The many conversations on spiritual fatherhood I have had over my life have shown me that most of my fellow Orthodox don’t have a traditional sense of spiritual fatherhood. I am putting down some thoughts in this brief form, because I hope to follow up on them at length later on.

1. Spiritual fatherhood is not necessarily fatherhood and is certainly not necessarily confessing. What I mean by this is that a spiritual “father” can also be a mother and that spiritual eldership is not tied in with confessions. Not only confessors are spiritual fathers! Moreover, confession is one thing, spiritual fatherhood is another. Furthermore, spiritual fathers and mothers are not necessarily monastics. In traditional Orthodox cultures, spiritual members of village parishes have been spiritual fathers and mothers to their fellow parishioners.

2. One does not need to have a spiritual father or mother. In this recent fad of having a spiritual father we could easily forget that many saints (probably a majority of them) did not have a spiritual father or mother. This is not because they started their lives from better positions, but because in Orthodoxy spiritual fatherhood was never thought of as necessary.

3. Spiritual fatherhood will not require of us to become someone else. A spiritual father will not impose his way of being and his character on us, but will help us grow our own way of being, our own way, into the same one common goal–Christ. This is precisely what the Church does, in her life which she gives to us, with or without a spiritual father. The church is what is needed (and sufficient), not a spiritual father.

4. Spiritual fatherhood for monastics is one thing, spiritual fatherhood for non-monastics is a different thing. We cannot pretend to be monastics if we are not. Yet, what all spiritual fatherhood will give is peace, a sense of safety and joy, of being found and cared for. A spiritual father is in such way with his sons and daughters that they leave his side comforted and with their hearts burning for more. That “more” for which a spiritual father will make someone thirst is Christ, not himself. A spiritual father succeeds precisely in this, in erasing himself before Christ.

5. From the other side spiritual sonship means trust and love, universally. But it does not mean coerced obedience. Yet, without trust there is no sonship. A son must feel cared for, loved, encouraged, emboldened, on fire for Christ. What spiritual fatherhood will erase in a son is first and foremost any sense of loneliness, of abandonment, of being lost.

6. Spiritual fatherhood naturally carries no sense of strangeness. A spiritual father is supposed to come natural and familial to his sons, because his sons have taken him on as a father. Once that decision on the part of the son is made, the father is father. Rather, the father is like the family grandfather.