Toward the Endless Day:
The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel

Author: Olga Lossly
Translator: Jerry Ryan
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Release date: 2010
“Vers le jour sans déclin”
was first released in French in 2007
Pages: 344
ISBN: 978–0-268-03385-9
Genre: Nonfiction/Biography/Autobiography/Memoir
History – Byzantine & Orthodox
Religion & Theology – Christianity

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     MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Until 1582, all Christians used to celebrate Easter  on the same date. That year, a new calendar was adopted in Western countries, leading then Catholics and others to calculate the date of Easter in a different way from the Orthodox, who kept to the original calculation.
Henceforth, some years, in 2017 for instance, Easter is celebrated by all on the same date.
This year 2016, the Orthodox Pascha will be celebrated on May 1st! Therefore, as our Catholic brothers and sisters are almost done with Lent, today is actually the very first day of Lent for Eastern Orthodox Christians.
I’d like then to wish a Blessed Great Lent to all Eastern Orthodox Christians, on this “Clean Monday“.
This is another interesting difference: whereas the beginning of Lent is on Ash Wednesday for Catholics, when they receive on the forehead a dark mark made of ashes to remind them of death, the Great Orthodox Lent starts with Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα): along with a service of mutual forgiveness the day before in Church (Forgiveness Sunday), they are invited today, through a strict fast, to start this blessed liturgical time with a “katharsis”, a cleansing of their conscience and renewed love.

I chose this day to present to you a unique person, in fact the most important woman Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. She happens to have lived most of her life in France. Unfortunately, she is not too well known in the United States, not even among Orthodox Christians, even though Towards The Endless Day, her biography, was already translated and published in English six years ago!

I have read writings by Elisabeth Behr-Sigel for many years, mostly in French. The last book I read by her was her own biography of a great spiritual master, Lev Gillet, who used to sign his books “A Monk of the Eastern Church”. I presented one of his books on this blog.
Elisabeth was able to write his biography (Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church) thanks to their long and deep friendship. It was interesting to revisit this aspect of her life in the biography of her own life, and indeed many pages are dedicated to their sometimes complex and difficult relationship. Many excerpts of their letters are included. I’d like to quote two short passages of these, which show Father Lev’s amazing wisdom:

We make a mistake by asking ourselves whether we should do this or that. The real question is: should I be this or that? What we will do is the result of who you are. Let your action be the necessary expression of who you are!
p.32

Cast out from yourself all the dark nights, all the fog. Set yourself up in a sun-filled landscape, the landscape of the light of limitless love.
p.163

Olga Lossky met with Elisabeth Behr-Sigel many days to collect information for this biography.
She does an amazing job at retracing the difficult circumstances of Elisabeth’s youth, and how the historical situation fostered in her openness to others and the desire to reach with them union and communion. Looks like in those days, the ecumenical dialogue was so much more reaching than it is today, at least in the United States!
This inner mission started with her conversion to Orthodoxy at 24, after meeting with Russian émigrés, though she was born to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother! And she worked at that goal, at so many levels, to her very last days.

During her long life (1907-2005!), this very smart woman, while raising a family and struggling with  her husband’s disease, was at the heart of the Orthodox reflection of her time on hot topics, such as the place of women in the Church, to name but one.

She was, above all, a theologian of the Incarnation, centered in the possibility that we might encounter Christ in the midst of our fallen lives.
p.278

In her introduction, the author highlights that Elisabeth’s life was “dominated by a single and permanent question: How do we live our faith in God at each instant through all the choices and events that we must confront?” (p.XV).

Elisabeth’s numerous academic works, steeped in patristics and spirituality, helped others discover the richness of the Russian Church and its saints.
This biography is also amazing at presenting Elisabeth interacting with all the major Orthodox theologians of her time, and how instrumental she was, for instance at the first French speaking Russian parish in Paris, at St Sergius Institute, etc.

Spending time with Elisabeth through this book, I regretted having taken so many years to choose Orthodoxy myself (20 years!). It would have been wonderful to meet this woman, and actually our paths almost crossed so many times in so many places!
But as Father Lev and herself highlight many times in the book, to each his or her own path, and the Lord speaks in different ways to each.  But for sure the mission common to all is still, as Gabriel Matzneff says:

How to be worthy of our baptism,
how to put on Christ fully,
how to live according to the Gospel,
how to become beings of light,
how to transmit to the world this deposit of truth found in the Orthodox Church and which the world needs so badly?
quoted p.196

The book ends with an extensive bibliography and index.
It is also rich with references to many other Orthodox books I want now to read or reread.

EN DEUX MOTS :

Remarquable biographie de “la grande dame de l’Orthodoxie” du 20ème siècle. Une intellectuelle toute ancrée dans son quotidien, elle reste un témoin capital de l’importance de l’Incarnation et de son appel à nous conduire vers plus de compréhension mutuelle et de communion. Un message dont notre monde a de plus en plus besoin.

VERDICT: Essential biography of the most important woman Orthodox theologian of our time. Of interest to all desiring to rediscover the richness of Incarnation and how it can lead us to communion with others, a goal so necessary to our current world.