Cheap Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father : Being the Narratives Compiled by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father (Book) (Alexander, Vera Bouteneff) Price

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Customer Reviews of Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father : Being the Narratives Compiled by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father

Compelling, life Changing, sobering
I just completed reading Fr. Arseny Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father. And I wanted to share with anyone who whould listen that this book was one that I could hardly put down. It reads simply, easily, yet truthfully. It is not spiced up with pietism nor does it try to make something out of the man that he was not,yet who he was in Christ was nothing short of ingodded, (an Orhodox Christian Phrase used to describe someone who has given his life so totally unto God that he or she has become by Grace everything that God is by nature. In otherwords: Christlike. I found myself, a grown man, weeping at times; laughing in the spirit in others. But always deeply moved and contemplative. I now ask Fr. Arseny to Pray for me a sinner. I have been an Orthodox Christian for 25 years and rarely have I found a book that touched my soul as deeply as this book. Whether you are Orthodox, Catholic, Or Protestant, if you want to read about a REAl MODERN DAY SAINT read this. It contains no tampering to make him sound better than he is, with all accounts checked with witnesses from the Russian Gulog where he spent over 20 years in prison simply for being a Christian Priest, to His Spiritual Children. This Book is a MUST READ!

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Best Book of the Year (1999)
I read Father Arseny aloud to my 13 year old son, and we both agreed it was one of the best books we have ever read. He begged me to get him his own copy! While I am a recent convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, I would've recommended this book to anyone before I knew anything about Orthodoxy.

The chapters all have a ring of truth as they describe the horrible conditions of the prisoners in Stalin's Siberian camps. The stories of how Father Arseny, a former art historian turned Russian Orthodox priest, survived and shared the love of God with his fellow prisoners, including the Communist official who sent him there, are humbling and truly awe inspiring.

The middle section deals with Father Arseny's days following his release from prison, but still during the days of Communist opposition to any underground Christian activity.

The final section introduces the reader to individuals whose lives were incredibly touched by the ministry and faith of Father Arseny.

We in the West need to learn more about what went on behind the Iron Curtain during the Bolshevik years. This book puts a human face on the suffering.

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Spiritual classic of modern times
Orthodox Christians like to tell each other that their church is the "best kept secret" in America. That's one way to make sense of the puzzling fact that, though membership estimates range from three to six million (record-keeping is not the faith's strong suit), the church is mostly invisible. Other Americans might recall going to a Greek wedding once, or seeing Russians troop around their church with candles at midnight, but otherwise have little awareness of this non-Protestant, non-Catholic, Christian body.

Thus, when something big happens in the world of Orthodox publishing, it's mostly unknown outside church circles. Something big happened four years ago, with the publication of "Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father."
This was a translation of a book that had already sold 400,000 copies in Russia, the first open publication of a battered manuscript which had previously circulated only in carbon copy, underground.

American Orthodox immediately recognized "Father Arseny" as a spiritual treasure. The book is a collection of memoirs assembled by someone who calls himself "the servant of God Alexander." The essays describe a Russian priest through the eyes of many who knew him, both during his years in a communist
concentration camp, and in the town where he lived till his death in 1975. Father Arseny's radical compassion and humility embody the distinctive flavor of Orthodox spirituality, and as such his story struck an immediate chord.

For example, the book opens with dawn in the sub-freezing gulag, as the feeble, aging priest struggles to light a fire for the barracks. Clergy were despised by everyone, even other prisoners; Christians were believed to be stupid. Yet in the course of this typical day Fr. Arseny endures beatings and
abuse with patience, while caring for two sick prisoners and sharing with them his rations. One invalid is a criminal, and the other a deposed official who had signed Fr. Arseny's own sentence. Through the course of succeeding chapters both become converts, and take the priest as their spiritual father.

The character of this kindly, long-suffering priest contrasts with the American expectation of what a successful Christian leader would be like: glib, brisk, upbeat, forceful. Fr. Arseny represents a different kind of Christian spirituality, one associated more with the Desert Fathers and early Christian spirituality.

Fr. Arseny differs in another way: he has contact with the supernatural. American Christian spokesmen live in an orderly, corporate sort of world, but Fr. Arseny is frequently shown at crux of miraculous events. In one incident, he and a young man are thrown into a punishment cell, a small metal cubicle
exposed to -22 degree temperatures. The guards expected to find both dead when they unlocked the door 48 hours later. Instead, they found the prisoners rested and radiant, with a thick coat of frost on their clothing. As the young man described it later, when he collapsed in despair he saw the dark cell flooded with light, and Fr. Arseny praying in priestly garments. The young man, like most others who knew Fr. Arseny, was transformed by his encounter.

These distinctively Orthodox elements, of humble compassion and spiritual power, are what made the first "Father Arseny" volume so beloved, and why the new volume has been eagerly awaited. "Father Arseny: A Cloud of Witnesses" continues the story with essays by people who knew him in the years after
prison, and like the first includes many tales of personal transformation and miracles.

When asked if other, similar samizdat works are waiting to be published, translator Vera Bouteneff says, "I wish, I wish. Everything I've found so far was much too sweet." Her own parents fled Russia soon after the Revolution;
her father had been sentenced to be shot, but the order was commuted to exile. Her practical turn of mind is evident in the straightforwardness of the translation. Many other holy women and men lived during the communist era, but Bouteneff has found those accounts to be overstated and saccharine. "Fr. Arseny," which was written by many different people of different
educational levels, preserves a winning directness. Those who would like to know more about Orthodox Christian spirituality can see it enacted in these books, worked out in human lives rather than in theory.

Soon after the publication of the first volume a story went around the internet: an Orthodox nun who had been reading the book one night turned out her light to go to sleep, looked back toward the book "and it was glowing. Though she hadn't heard the story, "I won't deny it," says Bouteneff. "I believe in miracles."