A Russian friend recently spoke to me about his devotion to St Seraphim of Sarov, a saint I had never heard of. Can you tell me something about him?
St Seraphim of Sarov is one of the most revered saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as in the Anglican Communion and in some Eastern rite Catholic Churches.
Pope John Paul II referred to him as a saint in his book Crossing the Threshold of the Faith (1994). He compared his spiritual impact to that of great Catholic mystics like St John of the Cross and St Francis of Assisi.
He was born Prokhor Moshnin on 19 July 1754 in Kursk, Russia. From a young age, Prokhor had deep piety and love for the scriptures. Miraculously healed from a serious childhood illness after a vision of the Mother of God, his devotion to the church and Our Lady only deepened.
That vision was the first of twelve apparitions from Our Lady throughout his life. When he was nineteen, he entered the Sarov monastery as a novice and, on taking monastic vows in 1786, he took the religious name Seraphim, meaning fiery or burning, to reflect his religious zeal.
He was ordained a priest in 1793 and became the spiritual leader of the Diveyevo monastery. Soon after this, he retreated to a log cabin in the forest outside the monastery and led the solitary life of a hermit for 25 years.
He lived a strict asceticism, at first eating bread from the monastery and vegetables from his own garden, but then only vegetables. It is said that for three years he ate only grass.
One day, while chopping wood, he was attacked by a gang of thieves who beat him mercilessly with the handle of his axe, leaving him for dead. He had a hunched back for the rest of his life, but he forgave his attackers.
At the thieves’ trial, he pleaded with the judge to show them leniency. After this he spent one thousand consecutive days kneeling on a rock in constant prayer.
In 1815, in obedience to Our Lady in an apparition, Seraphim began admitting pilgrims to his hermitage as a confessor. He soon became immensely popular due to his reputation for holiness, healing powers and the gift of prophecy.
Pilgrims from all over Russia flocked to his cell for counsel, healing and spiritual direction. He greeted everyone with deep humility, prostrating himself and offering the Easter greeting “Christ is risen!” He called everyone “My joy”.
Seraphim died peacefully in 1833 while kneeling in prayer before an icon of Our Lady. The icon is now kept in the chapel of the residence of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow.
Due to widespread popular veneration and the many miracles attributed to Seraphim’s prayer and intercession, the Russian Orthodox Church canonised him as a saint on 19 July 1903.
Among the dignitaries present were Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and his mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna, along with other members of the Imperial family. In early July 1903, St Seraphim’s remains were transferred to the church of Saints Zosimus and Sabbatius.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Soviet authorities severely persecuted religious groups, confiscating many relics of saints, including those of St Seraphim.
His relics were rediscovered in 1991, after being hidden in a Soviet anti-religious museum for seventy years. They were taken in a procession on foot from Moscow to the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery, some 460 kilometres away, where they remain to this day.
On 15 September 2016, Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, presented a relic of St Seraphim to Pope Francis, on behalf of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.
The pope kept the relic by his bedside and venerated it with a daily prayer for unity. One of St Seraphim’s most famous sayings was: “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved.
“It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us.”
