Holy Fathers of the Church
Icon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov
St. Seraphim of Sarov — Russian Orthodox icon of the bent, white-mantled elder.
CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Wonderworker of Sarov · one of the most beloved saints of Russia · 1754 – 1833

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✦ Commemorated January 2 (his repose); and July 19 (the uncovering of his relics)

A child marked by grace

He was born Prokhor Moshnin in 1754 in the city of Kursk, the son of a merchant family. Two events of his childhood were long remembered. As a small boy he climbed with his mother to the top of a church bell tower under construction, lost his footing, and fell to the ground far below — yet he stood up entirely unharmed. Later, gravely ill and near death, he saw the Mother of God in a dream promising to heal him; days afterward a procession carrying the wonder-working Kursk Icon passed by his home, his mother lifted him to venerate it, and from that moment he recovered. Heaven, it seemed, had claimed him early.

The monk of Sarov

Drawn to God from his youth, Prokhor entered the famous Sarov monastery in central Russia in 1778. He embraced the monastic life with whole-hearted zeal, and in 1786 he was tonsured a monk and given the name Seraphim — “fiery one” — after the burning angels who stand before God’s throne. He was ordained, and served the brotherhood faithfully, but his heart longed for deeper solitude and unceasing prayer.

Years in the wilderness

With his abbot’s blessing, Seraphim withdrew to a small log cabin in the forest some miles from the monastery, and there he gave himself to a life of astonishing asceticism. He tended a garden and beehives, fasted strictly, read the Scriptures, and prayed without ceasing. The wild animals of the forest came to him unafraid; visitors told of seeing him feed a great bear from his own hand, as gently as one might feed a pet. For a thousand nights, it is said, he prayed kneeling on a rock with his arms raised to heaven, crying out, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

St. Seraphim feeding a bear from his hand — from the lithograph “The Way to Sarov,” 1903.
St. Seraphim feeding a bear from his hand — from the lithograph “The Way to Sarov,” 1903.Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

His path was not without suffering. One day robbers, believing the monk must be hiding money, attacked him and beat him savagely with his own axe, leaving him for dead. Though Seraphim was strong and held an axe in his hands, he would not defend himself, choosing to suffer rather than to strike. He survived, but remained bent and stooped for the rest of his life. When the robbers were later caught, the saint pleaded for their release and forgave them completely.

“My joy! Christ is risen!”

After long years of solitude, silence, and reclusion, Seraphim received a command from the Mother of God to open his door to the world. And so the hidden hermit became, in his last years, one of the most sought-after spiritual guides in all of Russia. Thousands streamed to Sarov — peasants and nobles, the sick and the despairing — and the bent little elder in his white peasant’s smock greeted each one, whatever the season, with the radiant Paschal cry: “My joy! Christ is risen!”

He seemed to know the hearts of those who came to him before they spoke, answering questions they had not yet asked and reading the secret burdens they carried. Many were healed; many more went away consoled and set back on the path to God. He became the loving father of the nearby Diveyevo convent, guiding its nuns with tender care, laying out their community by what he said were the directions of the Mother of God herself, and promising them her unfailing protection.

His counsel was gentle but searching. He urged a constant remembrance of God and the unceasing repetition of the Jesus Prayer; he told the despondent that there is no sin which outweighs the mercy of God for the one who repents; and he insisted that joy, not gloom, is the true mark of a soul that has found Christ. To one who lamented his weakness he said simply that the merciful God is always ready to receive us, and that the whole of the spiritual life can be summed up in turning, again and again, toward Him. Many who came burdened with grief or guilt left him as though a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

The acquisition of the Holy Spirit

Seraphim’s most famous teaching was given in a winter conversation with his disciple Nicholas Motovilov. The true goal of the Christian life, the saint explained, is nothing less than the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God; fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and every good work are only means to gain this one priceless gift. As he spoke, Motovilov saw the elder’s face shining like the sun with a dazzling light, felt an indescribable peace and warmth even in the snow, and understood that he was beholding, in his living teacher, the grace of God Himself.

“Acquire the Spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved.”St. Seraphim of Sarov

His repose and glory

Saint Seraphim foresaw his death, and on January 2, 1833, he was found reposed, kneeling before his beloved icon of the Mother of God, a candle still burning. When his relics were uncovered in 1903, in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and vast crowds of pilgrims, the Church of Russia solemnly glorified him, and reports of healings and answered prayers multiplied at his shrine. His relics were lost during the upheavals that followed the Russian Revolution and were rediscovered, almost miraculously, in a storeroom in Leningrad in 1991; they were carried in triumph back to Diveyevo, where they rest today and where pilgrims still stream to ask the gentle elder’s prayers.

He has remained ever since one of the most tenderly loved of all Orthodox saints — the bent, smiling wonderworker who teaches that holiness is not gloom but joy, that the despairing should never doubt God’s mercy, and that the whole purpose of every human life is to be filled with the light and peace of the Holy Spirit.

Troparion

From your youth you loved Christ, O blessed one, and longing to work for Him alone you struggled in the wilderness with constant prayer and labor. With penitent heart and great love for Christ you were favored by the Mother of God. Wherefore we cry to you: Save us by your prayers, O Seraphim our righteous father.

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