The Dogmatic Meaning and Church-Canonical Significance of the Celebration of July 19

It is impossible to define the outer limit of the glorification of Saint Seraphim, which began even during the days of his earthly life; equally impossible is it to enumerate all the forms in which this glorification manifested itself, manifests itself now, and will continue to manifest itself. Yet within this boundless ocean of glory of God’s holy one there is a point upon which one may pause and thereby more clearly picture this phenomenon and discern its significance. That point must be named as the solemn celebration of the ecclesiastical glorification of Saint Seraphim that took place on the nineteenth of July. This celebration is twofold and consists of two acts: the canonization of Saint Seraphim, that is, his enrollment among the saints, and the opening of his venerable relics. The first consists in the fact that the “eternal memory” kept by the Church for the reposed ascetic of Sarov—which until that time had been expressed in prayer for the repose of his soul—from the nineteenth of July became a prayer addressed to the reposed one himself; and the opening of his holy relics consists in the fact that his remains, hidden until then in the earth (beneath the ground), were brought forth from the grave and openly offered to the faithful for the same veneration that we render to the life-giving cross of Christ and to the holy icons. On this occasion both acts were performed simultaneously and jointly, so that from an outward standpoint their separation is hardly convenient; nonetheless they are two distinct and independent acts which in other cases are frequently performed at different times, sometimes centuries apart from one another. Accordingly, our discourse will treat each of them separately.