Presvytera Melanie DiStefano: Welcome to Family Matters: Fully Human Edition. My name is Melanie DiStefano, and joining me today is Fr. Michael Ziebarth.

Fr. Michael was born in the United States. He trained in applied linguistics, and taught English in various countries, including Greece, for several years. He met Sister Gavrilia, whose life and teachings will be at the center of our conversation today, in Athens in 1980. He was received into Orthodoxy in 1986 and entered the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. Later he spent time in Aegina near Sister Gavrilia, and then on Mount Athos. Fr. Michael returned to America in 1991 at the invitation of Metropolitan Maximos of blessed memory, and he has been a monk at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in north-central Ohio since then. He received a masters of theology from Holy Cross School of Theology in 2002 and was ordained a priest in 2003. Father and I were students at Holy Cross together, and he has also been my father confessor for the past 12 years.

Today we’re going to talk about a contemporary eldress, Mother Gavrilia, and a book written about her, titled The Ascetic of Love. She reposed in 1992, and The Ascetic of Love has been out of print in English for several years. There’s some plans in the works to translate and republish the most recent Greek edition soon. This Fully Human Edition of the Family Matters podcast is geared toward the experience of families with disabilities, and I will have some questions later on that are specifically related to our experiences, but we need to set the stage and start with some background, so let’s start.

So, Father, welcome!

Hieromonk Michael Ziebarth: Glad to be here.

Presv. Melanie: You had a personal relationship with Mother Gavrilia. I’ve heard you call her your godmother. Can you tell us when and how you met her?

Fr.. Michael: When would be 1980. How? As you indicated in the bio, I was trained as a teacher of English as a foreign language and worked in a variety of exotic places, including Greece, and after finishing a contract I met someone in passing over a cup of tea who said, “Oh, if you’re going to Greece, you should meet—” and gave me a piece of paper with a name and a phone number. And a half hour later, I left, never saw that person again in my life, got on a plane to Athens, made a phone call, discovered that Sister was away at the moment, made a second call a month or two later, and that began the connection. I met her then, I spent 12 years with her or around her or, coming back and forth, every time I came back I’d visit her again until I came to the States in ‘91.

Presv. Melanie: So she wasn’t literally your godmother.

Fr.. Michael: Oh, she wasn’t literally my godmother in that when I met her I was a miscellaneous Protestant American, and she tried to send me to the Russian parish in Athens, but I’m not Russian, so they had nothing to do with me. They tried to send me to the cathedral in Athens, but I’m not Greek, so what am I doing there? So she took me under her wing, and when I finally came back to her in ‘86, saying, “You know, we need to do something about this becoming Orthodox…” She had never said a word about me becoming Orthodox in six years, but when I was ready for it and came to her, she picked up the phone, called the archbishop of Sinai from memory, and said, “He’s ready.” I went back to Sinai for the third or fourth or fifth time—I can’t remember now.

She was not there when I was received into Orthodoxy, so she’s not technically my godmother, but it’s a lot easier to say, “Nouna,” than try to explain how a monk has a spiritual mother rather than a traditional spiritual father. But that was really the relationship that I had with her. I say in Greek, E pnevmatikos mou mou eipe,” and in Greek if you have a profession that is usually male, “o iatros, the doctor,” but if it happens to be a woman, you can say, “e iatros,” changing the grammatical form, and it indicates a female physician. So everyone assumed that I was an illiterate American who didn’t know my Greek, and I spoke of e pnevmatikos mou, my spiritual director. [Laughter]

Geronta Paisios of the Holy Mountain knew of this situation. He saw it as something rather irregular, but it was the actual circumstance, so when I told him that I had met Bishop Maximos and was thinking of going back to America, he said, “Go call Sister and see what she says.” So he understood that. So she was my spiritual mother for 12 years that I was blessed to be around her.

You know, St. Makarios of Egypt, whose feast day was yesterday, said at one point, “I’m not really much of a monk, but I’ve seen real monks.” Well, I’m not much of a Christian, but I’ve seen real Christians. And Sister was an example of a real Christian.

Presv. Melanie: Now, as you said, somebody gave you her name and number before you left for Greece. Were you talking about the Christian path in reference to her? What made that—

Fr.. Michael: I was just— This person happens to be a monk, and we had met in passing someplace, and I said that I was about to go to Greece. And he said he had met Sister at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, so he thought if I was going to Greece, this would be a good person for me to meet.

Presv. Melanie: I love that you took his advice and kept trying, because if someone gave me a name and a number, I don’t know if I would have continued trying to call if they weren’t there the first time.

Fr.. Michael: The angels in heaven have a way of arranging what needs to happen when it needs to happen. Most people would come in ordinary ways. I’m a little blockheaded, and it needed not just any saint, but one that would be patient enough to deal with my situation.

Presv. Melanie: I love that she was that patient to wait that many years without even just questioning, “Are you interested in Orthodoxy?”

Fr.. Michael: She was quite willing to leave you be a Jew or a Hindu your entire life, and trusted that God would take care of things. So the formal affiliation was less critical than the work of the Holy Spirit, which is in no way to say that she did not value the reality of the Orthodox Church. And indeed, when I was coming to America, she insisted that wherever I went, whatever I was doing, that it be in association with the ecumenical patriarchate. But she had been born in Constantinople and was a family friend of patriarchs.

Presv. Melanie: Interesting. That trust she had in God is one of the things that really stood out when reading her book.

Fr.. Michael: There are three books, at least, that deal with her in Greek.

Presv. Melanie: In English, are there more than just The Ascetic of Love?

Fr.. Michael: In English, The Ascetic of Love is the only one that has been rendered into English at this time, and as you mentioned there are efforts to get it re-released, and that will happen whenever it is time. The angels will arrange it. I am hopeful that it will happen before I die—somewhat tongue in cheek, but not very much. The Church has a tradition of waiting to recognize saints until after the first generation has passed, therefore making sure that it’s not just a personality issue. So Fr. Sophrony of Essex just managed to live long enough to see St. Silouan, his elder, recognized. And only after the next generation was retiring at the monastery in Essex was Fr. Sophrony recognized. And Fr. Haralambos and Fr. Joseph of Dionysiou and Vatopedi on Athos, both had passed, and Elder Ephraim just managed to stay in this world long enough for Elder Joseph to be recognized as a saint. So we’ll see how quickly that’s recognized by the Church. It doesn’t really matter. God knows, the angels know, and some people around are alert to it.

Presv. Melanie: That’s true, and we can still benefit from her wisdom and her holiness, even if it’s not officially ever declared in this life.

Fr.. Michael: The book that you mentioned, The Ascetic of Love, is quite remarkable, because I remember being in Greece, and a priest asked me, “Can you tell me something about the gerontissa?” And I looked at him and I said, “Father, if you knew her, there’s nothing for me to say, and if you didn’t know her, there’s still nothing for me to say. I can’t describe for someone the taste of a ripe papaya. You have to actually taste one.” The remarkable thing about The Ascetic of Love is that it gives enough biography, enough narrative, enough sayings and recordings and letters and whatnot that, astonishingly, through the book, people actually get to know her. I mean, there’s a book circulating in Greece about her and her impact on people’s lives, written largely by people that never met her in the flesh, or if they did they were schoolgirls 40 years ago, 35 years ago, and just barely had had any contact, and yet she does seem to be a vehicle of God’s grace.

Presv. Melanie: I have read The Ascetic of Love a number of times over the last 20 years, and it’s one of those books that you can open up into her sayings: “Mother, give us a word,” and just read some wisdom and be encouraged for the day. There’s also, though, something about the image on that book that actually attracted me to the book in the first place. I was at a retreat, and the book was sitting out for sale, and just the radiance of her face…

Fr.. Michael: Yes.

Presv. Melanie: She looked otherworldly to me, and it’s hard to describe, so I guess that’s that holiness that’s hard to put into words. Words fall short.

Fr.. Michael: Yeah, and another priest asked me at one point, “Is she for real?” [Laughter] And I answered, “Oh, yes, she’s very much for real,” and it’s hard to explain, because she was a Greek woman, born at the end of the 1800s in Istanbul, in Constantinople. And she lived through the aftermath of the Turkish-Greek War and the expulsion of Greeks in 1922. She later lived through being stuck in England during World War II, cut off from her family and her nation. She certainly was in place where there should be a lot of trouble, and yet she had a remarkably supportive family, wonderfully loving relationship that she always treasured regarding her mother, and never seems to have registered any of that. She was around it all the time, but, you know, one of the sayings in that book translates in the usual edition that Orthodox spirituality is a knowledge gained not through study but through suffering. And that is a legitimate translation, but it is woefully inadequate. Ou mathoumai alla pathoume. It’s quoting St. Gregory of Sinai, citing St. Dionysios the Areopagite, and it’s not because she read the book; it was just her own experience, that Orthodox spirituality is gained not by study and reading holy books, but by experience. And the translation in the Philokalia of St. Gregory, it says exactly that. It does not study the divine things, but experiences them.

And that was what she was. She had that experience, and somehow ineffably conveyed that to the people around her. It wasn’t the flashy things. Everybody likes to hear about flashy miracles. “Oh, she came out of that church and she was so joyful and she was six inches off the ground!” No, I checked three times, and she was actually walking on the ground. [Laughter] But what was remarkable was that people would come to her in all kinds of distress, and she would receive them and she’d talk to them. She’d listen, more to the point. And after you got done, you left, and whatever that burden was had evaporated and you were at peace! And the world around you was brighter. That’s the real important part of it all.

Presv. Melanie: And the greatest of these is love.

Fr.. Michael: Yes. Yes. Flashy things happened sometimes, but the really flashy stuff is the peace that passes all understanding, and remarkably God sometimes uses people as windows to shine his light through. I had the blessing of meeting three.

Presv. Melanie: So she was one. Who were the other?

Fr.. Michael: Geronta Paisios and Fr. Sophrony of Essex. Those two have been actually recognized by the Church.

Presv. Melanie: You mentioned a few things, but what of her teachings has been most influential to you?

Fr.. Michael: It really is the experiential matter. I’ll tell you two things. One, a sense of the joy that was in her, no matter what it was that came along. She was in the hospital in Athens. This growth in her throat had become extreme, and the doctors were trying to figure out what was going on. They took her in for a biopsy, and the result of their biopsy later we learned was that she had days, not weeks, to live. And I remember being in the hospital room when they brought her back, and here she is: she’s a 90-year-old nun, and they’ve got her on this gurney. She’s got a flimsy hospital gown and a plastic hairbag over her head. It had been done with local anesthesia. And they rolled her in, and she looked up at me, and she said, “Michael! I’m going to die! From freezing!” [Laughter] It’s that way. Here she was in that terrible condition, and she still had this brightness of attitude and just a remarkable sort of humor, and I took the message quickly. I got out of the room and left my spiritual sisters to get her settled down so I could come back. But just that great brightness of person around her.

And there’s a saying in the book, The Ascetic of Love, where she speaks of the five languages with which she traveled the world. The languages were helping and prayer and smiles and, when all else fails, is just loving them. Curiously, I don’t remember that that way. I remember it being helping people, and when there’s no help to be given, then just a touch, a presence. And then smiles, and tears, and when all else fails, just loving them. And it puzzles me that I don’t remember the word of prayer in there, because that was really, to me, one of the greatest things she gave. I remember sitting with her one evening, and everyone else had left, and the lights were dimming with the setting of the sun—she didn’t have any lights turned on inside of the apartment—and the conversation went on, and then it paused for a while. And then she started again, and then the conversation just slid into silence until she started talking. And I will affirm that everything I ever learned about prayer I learned in those silences that evening with her, in some manner that it was shared and transmitted, things that are not in words. But her presence like that, to be present to people and receive them, wherever they were and however they were.

And people ask: How do you get to be that patient, that forgiving, that loving? And I really don’t have an answer for that. I know part of it can be explained as her upbringing, that wonderful, loving family that she had, and so few of us have. She went through all kinds of things in her life, but it was just… God was present to her. God was present to her, and she got out of the way and let God’s love, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, actually flow into her. That’s always a mystery as to how that happens.

Presv. Melanie: I like that. Something you mentioned about the loving family. She actually attributed the unconditional love that she experienced from her mother as the thing that made her the way—

Fr.. Michael: The way she is.

Presv. Melanie: Right, the way she saw life was attributed to that love. And then what also struck me was that the encounter she had when her mother died, and she describes how it changed her and was the impetus for a whole other new beginning. I’m here. Let me read it. Hold up.

Fr.. Michael: Read a couple of lines of that, because it is something that is worth people hearing.

Presv. Melanie:

On March 24, 1954, her beloved mother passed away. It was the most painful, the most significant, the most determinate day in Gavrilia’s life. She was saying to her friend: The day of our parting, the day of my inner crisis, severed the last tie that had kept me bound to normal material life on this earth. Suddenly, I was dead; I was dead to the world. The only course that lay open before me now urged me to take the decisive step: “Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor. Then come and follow me.”

But where? The call came quite unexpectedly: India. That was it: my destination. Until then, however, I had no particular connection with this distant country.

Fr.. Michael: Yeah, it was as much of a surprise as when she discovered that she was supposed to become a nun. [Laughter] She had no idea of becoming a nun. That was not part of her perspective on things, and yet… You know, she used to say that we are to be like the football—which is to say, soccer ball—at the feet of the angels. Angels play ball, and we are to be the ball, and the angels will take us where we need to be. And she was always ready for another adventure.

But, yes, we are attached to this world, and we’re attached to people in this world, and when things happen right, then we discover that that personal love that we had for the individual, for the person, is just a pointer toward God’s love for us and our love for God. And then everything else changes. We try to look for the method, the exercise, what do I do in order to acquire this? And there are things. She was wonderful at extracting from us our attachment to money. “Oh, Vasily needs a hundred dollars. Go and get it and bring it,” and when you get back: “Oh, Vasily’s already received that from another direction, but thank you very much.” And she would dispose of your money. She never had any of her own; always made sure her hands were empty at the end of the day.

But, yes, the release from our small understanding of our love opens up for a love that goes beyond all of the other expectations. And everyone says, “How do I do that?” Somehow, mysteriously, we let go and let God, and it happens.

Presv. Melanie: That gives us hope for sure, especially as parents, especially if our children have health problems. One of the greatest fears is: How will I be able to stand if that time comes when I have to say goodbye? Even if you believe in Christ, even if you believe in heaven, that pain is so intrusive—

Fr.. Michael: Did Christ not weep at the tomb of Lazarus?

Presv. Melanie: That’s true.

Fr.. Michael: It’s not that there’s not a reality to that; it’s just that we discover that it points beyond itself to something greater.

Presv. Melanie: Thank you. And, on similar lines, I think underlying almost all of her teachings, her manners, was this just trust in God’s providence. She seemed to trust that there were not accidents in life.

Fr.. Michael: No.

Presv. Melanie: That God allowed things to happen for our benefit, even if he didn’t specifically will them. But if you’re in the midst of having pain over watching someone you love suffer, that can be difficult.

Fr.. Michael: It can be very difficult. It is very difficult. If it’s not difficult, there’s something wrong. It’s that we know the Scripture. “Why was this man born blind? Was it his sin or the sin of his parents?” In our little restricted, reputedly human mind, we’re always looking for the fault, the blame? And, on one hand, we can say, “Sometimes, things just happen,” but what did Christ say in that case? “Not for his parents’ sins, not for his sins, but so that the glory of God could be revealed.” And the brightness that she had in her life when she was there in the hospital dying is the sort of example that we have of the kind of brightness that there should be, because whatever it is that comes to us is so that the glory of God might be revealed.

Sometimes it’s in an overt healing. I tell you something that’s not in any book. I don’t quite know how I know it, but I do. When Sister was in the hospital in Athens and the biopsies had come back, and they were saying that she had very little time to live, Fr. Timothy came to hear her confession, and he got down, he went through the whole list of everything that you could do—because, I mean, when you’re facing death, whatever you deal with here, you don’t have to deal with on the other side, so he was being very, very thorough—he got down to, “Do you forgive your enemies?” She said, “No…” He said, “Sister, you have to forgive your enemy. How are you going to the Lord’s judgment seat and ask forgiveness if you don’t forgive? Seventy times seven, forgive us ours as we forgive. You need to forgive.” “Never had any enemies to forgive.” [Laughter]

And somewhere, she was so rooted in that divine love, you couldn’t hurt her! You might have a problem; she didn’t have any problems. Fr. Timothy was a good priest. He took off his stole, he turned to her and said, “Would you pray for me, please?” [Laughter] And three days later, the tumor disappeared. Some kind of spontaneous remission. We know about spontaneous remissions, doctors. It’s called God gave her back to us for a little while. Those things happen, but it’s in the context of that unshakeable trust that God is in charge, and our sufferings and our troubles, if we manage…

I was sick a while back here with this COVID thing going by. First time around I was not well, and I remember recognizing that everything that has happened to me in over 70 years was absolutely necessary to get me where I am today, and I was exactly where I needed to be, exactly where God wanted me to be, for every blessing that God had wanted for us. And it was necessary to go through all of those struggles. That was the example that she gave us, to see that it’s actually for the glory of God, and one day I will be able to recognize that, and not necessarily in the moment, in the midst of it, although I should be doing that right now, because it’s true right now.

Presv. Melanie: Yeah. Hindsight’s 20/20, but with her…

Fr.. Michael: Always present. 20/10! [Laughter]

Presv. Melanie: Right, because I can only speculate, but it seems to me that relationship she had in prayer with God, she knew who God was, and she knew he was love, and that’s why she could trust that, no matter what came her way, it was out of love.

Fr.. Michael: Yeah, and it’s… You know that saying of hers… Again, those of us that love the literature find out that it’s in the Philokalia with St. Nilus, where he says, “God and myself on earth, and I don’t exist.” When she dealt with people, it was always: “There’s nobody here except God and myself, and I don’t exist.” And when she became transparent that way, then she could sit and listen to you for an hour or two, and she—I mean, she was there, she was present. She felt everything… She became the person that she was listening to. She experienced all of it. And when you were emptied of all of that struggle, free of all that, she’d say, “Thank you very much,” and send you on your way, and then go through her little ritual, as it were, of washing her face, washing her hands, saying, “Thank you, Lord,” and then open the door for the next person to come. And they came and they came and they came, and it was possible because she wasn’t doing it. She knew that the Lord was doing it. And she felt it all, and none of it touched her, and that’s not actually logically consistent, but that’s the only way I can say it.

Presv. Melanie: Right. That’s really hard to grasp.

Fr.. Michael: You can’t grasp it. We cannot grasp it, we cannot understand it, but we can live it.

Presv. Melanie: There have been moments of my life where I would have an encounter with someone and I’d be praying, “Lord, help me here, because I don’t know how to help this person and I know they really need help.” Inevitably, he would put something for me to say, without me ever— It wasn’t something I thought of; it wasn’t from me.

Fr.. Michael: That’s the veil. She used to say if somebody comes to a monk or a nun or a priest or any Christian, in need of help and searching for help, if you and I can just get out of the way with our own ego, then the Holy Spirit will put, as it were, a veil over our face, and the person hears what he or she needs to hear. And it might be that I’m inspired to say something wonderful. More likely it has nothing to do with what I’m saying, but they’re hearing what they needed to hear. And she does that. And you and I can do that, if we would just get our own ego out of the way, if we stop lecturing God, saying, “Oh, you know, this person has so many problems. Giorgio, he has so many problems, if you just help him with this and this and this, Lord.” It’s like saying, “God, you know everything, you can do everything, but you missed out here. Let me explain to you what George really needs.” That’s ridiculous!

She taught us: You don’t pray for someone; you hold them in prayer. You lift them up to the Lord, and you say, “Lord, you know this person better than I do. You love this person more than I love them. Use my small love and do what you know is best for them. Genithito to thelima sou. May your will be done on this person, as you love them.” Rather than lecturing God on how he can improve the situation for us.

Presv. Melanie: Okay, so I’m just going to go in a direction as a mom with this…

Fr.. Michael: Go, Mom!

Presv. Melanie: [Laughter] …with this conversation, because when you’re a mom and your child is suffering, and I never thought I would feel this way toward God, but I: “Is this the kind of love you have for your child? If this is love, I don’t want it.” When I see my child going through some really hard— I mean, I’m not just talking about not being able to talk; I’m talking about surgery after surgery, health issue after health issue.

Fr.. Michael: Yes.

Presv. Melanie: I know it’s my infantile understanding of God—I believe that—but at the same time it’s a very real experience that we have as parents.

Fr.. Michael: Yes, it is.

Presv. Melanie: But I just wanted to validate that experience for those who are listening, for understanding that the ideal would be to get to a place and receive the gift of faith that she had so that we could be vessels of God’s grace, of the Holy Spirit, and trust him in such a way. But we are not—I’m not there for sure, and…

Fr.. Michael: Actually—I’m going to say something outrageous here—we, every one of us, wherever we are, in all of our struggles, are exactly where God wants and needs us to be today. And that pain and struggle that I have, as I said, Christ wept at the tomb of Lazarus. God cares. God cares enough to get involved, to come and enter into every bit of our struggle and pain, and be with us. And he feels the same agony that a parent feels for their child. Whatever you’re feeling, God feels that with you, where you are. And there will come a day when we notice, as the Scripture tells us, of the man born blind, for the glory of God. For the glory of God. Whether or not we get the overt healing, living with what God has given us is for his glory, and he is with us in that struggle.

When Sister Gavrilia was sitting with the mother of a drug addict, she was present to that woman, and the pain and the love and the anxiety and the concern that that mother had for her addicted son, Sister had just as much right then. And somehow, quite miraculously—and when you and I are living with it every day, we hardly seem able to catch our breath over it—then she would be able to step back and say, “Yet thy will be done, Lord.” Don’t discredit the concern that you feel. Yes, even the pain that you feel. I’m a monk; what do I know of these things? I’m told that it can be painful to give birth, but it’s a wonderful thing to have the child. Even the Scripture says she doesn’t remember the pain, the travail, when the child is there.

Our pain is real; our struggle is real. And, shining through it… The cross is the mount of transfiguration. They all go together. The pain reveals a blessing. I don’t—I won’t say the pain is a blessing, but it does reveal God’s blessing to us, in ways that I will never understand.

Presv. Melanie: It’s not a curse.

Fr.. Michael: No! No, not at all. It’s a blessing that I wonder how in the world God can believe that I can bear this much blessing. As a trial, he’ll give you a way of escape—no, they’re all blessings. It’s just like: “Lord, why in the world do you think I can endure this much blessing?” [Laughter] But Sister lived it all the time. Sister saw it. As I say, I’m not much of a Christian, but I’ve seen real Christians. She was a real Christian.

Presv. Melanie: Thank you, Fr. Michael.

Fr.. Michael: Thank you for having me.