His Life Is Mine. The title of this work stands as something of a promise fulfilled. Having believed that life—true life, eternal life—is found in Christ, the Russian Athonite monk, Sophrony set about to make that life his own. Best known as the disciple and biographer of St Silouan the Athonite and compiler of St Silouan's works, and as the founder of the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England, St. Sophrony’s life reflected the turbulent times of the early twentieth century. Born in Czarist Russia, Sophrony achieved success as a painter exhibiting in the great Paris salons after the Russian Revolution via a brief period of study at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. He then departs for Mount Athos, where he spends twenty-two years, first as a monk in the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon and for the final seven years as a hermit in the "desert."

On the occasion of St. Sophrony’s glorification as a saint, SVS Press has released a new edition of His Life is Mine with a new cover and typesetting.

In His Life is Mine, St. Sophrony writes that “to assimilate the inexhaustible depths of life in Christ requires our whole strength, the unremitting effort of a lifetime.” No doubt it was his own lifetime of experience as an ascetic and monastic that he draws on to write this work.With a writing style that is very simple and straightforward, he delves into such topics as “The Tragedy of Man”, the “Enigma of I Am”, and “Concerning Repentance and Spiritual Warfare.” There is an excellent chapter on the gradual way that God reveals himself to the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament. He ends his work with several chapters devoted to the Jesus Prayer, the prayer that brings us into an encounter with the personal God I Am and demands a change in us.