A Review From the Newspaper «RUSSIAN INVALID» (No. 126, 11 June 1900)

Archpriest Father John Sergiev, rector of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, is the son of a church reader of Arkhangelsk province, Pinega district, the village of Sura, born in 1829. (He is now 69 years old1.) He sleeps no more than three hours a day, and sometimes barely manages to doze while sitting, or while riding somewhere in a carriage. He is always on his feet, forever serving in church, hearing confession and communing hundreds of people in the Holy Mysteries».

«The Sovereign Emperor Alexander III, feeling the approach of his own end, wished to see Father John, and received him joyfully. Father John prayed together with the Tsar, and the Tsar felt the power of his prayer. On the 7th of October, in accordance with the Sovereign’s wish, Father John gave him Holy Communion. Summoned again by the Most Sovereign sufferer on the very day of his death, Father John, at the Tsar’s wish, read a prayer for the healing of the sick and anointed him with oil from a wonderworking icon. Then, at the Tsar’s wish, Father John laid his hands upon the Tsar’s head and did not take them away for a long while. The Sovereign, being fully conscious, asked Father John to rest, but Father John said he felt no weariness, and asked him: «Is it not burdensome for Your Majesty, that I hold my hands so long upon your head?» But the Tsar said to him: «On the contrary, it is very easy for me, when you hold them there». Then the Tsar went on: «You are a righteous man: the Russian people love you». — «Yes, answered Father John,—your people love me». «They love you, said the Sovereign,—because they know who you are and what you are».

And indeed, Father John’s fame spreads far beyond the bounds of Kronstadt and Petersburg. And this fame arises because Father John knows how to distribute the money gathered from donors, knows how, in giving it, to encourage and teach sense to the poor. His Sunday sermons, delivered in St. Andrew’s Cathedral, draw thousands of people. Not everyone can hear them, not everyone has the chance to be in the cathedral, yet everyone wishes to hear them… And so Father John began to have them printed. They then passed into the newspaper «The Gazette of the St. Petersburg City Governorate», and finally found their way into a little book published by M. G. Krivoshlyk. Father John speaks of prayer, of the church, of miracles in our own time, of love, of the science—the science of overcoming sin. In him the priest is joined with the orator, the philosopher with the plain mortal. Every word breathes with faith and love for God, with a sincere desire to help one’s neighbor and to draw one’s neighbor into his own faith. «Love without deliberation—love is simple»,—he said in one place,—«do not gaze at the beauty of a man’s face, but look at his soul; do not look at his garment (the body is a temporary garment), but look at the one who wears it; do not look at the splendor of a house, but look at the tenant, at who lives in it and what he is—otherwise you will insult the image of God in man, you will dishonor the King by bowing to his servant while rendering to Him not the least of the honor due Him»… «Youth who have studied and youth who have not finished their studies»,—Father John writes further—«rarely go to church, in general do not tend to the work of their own spiritual upbringing, considering it as it were needless, and give themselves over to the vanity of worldly life. Attention must be paid to this. This is the fruit of pride, of spiritual immaturity. They consider attendance at the temple and at public worship the business of the common people and of women, forgetting that in the temple the angels serve together with man in fear, and count it for themselves the greatest blessedness».

Such is the general character of Father John’s thoughts. He takes up the most topical, everyday matters, questions of common concern, and considers them with a deep knowledge of the human heart and a sincere desire to teach and to guide. His thoughts are so imbued with faith and love that they are able to carry a man along with them. The book has been recommended by the Main Administration of Military Educational Institutions for all classes of the cadet corps. There is an age—thirteen to sixteen—when the young mind is tormented by doubt, when, on the one hand, the guileless accounts of the priest’s tales about the creation of the world and of Joshua, who said, «Sun, stand still; and moon, be not moved» (Nav 10:12), and, on the other, Darwin’s theory and the facts of cosmography, refuse in any way to be reconciled… when, on the one hand, life through the crack of a half-open door beckons with the enticement of sin, while, on the other, the church does not yet grant blessedness of soul, is not yet understood. In these moments Father John’s thoughts, simple and profound, the account of the Peacemaker Tsar’s warm regard for him, may make a young man pause and stop short at the half-open door of worldly enticement, and, having stopped, listen to the distant church chant that calls and entreats… and, who knows, perhaps the young soul will be saved after all, for who can save «one of these little ones» (Mt 18:6)… In any case, these «thoughts», in a hard hour of life, may with success stand up against the comfortless, gloomy philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Count A. D.