Saint John of Kronstadt

On Soul-Destroying Drunkenness, and on the Dread Judgment of God

19th–20th c. · Asceticism & Spirituality · English translation, 2026

3,764 words · 19 min read· Accessible

Source edition: О душепагубном пьянстве, и о страшном суде Божием (azbyka.ru; from the pre-revolutionary Russian edition)

Cover art: Monastic Refectory (1876) — Vasily Perov (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

A sermon rebuking the drunken, brawling way Russians actually kept the Church's feast days, paired with a February 1907 sermon on the Last Judgment that opens in an earthly courtroom and closes at the far more searching one. A later tribute, appended in the same chapter and signed by a different writer, recalls Father John after his 1908 death and the Emperor's 1909 rescript naming him a righteous man, read together here as the source presents them.