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Les saints
n°212

Russia

1759 - 1833

Seraphim of Sarov: the purpose of the Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit

One of the most renowned Russian saints and venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Seraphim of Sarov is known for the splendour of his Interviews with Motovilov and spiritual instructions, given to two friends. The young man began his monastic life in Sarov, was ordained a priest in 1793, then retired at the age of thirty-five to the solitude of a vast forest, devoting his time to praying, fasting, reading the Gospel and working in his vegetable garden. He liked to repeat this prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, through the intercession of your Blessed Mother, have mercy on me, a sinner". After being attacked by bandits, he returned to his monastery to live in silence and seclusion. As he grew old, crowds flocked to him to receive his wisdom. On 2 January 1833, the monks found him lifeless, his body prostrate before the icon of her whom he called "the joy of all joys!"

Shutterstock/Dance60
Shutterstock/Dance60

Reasons to believe:

  • The fervour of his prayer was such that Seraphim was regularly taken into ecstasies, during which he contemplated the splendour of God. Witnesses are unanimous in recounting some astonishing scenes. On one occasion, as the monks were leaving the choir during the celebration of Holy Thursday, Father Seraphim remained motionless for three hours. Then, when he came to, he explained: "I saw our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, looking like the Son of Man in his glory, surrounded by the heavenly armies."

  • When a person had a particularly difficult trial to bear, the humble monk could distinguish her from the other visitors who were pressing at his door, and would say to her: "I know, I know." Too many people have testified to his astonishing knowledge of the details of their lives not to give credence to these statements: even before he was told who they were or why they had come, Seraphim would provide the exact answer to their question or difficulty. The purity of his soul meant that he clearly received divine advices for the salvation of sinful souls.

  • Many sick people were cured of their illnesses through his intercession. The most astonishing healings were those of Mikhail Manturov and Nikolai Motovilov. Seraphim had a long conversation with Motovilov. This admirable exchange has been preserved and has become a reliable guide to help souls find a close path to union with God.
  • Our Lady's interventions were a regular feature of Seraphim's life. As proof of this, several trustworthy observers have written similar accounts, in which Our Lady is seen with her protégé Seraphim. For example, the faithful monk's ascetic zeal was such that he fell seriously ill (suffering from dropsy, he was in intense pain for three years), and the father abbot did not leave his bedside. Father Abbot testified that one day the Virgin came down to Seraphim's cell, accompanied by the holy apostles Peter and John. The Queen of Heaven spoke these strange words to them: "He is of our race." Holding her sceptre in her left hand, she placed her right hand on the sick man's forehead, and the sceptre came to touch Seraphim's right hip, even digging an indentation from which water flowed. To the astonishment of the Abbot, the humble servant of God was suddenly healed, but left with a deep scar that would testify, many years later, to the miracle that had really happened.

  • Driven by a deep love for his people, Seraphim foresaw, decades in advance, the countless deaths that would follow the Russian Revolution, the Great Terror and Stalinism: "Life will be short then, the angels will barely have time to collect the souls."

  • After his return to God, Seraphim was invoked en masse by the Russians. At his burial site, countless conversions and healings attest to the power God granted him to relieve the profound suffering of a people whose faith had been torn apart.

Summary:

Born Prokhor Moshnin on 19 July 1759, in Kursk (500 km south of Moscow), in the family of a wealthy eminent merchant, the boy was brought by his devout widowed mother. During his youth, a number of events showed that providence was paying special attention to him. At the age of seven, on his way to church with his mother, Agatha, he fell from the bell tower of church. But, curiously, Prokhor got up unharmed. At the age of ten, when he was struck by an illness, he told his mother that the Virgin had appeared to him in person to tell him that he would be cured. During a procession of the icon of Our Lady of Kursk, a violent storm prevented the celebrants from continuing with the ceremony. They took refuge in the courtyard of Prokhor's house, where his mother lowered the sick man, who was miraculously cured on the spot. One day, his mother heard a passer-by say to her: "Blessed are you for having a son who will be a powerful intercessor before the Holy Trinity, a man of prayer for the whole world".

With a few friends, Prokhor responded to an inner call to go on pilgrimage to Kiev to pray at the relics of the saints. At the age of eighteen, he went to see Starets Dositheus to ask for advice about which monnastery to enter, where he could give himself entirely to God. This spiritual master directed the young Prokhor towards the Sarov hermitage. He chose to renounce his family inheritance, gave generously to the poor and decided to leave his home town. Seized by the love of Christ, he took with him only a modest bag, a staff and his only treasure: a copper crucifix. He leaves, very moved to be leaving his mother, who had given him this crucifix and her blessing, knowing that he would never see her again in this life, and wore this crucifix over his clothes until his death.

With his friends, he walked six hundred kilometres to the forest of the Sarov monastery, where he was admitted. Struck by the clarity of his eyes, the abbot liked him immediately. Now called Brother Seraphim, meaning "the torch", he performed the tasks of the bursar's servant, the baker's assistant, the carpenter's assistant and the sacristan's assistant with gusto and cheerfulness, and fasted assiduously to overcome the desires of the flesh. Gifted in carpentry, which reminded him of the work of Christ, he fashioned wooden crosses that pilgrims gladly bought. Physically strong, he helped the monks to cut and float fir trees. Seraphim was convinced that physical work and study of the Holy Scriptures are especially effective in preserving purity. His mind was turned towards remembering God through the prayers of the Our Father and the Holy Name of Jesus, which he meditated on constantly. Seraphim loved to sing and was sensitive to beauty. He had an aversion to sadness and despair, and cheered his brothers with his joyful countenance. But for three years, he suffered from an illness, without any complaint from his brothers. He surrendered himself "to the only true physician of body and soul, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to his holy Mother", he said.

After an apparition of the Mother of God, he was once again completely healed. He then heard the Virgin say: "This one is of our race." Once he had recovered, Seraphim was sent to beg for the future church of his monastery. He was then ordained a priest. Attracted by an increasingly contemplative life, he obtained permission to withdraw a few kilometres into the solitude of a forest where few people dared to venture. There, he built a modest wooden hut surrounded by a small garden on a hill, which he call the "holy mountain". Returning to the monastery on Sundays and feast days, he remained in solitude during the week, devoting himself to prayer, reading and manual labour. These activities brought him closer to God. Living in extreme poverty, he patiently endured the rigours of the Russian winter and the onslaught of insects during the summer, uniting his soul to the sufferings of Christ. He loved the Gospel so much that he continually carried it strapped to his back in remembrance of the burden the Lord had carried. Captivated by the accounts in the Gospels, Seraphim assigned the names of holy places to the various places in the forest to which he went to read aloud passages from the life of Christ: Bethlehem, the Jordan, Tabor, Golgotha. In this way, each day he experienced a part of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to his daily recitation of the divine offices and his many prostrations, he prayed unceasingly, uniting his mind to his heart. To feed himself, Seraphim received bread from his monastery and grew produce from his garden. But he regularly deprived himself of food in order to give it to the animals that visited him. He even tamed a bear, who ate from his hands.

But in September 1804, his solitary life was interrupted when three thieves from the neighbouring village broke into his hermitage. When they found nothing, they beat him violently, leaving him half-dead with a fractured skull and several broken ribs. The "wretched Seraphim", as he called himself, was found by the monks of Sarov, who nursed him. The thieves were arrested, but Seraphim was adamant that they should not be punished. He even went as far as to ask the authorities to pardon his executioners, or he would leave his monastery if any harm came to them. Seraphim lived with the deep sorrow of being a great sinner. He struggled with all his soul against the powers of evil that were unleashed upon him, to the point of raising his hands to heaven, standing on a rock, and praying for countless nights: "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). However, his abbot no longer granted him permission to live in his hermitage. Seraphim obeyed and returned to the Sarov monastery. There, he began to receive a few visitors. However, from 1822, when he was sixty-three years old, his fame began to spread throughout the region, to the point where he was besieged by visitors. Attracted by his wisdom and his supernatural gift of knowledge of souls, people from all walks of life came to listen to him and find answers to their questions. They saw an old monk "all white, all shriveled, all dry, with blue eyes" and a smile "incomprehensibly radiant".

He greeted each visitor with the words "Good morning, my joy!" Seraphim lived out this profound truth of faith that "Christ is risen!" and would often repeat this phrase. However, his supernatural gifts and advice were not the only reasons for his popularity. Many sick people were cured of their illnesses thanks to his intercession. The two healings that surprised most were those of Mikhail Manturov and Nikolai Motovilov. Seraphim had a long conversation with Motovilov. This admirable exchange has been preserved and has become a reliable guide to help souls find a close path to union with God.

During the night of 1 to 2 January 1833, the monks heard a long antiphon of the Resurrection being sung in Seraphim's cell. These were his last words. His body was found in his cell in the early hours of the morning, prostrate before an icon of the Virgin Mary. Later, the Russian people flocked to his monastery to ask for his intercession. As Seraphim had promised to pray for his people, he kept his word before the throne of God, obtaining from them countless graces of conversion and healing.

Diane Suteau, author of the novel Les Conquérants de lumière


Going further:

Life and Teaching of Saint Seraphim of Sarov by St Seraphim Of Sarov, Nicolas Puretzki, Convent Portaïtissa, Gozalov Books (August 22, 2022)


More information:

  • St. Seraphim of Sarov by Valentine Zander, St Vladimirs Seminary Pr; First Edition (January 1, 1975)

  • On Acquisition of the Holy Spirit by St. Seraphim of Sarov, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (April 23, 2014)

  • St Seraphim of Sarov: A Spiritual Biography by Archimandrite L. Moore, New Sarov Press; First Edition (January 1, 1994)

     

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