Early life On 22 September 1896, Sergiy Symeonovich Sakharov () was born to Orthodox parents in
Russia. He grew up in a large Orthodox family with four brothers and four sisters. As a young child, he assimilated the spirit of prayer from his nanny, who would take him with her to church and he would pray for up to three quarters of an hour at a time. Even as a child, Sergiy claimed to have
experienced the
Uncreated Light, which he later described as the Christ-God manifesting as a light, which defies notions of place and volume. He read widely, including such Russian greats as
Gogol,
Turgenev,
Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky and
Pushkin. Due to great artistic talent, Sakharov studied at the Academy of Arts between 1915 and 1917, and then at the
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture between 1920 and 1921. He used art as a "quasi-mystical" means "to discover eternal beauty", "breaking through present reality ... into new horizons of being". Later, this would help him to differentiate between human intellectual light and God's
Uncreated Light. It was around the time of his study at the Moscow School that Sakharov would see
Christianity's focus on personal love as being necessarily finite; he fell away from the Orthodoxy of his youth and delved into Indian mystical religions based on the impersonal
Absolute. In 1921 Sakharov left Russia: partly to continue his artistic career in
Western Europe, and partly because he was not a
Marxist. After first going to
Italy, he went to
Berlin, and then settled in
Paris in 1922.
Paris In 1922 Sakharov arrived in Paris where his artistic exhibitions attracted the attention of the French media. He was frustrated by the inability of art to express purity. He saw rational knowledge as unable to provide answer to the biggest question, the problem of death. In 1924 due to his realisation that Christ's precept to love God totally was not psychological but ontological, and the only way to relate to God, and the necessity of love being personal, Sakharov returned to Christianity on
Great Saturday. He experienced
Uncreated Light (in a strength unmatched to the end of his life) and as a result distanced himself from his art. The
St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute began with Sakharov among its first students. Here he was lectured by
Sergius Bulgakov and
Nicholas Berdyaev; however, while both influenced him, problems with each (sophiology and anti-asceticism, respectively), meant that their influence on him was limited. In 1925, finding formal theological study to be unfulfilling, Sakharov left the institute and Paris for
Mount Athos.
Mount Athos In 1926 Sakharov arrived at
Mount Athos, entering the
Monastery of St Panteleimon, desiring to learn how to pray and have the right attitude toward God. In 1930 he was ordained to the
diaconate by
Nicolai (Velimirovic) of Zicha. He became a disciple of
Silouan the Athonite, Sophrony's greatest influence. While Silouan had no formal system of theology, his living of theology taught Sophrony volumes, which Sophrony would later systematise. From 1932 to 1946, Sophrony exchanged letters with David Balfour, a Catholic who converted to Orthodoxy. These letters reveal Sophrony's knowledge of many Church Fathers, and forced Sophrony to articulate his theological thought, and to demonstrate the differences between Western and Eastern thought. Many of Sophrony's later thoughts would arise out of the same topics addressed in this correspondence. One of Sophrony's critics was
Georges Florovsky, who attacked his concept of "Theological Confession" through his critique of Lossky's understanding of antinomy as the criterion of piety. Sophrony was influenced by the latter in this specific theology. This writer cited Sophrony's influence on a number of Russian thinkers, particularly his philosophy of "the knowing heart", which was contrasted to the "self-aware thinking mind in Hegel". On 27 November 2019, the Ecumenical Patriarchate announced the glorification of Sophrony as a saint of the Orthodox Church. ==Books==