Father Gabriel Bunge, renowned patristics scholar, contemplative monk, and author, who also has published with St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, recently was received into the highest level of monastic life: the "Great Schema." He made his profession of vows and received his tonsure by the hand of His Grace Nestor, bishop the Diocese of Korsun of the Moscow Patriarchate, at the Skete of the Elevation of the Cross in the Swiss Province of Lugano, Switzerland. At his tonsure, he was given once more the name "Gabriel" in honor of St. Gabriel of Constantinople, a martyr of the 17th century.
Father Gabriel was received into the Orthodox Christian faith in 2010, after having lived the eremitical life as a Benedictine monk in Switzerland since the 1980s. He wrote the SVS Press title, Dragon's Wine and Angel's Bread, an exposition of the teaching of Evagrius Ponticus (AD 343–399), a desert monk, on anger and meekness. He also authored another press title, The Rublev Trinity: The Icon of the Trinity by Monk-Painter Andrei Rublev, a highly detailed and critically researched work that explains the magnificent icon painted by St. Andrew Rublev.
Upcoming in December from SVS Press is another title of Fr. Gabriel, Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Acedia. The book is a companion volume to Dragon's Wine and Angel's Bread, and it examines the all-too-human condition of spiritual discouragement, often termed "weariness of the soul." It is one of the few books available in English to deal exclusively with the problem of despondency (acedia), and how it can be overcome by building a dam, as it were, against negative thinking, and by acquiring a positive attitude.
Read the Russian language article about Father Gabriel's tonsure here.
