12. Continuation of the Account of the Manifestation of the Gracious Help of Father Seraphim After His Death

In the preceding chapters, after the portrayal of the ascetic life of the elder of God and the accounts of those miraculous works of God’s mercy which were performed through his intercession upon those who came to him for help while he was still alive, an account was also given of those miracles worked through his prayers after his repose. The accounts of these miracles were brought up to the 1860s, when the first edition of this book appeared. In the present chapter these accounts are continued, for the source of God’s mercy through the prayers of the blessed elder Seraphim has never dried up and does not dry up to this day. From eighty written statements from persons who received gracious help through his prayers during the period from the 1860s to the 1890s—statements verified by an ecclesiastical commission, as mentioned in the preface to this book—the statements of fourteen persons are included here, persons over whom, through Father Seraphim’s prayers, especially remarkable manifestations of the Lord’s mercy were performed.

We bring first the letter of Mrs. Zhukovskaya to the abbess of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery, Maria: “One day our daughter, being about five years old, fell ill with all the signs of concealed scarlet fever that had gone to the brain. Knowing from experience all the horror of this illness, I asked my husband to call on Father Nazary, priest of the Court Hospital Church at the Police Bridge in St. Petersburg, and to ask the father to roll water over the little stone of the holy elder Seraphim. Learning of our child’s illness, Father Nazary was kind enough to give us also a fragment of the stone, telling my husband that when we rolled water over it, we should read ‘Our Father’ three times and ‘Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos’ the same number of times, dipping the stone itself into the water. Before my husband returned from Father Nazary, a doctor had visited us and informed me that if the illness took a bad turn, the patient would complain of dizziness accompanied by vomiting. The doctor had barely left when all of this occurred, and the patient began to rave with her eyes open. At that moment my husband returned home. Learning all my fears about the patient, he said to me, handing me the stone: ‘Here is your medicine,’ explaining how the water was to be rolled over it. With reverence I kissed the stone and immediately prepared the water. This was at about twelve noon. My husband left for work and returned at four; during that interval I tried to give the patient water more frequently with a teaspoon; by the time her father arrived she had come out of her stupor, and by evening she asked for her toys. The doctor, visiting the patient at about eight in the evening, expected to find her in a dangerous condition. His amazement was great when he found her well.”

Ivan Latkin, a merchant of Krasnoyarsk, wrote to the same Diveyevo abbess Maria: “In the 1860s I was unwell in the city of Krasnoyarsk from autumn for about two months—I could not even walk. But the master in whose employ I was sent for me, so that I should prepare to travel with him to the city of Tomsk. The medical orderly who was treating me at that time told me that if I did not change the dressings on my wounds four times every day, I would have to die. Despite this, though involuntarily, I was compelled to travel with the master, and we sat in the carriage side by side; owing to the poor road, the journey to Tomsk took more than three days, and I dared not tell the master of my illness and changed no dressings throughout the entire journey. In Tomsk we stopped at lodgings, where in the evening, after some time had passed, I lay down to sleep on a sofa on my side and fell asleep. And there in my sleep I saw—a little old man came in wearing a short white tunic that reached above his knees, with a belt. Coming up to me, he struck the palm of his hand against my leg and said: ‘So you stopped getting treatment and recovered!’ I woke up at once, struck a light, and looked at my wounds, from which I had not removed the dressings during the entire journey. To my astonishment, not a trace of the illness was to be found, which gladdened me to such a degree that I ran back and forth several times during the night, without fully thinking where I was going, to the chapel of the Iveron Mother of God, intending to buy a book of the Lives of the Holy Fathers—but they were asleep there, since it was past midnight. When it began to grow light, I ran again, and to my joy and happiness I saw a monk sweeping the snow at the chapel. I asked him whether there were books of the Lives of the Holy Fathers, and he answered that there were. The monk unlocked the chapel, went in, and handed me a small book. Remembering the face of the elder I had seen in the dream, I took the book in my hands, opened it, and unexpectedly beheld that very Elder. It was Father Seraphim, hieromonk of the Sarov Hermitage, whom I had not previously seen or known.”

Priest Gavriil Galitsky wrote to the abbess of the Diveyevo Monastery, Maria, the following: “In August 1861, owing to a cold and still more to my grievous sins, I was struck down with typhoid fever. I was being treated in the city of Orlov in Vyatka province, but the medicines gave me no relief at all, and hour by hour my illness grew stronger and stronger, so that I despaired of recovering, all the more so since I could take no medicines without them causing me to vomit. There was also no sleep. One night I began to take leave of my wife, for I felt death drawing near. But my wife said to me: ‘If you no longer hope to live, you must at least die as a Christian.’ But I had no inclination to cleanse my conscience through repentance and receive Holy Communion; instead there was a kind of despondency and anguish. I told this to my wife, and she with tears begged me to send for the archpriest, even though it was already midnight. I told my wife to bring me some book in the hope that reading would dispel the tedium, and she brought me the book ‘Life of the Sarov Hermit, Hieromonk Seraphim.’ Having read this book, I at once resolved to repent of my sins, and then and there had the archpriest sent for; he came to me immediately and administered the last rites. About four days after receiving communion, I set out for treatment to the city of Vyatka, arriving there in the evening. This was already in early September. The next morning at seven o’clock, an elderly woman came to my lodgings and offered me a portrait of Father Seraphim of Sarov; I took two portraits from her, and as she was leaving she said to me: ‘Father, when the time comes, do not forget Agafya.’ Regarding both of these occurrences as a sign from God, I turned in prayer to the servant of God Seraphim and gave a vow to visit the Sarov Hermitage and serve a memorial service at Father Seraphim’s grave. From that time I began to feel better, so that within a week the doctor even permitted me to go out to the monastery and into town, and I began to repent of the vow I had made. And, as it seems, it was as a result of that repentance that my illness intensified once again, so that the doctors I summoned refused to treat me, and the last of them, the surgeon F-n, said to me: ‘Father, I will continue to visit you, but I give no word that I can cure you: seek a spiritual physician.’ Then once more I gave a firm vow to go without fail to the Sarov Hermitage. And through the prayers of the Venerable Father Seraphim I was completely healed of my illness. Being in the Sarov Hermitage, I bought the book ‘Life of Elder Seraphim,’ the 1863 edition, and reading it I learned that the first superior of the Diveyevo community was Agafya. I then recalled the last words of the elderly woman from whom I had bought Father Seraphim’s portraits—‘When the time comes, remember Agafya’—and thought that I must pray also for this venerable one, that she too is close to the Lord.”

The account of the healing of Matvey Karpov, a townsman of Krasnoslobodsk, from a toothache. “I was afflicted with severe toothache for about two and a half years. It distracted me from my work. I took various medicines, but they gave no relief, and various spells were of no use. In 1866 I felt a desire to go to the Sarov Hermitage to ask God, through the prayers of Father Seraphim at his grave, for healing from the toothache. On the eighth of September, on the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, after the celebration of the Holy Liturgy, I, along with other people, asked the serving hieromonk to serve a memorial service at Father Seraphim’s grave. After the service was completed, I wished to press my cheeks three times against the memorial stone, and from this I at once felt relief, and afterward complete healing.”

The account of the wife of Priest Alexander Vinogradov about the healing of her son from stammering. “In 1865, for my sins, my three-year-old son, a boy who was quick in conversation, suddenly began to stammer. This stammering grew worse and more severe with time, and by the beginning of 1866 had increased to the point where he could not get out a single word at once, but would first struggle for five minutes or more: ‘a, a, a…’—go completely red, finally seize his cheeks with both hands, and run off in tears to hide somewhere and weep over his inability to say what he wanted. For us his parents it was very painful to see; we looked with dread toward the future, wondering how the poor boy would answer his lessons when he went to school. We would often say to him: ‘Sashenka! Think first, then speak’—imagining that he had acquired the habit of stammering so terribly from haste in speech; and sometimes we would say to him: ‘Better keep silent: it is very unpleasant to hear your stammering.’ All of this visibly distressed the boy himself, who was precociously clever for his age. During Great Lent in 1866, acquaintances gave me the book of the Life of the Sarov ascetic Father Seraphim to read. I read it aloud to my son; the son listened to my reading with remarkable attention and comprehension, and began thereafter to have faith in the holiness of Father Seraphim and to feel love for him. He expressed this by kissing with reverence the small images depicting Father Seraphim. So the days of Holy Pascha passed; during those days, namely on Tuesday, his father sent Sasha from the front part of our house to the back rooms to say something to me. He opened the door to us, tried to speak, but could not—went red, clenched his cheeks (for the stammering caused him pain in the cheeks), ran back behind the door, and wept. Seeing him in this condition, I and the nursemaid—a young woman living with us—both wept. I embraced my unfortunate son and advised him, at the sound of the bells calling to ‘It is truly meet,’ to pray, or at least to cross himself wherever he might happen to be at that moment, and to ask Father Seraphim to heal him through his prayers. The boy received my advice with joy and promised to do so, which he then faithfully did. That very hour I privately made a vow to serve a memorial service for the repose of the soul of Father Seraphim, went to my husband, and told him everything. But my husband, who at that time had not yet read the Life of Father Seraphim, received my vow with great indifference and promised to serve the memorial service someday. Remarkably, from that very day on which we made a vow to appeal to Father Seraphim and to pray for the repose of his blessed soul, our son suddenly stopped stammering altogether and began to speak everything well, distinctly and clearly… We careless sinners thought: here is what people said was true—that with time this illness would pass; and so it has passed—and we served no memorial service. Only I harbored in my soul the thought that someday I would fulfill the promise on some occasion. About three weeks passed thus. And then the Lord was pleased to instruct us careless ones and to show us that our son had not recovered by himself, but through the prayers of Father Seraphim. Our son suddenly began to stammer again as before, again could not say a single word at once. Then I, sinful one, understood everything and conveyed my view of this to my husband. My husband then wished to read the biography of Father Seraphim; he began to read it, felt reverence toward the elder of God, and soon expressed to me a desire to serve the promised memorial service for the father—which he did. After the memorial service our child recovered completely at once. More than that: in that same year 1866, being four and a half years old, he insistently demanded to be taught to read.”

Collegiate Secretary Andrei Vasilyev wrote to the Sarov Abbot Seraphim the following: “In March 1866 my wife Aleksandra Nikolaevna, returning from the Sarov Hermitage, saw in a dream the departed ascetic of the Sarov Monastery, the holy elder Father Seraphim, who told her that she would have pain in her side and that no one could help her but he. Indeed, in April of that same year my wife felt a severe pain in her right side, and the illness took on such extreme proportions that it drove her to distraction. We sought the advice of doctors in the cities of Penza and Saransk, who treated her for more than two years, and though they gave some relief, they provided no definitive help, and informed me that my wife’s illness was incurable. Trusting in the power of the prayers of the holy elder Father Seraphim and recalling his appearance to my wife in the dream, I set out with all my family in September of that year for the Sarov Hermitage, where, having remained until the eighteenth, we were found worthy to receive Holy Communion, to hear a moleben before the icon of the Queen of Heaven of the Life-Giving Spring, and a memorial service in the cell and at the grave of the holy Father Seraphim. We then set out for the Seraphim-Diveyevo women’s monastery, and there the next day likewise heard a moleben before the icon of the Queen of Heaven of Tenderness and a memorial service in Father Seraphim’s cell, where all kissed the humble garment of the holy elder, and returned to our lodgings. During the night of that day the illness with my wife repeated so violently that it was repeatedly accompanied by vomiting of bile in separate chunks and finally by a black liquid resembling earth, and the patient was drained to the last of her strength; but having faith in the power of Father Seraphim’s prayers, I again appealed in prayer to him and asked also for the prayers of the sisters of the monastery, after which the abbess, Mother Maria, visited my sick wife and placed upon her the cap and towel of Father Seraphim that she had brought. After this my wife never felt even the slightest pain, as though she had never had it at all. Finally my wife again saw Father Seraphim in a dream, and he said to her: ‘Well, my joy, your illness will not return to you, and you will be well.’”

From a letter by the Alferov family. In 1866, on December 6, writes Mr. Alferov, my daughter Sofia, being one year and two months old, suddenly lost the use of her left leg; the little one’s suffering was unbearable—she could sleep neither day nor night. The doctors who treated her could not even determine what the illness was, for there was no swelling. In short, she could not use her leg at all, and the various ointments prescribed by the doctors only intensified the pain. My wife and I were deeply distressed to witness the child’s unbearable suffering and, being unable to relieve it, we turned for help to the Most Holy Heavenly Lady—we asked a priest to serve a prayer service to the Kazan Mother of God, beseeching the Queen of Heaven to send our daughter healing. Shortly after this, before dinner, my wife, while sitting by the cradle of the sick child, fell asleep for a few minutes and saw the hieromonk elder Seraphim in a white smock, who said to her: “Do not weep and do not despair—your daughter will be alive and well. She has a dislocation; her leg must be set as soon as possible.” At that my wife awoke and told me of her dream at dinner. After dinner I lay down to rest and myself saw the elder Seraphim in a dream, also in a white smock, who, turning to me, said: “Do not worry: your daughter will be alive.” Upon waking, I went to the dining room, where I found my wife speaking with a midwife, who had come specifically to advise us to consult a bone-setter—a peasant well known throughout the Glazov district of Vyatka province, where I was serving at the time. I told them of my dream and sent the coachman for the said bone-setter, who arrived the following morning. After examining our daughter’s sick leg, he found a dislocation in three places: at the foot, above it, and at the knee. He also told us that it would need to be set two more times. After the first setting of the leg, on the third or fourth day, she lifted it for the first time, to our great common joy; after each setting she improved, and within three weeks she was completely well. In 1867, around July 8, my son Alexander fell ill, being three months old. Around July 15, I returned from the district, went to bed at one in the morning, and in a dream saw the elder Seraphim, in the same white smock, who said to me: “He will die.” Three days later, my son died. In 1870, on August 2, in St. Petersburg, a daughter Olga was born to me. When she was six weeks old, my wife went to visit the godfather, and I, remaining at home, fell asleep by the baby’s crib and saw in a dream the hieromonk elder Seraphim entering my room in a white smock, who said to me: “She will not live to one year.” And indeed she died on July 20, 1871, twelve days short of a year. When I was serving in the town of Glazov, in 1865, I felt a sharp pain in my left side; at times my suffering was unbearable. When I arrived in Petersburg in 1870, the physicians I consulted found my illness incurable. Leaving service in 1876, I traveled to the town of Zadonsk, Voronezh province, went frequently to the Liturgy at the monastery, and mentally always asked the elder Seraphim to relieve my illness. On the night from the 23rd to the 24th of August, while I slept, the elder Seraphim approached my bed—in a cassock, epitrachelion, and cuffs; a deacon in full vestments stood some distance behind him, and someone else in monastic garb. Father Seraphim drew close to me, pressed his left knee against my aching side, and with both hands scraped my ribs in such a way that when I looked at the afflicted spot, some bloody sinews—like leeches, the thickness of a finger—hung beneath the ribs. When the vision passed, I awoke and immediately felt relief. From the first days of September, writes Mr. Alferov’s wife, I suffered from palpitations of the heart and tightness of breath in the chest, with a severe cough, pain in the chest, back, and left side; all this time I underwent treatment, but the medicines brought no relief. In the summer of 1884 I suffered from a debility of the whole body; at times from weakness I could barely walk. In my prayers I always asked the Mother of God and the elder Seraphim to send me healing. On the night from the 4th to the 5th of August, I saw in a dream the elder Seraphim in a black mantle, epitrachelion, and cuffs. He came up to me—though I do not know where—took me by the shoulders, and placed me in a large room, saying: “Fear not, my daughter! You are about to receive a great joy: a vision of the icon of the Mother of God.” At once a loud noise was heard; from fear and weakness my head was spinning, but it was supported by the hands of Father Seraphim, and I was encouraged by his word: “Fear not!” Suddenly the noise subsided, a door opened, and a woman entered in monastic garb, holding an icon of the Mother of God, accompanied by a great many persons, also in black monastic dress, who remained in the doorway. Beholding the beauty, majesty, and divine goodness of the nun, I could barely stand on my feet from awe, but Father Seraphim’s hands held me firmly. He said to me again: “Fear not!” and led me up to the icon of the Mother of God. The woman in monastic garb blessed me three times with the said icon, and I kissed it. She who had blessed me sat down on a nearby bench—Father Seraphim also helped me to sit beside her. The divinely gentle face of the nun holding the icon of the Mother of God moved me to beg her for healing, and I asked her permission to kiss her hand (from awe, I long hesitated to do so). She, smiling with divine graciousness, extended her hand to me, saying: “As much as you wish.” I kissed her hand with reverence, mentally never ceasing to beg her for healing. When my sinful lips touched her divine hand, my whole soul was filled with an inexpressible blessedness, from which I was recalled by the voice of Father Seraphim, who had been near me all the while, on my right side: “That is enough for you now—go; here, the deacon will see you out.” At once a deacon appeared in a black cassock, whom I had not noticed before. The vision passed; the deacon walked ahead, while I rose from the bench on my own and followed him, feeling no weakness at all. We passed through many rooms, and at last he led me into a small room hung all about with icons, before which lamps were burning. Entering that room, he asked me: “Do you know where you are now?” I answered: “No.” “In Kostroma,” was his reply. At that I awoke. From great joy and awe I was shaking as if with a fever; when I had calmed somewhat, I felt relief. The whole day I felt stronger, and on August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, I went for a walk with my family from the Finland Railway station, where we were staying at a summer cottage, and reached Shuvalovo station without fatigue, a distance of about three versts. Thanks to the intercession of the Mother of God and the hieromonk elder Seraphim, I feel no more weakness, and my health has improved.

The candidate Potapy Maksimov wrote the following to Seraphim, abbot of the Sarov Hermitage. In 1868, on the feast of the Holy Trinity, I went to the church of God with my children to hear the Liturgy, while my wife Maria, who professes the Roman Catholic faith, went for the same purpose to the Catholic church. After the service ended and I returned home, I learned that my wife had not yet returned. Under the influence of an unpleasant feeling I awaited her return, and when she arrived, I began to reproach her for her long absence. When she answered that the reason for her absence was the wish to hear the divine service to its end, I spoke blasphemously of her piety. At that moment our daughter Darya, seeing her mother’s grief and my agitated state, came up to me with a plea not to offend her mother. “Get out!” I shouted at her. The poor child recoiled, and that same day she fell ill. Supposing that my daughter’s illness was the result of a minor fright, a week after she fell ill I invited more than twelve physicians to the house to provide assistance to the sick child. But medical assistance did not relieve the child’s sufferings. For eleven months my daughter suffered a debility of the whole body to such a degree that she could not even lift her head. Deeply repenting of my hastiness and attributing my daughter’s illness to a trial sent upon me by God, I wept and prayed. Having read the life of the elder Seraphim of the Sarov Hermitage and his miraculous intercession on behalf of true believers and those who pray, I, at the advice of my spiritual father, served a memorial service for the reposed elder of God. The priest who conducted the service then heard the confession of and gave communion to my nearly dying daughter. And on the following day, March 19, 1869, my daughter Darya rose from her bed and began to walk freely about the room. To our question of how this had happened, Darya replied that in her sleep she had seen a priest who, approaching her bed, said: “Rise, little Dashenka, the Mother of God has told you to get up.”

Pavel Ivanov Baykov, a townsman of Nizhny Novgorod, testifies: in 1868, when I was a shop clerk for the merchant Storozhev in the town of Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod province, in the month of December, while at work in a wine cellar, at eight o’clock in the evening, an illness of the eyes came upon me, and at the same time a kind of dread seized me. The illness of the eyes and the fear that attacked me intensified day by day and continued for more than a year, so that in the end a severe aching pain in the eyes developed, and I could barely look at anything, still less at the light. The doctors, both those in Arzamas and those in Lukoyanov, who treated me for a considerable time, could bring me no benefit. At that time my mother, a God-fearing old woman, having heard much about the healing of various ailments through the prayers of the hieromonk elder Seraphim, gave me the instruction to ask Father Seraphim in prayer for the healing of my illness, and she also advised me to walk on foot to the Sarov Hermitage to serve a memorial service for him. I received my mother’s counsel with zeal and constantly asked Father Seraphim in prayer for the healing of my illness, and I also walked on foot to the Sarov Hermitage, where I served a memorial service at Father Seraphim’s grave. After arriving from Sarov at the village of Ivantsevo, about two weeks later, it pleased God, through the prayers of Father Seraphim, to work a miracle for me. My elder brother Alexei had at that time rented an estate garden in the village of Ivantsevo, belonging to Countess Protasova. In June of 1870, at midday, my brother suggested that I walk with him to the garden, which was about one hundred or one hundred and fifty sazhens from our dwelling. We went to the garden, sat near the shelter for a while, then my brother said it was time for dinner, and I told him: “Go ahead, I will come by myself in a few minutes somehow.” My brother had not gone more than a few sazhens from me when I was suddenly and instantly overcome with a powerful urge to sleep, even though I had no habit of sleeping during the day at that time. At that very moment, in the space of some five minutes, I saw in sleep that I was in Sarov near the grave of Father Seraphim, praying on my knees to God and asking for the healing of my illness; at that moment great fiery sparks flew from my eyes. I cannot recall whether I was asleep or in some kind of oblivion, but when I came to, I was trembling violently, and I felt no more pain in my eyes.

The healing of Anna Semyonovna Rubtsova. “Wondrous is God in His saints, the God of Israel”—so wrote Mrs. Rubtsova to the abbot of Sarov—and upon me, a wretched, unworthy sinner, He has shown His mercy, through His great servant, the desert-dweller of Sarov, the hieromonk Seraphim. May his glory spread from one end of Russian soil to the other! Here, on the border of Russia with Poland, I sing memorial services for him with tears of heartfelt gratitude; and I ask you, Your Reverence, to convey my humble request to one of the hieromonks, to serve a memorial service at his tomb and a prayer service of thanksgiving to the Mother of God of All Who Sorrow. Now please do not find it troublesome to hear how I, living several thousand versts away, came to know that your holy hermitage possesses such a treasure. As a child I often visited a monastery where my aunt lived and saw a painting on canvas, done in oils, of magnificent workmanship—“The Repose of the Hieromonk Seraphim”—and she told me a great deal about his lofty life and his unfathomable labors. Decades passed; my husband was appointed vice-governor to the town of Kovno, right on the border with Poland; there, I do not know why, this painting began to come into my mind frequently, though previously I had never thought of it. A year later my husband was transferred to the town of Vilna as director of the chancellery of the Northwestern Region. On my arrival in Vilna I became gravely ill and was sick for nearly four years with various ailments. At last my nose became diseased—a severe swelling and redness appeared in the left nostril. For eight months various doctors treated me, but nothing helped: some said it was a polyp, others threatened an even more serious illness. In the end it was decided to perform an operation in the spring if the growth did not yield to treatment; but the operation was very dangerous for me on account of my anemia. One day, having wept to my fill, I lay down to sleep and in a dream saw the painting I have mentioned, and it remained so vividly in my memory that even now I could draw that pale, wax-white elder with gray hair, kneeling with his hands folded on his chest, in a white smock with prayer beads, his eyes cast down, as if in inner prayer, looking nothing at all like a dead man. This painting so gripped my soul that I did not want to get up for a long time—I kept closing my eyes and savoring it, sincerely regretting that the painting could now not be obtained, since no one knew who had received it after my aunt’s death. That very same day (it was a Sunday) I sent to the abbess Flaviana asking for books to read, and—can you imagine my astonishment and joy—she sent me the life of the hieromonk Seraphim with six illustrations, among which was his hermitage with the spring. Having read of all the healings granted by him during his life and after his death, I pressed that little picture to my face and wept, saying: “How fortunate are those people: they saw you, Servant of God, and through your prayers and blessing received healing from this spring; whereas I can never do this, living so far from this holy place.” My aching nostril pressed right up against the image of the spout on the picture, and to my astonishment blood began to flow from it; then it seemed slightly easier for me to breathe. The next day I repeated the same thing, and again blood flowed. And each time I pressed the picture to my face, blood would come from my nose—the swelling and the tissue swelled down, and my nose came to its proper condition.

The healing of Ivan Zasukhin, a merchant of Murom, and of his son and daughter (described in the journal “Grazhdanin” for October 1884). Ivan Ivanov Zasukhin, a merchant of Murom, arrived in Murom at his home from the village of Uryupino on March 21, 1882, very ill. By his own account he had fallen ill there with typhoid fever on March 3. The local doctor of Uryupino who treated him somewhat alleviated the illness but advised him to travel to his home region, which he did. The journey greatly exhausted the patient, and he arrived in Murom very weak. A doctor, Stabrovsky, was summoned. Mr. Stabrovsky also diagnosed the illness as typhoid fever and began treatment; the illness weakened, and according to Zasukhin’s own observation, the fever temperature dropped from 40.1 degrees to 37.5 degrees. After a few days, the patient began to improve. But during the illness a swelling had formed behind his ears and then at the top of his right leg. The physician found it necessary to lance this swelling in order to allow the accumulated matter to drain. But the lancing was unsuccessful—the matter did not come out, and the swelling began to grow more and more. Neither Stabrovsky nor another physician could help with this condition. Then it was proposed to the patient to go to St. Petersburg, on the assumption that perhaps a surgical solution might be found there. The patient did just that and traveled to St. Petersburg. A council of Petersburg professors Bogdanovsky and Multanovsky found surgery impossible and advised the patient to return home. After returning to Murom, a new complication appeared in Zasukhin’s illness: inflammation of the pleura developed, accompanied by a stomach disorder; the patient weakened entirely. Other physicians were invited for a consultation, and they acknowledged the patient’s condition to be hopeless and even named the day of his death. After such a verdict from the physicians, the patient began to prepare himself for death. A priest was invited, as a physician of the soul. He found the patient very weak but in his right mind. As a true Christian, Zasukhin made a sincere confession and was found worthy of Holy Communion. A few days passed, and the priest was summoned to the patient again. He arrived to find that although the man was still conscious, his strength had given out entirely, and the prayer of departure was read over him. But on the third day the patient improved. This came about because in the neighborhood of the patient lived a certain respectable Mrs. M. F. Bychkova; she was very sorry that such a good neighbor was dying so young, and she brought to the dying man’s wife some water taken from Father Seraphim’s spring and asked her to give it to the dying man to drink. The wife, taking this water, offered it to her husband to drink, but he could barely open his mouth—she could only pour a few drops into his mouth from a teaspoon, and poured the remaining water over his head. From the moment she poured a few drops into his mouth and moistened his head, the patient fell completely still, so that she thought he might actually be dying, and she began to watch closely. But the patient, to her astonishment, fell into a quiet sleep. Several hours passed in this state. Then the patient awoke and asked for something to drink. His wife, from such unexpectedness, was completely at a loss and did not know what to give him that would not be harmful; it occurred to her to give him milk, which she did; but then she remembered that milk had been forbidden to him, and so she began to fear bad consequences. The patient drank and felt that it was good for him. His stomach returned to function and the previous symptoms did not recur. From that moment (November 16) his condition improved. The next day the physician listened to Zasukhin’s chest and found an improvement. However, the hip remained as painful and swollen as before; the fistulous tracts did not close. At that point the patient conceived a desire, despite the extreme impossibility owing to his illness, to personally make a pilgrimage to this servant of God, and he set out for the Sarov Hermitage. The patient’s wife took along all the necessities for burial, just in case. All the children were taken so that the patient, in case of a sorrowful outcome, might see his children in his last moments. The patient’s condition was very grave: he could not sit in a carriage because his sick leg was bent, and the jolting of the road produced unbearable pain. At every stop he was carried out of the carriage in arms. In such a painful state Zasukhin arrived at the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery. Here the patient intended to rest for a time from the difficult journey and to stay for a full day. This was June 5, the feast day of the Holy Trinity. The time for the all-night vigil came, and the patient, despite his severe pain, resolved to attend the service. With the help of his wife and servants he was carried on a stretcher from the guesthouse to the church and was brought into it almost entirely by hand. When after the magnification the entire people had venerated the icon of the Holy Trinity, the sick man also went, with great effort, aided by his wife and others, on his crutches, to venerate the festal icon and receive unction with holy oil. When he had venerated the icon and received unction, his eyes involuntarily turned to the holy icon of the Mother of God standing in the iconostasis—the very icon that had been in the cell of the elder Seraphim and before which he had prayed so fervently—and at that moment the patient felt his leg firmly placed on the floor, without pain. He lifted his crutches and, without their help, to the amazement of all who were present, walked to his place. When the service ended, Zasukhin boldly stood on his feet and walked out of the church, where his servants were waiting with the stretcher; but he, needing no assistance, even gave away his crutches and walked to the guesthouse (a distance of about a quarter of a verst) entirely on his own. The next day the patient already went on foot again to the church, where he received Holy Communion, and that same day he hastened to Sarov, directly to Father Seraphim’s grave, where he served a memorial service. In the morning, after the service, he hastened to that healing spring from whose water he had so miraculously been saved from death. This spring is about two versts from the monastery. But the patient seemed to feel no fatigue: before, he could not cross even a room without outside assistance, and now he walked this considerable distance with ease. Father Seraphim’s spring flows from a hillside, and the faithful approach it by undressing to the skin; the approach to the spring was quite difficult because of the terrain. On the way the patient deliberated whether or not to remove the drains from the afflicted area. Many advised him not to remove them, and he did not. Then the patient undressed to the skin and went under the spring itself; as soon as he felt the cold stream of the spring upon him, that cold stream aroused in his body a certain relieving warmth, and his strength increased. He came out of the spring and saw that one of the drains in the swelling was no longer with him, while he removed the other himself. The next day the patient received Holy Communion at the Liturgy. Thereafter Zasukhin became completely well. Where the swelling had been, that spot came to its normal condition. The son of Mr. Zasukhin, a boy of eight years, had his entire head covered with scabs and severe pain; they had taken him to the renowned professor of skin diseases, Mr. Polotebnov, who, upon examining the boy, said that it was impossible to interrupt his illness in less than two years. Zasukhin took the boy with his family to Sarov; on the way to the Sarov Hermitage, on June 5, the feast of the Holy Trinity, they stopped to rest from the road at the Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent—founded by Father Seraphim and, as it were, born of his spirit—and there they learned from the nuns about the elder’s commandment to walk with inner prayer along the little trench dug at his direction by the labor of the sisters, along which, by his own words, the Mother of God Herself had walked. The Zakhuins set out as a whole family to fulfill what the holy elder had commanded. The sick boy, at the advice of the accompanying nun, bending down into the very depths of the trench, plucked grass and flowers, spreading them all the while over his sick head. Arriving in Sarov, he bathed in the Seraphim spring, and upon returning home on June 13 to the town of Murom, his head had not only completely cleared but had grown over thickly with beautiful hair, without the slightest trace of any ailment. The third sign of the mercy of God to those who come to Him in faith occurred with Zasukhin’s daughter, whose injured finger was healed by the oil from the lamp above Father Seraphim’s tomb.

A four-year-old girl, Feodosia Vlasova, living with her parents in the town of Chelyabinsk, in 1885, on January 7, was seized with a severe fever throughout her body, which lasted two weeks; afterwards a hump gradually formed on her back, and she screamed through the nights to the point of losing consciousness. This continued for four years: village healers treated her, and physicians were also consulted, but they refused, saying she would not live long. The parents then placed all their hope in God. Over the course of four years the girl became so hunched that she could not walk upright; if she went anywhere, she held on to her knees with both hands and moved forward slowly. Her elder sister had been given to the Chelyabinsk Odogitrievsky Convent, and it occurred to her parents to teach Feodosia to read and write. In 1888, on September 1, they brought her to the convent, and the mother abbess accepted her for instruction, but not into the school—simply into a cell, because attending school was too difficult for the girl—and placed her in the care of the senior nun Evpraxia. Feodosia lived there three months, and her illness grew so severe that she could not walk at all. When the sisters would go to church, they used to carry her in their arms. Having heard of the miracles of the venerable Father Seraphim and on the advice of the senior nun Evpraxia, the parents of Feodosia sent to the Sarov Hermitage to have a memorial service and a prayer service served at Father Seraphim’s grave, and they asked that some earth from his grave be sent to them. When they received the earth from the grave, they served a prayer service to the Mother of God and a memorial service for Father Seraphim, put the earth in a bottle, poured water over it, and began giving the sick girl water infused with this earth to drink—whereupon she felt herself completely well, and within a week she began walking on her own, without any special assistance.

On March 26, 1890, a peasant from Astrakhan province, Tsarevsky district, the village of Zaplavnoye—Ivan Kharitonov Shazhkov—appeared before the prior of the Sarov Hermitage, Abbot Rafail, and made the following statement: in the previous year, 1889, in the month of December, a week before the Nativity of Christ, both his extremities, without any cause that he could identify, suddenly went numb, though he felt no pain in them; yet he could not use his hands up to the elbows or his feet up to the knees; in addition, the cavity of his mouth swelled. The fingers of his hands clenched into a fist, so that when it was necessary to take a spoon to eat, the handle was pushed into the gap between his thumb and index finger and he ate in this manner; he could neither dress himself nor put on a belt, and when he was helped to stand he fell either forward or backward. Shazhkov took no medicines. His condition lasted about three weeks. His mother-in-law, who had visited Sarov and had witnessed the gracious help of Father Seraphim to many sick persons, advised him to make a vow to walk to Sarov, to bow at the tomb of the holy elder Father Seraphim, and to ask his assistance in illness. Shazhkov gratefully received his mother-in-law’s counsel and with faith made a vow to go to Sarov and fulfill everything according to her instruction. From that very day when he made his vow, the strength in his hands and feet began to return; the swelling in his mouth disappeared; by the start of the Great Fast he had recovered and grown strong enough that on Wednesday of the first week of the fast he resolved to set out on the long journey to Sarov. However, in both his feet and hands, especially in the fingers, he still felt weakness, which gradually disappeared on the road. He arrived in Sarov on March 21, having made the entire journey of about 1,000 versts on foot with no harmful consequences to his health. There in Sarov he made his confession and was found worthy to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ; and on the 26th he went to Father Seraphim’s spring, where he bathed several times and received complete healing from his illness.

Mrs. Yu. V. Karazina writes in her account of the following miraculous occurrence: during my visit to the Sarov Hermitage on May 22, 1890, I went to visit Father Seraphim’s cell, where he had reposed. I approached his portrait and saw that the face was coming to life—the eyes were moving and opening, and the eyebrows were moving as well. I was so struck by this that I trembled all over and nearly fell. I turned to those standing near me and said in agitation: “Father Seraphim has come to life—his eyes have opened and his eyebrows are moving.” Coming back the following day, I found an entirely different expression on Father Seraphim’s portrait, but the eyes seemed to come alive again.

In conclusion we find it fitting to cite the letter of Lieutenant General Vrassky concerning the gracious help granted him by Father Seraphim during the elder’s lifetime. Although this event took place back in 1826, it was not included in earlier editions of the life, because P. A. Vrassky communicated it in writing to the former abbot of the Sarov Hermitage, Rafail, only in 1892.

In the year ‘26, being an officer, I visited the Sarov Hermitage and went, following the example of other pilgrims, to receive a blessing from the venerable Father Seraphim. In the corridor of his cell the cold was terrible, and I in my military overcoat was shivering from the frost. His cell-attendant told me that at that moment a monk was with Father Seraphim and the elder was conversing with him, while I, standing in the corridor, prayed to the Most Holy Mother of God. The door opened, the monk came out, and a few minutes later Father Seraphim opened the door and said: “What joy God gives me!” He led me into his cell, and since it was filled with various objects, he seated me on the threshold of his cell, while he himself sat on the floor facing me, holding my hand and speaking kindly with me—he even kissed my hand. Such was his love for his neighbor! I, sitting across from him, was in a state of some extraordinary rapture. After many conversations, I told him that my chest was aching (I was myself a thin, pale young man). To this he replied: “That is nothing,” rose, took a bottle, and handed it to me, saying: “Take a large swallow.” What was my horror, then, when olive oil poured into my mouth! I thought the consequence would immediately be bad, but on the contrary the oil proved pleasant. From that moment, thanks be to God, my chest no longer ached, and from a thin, pale young man I became a healthy and strong man. After a rather long time I was compelled to leave military service and depart on indefinite leave. This parting from St. Petersburg brought upon me such a melancholy that for a whole year I could find no peace from it. On my way to Arzamas I stopped at the Sarov Hermitage and immediately went to Father Seraphim’s grave, asked for a memorial service to be served for him, and as soon as it was served, my melancholy vanished in an instant and I became well.

In concluding our account, let us pause in reverent thought upon the particular ways of God’s providence in the life of the elder Seraphim.

The son of a citizen of Kursk, from his youth drawn by a secret desire to leave the world and serve God exclusively, as did St. Theodosius of the Caves, himself also a native of Kursk, he comes as a young man, known to no one, to the Sarov community, having left behind his mother, his brother, his property, and his home. Bringing nothing to the community but the ability to read and write, he begins his life from the lowest degrees of obedience and passes through them humbly, drawing to himself the love and respect of the authorities and brothers for his diligence and meekness. Meanwhile, in the depths of his soul—unnoticed by anyone, under the cover of deep humility—an inner man was ripening. The hard labor of monastic life—prayer, fasting, obedience, non-possessiveness—which would of itself be difficult enough for others, no longer satisfied him. In him there awakened a thirst for ever higher and higher struggles. And so in silent solitude he leads a life of strict reclusion, takes up a labor akin to that of the pillar-saints, imposes upon himself for a long time a vow of silence, and as if in a certain tomb, shuts himself away in enclosure. Then, having ripened in the spiritual life, moved by a special prompting of God, he opens the door of his cell and the door of his mouth—and for many years sweet streams of spiritually edifying teaching flow out to a countless multitude of people who sought his instruction. After prolonged struggles in various virtues, having acquired the spirit of love—which is the summit of perfection—he became a comforter of sorrows of the soul, a healer of bodily ailments, a guide of conscience for many. And so the obscure and poor newcomer to the Sarov community became, by the grace of God and his own humility, not only its glory, but an ornament of the whole Orthodox Church. The name of Seraphim was justly spread abroad as the name of one of the great ascetics of antiquity. In his person, for our age so poor in virtue and so weak in faith, it was as if an ancient ascetic of the Thebaid deserts or of the Caves of Kiev had been raised to life again. The noble and the simple, the rich and the poor—all flocked to the threshold of his cell, fell prostrate before the stooped elder clothed in a poor smock, opened the secrets of their conscience, confided their sorrows and needs, and received with sincere love and gratitude his every word, warmed by grace. And for a long, long time the words of the elder, spoken in a narrow cell, will resound throughout the wide expanse of Russia! For a long, long time they, like fertile seed, will bear the good fruit of good deeds! And never will his memory be blotted out, according to the word of Scripture: The righteous shall live forever.

The places hallowed by remembrance of Father Seraphim had always been carefully preserved and protected for the benefit of posterity, yet many of them took on a fully fitting appearance worthy of a holy site only recently. The place of Father Seraphim’s blessed repose—the grave with the gravestone—had previously remained uncovered, and pilgrims, when memorial services were served, sometimes had to stand bare-headed in rain and mud in summer and in blizzards in winter, kneeling in an open, unprotected spot. In the early 1890s, at the corner formed by the eastern wall of the side-chapel altar of the Dormition Cathedral and the southern wall of its main altar, above Father Seraphim’s grave, a chapel of sorts was constructed with a small dome and two doors. Two walls of this chapel consist of metal frames with panes of glass. Above the elder’s tomb an undying lamp burns, and on the two stone walls of the chapel are placed six canvas paintings depicting Father Seraphim: (praying on the rock, the appearance of the Mother of God to the elder on the feast of the Annunciation, his repose, feeding a bear, a full-length depiction of Father Seraphim, and his blessing of a pilgrim by the spring). Since the grave of another great Sarov ascetic—the schema-monk Mark, who had died before him (in 1817)—lies at Father Seraphim’s feet, there is placed across from it a depiction of that elder as well.

The spring constructed by Father Seraphim—this truly “source of miraculous healings,” which every visitor to Sarov has always considered and still considers it an absolute obligation to visit, and, if not to bathe in it, at least to wet one’s head and drink of the healing water—had previously remained in appearance a simple well with a trough leading from it at the level of the water it contained, from which the water overflowing above that level ran off in a fairly strong stream, under which those wishing to bathe would stand. But since this spring stands in an open spot, it was quite inconvenient for pilgrims—who gathered very often in large numbers and of various ages and genders—to bathe there. Nowadays above Father Seraphim’s spring a beautiful chapel has been built with holy icons and two large depictions of him, and beside it a bathhouse with two fully separate sections. Near the spring, on the site of Father Seraphim’s near desert cell of wood, a new cell has been built according to the same plan and dimensions (the original was transported to Diveyevo).

In the forest, one verst from the spring, on the spot where the rock stood upon which Father Seraphim performed his prayerful feat of 1,000 nights, a shelter was erected in 1890 in the form of an open chapel on four carved pillars with a tent-shaped roof, with a cupola and a cross covered in iron sheeting. The lower sides of this structure are enclosed by railings. Inside a cross has been placed bearing an image of the Crucifixion of the Lord, and a large stone has been set there in remembrance of Father Seraphim’s labor.

On the site of Father Seraphim’s far desert cell, during excavations in 1893, an underground grotto of brick construction was uncovered, approximately three arshins in length and one arshin in width, into which the elder would withdraw from visitors who beset him during his prayerful labors, and where he had stones for standing upon. This grotto was left in exactly the same condition as it was found, and above it a cell was also built according to the plan and dimensions of the previous one—which had likewise been transported to Diveyevo and converted in its entirety into the altar of the cemetery church. Pilgrims consider it an absolute obligation to visit this place as well, hallowed by the memory of Father Seraphim’s wondrous labors. Beside this cell is the spot of his small kitchen garden. Father Seraphim’s cell, in which he labored from the time of his return from the desert enclosure in 1810, in which he was found worthy, a year and ten months before his repose, of the visitation of the Mother of God, and where his righteous soul departed to the Lord, stands within the monastery enclosure directly across from his grave. It formerly constituted part of the southern wing of the monastic cells. From the enclosure a narrow passage led into it, with two doors on the right: the first door led to the cell of the monk Pavel who lived with Father Seraphim, the second led to the cell of the elder himself. This latter cell is five arshins in both length and width, with a height of three arshins and ten vershoks. On its southern side are two small windows looking onto the gardens and the Sarovka River; to the right is a tiled stove with a small sleeping bench. Beside the stove there are displayed in a cabinet and in a glass case several objects that remained after the elder: his mantle (together with the mantle and staff of the schema-monk Mark), his cap, prayer beads, cross, hair that had fallen out during his illness, the Gospel he carried with him, a piece of the stone from the hermitage on which he prayed for 1,000 nights; and also the bench made by Father Seraphim’s own hands, signed by him. At the front wall of the cell stands a copy of the Diveyevo icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness,” together with several other icons, and beside the glass case with the elder’s belongings are placed two large canvas depictions of him (full-length, blessing, and his repose).

From 1897 the cells adjacent to Father Seraphim’s cell have been dismantled, and an expansive and magnificent church in the name of the Most Holy Trinity is being constructed over it. Thus the place of the prayerful labors and the blessed repose of the elder of God will be sheltered, in its inviolate state, under the roof of a church of the Lord.