The Liturgical Life of Archpriest Avvakum
by E.A. Ageeva.
In the Old Believer tale “About the Greatly Zealous and Long-Suffering Archpriest Avvakum,” the great ascetic of faith is described as follows: “Archpriest Avvakum, a man of great good and abstinent life, of such great and fiery zeal: abundantly endowed with magnanimity and enriched with much suffering; he was known and loved by the earthly tsar, princes, and boyars for his righteous life; and he appeared desirable to the heavenly King, the angels, and all the saints for his long-suffering endurance. Everywhere he always had good and most useful clerics—friends in prosperous times, counselors in standing for piety, companions in suffering: and everywhere he proved to be valiantly zealous for good. How many long years he suffered, in how many great torments he was enveloped, how many most severe exiles, imprisonments, and dungeons he endured with magnanimity: yet he remained immovable in piety.”[1] Indeed, for Archpriest Avvakum, not only prayer but the entire daily liturgical cycle constituted the most essential foundation of his Christian life—and so inseparably that the archpriest sought to maintain the full liturgical cycle in any circumstances of his own life and that of his spiritual children. The initial source of such prayerful views was, of course, his mother, who later became the nun Martha: “My mother was a faster and a woman of prayer, always teaching me the fear of God,” writes the author of the Life.[2] Undoubtedly, Avvakum himself possessed a special disposition of personality: “Once I saw a dead animal at a neighbor’s, and that night, arising, I wept much before the icon over my own soul, remembering death, that I too must die; and from that time I grew accustomed to praying every night.”[3] He also turned to prayer before marriage, for which he was rewarded with a bride, Anastasia, who “constantly made it her habit to go to church.”[4] Later, Avvakum had many spiritual children, whom he, “without resting, diligently attended in churches, in homes, and at crossroads, in cities and villages, even in the reigning city and in the Siberian land, preaching and teaching the word of God….”[5]
Avvakum encouraged prayerful zeal and conscientious fulfillment of the liturgical cycle. He recalled about Tobolsk: “My spiritual daughter greatly applied herself to the church and cell rules and despised all the beauty of this world.”[6] For Avvakum, sincere striving and self-overcoming in fulfilling the prayer rule were important. He addresses Boyaryna Morozova thus: “Rise at night—do not order people to wake you. But arise yourself from sleep without laziness and fall down and bow to your Creator.” Neither the difficulties of the last times nor persecutions could serve as a reason to weaken prayer discipline. Thus, in a letter to Feodosia, Avvakum remarks: “It seems to me that you have grown lazy about nighttime prayer: that is why I say this to you with joy, recalling the Gospel: ‘When they revile you and drive you out, rejoice on that day and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven.’”[7]
While demanding of others in prayer discipline, Avvakum was extremely strict with himself. Even the most severe circumstances could not serve as a reason to abandon the statutory prayer: “Then another superior, at another time, raged against me—he ran into my house, beat me, and bit my fingers with his teeth like a dog. And when his throat was filled with blood, he released my hand from his teeth and, leaving me, went to his own house. But I, thanking God, wrapped my hand in a cloth and went to vespers.”[8] And another time: “From weakness and great hunger I grew faint in my rule, having almost no strength left—only the vespers psalms, matins, and the first hour, and nothing more; so, like a little animal, I drag myself along; I grieve over that rule but cannot perform it; and now I have grown completely weak.”[9] That is, we are speaking only of some shortening of the rule.
Avvakum’s liturgical practice was also not strictly tied to the space of an Orthodox church, except for the Liturgy. The peculiarities of how Avvakum fulfilled the rule are especially evident in the example of his exile: “Walking along, or dragging a sled, or fishing, or chopping wood in the forest, or doing something else, I recite the rule at that time—vespers and matins, or the hours—whatever comes up. <…> And riding in a sled on Sundays at stopping places, I sing the entire church service, and on weekdays, riding in the sled, I sing; sometimes even on Sundays while riding, I sing. When it is quite impossible to turn, I still turn a little bit anyway. Just as a hungry body desires to eat and a thirsty one desires to drink, so the soul, my father Epiphaniy, desires spiritual food; it is not hunger for bread nor thirst for water that destroys a person, but great hunger for a person is to live without praying to God.”[10] Thus, Avvakum used the daily liturgical cycle as his personal prayer rule. And this was adopted and embraced by the Old Believer accords.
Divine service constitutes the most important part of religious life. History shows that where the prayer rule is strictly observed, the community of believers continues to live, and conversely, where public liturgical life is abandoned, the community falls apart. For Old Believers, the temple of God is the community of the faithful itself. Personal prayer and public divine service form an indivisible complex, especially vividly manifested in Old Belief, and so closely interconnected that attention to liturgical space is diminished, thereby bringing the sacred and the everyday closer together. God’s presence is not necessarily tied to the sacred. What matters is not the place or the number of believers, but faith and piety. Liturgical space is not as important for Old Believers as it was for Avvakum.[11] His prayers took place not only outside churches but often without the necessary attributes, for example, without icons or books. And this too was adopted by Old Believers. The main thing is that prayer should be regular and meaningful. This principle is known from the book The Son of the Church, which has been published many times and is highly respected among Old Believers: “When you stand in church in your place, do not look here and there, nor step onto another’s place. … Do not give in to weakness of the flesh, and do not indulge in the vanities of this world. Only listen to the singing and attend to the reading. And if some word comes and you cannot understand it, then ask those who know about it after the singing.”[12]
Avvakum’s own writings and instructions eventually became difficult for his followers to access. As the study of Old Believer manuscript collections from the second half of the 18th–20th centuries shows, copies or excerpts of the archpriest’s works are quite rare in them. To a greater extent, Avvakum’s written heritage became the property of the scholarly community. However, the universal idea that performing divine services and sacraments is more important than certain external conditions—for example, the presence of liturgical space—firmly took root in Old Belief and found development both in theological thought and in liturgical practice.
[1] Tale about Archpriest Avvakum [Text]. — Moscow: Moscow Old Believer Printing House, 1911. Pp. 1-2.
[2] Life of Archpriest Avvakum. M., 1959. P. 54.
[3] Ibid. P. 59.
[4] Ibid. Pp. 59-60.
[5] Ibid. P. 60.
[6] Ibid. P. 117.
[7] Ibid. P. 210.
[8] Ibid. P. 61.
[9] Ibid. P. 91.
[10] Ibid. P. 90.
[11] This idea is convincingly developed; see Ivanov M.V. Archpriest Avvakum on Prayer Outside the Church. Electronic resource: https://ruvera.ru/articles/protopop_avvakum_o_molitve_vne_hrama/comment-page-1
[12] The Son of the Church. M., 1995. Folios 24-25.