Letters from Fr. Lev Gillet to his bishop

This article publishes an anthology of unpublished letters addressed between 1921 and 1929 by Father Lev Gillet (1893-1980) to Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The publication, introduced by Élisabeth Behr-Sigel and presented at a Canadian academic congress in 1996, takes the form of a thematic anthology organized around several axes: liturgical style, Eastern monasticism, kenotic spirituality, hesychast prayer, and apostolate among Russian emigrants. The central idea is that these letters reveal the founding intuitions that would lead Gillet toward the Orthodox Church: an aspiration to unite mystery and freedom, an ideal of total self-giving inspired by the Russian ascetic tradition, and an ecclesiology of "Catholic Orthodoxy" distinct from Uniatism. From a theological standpoint, these documents shed unprecedented light on the spiritual and ecclesiological genesis of a major figure of Western Orthodoxy in the twentieth century.