Moscow, September 27, 2016
A meeting with the modern French theologian Jean-Claude Larchet was held at Moscow Sretensky Monastery. During the meeting the author spoke about himself and his books which have already been published or await publication in Russia and answered readers’ questions on the spiritual life, the Church and Orthodox teaching.
The meeting took place on September 27 at 12.30 at the assembly hall of the Sretensky Theological Seminary.
Jean-Claude Larchet (born 1949) is an outstanding French Orthodox researcher of the patristic heritage, theologian, professor, and author of twenty-three books which have been translated into fifteen different languages, and of over 100 articles and about 600 reviews. Larchet was born into a Catholic family and under the influence of the Russian elder Fr. Sergei (Shevich) who lived in Paris he converted to Orthodoxy in 1971.
Jean-Claude Larchet developed as an Orthodox theologian essentially thanks to communication with such famous figures as Venerable Justin (Popovic), Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), disciples of elder Joseph the Hesychast: Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, Elder Charalampos, and Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, and Venerable Paisios the Athonite.
His books are devoted to diverse subjects, including issues of health, diseases (physical, mental and spiritual), means of treatment, issues related with suffering, death, and the body; bioethics; research into the heritage of Venerable Maximus the Confessor; the theology of the Divine energies; the doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments and many other subjects.
His books in Russian:
Venerable Maximus the Confessor – Mediator between the East and the West, the introductory article by A.I. Sidorov, Moscow: Sretensky Monastery, 2004;
Elder Sergei, Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University of Humanities, 2006;
Healing of Mental Diseases – Experience of the Christian East of the First Centuries, Moscow: Sretensky Monastery, 2007; second edition – Moscow: Sretensky Monastery, 2008. Third edition – Moscow: Sretensky Monastery, 2011;
God Does Not Want People to Suffer, Moscow: Palomnik, 2014;
Venerable Silouan the Athonite, Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University of Humanities, 2015;
Patriarch Pavle – a Saint for our Times, Moscow: Sretensky Monastery, 2015.