Father Zossima is the wise old monk who forms the spiritual centre of gravity in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, published in 1880. On his deathbed, Zossima recalls how, as a boy in church, he was deeply moved as he watched incense rising from a censer to meet a ray of sunlight high overhead, and as he heard the ancient story of Job read aloud:
Ever since then – only yesterday I took it up – I’ve never been able to read that sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery and blame, proud words, “How could God give up the most loved of his saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his sores with a potsherd – and for no object except to boast to the devil, ‘See what my saint can suffer for my sake!’” But the greatness of it lies just in the fact that it is a mystery – that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished …
What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man … And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them …
It’s the great mystery of life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life – and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.[1]
Rod Benson is Director of the Centre for Christian Ethics, Morling College, Sydney, Australia. Written for EthicsDaily.com, Baptist Center for Ethics, Nashville, 30 May 2005.
Reference
[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, vol. 52 in Great Books of the Western World (trans. Constance Garnett; Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 158-159.
Image source: Rembrandt, “Philosopher reading,” oil on canvas, 1631. Wikiart
All Told 