maturity, and for the courage to realize our calling and potential as disciples of Jesus.

Let me close with the poignant words of Dorothy Soelle: If the most essential element of Christian faith is sin and not our capacity for love, if the first thing that should come to our minds in church and in our religious life is our impotence, our weakness, our guilt, our repeated failures, then the die is already cast. Then we cultivate our own fears and coddle our own need for security. We deny that human beings are capable of making peace; we abandon the unarmed Christ and run away just as the disciples did when Jesus was taken captive and when it became clear that protection and weapons were useless now. We are tempted to look for other masters who offer more protection and security.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished MOTHER MARIA SKOBTSOVA: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS (~1933-1939), a collection of essays by an Orthodox nun. Though an atheist and political Bolshevik, Elizaveta Pilenko (1891-1945) felt drawn to theology and the life of Christ. She was also a published poet and even a mayor of a small town, seeking to “act for justice and for the relief of suffering,” with no loyalty to “any imagined government as such” (intro). Too Red for the Whites and too White for the Reds, she narrowly avoided execution from both parties and escaped Russia with her family, finally settling in Paris. The death of her daughter and a failing marriage compelled her towards becoming a nun, taking on the name Mother Maria and serving the exiled, poor Russians in France. She was arrested by the Gestapo for helping Jews and died in a concentration camp. Surviving prisoners who knew her said she was the loving servant to her fellow inmates to the end of her life.

Her writings can be summarized as reflections on what it means to love God and love one’s neighbor, the two commands she considered mutually essential. One cannot do just one or the other. Maria had little patience for a humanism that denied an inner spirit needing God, nor did she care for a staid religiosity that ignored the “sobornost”—a Russian term for community—of all humanity created in the image of God (p. 175). “Christ gave us two commandments: to love God, and to love our fellow man…These are, in sum, not only the true but the only measure of all things” (p. 175). In “On the Imitation of the Mother of God,” she argued that Christianity combines the voluntary following of Christ taking on the Cross with the involuntary sword-piercing of Mary’s heart in sharing the painful burdens of individuals. “The first founder of the deed of love…calls every Christian to repeat tirelessly after her: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’” (p. 72). In the concluding essay, “Types of Religious Life,” Maria combined her spirituality with pragmatic creativity by telling her fellow Russian Orthodox émigrés to give up their dreams of the old, traditional ways of doing Orthodox church.

I’m too much the Baptist (for whom she had little regard) to assent to Mother Maria Skobtsova’s Orthodox theology. Nevertheless, I recommend her writings as a challenge to Christians of all denominations in understanding what it means to embrace loving God and loving one’s neighbor in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. She is among the remarkable Christian authors I have discovered in my journey through Russian literature, including Archpriest Petrov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the anonymous Pilgrim, Pavel Florensky, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

[Richard Maher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Essential Writings" is a marvelous and edifying little book.

St. Maria, not yet officially glorified at the time of publication, can be a polarizing figure in Orthodoxy, and it's not hard to see why. Her criticism of some within the Church, including its hierarchs and monastics, can seem brash, harsh and even reckless. But within are deep truths with which we all must come to account; namely, that to be Orthodox, to be Christian, is to embrace unbridled, radical love for God and neighbor. However, this is easier said than done, and beneath all the external beauty of liturgical worship lives a mass of humanity. This is humanity in all its reality: flawed, weak and, at times, not what we expect, especially in the case of converts.

That being said, I think it's important to remember the context of her words, and the fact that her criticisms come more as loving rebukes than venomous censures. After all, the same Church whose leadership she sometimes found fault with recognized her as a modern saint and martyr while still in living memory. In fact, St. Maria's uncompromising love of neighbor is reminiscent of that of St. John Chrysostom, who drew the ire of Constantinopolitan nobility with his unceasing devotion to the poor. St. John, like St. Maria, reminds us that we must strive to clothe the poor even as we clothe the altar, for as the former said, "if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice."

That being said, please consider reading this book in particular with some consultation from your priest if you're new to Orthodoxy. What is meant as a critique of hypocrisy of some individuals, even from a place of deep love, can come across as a rebuke of the Church. The Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ, is infallible because the Holy Spirit works through its members when they join together in unison, but those members are themselves human. This includes St. Maria herself, the people with whom she found issue, ourselves and the people we see each week in our own churches. I hope this book is received in the spirit it was intended, and not as a cudgel to wield against others or the Church.

St. Maria, pray for us!

[Angela Alessandroni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this book for a year. It's so profound that I'd have to put it aside at times until I was hungry for more. Written on the verge of WWII, Maria's insights into our church, our modern world, and our choices are as compelling as if she were speaking today. Her biography is very interesting. She lived through upheavals, poverty, and heartaches. I hope you'll discover her for yourself. Maria's absolute love for Christ and her compassion for our human dilemna inspired me to reconsider how I live my faith. There are many lives of saints that have formed and inspired me. M. Maria is unique. Truly a wonderful spiritual book.

[Cathy Kazakova · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writings of a "cigarette-smoking beggar nun", a "socialist revolutionary, an intellectual of leftist bent" who lived a life of monasticism in the world (which she outlines in these writings) and dedicated her life to service built in radical, self-sacrificial love.

No matter how much love you give, you never have less. In fact you discover you have more – one ruble becomes two, two becomes ten.

[Zecchaeus Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important book for our times. I felt like I was reading a commentary on the current world news!!!
This book provides a good balance to the purely intellectual side of the faith and presents a wonderful and powerful call to action. This call is centered on and fueled by the need to love others deeply as icons of Christ, because each person bears His image.

[Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this selection of St. Maria’s writings so much. As a former communist, turned unconventional nun she is quite the character but what comes through most of all is a deep love of Christ in the world she finds herself in.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

rockin'

[Jackson Swain · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really easy 5 stars. The essay “On The Imitation of The Mother of God” was really surprising and especially moved me.

[Anna Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book was without a doubt 5 stars, but the back half was not quite as easy of a read. Overall really loved reading about the life of St. Maria of Paris.

[Scarlett Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

St. Maria is that girl

[Robert Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most challenging read, especially the last chapter where she calls out all the types of religious lives we lead as humans, that lack the true sacrificial love Christ ultimately calls us to.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final chapter, Types of Religious Life, is excellent.

[Thea DeBroux · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love this book. i learned a lot about love, christianity, anarchy, resistance. all the good stuff

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me begin by saying that the author is literally a saint, canonized by the Orthodox Church. A refugee from Stalin’s Soviet Union, she became a nun who served desperately poor Russian immigrants in Paris. Under Vichy France, she began helping Jews escape, including the rescue of children from the Vel’ D’Hiv. Ultimately, she, her son and their priest were arrested by the Gestapo for providing falsified baptismal certificates to Jews—which they openly confessed. She died in the gas chamber at Ravensbruck, purportedly taking the place of another woman.

I understand that this is the only English translation of her work available. I found it a bit scattered and uneven, but it is obviously intended to be as much an introduction to her as to her writing. The forward may be the best part. The balance read like entries from a journal and better editing alone might have helped tremendously. But, read it anyway.

[Yanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very erudite lady. Such precision clarity of thought in her essays. Particularly liked her essay on "Types of religious life". She writes about the importace of various types such as "Ritualist", "Aesthetic, "Ascetic" and she clarifies and recaptures "Evangelical" into it's proper meaning, not "the current evangelical sectarianism which has extracted only a selected list of moral precepts from the Gospel, added to this its own distorted and impoverished doctrine of salvation - about being "born again" - spiced this up with hatred of the Church, nd then proclaiming this peculiar hodgepodge as a true understanding of Christ's Gospel teaching" but rather, the desire "to "Christify" all of life".

A wonderful Saint, whose biography I hope also to read some day.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mother Maria is fantastically modern, relevant, articulate, wonderful, and accessible. This book says a lot about what Christianity should look like, concretely, and how our priorities -- both ecclesial and personal -- should play out. It doesn't even need its historical Russian context to make sense, which is a blessing. Anyway, you should read this.

[Kristofer Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mother Maria provides the theological foundation of the love for God paralleling the love for others, both of which are expressed in doing good for others. She remains an enigmatic and problematic character, yet her life serves as an example of monastic living in the world, not apart from it.

[Mark Moore]

After the Nazis took Paris and persecution of the Jews began, she stood with them, was sent to the camps, and perished in Ravensbruck.