The first lengthy testimonial supporting Fr Parr appeared on the facebook page.
Unfortunately, its author is listed merely as "Nun N."
-- Why is there no full name in monasticism ? Nor, importantly, at which Convent she resides ? Or a general locale provided ?
This secrecy indicates that either the sister fears active persecution by the Mercy House Abuse group, or she is trying to preserve anonymity for reasons of humility. We hope it's the latter, but the lack of any place name throughout her narrative fuels a suspicion that she dreads attack by the purveyors of 'hatred' <-- as she describes their video exposing Fr Parr.
The only clues the reader gains are that the too-trusting sister might be somewhere in central Russia as she mentions the advice of an MP Archbishop of Kostroma. And that she is not a native English speaker, probably Russian speaking.
To be completely fair in giving both sides of this debate, I am posting her protestation in favor of Fr Parr :
"I met Fr Joachim when he first time visited our convent. After his first talk before the sisters, that impressed me greatly, our Abbess proposed that every sister who wants to, can make a confession to Fr Joachim and ask him her personal questions.
There were many of us who wanted to be confessed. Almost all the sisters were making their confessions through the interpreter - Hieromonk Savvaty who accompanied Father in his journeys along Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic States. But I didn’t want any witness to attend my confession and conversation with the Elder. So I took a dictionary and prepared my confession and questions in English. Fr Joachim was confessing in one of the rooms in the convent’s hotel where he stayed. When there was my turn to come in I told Fr Savvaty that I was going to confess without any interpreter. He was even glad to hear it - it was a chance for him to rest a little bit, and he went to drink some coffee.
In my confession, along with other things, I told also about my failure in search for a spiritual father. I was looking for a spiritual guide in my monastic life already for a long time, and yet couldn’t find. Having met Fr Joachim, of course, I thought: maybe, this is the ONE I’m looking for and praying to find... And I decided to ask him at the end of my confession for a permission to write him letters. But Fr Joachim himself anticipated my desire saying that he can help me and proposing to correspond. He only gave me a preliminary condition: I had to take a blessing for this from the Abbess. The Abbess (God, save her soul!) gave me her blessing, and the correspondence began.
I felt myself the most happy, for I was receiving letters from the Elder, wise and much-experienced, who knew the monastic life. His letters impressed me greatly with their accuracy and depth. Nun Mastridia, the spiritual child of Fr Joachim, who is staying with him until now, and whom I had a chance to talk, she also was telling me about his depth.
Once I asked her why the sisterhood in America fell apart, and the sisters left. From her answer I understood that the reason was the temper of those sisters, unprepared to the monastic life. “But I will never leave Fr Joachim, - Mt Mastridia told me. - Because I know that I will never find for me again such a spiritual father, of such a depth”.
It could be difficult with Fr Joachim at times, I already knew it from my personal experience. And once when we were talking with Mt Mastridia, she also illustrated this to me with the eloquent gestures. Bringing her fist to her own jaw and exclaiming as if in pain, she obediently lowered her head saying: “Yes, I needed it...” And I knew that she was talking about some kind of reprimand and reproof from the Elder.
Yes, Fr Joachim is very demanding, especially to the monastics. It’s clear that not many can endure the constant tension of spiritual feats. Most likely, that this is the reason why many leave. Herewith, they are trying to put the blame for their own failure on the spiritual Father...
Letters of Fr Joachim set the bar very high. Being carefully kept by me, they serve me as a landmark: never reaching it, I can at least strive to attain. Mostly all the letters of Fr Joachim were devoted to the problems of my spiritual life. He never answered my questions about his health, and usually he wrote very little about himself. As to those few things that he nevertheless wrote about himself, I want to share some of them now.
In the beginning I showed some impatience, not receiving an answer to my letter for a long time, and being unaware of the reason for this delay. And later Father explained me, that he simply didn’t have the time to sit down and answer my confession:
“When I returned from Russia there were many things to tend to. As soon as I got into the house there were people there for help. I went to the parish on the weekend, served Saturday and Sunday, then drove three and a half hours to the monastery in the mountains. There was a group of Romanians who came to be confessed, the brotherhood, and then there was my prayer.
I had to go to Philadelphia on Friday and come home today, to serve in the morning, and then to do vigil this afternoon. I have Liturgy and then the return drive to the monastery of 3 ½ hours tomorrow afternoon.
"... I am trying to pray and to get the time to answer you correctly. On top of your e-mail, there were 19 confessions, and at least 30 long letters of need. You are not neglected, you are just a little impatient.
I shall try to get to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, pray and repent.
Father Joachim”.
When Father got into hospital with severe appendicitis, all worried and prayed for him. In his first letter after the hospital he thanked us for the prayers and concern for his well being and wrote:
“Many wonder people prayed for me to the Lord God that I should recover from this illness, and the Lord has answered the prayer. I am grateful”.
It was a long and very informative letter. Nevertheless, in the end of it Father expressed his regret that he couldn’t write more, and that he couldn’t respond as quickly as I had desired. And then he asked me for prayers, continuing, already in another way, to edify me:
“Please pray for me. As I get older, I see how much time I have wasted on my sins and on myself, and how much there is to do for the Glory of God and for His Holy Church. Pray that I have the strength to give myself to the Lord in some small measure as to the magnitude that He has given Himself to all of us”.
Later Fr Joachim also wrote, in the end of a long letter, a few words about his health:
“I am getting better each day. It is very slow. The wound from the surgery is still open and it needs to be dressed with new bandages each day. I will go to the doctor this weekend and I will get a progress report. I do not know how long it will take to close the wound, but I am ready to have it done now. All have been very kind to me. I am most grateful for all of the prayers. Let the sisters know that I am on the mend and that I hope to visit you all in the Fall”.
In the next letter, written before the feast of Dormition of the Mother of God, Fr Joachim informed me that he came home from the hospital on last Monday, and experienced a difficult time:
“I seem to have a lot of pain and this makes any attempt at getting around next to impossible. Tomorrow is the great feast of the Mother of God and I want to be in the Liturgy, pray for me”.
Then, in response to a new manifestation of my impatience, he briefly depicted to me all his life:
“You must understand that I have a great number of people who contact me by email, letter and phone. There are a great number of visitors. There are many priests seeking help through confession and advice. I have nuns and laity that I serve as spiritual father and there are the needs of our parish in New York, the needs of the brotherhood here and the sisters and then there is the need for me to take care of my own prayer life and my soul. On top of all of this I have to deal with my poor health. I have much traveling that I have done and must still do. There are many requests for help from all over the places that I have spoken, more and more ask that I come and talk, speak at colleges, universities, monasteries and seminaries. I do not have the time to do all I asked to do, and yet I try to help where I can”.
Two weeks later, Father wrote to me again that he was very busy:
“We have many visitors here at the monastery from all kinds of places. This is one of the problems living in an international city that is famous and large. Many people want to come to New York. Since New York is such an expensive city, many people ask to stay in the monastery. It is too much some times. It is good that your monastery is so far from the tourist path, only those seeking the monastery come to see you.
Summer is coming to an end here, the weather is cooler and the days are beautiful but they are shorter. I hope that Mother Mastridia is doing well there and that you are all enjoying her. Please give Mother our love from all the monastery.
Fr Joachim”.
Before his second visit to our convent, Fr Joachim informed me in a brief note that he had received my letter, but had no time to respond:
“I have a house full of visiting monks and I am travelling to New York City tomorrow and then back up here to Treadwell on Monday. I will get to you.
I will be seeing you in a very short time. Give my love to Mt Mastridia, tell her to enjoy the wonders of winter, we have no snow at the moment and they are predicting that we will have very little snow this winter. The times are all crazy, one never knows what to expect.
Father Joachim”.
Having visited us the second time and returned to America, Father soon began to make plans about his next trip to Russia and Ukraine. As usual, he visited only those places where he was persistently invited to. He wrote to me that he didn’t go to monasteries or anywhere else if he was not asked to come with a blessing.
More than two years ago Fr Joachim stopped his trips outside USA, but not because he stopped to be invited. As I recently learned it from a comment in the internet on suspension of Fr Joachim, such was the will of Bishop John of Naro-Fominsk, administrator of Patriarchal Parishes in the USA (Moscow Patriarchate), long before the suspension, at the insistence of those who now are triumphing, having taken restrictive measures against Father. The author of that comment, who is the initiator of the so called “Mercy House Abuse Group”, wrote about the suspension with glee: “For many, it was the long-awaited day...” For us, who love Father, it was the day of sorrow, having begun then and continuing until now.
For Fr Joachim himself, it has become the way of the Cross, commanded by our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ to all His faithful disciples. The Word of God is immutable: “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). This is a personal kenosis of Fr Joachim, if we’d like to express it with the language of Theology.
It is granted not to everyone - to attain in such an extent likeness of Christ on the way of kenosis, that is, the depletion, the self-humbling, the self-emptying of Christ, to experience fully all the hatred of this world, slander and persecution from the false brethren...
For all of us, who love Father, the slanderous essence of that lampoon movie has been obvious from the very beginning, from the first minute of it. It has been obvious by the spirit of hatred, which the movie is saturated with.
I recall my conversation with now reposed Archbishop Alexy of Kostroma, that happened long ago. It was about truth, slander and love. He drew my attention to the fact that Truth and Love were the Names of God, therefore the genuine Truth is impossible without Love. Therefore mathematical truth told without love is a lie and a slander. Having applied this criterion to that movie, one could understand, or rather feel its falsehood from the first glance without any investigation - by the spirit of animosity and hatred blowing out of it from the very first minute. However, if someone begins to investigate the movie (as it was done by one Deacon from St Petersburg in his videos - not professional, but made sincerely and with love and, which seems to be important, with his scientific approach to the problem under investigation), then it becomes clear that not only the Divine Truth is absent in this movie, but so is even the mere factual truth...
Father Joachim himself takes all these adversities and afflictions sent to him as from the Hand of God, just recognizing that, yes, a difficult time has come... May God give him to live up to the time when he is allowed to serve and to preach again. As many have known, he suffers from a serious cancer disease, and regularly he takes very strong medicine when he is in pain. And he’s rather old... Time is precious for him. We all, who love Father, pray that release from the suspension may happen sooner than in three years. Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered! O Lord, protect our Father Schema-Archimandrite Joachim from all his enemies, visible and invisible..."
At minimum, the close of the letter seems to confirm what I noted earlier : that Fr Parr has been told that he is suspended for 3 years only.
This letter makes Fr Parr sound more human and less calculating. It also rouses pity for the sufferer from a serious disease.
But what brings such a disease on ? While the answer is known only to God, we can take a clue from the words of Elder Ambrose of Optina. This quintessential Russian Orthodox Elder told his disciples that God sometimes visits suffering later in life for what one has erred in during his youth. Elder Amvrosy self-deprecatingly gave the example of himself. He told his questioners that as a student, he had liked to talk and joke too much. The life of the party we might call it today.
So after 40 + years of hearing confessions, being a spiritual father to many Optina Monastery clergy, receiving lay supplicants requesting that he speak with them about their problems, the Elder had nearly lost his voice.
By the way, the brief description of a few of the Elder's duties might give a hint of the vast gulf between the workload of Fr Parr and a True Elder...
The 19 confessions and 30 letters of need cited by Fr Parr as delaying his reply to the anxiously waiting Nun N. do not sound onerous in contrast with the throngs of people from all over the Russian Empire who flocked daily for 3 decades to Fr Amvrosy's waiting room at Optina.
When Fr Amvrosy went to Shamordino for the last time, nuns reported that crowds of people chased his cart as he was shown the new construction work in the women's monastery he oversaw spiritually and practically. People slept out all over the convent's spacious premises
Shamordino Convent as it may have appeared during the construction phase - just to give an idea of where the pilgrims had to camp out on the bare ground, sleeping under the stars while waiting WEEKS for their turn to speak with the Elder
And he did his absolute best to not disappoint any of his supplicants > "Ambrose was visited by countless people, and his love for every person was so strong that he would even see people when he had passed the point of exhaustion being forced to lay down. Even then he would not refuse to listen to people coming to him to seek his counsel..." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_of_Optina
It should also be mentioned that while St Ambrose was being trained as Elder under his own teacher, Elder Macarius, and during the 30 subsequent years in which Fr. Ambrose was the main Starets for Optina and many satellite monasteries and convents, the Elder was terribly ill the entire time ! I have not found precisely what his conditions were in modern medical terms. Besides bad headaches, one serious problem which is revealed in his biography was a painful condition of his blood vessels.
Can anyone imagine carrying out this impossible work schedule while being too fragile to step outdoors most of the year ?