Did you know?… What is a Spiritual Father?

Did you know?… What is a Spiritual Father?


One who climbs a mountain for the first time needs to follow a known route; and he needs to have with him, as companion and guide, someone who has been up before and is familiar with the way.

In the same way, one needs a spiritual guide to lead them through life’s trials and tribulations and guide them into the correct spiritual path that will lead them to the Heavenly Kingdom.


To serve as such a companion and guide is precisely the role of the “Abba” or Spiritual Father—whom the Greeks call “Geronda” and the Russians “Starets,” a title which in both languages means “old man” or “Elder.”

The spiritual father does not need to be some kind of clairvoyant elder. Rather, he is someone to whom you can open your heart. There is often a mutual recognition, that “this is my father,” and “this is my son.” Or, at least, that is a person with whom one wants to work out their salvation with.


~The Three Gifts of the Spiritual Father

There are three spiritual gifts in particular, which distinguishes a holy spiritual father. The first is insight and discernment (diakrisis), which is the ability to perceive intuitively the secrets of another’s heart, to understand the hidden depths of which the other is unaware.

The spiritual father penetrates beneath the conventional gestures and attitudes whereby one conceals their true personality from others and from themselves; and beyond all these trivialities, they come to grips with the unique person made in the image and likeness of God. This power is spiritual.

With this gift of insight they have the ability to use words with power. As each person comes before him, the Elder knows—immediately and specifically—what it is that the individual needs to hear.

The second gift of the spiritual father is the ability to love others and to make others’ sufferings his own.

Abba Poemen, one of the greatest of the Egyptian Gerondes, was simply said of him: “He possessed love, and many came to him.”

A spiritual father “is one who takes your soul, your will, unto his soul and his will.... ” It is not enough for him to offer advice. He is also required to take up the soul of his spiritual children into his own soul, their life into his life.

It is his task to pray for them, and his constant intercession on their behalf is more important to them than any words of counsel. It is his task likewise to assume their sorrows and their sins, to take their guilt upon himself, and to answer for them at the Last Judgment.

Yet the relation between the spiritual father and his children is not one-sided. Though the Elder takes the burden of their guilt upon himself and answers for them before God, he cannot do this effectively unless they (the spiritual children) themselves are struggling wholeheartedly for their own salvation.

Once a brother came to St. Anthony the Great and said: “Pray for me.” But the Saint replied: “Neither will I take pity on you nor will God, unless you make some effort of your own.”


A third gift of the spiritual father is the power to transform the human environment, both the material and the non-material. The gift of healing, possessed by so many of the Elders, is one aspect of this power: More generally, the Elder helps his disciples to perceive the world as God created it and as God desires it once more to be.
“He is Himself in everything.”

Such are, by God’s grace, the gifts of an Orthodox spiritual father.



St. Anthony the Great said: “I know of monks who fell after much toil and lapsed into madness, because they trusted in their own work... So far as possible, for every step that a monk takes, for every drop of water that he drinks in his cell, he should entrust the decision to the Elders, to avoid making some mistake in what he does.”


Before he went to confession, St. Silouan the Athonite prayed that the Holy Spirit would enlighten his Elder so that he would guide him in accordance with the will of God. And he accepted the first thing his Elder said and implemented without the slightest reservation. He recognized that, being human, it was likely that the man might err. But when obedience is confidently given during the sacrament of confession, then divine Grace will bring the fruits of the Holy Spirit to Christians engaged in the spiritual struggle.


“A spiritual father, like a signpost, merely indicates the way; but you yourself must follow the path.”
(St. Nikon of Optina)


The spiritual father is ordained, not by the hand of man, but by the hand of God.

Being a disciple to a spiritual father, he is the one to whom you will promise obedience, as a means of being obedient to Christ. It is a sacramental relationship: obedience given to the spiritual father for Christ’s sake becomes obedience to Christ. Therefore, one must entrust themselves to God through their spiritual father.

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