3. From His Tonsure to His Withdrawal Into the Distant Wilderness

From his entry into the Sarov Hermitage, Prokhor spent eight years in the rank of novice. In the language of monks this time is called the probationary period—that is, a testing of whether one who desires the monastic life is ready to enter upon the path of more perfect life. The preliminary probationary period is set as a necessary condition for everyone passing from the world to exclusive service of God, as a preparation for that service. Prokhor had now grown to manhood: he was a little over twenty-five years of age. His outward appearance at this time had notable features. He was tall, about two arshins and eight vershoks in height; despite strict fasting and asceticism, his face was full, with a pleasing fairness of complexion, a straight and sharp nose, bright blue expressive and piercing eyes, and thick eyebrows; his hair was light brown and also thick. His face was framed by a thick, rounded beard, with long thick mustaches joining at the corners of the lips. He had a robust build and possessed great physical strength. Of his mental faculties, he had a retentive memory, a bright, lively, and precise imagination, and, connected with these, a captivating gift of speech. Prokhor, dedicating all his faculties and powers to the Lord, had thus passed through all the degrees of the monastery’s probationary period and had expressed in his actual life a complete readiness and fitness to receive the monastic vows. In severe bodily and spiritual trials sent to him by the Lord himself, his soul was purified and his heart strengthened in piety. Even while still at the novice stage he had striven for a strictly monastic—even ascetic—mode of life and, as we have seen, had already begun to lead it. The prior of the hermitage, now firmly persuaded of Prokhor’s calling, petitioned the ecclesiastical authority for his investiture with the monastic rank. With the approval of the Holy Synod, on August 13, 1786, his tonsure was performed by the superior Hieromonk Pakhomy. His sponsors were the venerable elders Joseph and Isaiah, who held the first places in the monastery’s hierarchy after the prior. At the tonsure he was given the new name Seraphim (“the fiery”). This name—given to Prokhor, following the custom of the previous century, without his prior knowledge or consent—may be seen as an expression of the monastery authorities’ understanding of him: they had seen Prokhor’s zeal for a godly life, they foresaw an even greater flame of love for God, and so they named him Seraphim. In the brotherhood registers for 1786 it is stated that Seraphim was tonsured as a monk, to fill a vacancy in the Gorokhovetsky Nikolaevsky Monastery, to which he was formally attached for a considerable time. But he never lived in that monastery and maintained his permanent residence in the Sarov Hermitage. With the acceptance of the monastic rank, the meaning of his new name—reminding Father Seraphim of the purity and fiery service to God of the Angels—heightened in him the desire to serve the Lord with even greater zeal than before. Without taking on new ascetic labors, the monk Seraphim continued his former course of life, which had long since become one with his soul and being. Only from the outside it became noticeable to all that he held himself more apart, plunged more deeply into his own soul, cleaved more firmly to the fulfillment of his vows and the most honorable duties bound up with them.

In the same year, 1786, in October, the monk Seraphim—at the petition of Prior Pakhomy—was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon by His Eminence Victor, Bishop of Vladimir and Murom. His ordination certificate for this rank remains intact to this day among the monastery’s papers. Now, beyond the labors of monasticism, Father Seraphim acquired new duties in the rank of hierodeacon. But his heart now also kindled with a greater love for God. He gave himself entirely to his new, truly angelic ministry. From the day of his elevation to the rank of hierodeacon, preserving the purity of soul and body, he served, almost without interruption, for a period of six years and ten months in the capacity of hierodeacon. He spent the nights before Sundays and feast days entirely in wakefulness and prayer, standing motionless until the very Liturgy. After each divine service was over, remaining in the church for a long time afterward, he performed the duties of a sacred deacon—putting the sacred vessels in order and caring for the cleanliness of the Lord’s altar. The Lord God, seeing his good zeal and diligence in ascetic labors, granted Father Seraphim strength and vigor, so that he scarcely felt the toil, had no need of prolonged rest afterward, remained vigorous in health, often forgot about food and drink, and departing from the path of ascetic labors for rest would feel regret that a person—unlike the angels—cannot serve God without ceasing. Prior Pakhomy now became even more attached to Father Seraphim than before. He performed scarcely a single service without him: “When our father Pakhomy served,” Father Seraphim would later say of himself, “he rarely performed the service without me, poor Seraphim.”

Whenever Elder Pakhomy traveled away from the monastery—alone or with other elders, for monastery business or simply to serve—he often invited Father Seraphim to accompany him. On one such trip Father Seraphim happened to take part in the burial of the most celebrated monastic nun Alexandra—in the world Agafya Semyonovna Melgunova—the foundress of the Diveyevo community. Shortly before her blessed repose, the landowner Solovtsov of the village of Lemeti, a benefactor of the Sarov Hermitage, had died. The elders Pakhomy and Isaiah went to his burial, taking Father Seraphim with them as hierodeacon. Passing through Diveyevo, they visited Agafya Semyonovna and, finding her gravely ill and very weak, administered to her the holy sacrament of Holy Unction. The sick woman, sensing her end, begged the elders with tears not to abandon her Diveyevo orphans.

The prior Pakhomy, comforting her, said: “Do not be troubled about anything, dear mother: by the grace of God you have been prepared with everything due to a Christian. While I am alive I will not abandon your orphans; and after me, here is Father Seraphim—he will not abandon them.”

The sick woman replied: “My father, I am not troubled for myself: with God’s help I go to eternity in hope. But these orphans will be left after me in the greatest sorrow, bound as they are to me in their devotion to me, their poor one. And it is for this reason that I beg you, my father—do not abandon them; bear all their burdens and infirmities in everything, according to God’s commandment. You know what grief and loss it will be for them to be parted from me forever.”

Then she took out the remainder of her estate, consisting of two small pouches—one filled with gold coins, the other with silver—and, handing them to Father Pakhomiy, said: “Accept this orphan’s portion for use in their benefit: they themselves cannot yet employ it wisely and as it ought to be applied for the common good, but you from experience know where and on what to spend it.” On their return from Lemetyj, the elders found the nun Alexandra already dead and barely managed to arrive in time for her burial. According to custom, a meal was held after the burial. Father Seraphim did not remain in Diveyevo even to take a bite for the sustenance of his strength, but walked back alone on foot to the Sarov Hermitage, which lies twelve versts from Diveyevo. Such was his habitual self-discipline—not only within the hermitage walls, but beyond them as well.

Such a state of spiritual sobriety, ascetic self-restraint, ceaseless prayer, and unremitting labor could not be attained except by way of long-practiced self-denial and continual compulsion of oneself toward monastic virtue. Father Seraphim, one may say, had labored over himself from childhood, cultivating this spirit within himself, and his entire past life had been, so to speak, a ladder toward his present degree of ascetic striving. But the future held for him labors and feats far greater still. Looking back over his past, Father Seraphim could see above his head the special protection of the Most Holy Mother of God and the care of Divine Providence. Now temptations could scarcely draw his heart, bound to God, away from the path of strict piety. And yet God’s Providence found it needful, in view of new and still more arduous feats of asceticism, to strengthen his zeal with spiritual visions. Purity of heart, self-restraint, and constant elevation of soul toward God had made him capable of beholding them. In the notes published in “Mayak” for 1844 (book 32), it is said that Father Seraphim, while serving in the rank of hieromonk, would at times see holy Angels during church services, co-celebrating and singing together with the brothers. They appeared in the forms of lightning-bright youths clothed in white gold-woven garments; yet their singing could be likened to no harmony on earth. What a wondrous impression these visions made upon his soul! “My heart,” he says, “was like wax melting from unspeakable joy. And I remembered nothing from such joy; I remembered only how I entered the holy church and how I left it.” Especially striking was one vision, which we shall relate here approximating the very words of Elder Seraphim himself, as this account is set down in the aforementioned notes of a Sarov monk of that time:

“I will tell you yet, my joy, of a most glorious vision that befell me, unworthy as I am. Only give me your word that what you hear from me you will reveal to no one.”

His interlocutor—most likely the author of the notes himself—bowed to the elder and gave his promise to keep the secret. But Father Seraphim, foreseeing that it might be revealed after his (that is, Seraphim’s) death, added: “Die with it, tell no one.” The interlocutor bowed to the holy elder’s feet in sign of agreement, and tears flowed unbidden from his eyes in tender emotion… The elder then continued: “It happened that I was serving with Father Pakhomiy and the treasurer Iosif on Holy and Great Thursday. The Divine Liturgy began at two o’clock in the afternoon, and as customary, with Vespers. After the Little Entrance and the readings, I, unworthy as I am, cried out at the holy altar: Lord, save the pious and hear us—and, having entered the Royal Doors, I swept the orarium over those present and proclaimed: and to ages of ages. At that moment a light blazed upon me like a ray of sunlight. Turning my eyes toward the radiance, I beheld our Lord God Jesus Christ—in the image of the Son of Man in glory, shining brighter than the sun with an unspeakable light, surrounded, as if by a swarm of bees, by the heavenly hosts: Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, and Seraphim. From the western church doors He was walking through the air, stopped opposite the ambon, and, raising His hands, blessed those serving and those praying. Then He entered into the icon in the iconostasis near the Royal Doors. My heart rejoiced then with a pure, enlightened joy, in the sweetness of love for the Lord.”

From this mysterious vision Father Seraphim was instantly transformed in appearance and could neither move from the spot nor utter a word. Many noticed this, and of course no one understood the true cause of what had occurred. At once two hieromonks approached, took Father Seraphim by the arms, and led him into the holy altar. For about two hours Father Seraphim stood afterward in one place without moving. Only his face changed from moment to moment: now it would be covered with a whiteness like snow, now a flush would play across it. And for a long time he could not speak a word, contemplating in his soul the wondrous visitation of God and tasting its gracious consolations.

It is most noteworthy that this vision fell at that moment of the Liturgy when, by the entrance of the clergy into the altar, their entering as it were into heaven itself is signified; when in the silent prayer the priest asks the Lord: grant that with our entrance there may be an entrance of the holy angels, co-serving with us and co-glorifying Your goodness; when the Angelic hymn is sung: Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. This vision showed that it is not in vain that we believe the heavenly powers to be invisibly serving with us at the Divine Liturgy… And every person praying in the house of God ought to think that he is praying as it were in heaven together with the Angels. There is no doubt that the zeal of Father Seraphim was more powerfully strengthened in his arduous ascetic labors by such heavenly consolations. They kindled in him ever greater longing for the contemplative life. The vision could also have had harmful consequences for Father Seraphim’s spiritual character. Had he thought to himself that he was now already holy, that he had attained a high degree of perfection and had no need of further advancement—then all his labors before God would have turned to vanity and worthlessness, crumbling like dust scattered by the wind… But Father Seraphim had good spiritual guides, in whom he placed complete trust and who were his mentors in monastic life. The elders Pakhomiy and Iosif, who had served the Liturgy, asked: “What had happened to him?” It seemed to them that he might have suddenly felt a weakening of strength, which could so naturally occur on Holy and Great Thursday after the prolonged fast—given the reverence which Father Seraphim had long held for them. Father Seraphim was accustomed to relating to these two elders with childlike confidence: he told them his vision exactly as it had occurred. The elders, experienced in the spiritual life, treasured this account in their hearts. And to Father Seraphim they impressed the need not to become proud, not to allow in his soul any ruinous thought of any worthiness of his own before God, and they confirmed him in the spiritual disposition of self-abasement and humility.

Guarded by humility, Father Seraphim advanced from strength to strength in the spiritual life. His humility and monastic labors, formerly hidden, now became as it were more visible and more steadfast. We have already seen that even as a novice Father Seraphim would withdraw into the Sarov forest and plunge into contemplation in a hidden bower. Now a solitary cell was established there for him. As a hieromonk bound by service in the church and by obediences in the monastery, Father Seraphim could not yet—and perhaps had not yet matured sufficiently—to become a full hermit. And so he spent his days, from morning until evening, in the monastery, performing services, fulfilling the monastic rule and obediences. But in the evenings, when he could be his own master, he withdrew to his hermitage cell and spent the night hours in prayer; then early in the morning he would appear again in the monastery to fulfill his duties. Some among the weaker brothers might perhaps have been envious, yet no one had grounds to be offended by his feats; for Father Seraphim did not make others labor on his behalf, fulfilling sacredly all his own obligations—both personal and communal—toward the hermitage.

In the year 1793, on the nineteenth of July, Father Seraphim turned thirty-four years of age. The Sarov Hermitage, by a new administrative division, passed from the Vladimir diocese to the governance of the Tambov diocese. The leadership of the hermitage, seeing that Father Seraphim by his ascetic labors had risen above the other brothers and deserved precedence over many in advancement to the higher ranks within the hermitage, petitioned for his ordination to the rank of hieromonk. On this occasion, after nearly seven years of service as a hierodeacon, Father Seraphim was summoned to Tambov, and on the second of September 1793, Bishop Feofil ordained him a hieromonk. By the observation of contemporaries, all who have described the life of Father Seraphim affirm one and the same thing: that upon receiving the higher grace of the priesthood, he began to strive in the spiritual life with greater zeal and redoubled love. In the rank of hieromonk he continued for a long time in unbroken liturgical service, receiving Holy Communion daily with fervent love, with faith, and with reverence.

We have now come to the final days of Father Seraphim’s sojourn in the hermitage. Soon we shall also witness the death of the venerable elder Pakhomiy. Let us recall certain circumstances of the hermitage during his abbacy—circumstances that remained in Father Seraphim’s memory until his death and had a moral influence upon him. During the period that corresponds to Father Seraphim’s life before his withdrawal to the wilderness, there was more than once a famine in the regions surrounding Sarov. But the hermitage suffered no shortage of bread and provided those in need with abundance. There was one occasion when the famine was especially prolonged; yet even then the hermitage fed about a thousand people every day for many months. At one point it came to pass that there was neither flour nor grain left even for the monks of the hermitage. The entire brotherhood gathered in the church. The prior Pakhomiy, on account of the impending famine, served a moleben to the Mother of God and an all-night vigil in full assembly. The brothers prayed as if before death, without losing, however, their hope in the Lord and His Most Pure Mother. The next morning, Father Seraphim, by the special trust of the prior Pakhomiy, went to the storehouse and found all the grain bins filled with various kinds of bread and grain. From that time forth, throughout the duration of the famine in the surrounding region, there was no shortage in the hermitage: however much was distributed to those in need, the storehouses were filled again. These events had a great influence on the deepening of mercy—one of the essential qualities of Father Seraphim. At the same time they further contributed to the confirming of his heart in unshakeable hope in the Providence of God and the protection of the Most Holy Mother of God.

So many years had Father Seraphim spent in the monastery! How greatly he had labored over the purification of his heart! How many feats he had endured for the salvation of his soul! We have already seen that these labors were not fruitless for him. Ascending by degrees along the ladder of spiritual life toward Christian perfection, he had by now attained a significant measure of the stature of a spiritual man. His spirit had matured for dwelling in the wilderness and for the higher monastic feats.

This year 1786 is precisely recorded in Father Seraphim’s ordination certificate, which is kept in the Sarov Hermitage.

This account, as we can see, became known after the interlocutor’s death, contrary to his own wishes.