The Life
Saint Seraphim of Sarov is one of the most beloved saints in the world. He spent decades alone in a Russian forest, praying. When he finally opened his door, thousands came. He greeted every single visitor — in summer, in winter, in joy or in sorrow — with the same words: "Christ is risen, my joy!" He could see into people’s hearts, heal their sicknesses, and answer questions before they were asked. Once, a young girl said about him: "Father Seraphim only looks like an old man. He is really a child like us." That was exactly right. Two centuries later he is still a friend to every Orthodox Christian.
Prochorus was seven years old. His mother was building a cathedral in Kursk — the project his father had begun before he died. One day she took Prochorus with her to the construction site. He climbed up onto the scaffolding around the bell tower, which was seven stories high, and he fell. His mother ran to him in horror, sure he was dead. But Prochorus stood up unhurt. Three years later, the same little boy fell terribly ill. In a dream the Mother of God came and promised to heal him. Soon a procession with the wonderworking Kursk Root Icon passed by his house. His mother carried him out, he kissed the icon, and his sickness vanished. The Theotokos had taken him as her own child very early.
Prochorus was nineteen when he set out on foot from Kursk to find a monastery. His mother, instead of trying to keep him, blessed him with a copper cross and sent him with her love. He visited the holy caves of Kiev and asked the elders where he should go. They told him: Sarov, in the deep forests of central Russia. He arrived at Sarov on November 20, 1778. He stayed for fifty-five years. He took the name Seraphim, which means "burning" — because his love for the Lord was a fire that never went out.
After he was ordained a priest, Father Seraphim asked permission to live alone in a small cabin three and a half miles from the monastery. He named the place "Mount Athos." He lived there for fifteen years. He prayed all day. He read the whole New Testament every week. He ate one meal a day, on Wednesdays and Fridays nothing at all. He kept a small garden and a few beehives. The wild animals of the forest came to him — bears, foxes, wolves, rabbits — and he fed them from his hand. There was even a great brown bear who came to him every day and would do little errands for him, the way a dog might.
The evil one attacked Saint Seraphim with such force that the Saint decided to fight back with an extreme weapon: prayer that would never stop. For one thousand days and one thousand nights he stood or knelt on a great stone in the forest, with his arms raised, repeating one prayer: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." When the days were over he could barely walk. But the spiritual strength he gained from those nights was the foundation of the rest of his life. The Lord let his servant be tempted that he might be made unconquerable.
One day three robbers came to the Saint’s forest hut, looking for the money they imagined a famous holy man must have. He was working in his garden with an axe in his hands. He could have fought them — he was strong — but he remembered the Lord’s words: those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. He set the axe down and said quietly, "Do what you intend." They beat him almost to death and tore his cell apart, looking for treasure. They found only icons and a few potatoes. They left him broken on the ground. He survived, walked back to the monastery in agony, and refused to let the law touch the men who had wounded him. After he had recovered, he forgave them and begged that they not be punished. For the rest of his life he was bent over and could only walk with the help of a stick.
A Russian gentleman named Nicholas Motovilov asked Saint Seraphim what the goal of the Christian life really was. The Saint answered: the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Motovilov asked how anyone could know if the Holy Spirit was actually present. Then the Saint took him by the shoulders and said, "We are both in the Spirit of God right now. Why don’t you look at me?" Motovilov tried to look but could not — the Saint’s face was shining like the sun. Motovilov felt warm and full of joy and surrounded by the most beautiful fragrance. The Saint told him: this is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is what God made us for.
No matter what season of the year it was, Saint Seraphim greeted every person who came to him with the same words: "Christ is risen, my joy!" Pascha was, for him, not one feast but the whole reality of the Christian life. The Lord had conquered death. Why would the Saint greet his guests with anything less than that?
This is perhaps the most famous saying that has come down to us from Saint Seraphim. The work of helping others, the Saint is telling us, begins with our own inner work. When the Lord gives us peace inside, the people around us start to find their way to him without our even saying a word. We do not save anyone. The Lord does. But the Lord works through souls that have made room for his peace.
A year and ten months before he died, the Mother of God came to Saint Seraphim one last time and told him: "Soon, my dear one, you shall be with us." The Saint began to speak often of his coming death. He had a coffin made and placed in his cell, and he could often be seen sitting beside it in quiet prayer. On New Year’s Day, 1833, he came to Liturgy one last time, received Communion, blessed the brethren, and said to them: "Save your souls. Do not be despondent, but watchful. Today crowns are being prepared for us." The next morning, his cell attendant smelled smoke from the Saint’s cell. They opened the door. They found Saint Seraphim kneeling before his icon of the Mother of God, his hands crossed over his chest. He had fallen asleep in the Lord while praying, exactly as he had lived.
Saint Seraphim is alive in Christ now and he has not stopped working. The Russian Church loves him beyond words; the whole Orthodox world loves him too. His relics, lost during the Soviet period and rediscovered in 1990, now rest at the Diveyevo monastery he loved, where pilgrims come every day to ask his prayers and pour out their sorrows to him. He prays for everyone who asks. He answers gently and joyfully, just as he did in his cell two centuries ago. He greets every soul that turns to him with the same words: Christ is risen, my joy.