Letters to Spiritual Children: Abbot Nikon

In addressing his spiritual children, Fr Nikon speaks to all those seeking guidance on the difficult path to salvation. He balances exhortation and reproach with encouragement and consolation, instructing the reader in the fundamentals of the Christian struggle: “Recognise your sinfulness, your indebtedness before God…submit yourself totally to God’s good will…endure sorrows without murmuring…place all your hope for salvation on God’s mercy and not on the ‘correctness’ of your deeds…fear a high opinion of yourself…only through humility does a person become as one spirit with the Lord.”

Written in the 50s and 60s, these letters of spiritual direction provide a contemporary distillation of the age-old wisdom of the Church, at once simple and profound.

“Let us not play games with our eternal destiny,” writes Fr Nikon. “Strive for salvation.” Here is a volume of enduring value to anyone seriously and sincerely desiring to attain, as he surely did, the Kingdom of Heaven.