Didn't think of that

Friday, Feb. 06, 2015

One of my greatest pleasures in reading books is discussing them afterward. I sometimes learn from the books themselves, but I usually get more from talking with others about them.

Such was the case with The Way of a Pilgrim. In the normal course of things, it’s not a book I would have read: It’s a classic that was written in the 19th century by a Russian.

If you’re getting visions of a faith-filled War and Peace, you’ve got my preconception of The Way of a Pilgrim even though it’s only 100 pages long – far less weighty than any tome by Tolstoy. Which may be why I picked it a couple of weeks ago, just to give it a try.

To my surprise, I found it eminently readable, as well as thought-provoking.

The narrator of the book is an anonymous Russian Christian pilgrim who takes to heart the command Saint Paul gives to the Thessalonians: “Pray without ceasing.” A monk teaches him the Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”), tells him to repeat it constantly, and introduces him to the Philokalia, a collection of writings by the Greek-speaking Church Fathers. The pilgrim buys a copy of this book and spends his days wandering from place to place, praying and reading the Bible and the Philokalia.

Whether The Way of the Pilgrim is an autobiography or a literary invention is open to question; the manuscript was found in a monastery on Mount Athos and first published in 1884. Fact or fiction, my initial impression of the narrator was that he was a holy man. It wasn’t until I was almost done with the book that I started to change my opinion. 

The reason for this is simple. Time after time in the book the narrator complains about circumstances where he’s not able to be alone to pray. I can certainly sympathize with his desire for solitude, but after a while it occurred to me that this pilgrim is all about praying for himself. I admit that when he encounters other people who are interested he teaches them the Jesus prayer or shares with them insights from the Philokalia, but this happens only when the occasion arises.  

Now, as far as I understand the Catholic tradition, even those monks and nuns who pray without ceasing in monasteries offer intentions for people outside their walls. The Carmelite nuns here in Utah, for example, pray for the special intentions of religious freedom and the protection of life from conception to natural death, as well as for people on their prayer list.

We Catholics also tend to quote Saint James, that “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

Contrast this to the pilgrim in the book, who at the beginning of the narrative says, “The one thing I wish for is to be alone, and all by myself to pray …” and his prayer is “have mercy on me.” Doesn’t that make him more of a selfish clod rather than someone to be emulated?

A day or two after formulating this question, I bumped into Dominican Father Carl Schlichte, pastor of Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center, so I posed the question to him. His reply? “Maybe the pilgrim was just concentrating on improving the one person he could: himself.”

That answer didn’t directly correlate to my question, but as I thought about it I realized it applies to more than just the book. Think about how our Church would be if we all did good deeds as opportunities presented themselves but focused most of our attention on deepening our own faith. Would this result in us becoming, like the pilgrim, examples others want to emulate?