This year marks 25 years since the repose of Archimandrite Andrei Scrima, a leading figure of the Romanian Hesychast movement “The Burning Bush”.
Biographical landmarks
Father Andrei Scrima was born in 1925 in Gheorgheni, Harghita County. He studied philosophy, mathematics and theology in Bucharest. Between 1957 and 1959, he was a doctoral student in Benares, India, where he defended a thesis entitled The Ultimate, Its Methodological and Epistemological Connotation According to Advaita-Vedanta.
He became a brother at Antim Monastery in 1946, where he encountered members of the Burning Bush group. There he met the Russian priest John (Ioann) Kulyghin, who guided him towards monastic life. He was tonsured a monk at Slatina Monastery in 1956, the same year he left Romania.
He spent five months in Geneva at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches, and in 1957, travelled to Paris and then to Mount Athos. That same year, he arrived in Benares, where he completed his doctoral studies in October 1959. At the same time, he became a member and inspirer of the Orthodox monastic community of Deir al-Harf, Lebanon. In 1960, he was granted French citizenship, according to Lumina Newspaper.
He later became a member of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and, between 1963 and 1965, served as the personal representative of Patriarch Athenagoras at the Second Vatican Council.
Academic career
Between 1968 and 1989, he taught philosophy and religious sciences at Saint Joseph’s Catholic University in Beirut and at the Maronite Saint-Esprit University in Kaslik, Lebanon. He was a member of the International Academy of Religious Sciences and Philosophy of Science in Brussels. In Romania, he was a Senior Fellow of the New Europe College in Bucharest.
His writings include numerous works published by Humanitas and Anastasia: Timpul Rugului Aprins (The Time of the Burning Bush, 1996, 2000), Commentary on the Gospel of John (2003, 2008), On Hesychasm (2003), Ecumenical Themes (2004), Apophatic Anthropology (2005), The Liturgical Church (2005), Orthodoxy and the Trial of Communism (2008), and Spiritual Experience and its Languages (2008).
Father Andrei Scrima fell asleep in the Lord on 19 August 2000 in Bucharest. He is buried at Cernica Monastery cemetery.
Photo: Dilema Veche
