Metadata

Mirror

http://masarchive.org/Sites/texts/1985-05-01-1-E-E-T-EM02-015SpiritualGuideInOrthodoxChurch.html[1]

Specifications

Property	Data
Name	spiritual_fatherhood.odt
Type	OpenDocument Text 1.2 (ODT)
Size	28.7KiB
Pages	3

Description

This ODT file contains a copy of Spiritual Fatherhood, a short essay about, not surpisingly, spiritual fatherhood. Through this essay, Metropolitan Anthony provides one of the best, and one of the only, descriptions of spiritual fatherhood I know about. Despite his composition being just over 2 pages in length, he completely turns common views about spiritual fathers on their head. He describes how a spiritual father—who may or may not be a parish priest—is to show us who we can be by seeing the beauty that God has already bestowed upon us and thus challenge us to enter deeper into that union with Christ. And this is why I have it: it so clearly illustrates the Orthodox mindset generally, and the Orthodox understanding of spiritual fatherhood specifically, that I can use this for a great number of circumstances. I knew I needed this text and I've had a copy since the late 2000s.

Authorship

Spiritual Fatherhood was originally given as a talk by Anthony (Bloom), the late Metropolitan of the British Isles, in 1985. I am still unsure about whether there are any copy restrictions, though.

I created this metadata on September 30, 2011 and last modified it on August 23, 2013.

Footnotes

1. 1. I have absolutely no recollection of how I got this essay or where it came from, but I finally, on August 18, 2012, located an archived copy of his speech. This version differs only slightly from mine and is, of course, in a different format.