Conversations in a Monastery

The book Vestlused kloostris (Conversations in a Monastery) is based on a series of talks that Hieromonk Raphael (Noica) held at the monastery of St. John the Baptist, in Essex, England. These conversations with the brethren and visitors can be considered as an introduction to the spiritual heritage of St. Silouan the Athonite and St. Sophrony the Athonite.

Fr. Raphael was born in Romania in 1942. While on his spiritual quest in the early 1960s, he met the founder of the monastery of St. John the Baptist, his future spiritual guide, Fr. Sophrony, and spent over thirty years at his side.

“In this book, Fr. Raphael treats an ancient tradition of searching for and knowing the truth, a truth greater than himself or his teacher, passed on from generation to generation. This quest for the truth and its knowledge is essentially a love story. It is a story about truth as the eternal and imperishable relationship of divine love, something which Fr Raphael recognized … in the life of Fr. Sophrony. It caused Fr. Raphael to open himself up, to fall in love with the truth, and to live his life in a similar manner to his elder,” writes Tauri Tölpt, a theologian, in the preface to the book.

Original title: Живи мя по словеси Твоему. Духовные беседы / Vestlused kloostris
Author: Hieromonk Raphael (Noica)
Translation: Marrit Andrejeva
Editor: Rev. Toomas Hirvoja, Carl Eric Simmul, Aile Tooming
Design: Angelika Schneider
Publisher: Arvo Pärt Centre
Country: Estonia
Year of publication: 2020
Language: Estonian
Number of pages: 248

The book is available from the Arvo Pärt Centre webshop.