It is about a holy fool, with a past, There is a lot about prayer and penance, faith and dying, and the tensions and joys of monastic life, human weakness and divine strength.
Most importantly it is about holiness.
It can be found here, sorry it is on You tube.
4 comments:
Father,
Thank you for noting this. This is a very Russian film. In particular, it very well depicts an important and fairly typical characteristic of Russian Orthodox spirituality: being fool for Christ. To some extent it is similar to Franciscan, although differs in a strong tendency to individualism. The fool (blazhenniy = блаженный) is a kind of an eremite in the world, there is never a commune of blazhenniy's. In this way, the fool is strongly opposed to the world, to a very high degree, to being its enemy, usually by way of extreme eccentricity, crankiness, but sometimes even a kind of hostility. There is also a strong tendency to severe asceticism.
What a great film. Thank God for the great gift of confession and priests willing to administer this sacrament diligently. Thanks Fr. Ray.
Thank you so much for the tip - it was spell-binding.
I was confused about how the furnace room connected to rest of the somewhat ramshackle monastery. The scene where he burnt the Abbot's boots and bedroll was priceless.
It is also available in the US on Netflix, streamed to your TV or computer. Wonderful movie. Thanks for recommending it.
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