__A Russian peasant who could barely write became one of the great spiritual teachers of the twentieth century, and the wisdom he carried out of his Athonite cell still alters every reader who encounters it.__The Wisdom of Silouan the Athonite: Silence, Tears, and the Love of Enemies tells the story of Saint Silouan (1866-1938), the unlettered Russian monk of Mount Athos whose teachings on humility, unceasing prayer, the gift of tears, and the love of enemies have made him among the most influential figures in modern Eastern Christian spirituality.

Born Symeon Antonov in a peasant village in Tambov province, he entered the Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon in 1892, was given the name Silouan at his tonsure, and spent the next forty-six years on the Holy Mountain in obscurity, prayer, and slow transformation. The Wisdom of Silouan the Athonite: Silence, Tears, and the Love of Enemies traces this hidden life and its enduring teaching with care and clarity, drawing on the writings of his disciple Sophrony Sakharov and the long Athonite tradition that produced him.

• Recounts the vision of the living Christ at the chapel of the Prophet Elijah and the long years of trial that followed
• Explores the famous word given to him in extremity, to keep his mind in hell while refusing to despair
• Examines unceasing prayer, the gift of compunctive tears, and the practice of hesychia at the heart of Athonite contemplative life
• Traces his most distinctive teaching, that the love of enemies is the only reliable proof of the Holy Spirit at work in a soul
• Illuminates the Adamic prayer for the whole world, in which the praying soul takes up the lament of the first man for the entire human race

The Wisdom of Silouan the Athonite: Silence, Tears, and the Love of Enemies offers a sustained and carefully grounded account of a spiritual teaching forged in obscurity yet marked by remarkable depth, presenting Silouan's witness as a demanding and enduring path within the Christian contemplative tradition.