9. The Final Years of Father Seraphim’s Life

We have already mentioned certain conversations of Father Seraphim spoken shortly before his death. The examination of events has imperceptibly brought us now to the penultimate years of his life. The enemy does not leave a person in peace until the very grave. So it was with Father Seraphim: having ascended to the heights of the spiritual life, he was not hidden there from the temptations of the devil. In many people he stirred up envy and malice over the fact that he received everyone who came to him and did good for all, without distinction of sex. One brother even ventured to say to him: “People of both sexes disturb you greatly, and you admit everyone indiscriminately.” Father Seraphim, defending himself from this empty reproach, cited the example of St. Hilarion the Great, who forbade his doors to be shut on account of strangers. “Suppose,” he said, “that I were to lock the doors of my cell. Those who come to it, needing a word of comfort, would beg me in God’s name to open the doors, and receiving no answer from me, would go home in sorrow. What justification could I then offer to God at his dread judgment?” From this it is clear that Father Seraphim regarded the receiving of all who came to him as a matter of conscience, an obligation of his life for which God would require an accounting at the judgment.

Someone expressed the same thought even more bluntly: “Some are scandalized by you,” he said. The elder answered thus: “But I am not scandalized either by the fact that some are benefited by me, or by the fact that others are scandalized by this.”

Far more painful for him was a conversation with the abbot of the Sarov convent, Father Nifont. Once, returning from the hermitage to his cell, elder Seraphim encountered Father Nifont. In his humble-mindedness, having been first to bow before the superior, he greeted him with brotherly love, as is the custom among clergy. Father Abbot Nifont, while extolling the elder for his ascetic endeavors, at the same time conveyed to him the thought of the brotherhood, who in the strictness of their outlook did not approve of Father Seraphim’s receiving people of every sex and kind—even if it was for edifying instruction. “In particular,” he said, “they are scandalized that you show merciful care for the Diveyevo orphans.” We consider it necessary to note that Abbot Nifont loved and respected elder Seraphim deeply, and addressed him with such words solely because the brotherhood were scandalized. Having heard the abbot’s word, the elder again fell at his feet and gave him a wise and saving answer—not to surrender in future to false suggestions, and not to accept just any word from the brothers against a neighbor without reflection. “You are the shepherd,” he said; “do not allow everyone to speak idle words, to trouble you and the wayfarers walking toward eternity. For your word is powerful, and the staff, like a whip, is feared by all.” Elder Nifont expressed his agreement that Father Seraphim should not change his manner and should continue as before to receive everyone who came to him, for the good of their souls.

A peasant named E. V. Likhachevsky, who worked in Sarov, was once approaching the hermitage of Father Seraphim when he saw from a distance that sitting with him in conversation was a young girl of about sixteen whom he did not know, very well dressed. Being inexperienced in the spiritual life, he thought to himself: “What can the father be talking to her about at such length? What sort of instruction would be suited to a girl of her age?” The moment he drew near with these thoughts in his mind, the elder, pointing to the marks of his own great old age, said: “I am dead to everything—and what is it that you are thinking?” The peasant then fell at his feet and confessed his fault. Father Seraphim graciously blessed him, absolved him of his guilt, and said: “Be at peace, and do not repeat this again.”

A) The loving-kindness of Father Seraphim in his dealings with his neighbors

The love and tender concern with which the elder received all who came to visit him are very clearly reflected in the following account of Mrs. Elizaveta Nikolaevna Pazukhina, a landowner from Simbirsk.

“From my earliest childhood I had heard of the clairvoyance and holiness of the Sarov hermit and recluse Father Seraphim, and I therefore greatly wished to see him and receive his blessing. My wish was at last fulfilled, by the mercy of God, in 1830.”

“In Arzamas, on the road to the Sarov Hermitage, the owners of the lodging where I was staying told me that if I did not arrive in Sarov in time for early liturgy the following Sunday, I would not see Father Seraphim at all, since after early liturgy he ordinarily retired to his little hermitage and remained there until Wednesday. As the weather at the time was very severe and my health was poor, feeling myself unable to seek Father Seraphim at his hermitage, I set out immediately, without resting in Arzamas, on Saturday afternoon; I traveled through the night and arrived in Sarov in the morning. My very first question upon entering the guesthouse was: ‘Has early liturgy ended yet?’ And when the monk to whom I put my question announced that liturgy had already concluded, I was completely crushed and lost all hope of seeing Father Seraphim. But it pleased the Lord God to comfort me and not let me fall into despondency. I made my way, as if on a chance, to his cell, together with a great many other visitors to Sarov, and we found the door of his cell bolted from the inside. This was a sign that the elder had remained at home, and we decided to ask his blessing to see him and to be comforted by his soul-saving words. But none of us dared be the first to say the prayer. Some tried, but the door did not open. At last I turned to a lady standing beside me, right at the door, who had a small girl with her, and asked her to have the little one say the prayer, saying that she was more worthy than any of us. And the very moment the little girl said the prayer, the door opened at once. But how great was our common alarm when Father Seraphim, having opened the door, began to close it again! I was standing closest of all to the door and fell into utter despair, thinking: ‘Lord, surely I am the least worthy of all, since he, having caught sight of me, resolved to close himself in again.’ But hardly had I formed this thought than Father Seraphim, standing in the half-open doorway, turned to me and said: ‘Be at peace, dear one, be at peace, wait just a little.’ And then, opening the door a second time, he turned to me again and asked: ‘Please come in, dear one; tell me, what is your need? What can I do for you?’ I wept for joy and told him that I had one desire—to receive his blessing and ask for his holy prayers. At once he blessed me and said: ‘May the Lord bless you; may His grace be with you!’ And at the same time he gave me three pieces of prosphora. After that he began to bless the others who came up to him, and to each one, after the blessing, he said: ‘Go with God.’ To me alone he did not say this, and so I remained in my place. Seeing me as the only one left after everyone else had gone, he said to me graciously: ‘After vespers, dear one, please come to me,’ and closed himself in again.”

“Upon returning to the guesthouse, I first of all told my maidservant to cut the pieces of prosphora given me by Father Seraphim into very small portions. I intended, on reaching home, to share them among all who held the elder in devotion. Then I began to wait for vespers with the greatest impatience, so that I might go to Father Seraphim and bring him the gift I had brought: a small amount of homespun linen, oil, and wax candles. However, it turned out that the man to whom I had entrusted the purchase of candles and oil had forgotten to carry out my errand, and so I decided to bring him the linen and the money set aside for the candles and oil. I was assured that Father Seraphim accepted nothing from anyone; but I did not change my intention, thinking that if he refused to take these things, I would donate the linen to the monastery and use the money the following day to buy oil and candles.”

“After vespers I found the elder in the entrance hall of his cell, lying on his knees at the coffin. When he saw me he rose quickly and, giving his blessing, said: ‘Please come in, dear one, please come in.’ At these kind words, wavering between fear and hope, I dared to offer him the linen, saying: ‘Holy father! Deign to accept this linen as a token of my sincere devotion.’ And how great was my joy when, taking the linen from my hands, he said: ‘Thank you humbly, dear one; everything is suitable for the house of God.’ Then I dared to offer the money as well, explaining that I had not had time to purchase oil and candles. He accepted the money also with gratitude. When I later told Father Damaskin, a monk of Sarov, about this joy of mine, he could not cease marveling at such a singular act of grace toward me on the part of Father Seraphim.”

“The conversation I then had with the elder prompted me, among other things, with the thought of confessing to him the following day; I shared this desire with Father Damaskin. But he said the desire was absolutely impossible to fulfill. Nevertheless I spent the whole night in thought and prayer, asking God that He would grant me, a sinner, to make my confession to the holy elder Seraphim. In the morning I again made my way to him, and when my servant opened the door to the entrance hall of his cell, I saw the elder once more beside his coffin. He led me into the cell, told me to make the sign of the cross, and gave me holy water to drink three times, holding it himself to my lips; then he asked for my kerchief. I held out the end of the shawl I was wearing, and he filled it with a handful of dried bread, saying: ‘There, dear one, do not trouble yourself—this is for distribution; give it to those who hold me in devotion.’ I instantly recalled what I had done the previous day with the three pieces of prosphora the elder had given me, and I marveled at his wondrous clairvoyance. After that, with reverence and fear of offending the righteous elder, I dared to declare to him my wish to confess to him, saying: ‘Holy father! Allow me to say one word to you.’ He replied: ‘Please do, dear one.’ Then suddenly, to my inexpressible astonishment and awe—and at the same time to my joy—he took both my hands and began to read the prayer: ‘O God, release, remit, forgive me my sins, which I have committed against You,’ and so on. I repeated the prayer after him, weeping aloud; then I fell to my knees, and he also knelt beside me, and throughout the reading of this prayer he held my hands. After the dismissal, such as is ordinarily given at the end of confession, he let me venerate his copper cross and, taking my right hand, said: ‘May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all your life, at the hour of your passing, and after your repose.’ I was beside myself with joy and kissed his hands.”

“After that, blessing me for the return journey, he said: ‘The Lord will help you.’ And indeed, by his holy prayers the Lord granted me a safe arrival home, even though at that time a most terrible cholera was raging all around me, everywhere.”

“I must also recount one event, showing how the Lord God heard the prayer of the righteous elder Seraphim. A certain woman had many children, but all of them died in the first year of their lives. The poor mother earnestly begged me to take her along, with her latest newborn daughter, with me to the Sarov Hermitage. I promised to fulfill her request and on my first journey to Sarov took them with me. When the mother brought the little girl to Father Seraphim and began to ask him to pray for her, explaining that all her children died before reaching a year, he placed his hand on the child’s head and said: ‘Take comfort in her.’ And indeed, by the prayers of the righteous man, this little girl survived; while the children born to this woman afterward continued to die.”

B) Conversations of Elder Seraphim with monastic persons

Many monastics from both men’s and women’s communities came to him at this time; among them were abbots of monasteries. He set before them his thoughts on the duties of an abbot.

“An abbot,” he would say, “must be perfect in every virtue and must have his interior faculties trained by long practice in discerning good from evil (Heb. 5:14).” “An abbot must be learned in Holy Scripture: he must meditate on the law of the Lord day and night; through such exercises he can acquire for himself the gift of discernment of good and evil.”

“True knowledge of good and evil can be attained only when the ascetic of piety comes to a foretaste of the future judgment and of eternal blessedness—which is accomplished in the devout soul, even here in earthly life, in a mystical and spiritual manner.”

“Before attaining discernment of good and evil, a person is unfit to shepherd rational sheep, but only irrational ones; for without knowledge of good and evil, we cannot comprehend the works of the evil one.”

“And therefore an abbot, as the shepherd of rational sheep, must possess the gift of discernment, so that in every instance he may be able to offer useful counsel to each one who requires his guidance; for, as Peter of Damascus says (in the Philokalia, ‘On the building up of the soul through the virtues,’ Part III, folio 52): not every person is worthy to give counsel to those who seek it, but only one who has received from God the gift of discernment and, through long perseverance in ascetic endeavor, has acquired a far-seeing mind.”

“An abbot must also possess the gift of insight, so that from the consideration of present and past events he may be able to foresee what is to come and to discern the snares of the enemy.” “The distinguishing mark of an abbot must be his love for those in his charge: for the true shepherd, in the words of John Climacus, is shown by his love for his flock. For love compelled the Supreme Shepherd to be crucified on the cross (in the Ladder to the Pastor, ch. 5, folio 178 reverse).” Other abbots, concerned for the salvation of the brothers entrusted to their guidance, asked Father Seraphim how to govern a brotherhood. To one such question Father Seraphim gave the following instruction:

“Every abbot must become and must remain always, in relation to those in his charge, a wise and tender mother.”

“A mother who loves her children does not live for her own pleasure but for the pleasure of her children. She bears the infirmities of her weak children with love; those who fall into uncleanness she cleanses and washes gently and peacefully, clothes them in bright new garments, shoes them, warms them, feeds them, provides for them, comforts them, and on every side endeavors to put their spirit at rest, so that she may never hear from them the slightest cry; and such children are well disposed toward their mother. So every abbot must live not for his own pleasure but for the pleasure of those in his charge: he must be forbearing toward their weaknesses, bear the infirmities of the weak with love, heal sins’ wounds with the plaster of mercy, raise the fallen in transgression with meekness, cleanse those defiled by the filth of some vice quietly and wash them by laying upon them fasting and prayers above those commonly prescribed for all; clothe them through his teaching and exemplary life in the garments of virtue; keep unceasing watch over them, comfort them by every means, and on every side safeguard their peace and tranquility so that not the slightest cry is ever heard from them, nor even a murmur—and then they will strive zealously to ensure peace and rest for the abbot.”

In 1830, a hieromonk who was being called away from the Sarov Hermitage by his superior to the Diocese of Kazan came to Father Seraphim to receive his blessing. He found the elder at work in the forest over the garden beds and approached him in silence, without saying a word. Father Seraphim, seeing the brother coming toward him from a distance, began to sing and brought to completion the exapostilarion to the Holy Cross: “The Cross is the guardian…” Then Father Seraphim asked the one who had come: “Where are you going, brother?”

“I am being summoned to Kazan,” the visitor answered.

“Deceit is going with you, father,” said Father Seraphim, and added: “Do not go to the Makaryev Hermitage.” The Makaryev Hermitage lies halfway up the hill near the town of Sviyazhsk and is called the Podgornaya.

“Father Seraphim, I am being summoned not to the Makaryev but to the Raifsky Hermitage as its abbot,” said the visiting brother, intending to correct the elder’s apparent mistake.

But Father Seraphim continued in the same vein: “I tell you: do not go to the Makaryev.” Then, reflecting for a moment more, he said: “Well, live away from Sarov for a while… You will come back to us again, and we will die here in the God-preserved Sarov Hermitage.” Then, blessing the brother, the elder sent him away in peace.

The brother set out on his way. On arriving in Kazan, he learned that he had indeed been assigned by decree not to the Raifsky but to the Makaryev Hermitage. Remembering the words of Father Seraphim, who had said so insistently, “Do not go to the Makaryev,” he declined the appointment and was sent as superior to the Tsivil Tikhvin Monastery.

Mrs. P. I. Shkarina, who had enjoyed the special confidence of Father Seraphim since 1827, testified that he, a full year before the first cholera epidemic—which came in 1830 and 1831—said to her: “The wrath of God is coming upon Russia; the deadly cholera draws near. Watch,” he told her, “watch and pray, lest the hour of death come upon you suddenly.”

“When the cholera broke out in Russia, it visited the Tikhvin Monastery, of which the Sarov brother had become superior. The illness compelled him to petition his superiors for release from the monastery. He returned once more to the Sarov Hermitage.”

A great many people also came to Father Seraphim at this time who, wishing to enter a monastery, sought his counsel and guidance. The elder, by his clairvoyance which had been given him by God, would offer beneficial advice and not infrequently would point to the future beforehand.

Thus in 1830 a novice from the Glinsk Hermitage traveled expressly to the Sarov Hermitage to ask Father Seraphim whether he had God’s blessing to enter monastic life. The young man, not yet knowing himself well, not having settled in his own mind the question of his calling, wavered between the world and the monastery: there was no one to whom he could confide his inmost thoughts; there was no one near him who could resolve the question that would determine his whole life. So the Glinsk novice came to Father Seraphim, fell at his feet, and begged him to free his soul from the whirlwind of doubts—asking: “Is it the will of God that both he and his brother Nikolai should enter the monastery?” Had not Father Seraphim himself, some years before, gone to Kiev to seek out the recluse Dosifeya in just the same way? He answered the novice thus:

“Save yourself and save your brother—your own blood kin.” Then, pausing to think for a moment, he said: “Do you remember the Life of Joannicius the Great? As he wandered over mountains and steep slopes, he accidentally let his staff fall from his hands; it dropped into an abyss. The staff was impossible to retrieve, yet without it the saint could go no further. In deep grief he cried out to the Lord God—and an Angel of the Lord invisibly placed a new staff in his hands.”

Having said this, Father Seraphim placed his own walking stick into the right hand of the novice and said:

“It is hard to govern human souls! But amid all your trials and sorrows in the guidance of the souls of your brothers, the Angel of the Lord will be ceaselessly with you until the end of your life.”

After this the novice resolved to enter monastic life. At his tonsure he was given the name Paisios, and in 1856 he was elevated to the rank of abbot at the Astrakhan Churkin St. Nicholas Communal Monastery; six years later he was raised to the rank of archimandrite of the same community, thus becoming, as Elder Seraphim had foreseen, a shepherd of human souls. His blood brother, of whom Father Seraphim had said “save your brother,” entered monastic life under the name Nazarius and ended his days in the Kozelets St. George Monastery with the rank of hieromonk.

“In giving instructions to those holding authority among the monastic brotherhood, Father Seraphim also set forth the duties of those under authority toward their superiors.”

“Acquire humility, obedience, submission—and you will be saved,” he would say, in the words of the venerable Barsanuphius. “And never speak in contradiction: ‘Why is this?’ or ‘What is the purpose of this?’ But be humbly compliant, above all toward your abbot, who cares for you before God and to whom your soul has been entrusted (Barsanuphius, Response 239).”

“Whoever truly wishes to be a disciple of Christ has no authority over himself to do anything on his own initiative, says the same teacher. For what is done according to one’s own thought is not pleasing to God, even if it may appear good. If someone knows what is beneficial for himself better than his abbot does, then why call himself his disciple at all?”

“One who obeys submits in everything and does not concern himself with his own salvation, because another—to whom he has subjected and entrusted himself—concerns himself with it. Whoever has cut off his will in one thing but not in another still had his own will even in that in which he appeared to have cut it off.”

“Whoever wishes to know the way perfectly and does not walk with one who knows this way perfectly will never reach the city (of perfect stillness).”

“Cast your will behind you and keep humility in every aspect of your life—and then you will be saved. Humility and obedience are the uprooted of all passions and the planters of all virtues (Barsanuphius, Responses 61–223).”

“One who is under authority must mortify his passions toward temporal life in order to have eternal life. He must be like cloth in a fulling mill, in the words of the venerable Antiochus. For just as a fuller beats cloth, treads it, combs it, and washes it until it becomes white as snow, so also the obedient one, enduring humiliations, offenses, and reproaches, is cleansed and becomes like pure silver, gleaming, refined by fire (Antiochus, Discourse 113).”

“One must not meddle in the affairs of those in authority, nor sit in judgment upon them: to do so is to offend the majesty of God, from whom all authority is established; for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God (Rom. 13:1).”

“One must not resist legitimate authority, lest one sin before God and incur His righteous punishment: whoever resists authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment upon themselves (Rom. 13:2).”

“One who is obedient makes great progress in building up the soul—beyond that, he gains through it an understanding of things and comes to a state of tender contrition.”

Many of the newly arrived monks asked Father Seraphim for counsel and instruction on how they might save themselves and their loved ones. Father Seraphim answered them as follows:

“Whether you came to the monastery by the advice or the authority of others, or by whatever means—do not be downcast: it is a visitation of God. If you keep what I tell you, you will be saved—you yourself and your loved ones for whom you are concerned. ‘I have not seen the righteous forsaken,’ says the Prophet, ‘nor his children begging bread’ (Ps. 36:25). Living in this monastery, observe the following: when you stand in church, attend to everything without omission; learn the entire order of church services—that is, Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office, Matins, and the Hours—and strive to hold all of it in your mind.”

“If you are in your cell and have no handiwork, apply yourself diligently to reading, and above all to the Psalter; try to read each section many times over, so as to keep all of it in mind. If you have handiwork, occupy yourself with it; if you are called to an obedience, go to it. While at your handiwork, or wherever you may be on obedience, pray without ceasing: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ In prayer, attend to yourself—that is, gather your mind and unite it with your soul. At first, for a day or two and more, pray this prayer with the mind alone, distinctly, attending to each word separately. Then, when the Lord warms your heart with the warmth of His grace and unites it within you into one spirit, the prayer will flow in you without ceasing and will always be with you, bringing you delight and nourishment. This is what the Prophet Isaiah spoke of when he said: ‘The dew that is from You brings them healing’ (Isa. 26:19). When you thus keep within you this nourishment of the soul—that is, conversation with the Lord Himself—why would you go wandering to the cells of the brothers, even if someone calls you? I tell you truly, that such idle talk is vanity and idleness. If you do not understand yourself, how can you reason about things and teach others? Be silent, be silent without ceasing; always remember the presence of God and hold it before you. Do not enter into conversation with anyone; but above all, beware of judging those who talk much or laugh. In this matter be deaf and mute; whatever may be said about you, let it all pass by your ears. As an example to follow, take Stephen the Younger (Menologion, November 28, in his Life), whose prayer was unceasing, whose manner was gentle, whose lips were silent, whose heart was humble, whose spirit was tender, whose body together with his soul was pure, whose virginity was blameless, whose poverty was true, and whose renunciation was that of a desert-dweller; his obedience was without murmuring, his submission was diligent, his labor was patient, and his toil was fervent.”

“When sitting at table, do not observe or judge who eats how much; but attend to yourself, nourishing your soul with prayer. At dinner eat to satisfaction; at supper, hold yourself back. On Wednesdays and Fridays, if you are able, eat only once. Each day, sleep four hours during the night without fail: the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth hours, and one hour past midnight; if you grow weak, you may in addition sleep during the day. Hold to this without doubt until the end of your life: for it is needful for the repose of your head. I myself have followed this way since my youth. We also always ask the Lord God for rest during the night hours. If you keep yourself in this way, you will not be downcast, but healthy and cheerful.”

“I tell you truly: if you conduct yourself in this way, you will remain in the monastery without leaving until the end of your life. Humble yourself, and the Lord will help you and will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday (Ps. 36:6), and your light shall shine before men (Matt. 5:16).”

A monk of the Sarov monastery named Kiprian was troubled by the burden of the obedience laid upon him, and went to Father Seraphim’s cell for guidance. “I had not even managed to enter his cell, nor had I said a single word,” said the monk, “when he met me at the door and said: ‘My joy! There is no way to refuse an obedience.’”

One time a monk came to Father Seraphim from a very distant monastery. The elder was at that moment working at his well. The pilgrim approached him, bowed, and asked for a blessing—but Father Seraphim, occupied with his labors, paid him no attention whatsoever. The monk stood in silence for a while, then withdrew to his lodgings without receiving any comfort. Then Father Seraphim went up to a Diveyevo sister who was working nearby and said: “There, dear mother, he asks for a blessing, yet does not himself know where he is going.” In this way the monk who had gone away without a blessing also came to understand the elder’s behavior—having undertaken his plan without reflection or discernment.

C) His conversations with laypeople

Without leaving monks without spiritual edification, Father Seraphim also taught laypeople at length, exposing their mistaken habits of mind and life and setting forth positive rules of piety. Thus, a devout priest brought to Father Seraphim a professor who taught one of the theological disciplines at a seminary, who wished not so much to hear the elder’s conversation as to receive his blessing to enter the monastic life. The elder blessed him according to the customary priestly form, but gave no answer whatsoever concerning his wish to enter monasticism, engaging instead in conversation with the priest. The professor stood to one side, listening to their conversation. The priest, meanwhile, frequently steered the conversation toward the purpose for which he had brought the scholar. But the elder, deliberately avoiding this subject, continued his talk—and only once, as if in passing, remarked of the professor: “Does he not need to study something further?” The priest explained to him plainly that the man knew the Orthodox Faith, that he was himself a seminary professor, and pressed him earnestly to resolve only his uncertainty about monasticism. The elder replied: “I know too that he is skilled at composing sermons. But teaching others is as easy as throwing pebbles down from our cathedral to the ground, while putting into practice what you teach is like carrying those pebbles up to the top of the cathedral yourself. Such is the difference between teaching others and personally carrying out the work.” In conclusion, he advised the professor to read the life of Saint John of Damascus, saying that from it he would see what more he still needed to learn.

On June 18, 1831, Ivan Maximovich Kreditsky and his wife Yu. P. were at Sarov and came out into the wilderness to Father Seraphim. “We found the elder at work,” they said: “he was breaking up a garden bed with a hoe, and when we approached him and bowed to the ground before him, he blessed us and, placing his hands on my head, read the troparion of the Dormition of the Mother of God: ‘In giving birth you preserved your virginity,’ and so on. Then he sat down on the garden bed and told us to sit down as well, but we involuntarily fell to our knees before him and listened to his conversation about the life to come, about the life of the saints, about the intercession, the advocacy, and the care for us sinners of the Lady, the Mother of God, and about what is necessary for us in this earthly life for the sake of eternity. This conversation lasted no more than an hour; but I could not compare that hour to the whole of my past life. Throughout the entire conversation I felt in my heart an inexplicable, heavenly sweetness—God alone knows how it poured in there—a sweetness unlike anything on earth, which to this day I cannot recall without tears of tender emotion and without feeling the most vivid joy throughout my whole being. Until that time, although I had not rejected anything sacred, I had not affirmed anything either: for me everything in the spiritual world was completely indifferent, and I was equally cold toward everything. Father Seraphim was the first to make me feel the almighty Lord God and His inexhaustible mercy and utter perfection. Previously, because of this coldness of my soul toward all that is holy and because I loved to play with godless words, the righteous Lord permitted a foul spirit of blasphemy to take hold of my thoughts—and these offensive thoughts, which to this day I cannot recall without particular horror, tormented me constantly for three full years, especially during prayer, in church, and most of all when I prayed to the Queen of Heaven. I had already come to think in despair that no earthly punishment could suffice for what I deserved, and that only the eternal torments of hell could be just recompense for my blasphemies. But Father Seraphim in his conversation completely set my mind at rest, telling me—with his characteristic, indescribably joyful smile—that I should not be afraid of this mental noise; that it was the work of the enemy, born of his envy, and that I should fearlessly continue my prayer always, whatever foul and blasphemous thoughts the enemy might produce.”

“From that time on, this mental noise truly began little by little to diminish within me, and in less than a month it ceased entirely.”

On one occasion four men came to him—devotees of the Old Belief, residents of the village of Pavlovo in Gorbatov district—to ask about the two-fingered sign of the cross, and to request that the truthfulness of the elder’s answer be confirmed by some miracle or sign. They had barely stepped across the threshold of the cell and had not yet had a chance to voice their thoughts, when the elder came up to them, took the first of them by the right hand, arranged his fingers in the three-fingered sign according to the rite of the Orthodox Church, and, signing the cross over him in this way, delivered the following address: “This is the Christian way of making the sign of the cross! Pray in this way, and tell others to do the same. This sign was handed down from the holy Apostles; whereas the two-fingered sign is contrary to the holy canons. I beg and entreat you: attend the Greco-Russian Church—she is in the full glory and power of God! Like a ship fitted with many riggings, sails, and a great helm, she is guided by the Holy Spirit. Her good pilots—the teachers of the Church, the hierarchs—are successors of the Apostles. But your chapel is like a small boat without a helm and without oars; it is tethered by a rope to the ship of our Church, and drifts along behind it, swamped by waves, and would surely have sunk long ago if it were not tied to the ship.”

At another time an Old Believer came to him and asked: “Tell me, man of God: which faith is better—the present church faith, or the old one?”

“Leave off your delusions,” answered Father Seraphim. “Our life is the sea, our holy Orthodox Church is the ship, and the Pilot is the Savior Himself. If, even with such a Pilot, people manage to cross the sea of life only with great difficulty because of their sinful weakness, and not all are saved from drowning—where do you think you are heading with your little rowboat, and on what do you base your hope of being saved without a Pilot?”

One winter a sick woman was brought to Father Seraphim’s monastery cell in a sleigh, and he was informed of this. Despite the large crowd of people crowding the entryway, Father Seraphim asked that she be brought in to him. The sick woman was entirely bent over, her knees drawn up to her chest. She was carried into the elder’s dwelling and laid on the floor. Father Seraphim locked the door and asked her:

“Where are you from, dear mother?”

“From Vladimir province.”

“How long have you been ill?”

“Three and a half years.”

“And what is the cause of your illness?”

“I was originally of the Orthodox faith, father, but I was given in marriage to an Old Believer. For a long time I did not yield to their faith—and all that time I was well. At last they persuaded me: I changed my cross to the two-fingered sign and stopped going to church. After that, one evening I went out into the yard on some household errand; there one of the animals appeared to me all aflame, and even scorched me. In my fright I fell, and I began to be tormented and twisted. A good deal of time passed. The household noticed my absence, searched for me, came out into the yard, and found me lying there. They carried me into the house. From that time on I have been ailing.”

“I see…” answered the elder. “And do you now believe again in the holy Orthodox Church?”

“I believe again now, father,” answered the sick woman.

Then Father Seraphim arranged his fingers in the Orthodox manner, made the sign of the cross over himself, and said:

“Cross yourself just so, in the name of the Holy Trinity.”

“Father, we would gladly do so,” answered the sick woman, “but I have no control over my arms.”

Father Seraphim took oil from the lamp before the icon of the Mother of God of Tenderness and anointed the chest and arms of the sick woman. Suddenly she began to straighten out—her very joints cracked—and right there she was restored to complete health.

The people standing in the entryway saw the miracle and spread word throughout the entire monastery—and especially at the guesthouse—that Father Seraphim had healed the sick woman.

When this event had concluded, one of the Diveyevo sisters came to Father Seraphim. Father Seraphim said to her: “It was not poor Seraphim, dear mother, who healed her—it was the Queen of Heaven.” He then asked her:

“Are there any among your family, dear mother, who do not go to church?”

“There are none such, father,” answered the sister, “but my parents and all my relatives pray with the two-fingered sign of the cross.”

“Ask them on my behalf,” said Father Seraphim, “to arrange their fingers in the name of the Holy Trinity.”

“I have spoken to them about this many times, father, but they do not listen.”

“They will listen—ask them on my behalf. Begin with your brother, who loves me: he will be the first to agree. And were there among your departed relatives any who prayed with the two-fingered sign of the cross?”

“To our sorrow, everyone in our family has prayed that way.”

“Even though they were virtuous people,” observed Father Seraphim after a moment’s reflection, “they will be bound: the holy Orthodox Church does not accept this sign of the cross… Do you know the location of their graves?”

The sister named the graves of those she knew the burial places of.

“Go to their graves, mother, bow three times to the ground, and pray to the Lord that He may release them in eternity.”

The sister did exactly that. She also told the living members to adopt the Orthodox manner of making the sign of the cross with three fingers in the name of the Holy Trinity, and they in fact obeyed the voice of Father Seraphim—for they knew that he was a man pleasing to God who understood the mysteries of the holy Christian faith.

Father Seraphim took great care in the matter of the proper Orthodox manner of making the sign of the cross with three fingers and of correctly tracing it upon the forehead, and he attributed tremendous power to the sign of the cross. A peasant from Ardatov district, the village of Avtodeyevo, by the initials M. B., was preparing to make a pilgrimage to Sarov when, just before his departure, he suffered such a severe blow that he lost his memory entirely, and was brought to the Sarov Hermitage in an unconscious state. There a novice who was his fellow villager led him to Father Seraphim. “As soon as we began to approach the elder’s cell,” M. B. and the novice who accompanied him recounted afterward, “I already felt relief within myself: the sense of memory and understanding gradually began to return to me, and I remember everything that Father Seraphim said and did with me at that time. First he blessed me and traced a cross on my forehead with oil from a lampada; then he gave me two handfuls of dried bread crusts; and finally he himself showed me the three-fingered manner of making the cross and said: ‘God is merciful! Pray to Him in this way: in time, all of this will pass.’ And indeed, a short while later, after I returned home, I became completely well, through the prayers of God’s pleasing servant, Father Seraphim.”

Often the holy elder would bring sinners to their senses by his very appearance and a simple word, and they would resolve to reform their vices. On one occasion a peasant was trying to push his way through a crowd to reach him, but each time he was seemingly held back by someone. At last the elder himself turned to him and asked sternly: “And where do you think you’re going?” Coarse sweat broke out on the peasant’s face, and with a feeling of the deepest humility in the presence of all those gathered there, he began to repent of his sins, especially theft, confessing that he was unworthy to appear before the face of such a lamp of light. This act of contrition could not, of course, fail to bear good fruit in the life of that simple-hearted peasant.

Ivan Yakovlevich Karataev related the following concerning the personal instructions he received from Father Seraphim:

“In October of 1830, I was sent from Kursk Province, where our regiment was quartered, to procure remounts. In Kursk and along the road I heard much about the ascetic labors of the elders of the Sarov Hermitage—Nazarius, Mark, and others—and I was told a great deal in particular about the great ascetic of that hermitage, the recluse hieromonk Seraphim: about his holy life, his wondrous prophecies, his gift of healing all manner of ailments both bodily and spiritual, and his extraordinary gift of clairvoyance. These accounts so inflamed my heart that I resolved, without fail, to stop at Sarov along the way. But when I was nearly at the gates of the Sarov Hermitage itself, the enemy troubled me with a fear of the elder Seraphim’s clairvoyance. It seemed to me that the elder would solemnly expose all my sins before everyone, and especially my error concerning the veneration of holy icons. I thought that an icon painted by human hands—by a man who might even be a sinner—could not be pleasing to God, and therefore could not contain within it the wonder-working grace of God, and should therefore not be an object of our veneration and reverence. Out of weakness and faintheartedness I yielded entirely to my fear of being exposed by the clairvoyant elder and drove past the Sarov Hermitage.”

The following year, in March, when our troops moved toward the Polish border, I was returning to my regiment on orders from my commanding officers.

“My road again passed by the Sarov Hermitage, and this time I had already resolved, on my father’s advice, to visit Father Seraphim. As I was walking from the inn toward the elder’s cell, the fear that had gripped me until then was suddenly transformed into a kind of quiet joy, and I came to love Father Seraphim even before I had met him. A great multitude of people were already standing near his cell, having come to receive his blessing. Father Seraphim, while blessing the others, glanced at me as well and made a sign with his hand for me to come forward to him. I fulfilled his bidding with reverence and love, bowed at his feet, asked for his blessing for the journey and for the coming war, and asked him to pray for the preservation of my life. Father Seraphim blessed me with his copper cross, which hung upon his chest, and after kissing me, began to hear my confession, himself naming my sins as though they had been committed in his presence. When this consoling confession was finished, he said to me: ‘One must not yield to the fear that the devil instills in young men; rather, at such times one must be especially alert in spirit, and setting aside faintheartedness, remember that, though we are sinners, we are all under the grace of our Redeemer, without whose will not a single hair shall fall from our head.’ He then began to speak of my error concerning the veneration of holy icons: ‘How harmful and destructive to us is the desire to investigate the mysteries of God, which are beyond the grasp of the weak human mind—for example, how the grace of God acts through holy icons, how it heals sinners like you and me,’ he added, ‘and not only their bodies but their souls as well; so that even sinners, through faith in the grace of Christ residing in them, were saved and attained the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Then, in confirmation of the veneration of holy icons, he cited the example that ‘even in the Old Testament, beside the ark of the covenant, there were golden Cherubim; and in the New Testament church the Evangelist Luke painted the face of the Mother of God, and the Savior Himself left His image not made by human hands.’ Finally, in conclusion, he said that ‘one must not heed such blasphemous thoughts, for which the eternal punishment of the spirit of falsehood and its companions awaits on the day of the Last Judgment.’”

“He spoke many other soul-saving words to me at that time for my edification, but I cannot recall them all. He said that ‘the temptations of the devil are like a cobweb: you only need to breathe on it and it is destroyed; just so with the enemy the devil—you only need to arm yourself with the sign of the cross and all his wiles vanish completely.’ He also said that ‘all the saints were subject to temptations; but, like gold, which the longer it lies in the fire the purer it becomes, so the saints through temptations became more refined, and through patience appeased the justice of the Creator and drew near to Christ, in whose name and for love of whom they endured.’ And finally he repeated several times that: ‘by the narrow way, according to the word of the Savior, we must enter the Kingdom of God.’”

“Listening to Father Seraphim, I truly forgot about my earthly existence.”

“The soldiers who were returning with me to the regiment were also honored to receive his blessing, and he, giving them instructions on that occasion, predicted that not one of them would perish in battle—and this indeed came to pass: not one of them was even wounded.”

“As I was leaving Father Seraphim, I placed three silver rubles beside him on the candles. But the enemy the devil, envying the tranquility of my conscience at that moment, put this thought into my mind: what does the holy father need money for? This hostile thought disturbed me, and I hurried back to Father Seraphim with repentance and a plea for forgiveness. But God evidently punished me for having admitted such an impious thought even for a moment. Walking around Father Seraphim’s cell, I could not find it and was compelled to ask a monk who was heading toward it: where is Father Seraphim’s cell? The monk, apparently surprised by my question, pointed it out to me. I entered the elder’s cell with a prayer, and he, anticipating my words, told me the following parable: ‘During the war with the Gauls, a certain military commander was destined to lose his right hand; but that hand had given three coins to a certain hermit for a holy church, and through the prayers of the holy Church, the Lord saved it. Take this to heart and henceforth do not repent of good deeds. Your money will go toward the establishment of the Diveyevo community, for your health.’ Then Father Seraphim heard my confession again, kissed me, gave me his blessing, and gave me a few altar bread crusts to eat and holy water to drink, and as he poured it into my mouth he said: ‘May the spirit of deceit that has come upon God’s servant John be cast out by the grace of God.’ The elder also gave me crusts and holy water for the road, and beyond that a prosphora, which he himself placed in my cap.”

“Finally, receiving his last blessing, I asked him not to abandon me with his holy prayers. To this he replied: ‘Place your hope in God and ask for His help, and know how to forgive your neighbors—and everything you ask for will be given to you.’”

“Throughout the Polish campaign I was in many battles—and the Lord preserved me everywhere through the prayers of His righteous servant.”

General Pavel Yakovlevich Kupriyanov came to the elder and thanked him for his prayers. “Through your prayers,” he said, “I was saved during the Turkish campaign. Surrounded on all sides by many enemy regiments, I was left with only a single regiment and saw that it was impossible for me to fortify my position, to advance, or to retreat. There was no hope of salvation whatsoever. I only kept repeating unceasingly: ‘Lord, have mercy, through the prayers of Elder Seraphim,’ I ate the crusts you gave me as a blessing, I drank the holy water—and God preserved me from my enemies, unharmed.” The elder replied to this: “Faith is a great means of salvation, and especially unceasing heartfelt prayer; let the holy Prophet Moses be our example. He, walking among the troops, prayed silently in his heart, and the Lord said to Moses: ‘Moses, Moses, why do you cry out to me?’ But when Moses lifted up his hands in prayer, he defeated Amalek … That is what prayer is! It is an unconquerable victory! The holy Prophet Daniel says: ‘It is better for me to die than to abandon prayer for a single instant’: through prayer the prophet Daniel shut the mouths of lions, and the three youths quenched the fiery furnace.”

As Father Seraphim was saying this, two men dressed in secular clothing came up to him. Father Seraphim, turning to one of them, said: “Our business is to teach children!” Astonished by this remark, the man replied frankly: “Yes, I am a pastor of the Western church.” After conversing with the elder, this pastor gave his promise and, it is said, was received into the Orthodox Church.

Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Golitsyn, traveling from Moscow to Penza and wishing to receive a blessing from Father Seraphim, stopped at Sarov and, not finding the elder in the monastery, hastened to the hermitage. On the road, half a verst from the monastery, the elder met him, to his greatest joy. The prince approached him and asked for his blessing. Having given it, the elder asked: “Who are you?” The prince, without giving his family name, simply said he was a passing traveler. Then Father Seraphim embraced him with brotherly love and, after kissing him, said: “Christ is risen!” He then asked: “Do you read the holy Gospel?” The traveler said that he did. “Read more frequently,” the elder replied, “the following words from this divine book: ‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light’ (Matt. 11:28–30).” Having said these words, the elder again embraced the prince with tears. Along the road he continued to converse with him about the life to come and about various trials that would befall him, all of which came to pass in due time. Upon arriving at the monastery, the elder invited the prince to his cell, gave him holy water to drink, and presented him with a handful of crusts. Bidding him farewell, he asked the traveling man how long he intended to stay at the monastery. He answered that he planned to leave in the morning, after the early liturgy. Then Father Seraphim said with inexpressible love that, having grown attached to him, he wished to see him again the next day after the early service, and that therefore, expressly for his sake, he would not go to the hermitage the following day but would remain in the monastery. The next day the elder came out to meet him on the porch of his cell, blessed him, embraced him, and led him inside. Here he again gave him holy water to drink, offered him crusts, and while blessing him for the journey once more advised him to read more frequently the words he had quoted from the holy Gospel and also the Creed, in which he asked him to pay particular attention to the twelfth article. Unfortunately, the elder’s other conversations with the prince remained unknown; but for the prince they served as the greatest consolation and brought much benefit to his soul.

Regarding parents, Father Seraphim instilled respect even in cases where they might have weaknesses that diminished their dignity. Thus, a certain man came to the elder with his mother. His mother was, to an extreme degree, given to drunkenness. The moment he was about to disclose his mother’s weakness to Father Seraphim, the elder instantly placed his right hand over the man’s mouth and did not allow him to utter a single word. According to the teaching of our Orthodox Church, we must not condemn our parents, nor lose respect and love for them on account of their failings. Turning from the son to the mother, Father Seraphim said: “Open your mouth.” And when she did, he breathed upon her three times. Then, as he was dismissing them, he said: “Here is my instruction for you: do not keep in your home not only wine but not even a vessel for wine, since you”—turning to the mother—“will no longer be able to tolerate wine.”

Among the notable instructions given by Father Seraphim in the final years of his life are the following, recorded in their time by Sarov monk Sergius, who later became archimandrite of the Vysotsky Monastery in Serpukhov: on duties and love toward one’s neighbors; on not judging one’s neighbor and forgiving offenses; on patience and humility; on illness; on almsgiving; on fasting; on repentance; on tears; and on the Holy Spirit. (See appendix.)

Among those who came to converse with Elder Seraphim were some who sought not edification but merely to satisfy their curiosity. Thus, a certain Sarov brother had come to think that the end of the world was near, that the great day of the Lord’s second coming was at hand. He went to Father Seraphim to ask his opinion on the matter. The elder humbly replied: “My joy! You think too much of poor Seraphim. How should I know when the end of this world will come and the great day will arrive on which the Lord will judge the living and the dead and will render to each according to his deeds? No, this it is not possible for me to know.” The brother fell in fear at the feet of the clairvoyant elder. Seraphim gently raised him and continued to speak thus: “The Lord said with His most pure lips: ‘Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father alone. As it was in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and took them all away—so will be the coming of the Son of Man’ (Matt. 24:37).” At this the elder sighed heavily and said: “We who live on earth have strayed far from the path of salvation; we anger the Lord and do not keep the holy fasts; today Christians break the fast from meat even during the holy forty days and during every fast; they do not observe Wednesdays and Fridays; yet the Church has the rule that those who do not keep the holy fasts and every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year sin greatly. But the Lord will not be angry forever—He will show mercy again. We have the Orthodox faith, the Church, which has no blemish. For these virtues Russia will always be glorious, terrible to its enemies, and unconquerable, wearing faith and piety as a shield and righteousness as armor; the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.”

Seeing that Father Seraphim exerted himself so greatly in teaching others, one brother ventured to ask him: “Why do you teach everyone?” To this the most blessed elder replied: “I follow the teaching of the Church, which sings: ‘Do not hide the words of God, but proclaim His wonders.’ (Tuesday of Holy Week, at Vespers, sticheron.)”

On another occasion a message was sent to him asking why he anointed those who came to him with oil from the lampada burning in his cell before the icon. Father Seraphim replied to the messenger: “We read in Scripture that the Apostles anointed with oil and many sick were healed thereby. Whose example should we follow, if not the Apostles’?” And the practice of anointing those who came to him continued without interference, because those who were anointed received healing.

D) Cases of Father Seraphim’s Clairvoyance

The clairvoyance of Elder Seraphim extended very far. He gave guidance concerning the future that would be impossible for any ordinary person to foresee. Thus, a young woman came to him in his cell—one who had never thought of leaving the world—to ask for instruction on how to be saved. The very moment this thought flashed through her mind, the elder had already begun to speak: “Do not trouble yourself overmuch: live as you are living now; in greater things God Himself will teach you.” Then, bowing to the ground before her, he said: “I ask only one thing of you: please, enter into every matter of administration yourself and judge fairly—that is how you will be saved.” Being still in the world at that time and having no thought whatsoever of entering a monastery, this woman could not at all understand what Father Seraphim’s words were leading to. He, continuing his remarks, said to her: “When that time comes, you will remember me.” As she was taking leave of Father Seraphim, his visitor said that perhaps the Lord would bring them together again. “No,” replied Father Seraphim, “we are parting for good, and so I ask you not to forget me in your holy prayers.” And when she asked him to pray also for her, he replied: “I will pray; but now go in peace—they are already complaining loudly about you.” Her companions had indeed met her at the inn with strong reproaches for her tardiness. Meanwhile Father Seraphim’s words had not been spoken in vain. By the inscrutable providence of God, his visitor took monastic vows under the name Kallista and, having served as abbess of the Sviyazhsky Monastery in Kazan Province, she remembered the elder’s instructions and ordered her life according to them.

On another occasion Father Seraphim was visited by two young women, the spiritual daughters of Stephen, a schema-monk of the Sarov Hermitage. One was of the merchant class and young in years; the other was of the nobility and already of advanced age. The latter had burned with love for God since her youth and had long desired to become a nun, but her parents had not given her their blessing to do so. Both women came to Father Seraphim for a blessing and to ask his counsel. The noblewoman, moreover, asked for his blessing to enter a monastery. The elder, on the contrary, began to advise her to marry, saying: “The married life is blessed by God Himself. In it one need only maintain faithfulness, love, and peace on both sides. In marriage you will be happy, but there is no path to monasticism for you. The monastic life is hard and not for everyone to bear.” The young woman of the merchant class, meanwhile, had no thought of monasticism and said nothing to Father Seraphim on that subject. And yet he, of his own accord, blessed her through his clairvoyance to enter the monastic order, even naming the monastery where she would find salvation. Both women were equally displeased with the elder’s conversation; and the older woman was even offended by his counsel and grew cool in her devotion to him. Their own spiritual father, Hieromonk Stephen, was himself surprised and could not understand why the elder was in fact dissuading the older woman—who was zealous for the monastic path—from becoming a nun, while blessing the young woman—who had no desire for it—to embark on that same path. The outcome, however, vindicated the elder. The noblewoman entered into marriage at an advanced age and was happy. And the young one did indeed go to that very monastery the clairvoyant elder had named.

Cavalry captain Afrikan Vasilyevich Teplov, who made it his custom to visit Father Seraphim every year, communicated the following cases of his clairvoyance, which related personally to him.

“In the summer of 1829, I traveled to Sarov with my wife and children. Along the road my wife, noticing that our eldest son—who was about ten years old—was occupied exclusively with reading sacred books and paid no attention to the world around him, began to complain that our children were far too attached to sacred books alone, and that they were entirely neglecting their lessons, their studies, and the other things necessary in society. Upon arriving at Sarov, we immediately went to Father Seraphim and were received by him very warmly. Blessing me, he said that we should stay for three days; blessing my wife, he said: ‘Mother, mother! Do not hurry to teach the children French and German—first prepare their souls, and the rest will be added to them afterward.’”

Blessing both our children, he honored our eldest by calling him “his treasure.” In this way the righteous elder reproved my wife’s unjust complaints; and afterwards, throughout the whole of his life, until his very end, he never ceased to warn me beforehand regarding all the joyful and sorrowful circumstances that arose in our family, sustaining my weak spirit with his fatherly counsels.

“In that same year of 1829, I was a witness to the following event from Father Seraphim’s life. A certain gentleman intended to marry a woman whose social standing was in no way suited to his, and his parents did not consent to this marriage. But the gentleman, knowing that his parents held Father Seraphim in the highest regard and would not be able to oppose the marriage after his approval, wanted first to win the elder over to his side. With this in mind, having prepared in advance his proofs of the legitimacy of his intention, and even texts from Holy Scripture in case Father Seraphim should disagree, to persuade him, he came to this righteous elder. And suddenly, to his utmost astonishment, he heard the elder pronounce the first name and patronymic of the very woman about whom he was thinking of making his inquiries—and he heard him go on to state the very same arguments he had intended to present, and finally even the very Scripture texts upon which he had intended to rely in case of the elder’s disagreement. Struck by this unexpected anticipation of his thoughts, the gentleman fell silently to his knees before the elder. Father Seraphim, raising him up, said: ‘God and the Mother of God and your own mother do not desire your intention—and this will not come to pass.’ The marriage indeed did not take place. Upon returning from the elder, the gentleman himself admitted that he had never before believed that righteous people could exist on earth; but that the present case had fully persuaded him of the righteous life of Father Seraphim.”

“In 1830, owing to an illness of my wife, we made a vow to make a pilgrimage to Tikhvin to the wonderworking icon of the Queen of Heaven. But on the very day when we were to depart, my wife, coming down the stairs from the second floor, stumbled and dislocated her kneecap. Although the bone-setter did restore the leg, the kneecap would slip out of place again at the slightest movement, so that it seemed quite impossible for us to travel at all. Nevertheless, placing full faith in the prayers of Father Seraphim, we did not wish to postpone the journey to another time and set out then, as it was winter. Along the road her pain intensified, and this caused me, despite all my trust in Father Seraphim’s prayers, to suggest several times that my wife consider turning back. But she would not agree. And since we had made it a sacred rule never to pass by the Sarov Hermitage without receiving Father Seraphim’s blessing, we once again turned off the main road to go to him. We were still far from the monastery when the pain in my wife’s leg began to diminish, and the nearer we drew to Sarov the weaker it became, until finally, when we entered the hermitage itself, it ceased completely: the kneecap settled into place and the swelling disappeared. We presented ourselves to the elder in his cell to receive his blessing, and he, having blessed us, told us to come to him at his forest hermitage by the spring, which we did, arriving around midday. The elder received us very graciously, gave us water from the spring to drink, gave us two rye crusts for the road to Tikhvin, and blessing us for the journey said: ‘Go, go, go! The road is smooth.’”

“We recalled Father Seraphim’s last words on the return journey from Tikhvin, for although it was the month of January, in anticipation of the sovereign Emperor’s procession, the road had been so well leveled that we encountered scarcely a single rut along the way.”

Through his gift of clairvoyance Father Seraphim was of great benefit to those around him. Thus, a pious widow of a deacon from Penza, named Eudoxia, had come to Sarov. Wishing to receive the elder’s blessing, she came from the hospital church in the midst of a great crowd to seek it, and stopped on the porch of his cell, waiting at the back of the line for her turn to approach Father Seraphim. But Father Seraphim, leaving everyone else, suddenly called out to her: “Eudoxia! Come here quickly.” Eudoxia was remarkably surprised that he called her by name, having never seen her, and she approached him with a feeling of reverence and awe. Father Seraphim blessed her, gave her blessed bread, and said: “You must hasten home so as to find your son there.” Eudoxia hurried home and in fact barely caught her son: in her absence the authorities of the Penza Seminary had appointed him a student at the Kiev Academy, and on account of the great distance from Penza to Kiev, they were in haste to send him off to his post. This son, upon completing his studies at the Kiev Academy, became a monk under the name Iriarkh, served as a teacher in seminaries and as rector, and was subsequently a bishop.

One day a man came to novice John Tikhonov, who called himself a landowner returning from a journey to Crimea, and said that he had twice been to Sarov but had not been privileged to see Father Seraphim, and now hoped to see him through the intercession of Father John.

Father John relates that a strange, even oppressive feeling came over him when he was about to lead this visitor through the forest to the elder, even though he had seen the man praying on his knees and with tears before an icon of the Mother of God at the liturgy that very same day. Leaving the visitor several yards from Father Seraphim’s forest cell, John went to the elder and told him that such-and-such a person wished to receive his blessing. But Father Seraphim replied sternly to his proposal: “I implore you in God’s name to flee from such people in the future,” and he explained that this man was a pretender. Hoping to change the elder’s mind, John told him how the man had prayed in church and again interceded for him. But the elder, having never seen this visitor, began to speak of him still more sternly, saying that “this is the most unfortunate, the most lost of men.” When the novice returned to the visitor who was awaiting him and relayed to him the elder’s words, urging him more fervently to pray to the Lord if he did not wish his soul to perish beyond recall, the man burst out weeping at the top of his voice and confessed that his soul was indeed filled with the most impure thoughts and feelings.

But then, shortly after him, another pilgrim came to the Sarov Hermitage. He appeared to be of simple station and also earnestly asked Father John to take him to Father Seraphim. Father John fulfilled his request, but out of caution from the recent incident, left him likewise a few yards from Father Seraphim’s forest cell. At that moment the elder was cutting sedge grass with his bare hands, and as soon as he heard that a certain pilgrim from Kiev wished to receive his blessing, he immediately said to the novice: “Bring him here.”

When the novice brought him, the elder sat the pilgrim down beside himself and began to tell him to abandon the path he had chosen—to take off his chains, put on shoes, and return to his home—for there his mother, wife, and children were grieving greatly for him; and at home he should occupy himself with the grain trade. “I tell you,” said the elder, “that it is very good to trade in grain. I have a merchant acquaintance in Yelets; you need only go to him, bow, and say that poor Seraphim sent you to him—and he will take you on as a manager.”

The pilgrim was silent throughout all of this, though it was plain that he was listening to the elder with particular feeling and was deeply moved by his words. When the elder, having given his blessing, dismissed those who had come with a word of peace, Father John asked the pilgrim along the road about the reason for his silence. The pilgrim replied that through his silence he had not only lost nothing but had in fact received everything he desired—that is, he had learned his true path. And he went on to tell them that Father Seraphim, through his wondrous gift of clairvoyance, knew his entire life: that he was of the petty bourgeois class and had always been engaged in the grain trade, by which he supported his family, but out of love for God, without discernment, without a guide, and without a father’s blessing, he had wished to go on pilgrimage; and therefore, having abandoned his family without any provision, he had set off on foot and in chains to Kiev with a year’s passport. “There,” he said, “I met an elder who told me to go to the Sarov Hermitage, to come to Father Seraphim, and to obey him in everything he commanded, because that would be my true path. And now the elder himself has told me beforehand, and it remains only for me to thank the merciful God and return home, according to the direction of the man of God.”

Not long before Father Seraphim’s repose, Alexei Petrovich Andronov, a townsman of the city of Kadom, motivated by deep respect and love for him, set out for the Sarov Hermitage and took along two young seminary graduates who were awaiting their appointments. When they came to the elder, he blessed them all; to one of the young men he said: “Hasten home—there is a fire at your house; your crops are burning, and you must go to help your family.” To the other he also said to hurry home “because they are already waiting for you there to take up your position.” The young men were astonished by these words, but upon returning home each of them was convinced that nothing was hidden from the wondrous elder.

A peasant named Yefim Vasilyev Likhachevsky once contracted to install the spire on a monastery tower at the Sarov Hermitage. When everything was ready and the people had begun to pray, while he and several workers were standing on the roof of the tower to oversee the work and set the spire in its proper place, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not asked for the prayers and blessing of Father Seraphim for this undertaking—for then he would have known for certain that everything would end well. The very moment he thought this, he immediately saw Father Seraphim himself, who had come out of his cell onto the porch and blessed him three times.

Down to our own time there have come accounts of such a kind that we perceive not only the benefit of Father Seraphim’s clairvoyance but also an explanation of how this gift of God acted within him. On one occasion Father Seraphim was visited in his monastery cell by the builder of the Vysokogorsky Hermitage, Hieromonk Anthony, and a merchant visiting from Vladimir Province. They entered together. Father Seraphim asked the builder to sit and wait, and immediately began to speak with the merchant. With graciousness and kindness he exposed his vices and offered him instruction: “All your failings and sorrows,” he said, “are the consequence of your passionate way of life. Abandon it, correct your ways.” His lengthy address on this theme was penetrated with such touching warmth of heart that both the merchant, to whom it directly applied, and the builder, for whom it was an outside matter, were moved, in the literal sense, to tears. In conclusion, Father Seraphim counseled the merchant to make his confession and receive Holy Communion at Sarov, assuring him that the Lord, in the case of sincere repentance, would not withdraw His grace and mercy from him. When the conversation was over, the merchant, his heart turned toward piety, bowed at the elder’s feet, thanked him from the bottom of his soul for the soul-saving conversation, promised to carry out what he had heard, and asking Father Seraphim’s prayers, left his cell in tears.

Then the superior of the Vyskogorsky Hermitage, who for many years had enjoyed Father Seraphim’s regard and respect, ventured to ask him:

“Father! The human soul lies open before you like a face in a mirror: in my eyes, without having heard the spiritual needs and sorrows of the pilgrim who was just here, you told him everything he needed.”

Father Seraphim said not a word.

The superior continued:

“Now I see: your mind is so pure that nothing in the heart of one’s neighbor is hidden from it.”

Father Seraphim placed his right hand over his companion’s mouth and said:

“You are not speaking rightly, my joy. The human heart is open to the Lord alone, and God alone is the knower of hearts; ‘a man shall come, and the heart is deep’ (Ps. 63:7).” He then told of how some had reproached St. Gregory the Theologian for drawing close to Maximus the Cynic. But the holy hierarch said: “God alone knows the secrets of the human heart; I saw in him one who had turned from paganism to Christianity, which is great in my eyes.”

The superior asked again: “But how is it, Father, that you did not ask the merchant a single word, yet told him everything he needed?”

Father Seraphim, opening his mouth and speaking at length, began to explain:

“He came to me as others do—as you yourself came—as to a servant of God. I, sinful Seraphim, think of myself as just that: a sinful servant of God. Whatever the Lord commands me, as His servant, I pass on to the one who needs something helpful. The first thought that arises in my soul I take as God’s direction, and I speak without knowing what is on my companion’s heart, trusting only that this is how God’s will points me for his benefit. But there are times when someone shares some circumstance with me, and I, not trusting it to God’s will, subject it to my own reasoning—thinking it can be resolved by my own mind without recourse to God—and in such cases mistakes always follow.”

The elder concluded this deeply edifying and richly illuminating conversation with these words:

“As iron to the smith, so have I surrendered myself and my will to the Lord God. As it pleases Him, so I act. I have no will of my own; whatever pleases God, that I pass on.”

This conversation was personally recounted to us by the venerable Father Archimandrite Anthony, who was at that time superior of the Vyskogorsky Monastery and later became vicar of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

D) Healings through the Prayers of Elder Seraphim

Some people, by virtue of their faith and through the intercession of Father Seraphim’s prayers, received healings during his lifetime. Thus, in 1830 there arrived in Sarov a sick woman who later became abbess in the town of Slobodsk in Vyatka Province. She was suffering from dropsy; her entire body was swollen and had turned yellow; she was so debilitated that she reached Sarov only with great difficulty. She had to stop twice along the road, and on one occasion was so weak that at the Nizhny Novgorod women’s monastery she had already been given the last rites in preparation for death.

Upon arriving in Sarov, she came with other visitors into the entrance room of Father Seraphim’s cell and sat down at the back of the group. The elder, parting the crowd of visitors, came straight to her, extended his hand to receive from her a towel she had worked herself, wiped himself with it three times, and said: “Come, my joy, follow me”—and led her into his cell. There he blessed her, gave her prosphora with holy water, and as he dismissed her said: “Tomorrow we shall see each other again.”

The next day the elder was receiving visitors at his nearby woodland cell, near his spring. He came out to them in a half-mantle with a lighted candle in his hands and began blessing everyone, saying to each what was needful for the soul’s benefit. The sick woman came to him last. Looking at her, he asked: “You are very unwell, aren’t you, dear mother?” and then, as he blessed her, continued: “Go and wash your face at the spring and drink from it—and you will be well.” The sick woman replied: “I have already drunk, Father, and washed myself when I arrived here.” He then said again: “Take some water from the spring with you, dear mother, drink it and wash with it, and bathe your body: the Apostles of Christ will heal you, you will be well.” When she said that she had no vessel in which to carry water with her, the elder brought out a small jug from his cell and repeated his earlier words, both at that moment and again after she returned with the water.

Returning to the guesthouse, the sick woman immediately carried out the elder’s advice in every detail, having no fear of using water in a case of dropsy and not heeding those who were with her and tried to forbid it. The next day she rose from her bed in perfect health. The fluid had drained from her body, the swelling had subsided, the pain had ceased, and her strength had returned; her face was suffused with its natural color. The sick woman was as if reborn, and those who had seen her the day before could scarcely recognize her in the morning.

Before she departed on her homeward journey, Father Seraphim sent her and her two traveling companions a blessing along with certain gifts: to the woman who had been healed—a walking stick with a crook; to one companion—a stick with four branches; and to the other—a plain stick. Subsequent events showed that each of these tokens carried a special significance which none of them understood at the time. The healed woman, having become a nun under the name Pulkheria, served as abbess of the women’s monastery in the town of Slobodsk, Vyatka Province. The first companion, together with her three branches (two sons and a daughter), all four of them took monastic vows; the second companion likewise entered a monastery.

The foregoing account mentions Seraphim’s spring and its healing power.

Here is what the Sarov hieromonk Father Anastasy recounts about this matter. Once he happened to be with Father Seraphim near his well. In the course of their conversation the elder said to him: “You see, Father, I prayed that this water in the well might be healing for illnesses.” This explains the present properties of the water flowing in Seraphim’s spring, properties it did not possess before. First, this water, as people observe, never spoils, even if it has stood for many years in unsealed vessels. Some would like to attribute this quality to mineral substances supposedly present in its composition. But it is well known that even mineral waters change and spoil—sometimes very quickly—when poorly sealed. Second, at any time of year many people bathe in the water from Seraphim’s spring, both the healthy and the sick, and not only has no one suffered harm from it, but on the contrary, many, as we see, have received healing. Thus, after Father Seraphim’s death, Princess E. I. E. recounted the following concerning the healing properties of Seraphim’s spring: “My cousin V. N. suffered greatly from seizures and was frightened of any holy object brought near her. Medicines, as so often happens, gave her no relief. There was nothing for it—she was taken to Sarov to Father Seraphim. The elder gave her some dried bread and told her to wash in his spring. From that moment her illness passed completely, and she lives in peace among her children.”

Here is what is also said in the letters of Maria Kol., a contemporary of Father Seraphim who knew him personally—letters written to the recluse George in the first half-year after the death of the Sarov ascetic.

“I return again to Father Seraphim, as to the source of my joy. In my presence, and to others as well, Mavra Lvovna, the general’s wife Sipyagina, used to say: She was ill, she felt a terrible anguish, and owing to her illness she could not eat the food prescribed by Church rule on fast days. When she came to Father Seraphim to ask for help, the elder told her to drink water from his spring. Mavra Lvovna drank—and suddenly, without any forcing, a great deal of bile came up from her throat. After that she was well.”

“Also, Tatyana Vasilyevna Barinova, during her visit to Father Seraphim, complained to him of her illness; she had an incurable ringworm on her hand, and the whole arm was wrapped in bandages. Father Seraphim told her to wash her hand with water from the spring. Tatyana Vasilyevna first thought: ‘Oh, how can I do this, when even the slightest contact with moisture makes the condition of my hand worse?’ Yet on this occasion she did not hesitate to render obedience and washed her hand. Immediately, as it were, scales peeled away from her hand together with the skin, and from that time her hands have been clean.”

“Many who even had open wounds were told by Father Seraphim to pour water from his spring over themselves. All received healing—and from various illnesses.”

Maria concluded her accounts of the spring’s healing power with these words: “The life of Father Seraphim and the wondrous works of God in him fill me with joy. But when I remember his departure from those here below, and that I shall see him no more, my heart is filled with grief and my eyes with tears. I would have asked him to let me join the Diveyevo community… During my time with him I was so amazed by him that I found little to say to him about myself; my tears simply flowed without restraint. With the foretold upheaval of my life, it seemed to me as though my whole heart was turned to weeping. But the elder managed here too to comfort me and to bring me into submission to God’s will.”

There were very many instances in which Father Seraphim gave help to the sick during his lifetime. Thus, the monk of the Sarov Hermitage, Alexander, recounted the following circumstances to many God-fearing persons:

“While still in the world, he had suffered from general weakness in all his limbs, and was especially tormented by an unbearable pain in one ear. Medicines gave him no help whatsoever. In the end a blockage formed in the ear. On the advice of good people he set out for Sarov to ask for the prayers and help of Father Seraphim. When the sick man entered and fell at his feet, the elder, without saying a word, went to the vigil lamp burning before the icon of the Mother of God, dipped his finger in the oil, and anointed the afflicted part of the ear. The sick man felt relief at that very moment, and soon all the pain was gone. Then the elder, among other things, said to the one who had been healed: ‘You will be ours,’ and he, despite considerable obstacles, did indeed enter the Sarov Hermitage.”

After entering the monastery, the weakness in his right hand, which he had previously experienced, became extraordinarily more severe. The monk could neither make the sign of the cross nor eat with his right hand without supporting it with his left. Coming again to Elder Seraphim, he threw himself at his feet, asking for his blessing and help through holy prayers. Father Seraphim blessed him with great kindness and said with a joyful face: “Pray to the Queen of Heaven and make three prostrations to her.” The monk immediately made three prostrations before the icon of the Mother of God. After this the elder, taking a vessel of holy water, began to offer it to him in his sick hand. But the monk replied: “Father! I cannot take it with that hand: it hurts and is completely weak.” The elder then took him by the sick hand and, offering the vessel, said: “Take it and drink.” The sick man, though with difficulty and with Father Seraphim’s support, drank. The elder concluded by blessing him and dismissing him in peace to his cell. “From that time,” said the monk Alexander, “I feel no pain whatsoever in my hand, thanks be to God for the prayers of Father Seraphim.”

Both in Diveyevo and in Sarov many peasants worked at various tasks. Some of them were especially close to Father Seraphim; they held the elder in faith and love as a person pleasing to God, and Father Seraphim in turn loved them. Some of them in this way became reliable narrators of events from the elder’s life.

Thus, the peasant E. V. of Likhachevo recounted that in 1831, upon feeling in himself the first signs of cholera, he immediately ran to Father Seraphim to ask for help, and barely managed to crawl to his cell. The elder pressed him to the icon of the Mother of God “Umilenie” (Tender Mercy), gave him holy water to drink, and let him partake of several fragments of prosphora. The sick man calmed down somewhat. The elder then told him to walk around the monastery and, stopping in the cathedral, to pray there. “There,” he said, “God’s mercy will heal you.” The peasant did all this and, by God’s grace, returned to the guesthouse in perfect health.

Cavalry Captain Afrikan Vasilyevich Teplov communicated the following regarding Father Seraphim’s help during the cholera epidemic: “In the early 1830s cholera appeared in Yekaterinoslav Province and began causing great mortality on my estate in that region. About twenty of my people suddenly fell ill, and two of them had already died. The convulsive thrashing of the others, the general moaning and weeping, tore at my soul. In such extreme circumstances I recalled that Father Seraphim had said to me several times: ‘When you are in sorrow, come to the poor Seraphim’s cell: he will pray for you.’ This recollection prompted me and my wife to turn, from afar, to Elder Seraphim, that he might deliver us from the deadly illness. And that very same night, in a vision during sleep, the elder appeared to my wife and told her to go to a spring where a wonder-working icon of the Mother of God had once appeared, to take water from it, to drink from it and to wash with it—both we ourselves and all our people. This spring, or source, is twelve versts from my estate, and early in the morning I set out there immediately with my whole household, preserving in my soul full confidence in the intercession of God’s saint Seraphim on our behalf.”

“Upon arriving at the spring, we first lowered a cross into it, and then we drank and washed ourselves from it—both we ourselves and those who served us. At the same time, on my instructions, a barrel was brought to us from our village, which we filled with water from the spring, and then we all set off for home. In the village I ordered all the peasants to be assembled, invited the priest, and after a solemn service of water-blessing we began distributing the blessed water to everyone, and sent a portion of it to the hospital, where many were already at death’s door. All of them, by God’s mercy, recovered soon, receiving no treatment other than the water sent to them, and no one died on my estate after that. What particularly astonished us all and moved us to give thanks for God’s mercy was the recovery of one seventy-year-old woman. She too had fallen ill with cholera and was already in a hopeless state. But when her neighbor, a peasant, forcibly poured water into her mouth—for she was insensible—and then poured the rest of the water from the bottle over her, she lost consciousness; then after several minutes a most abundant sweat broke out on her, and within an hour, no more, the old woman was out of all danger.”

On account of this deadly plague, many wrote to Father Seraphim with letters, and some came in person to ask for his prayers and guidance on how to protect themselves from danger. The elder gave the following instruction:

“Let us call on the name of the Lord—and we shall be saved. When the name of God is on our lips, we are saved. ‘Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He shall act; He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday’ (Ps. 36:5–6)—only submit yourself to the Lord and entreat Him.” As a continuation of this path he advised keeping that rule of prayer which he had earlier composed for common people and for those who often do not have sufficient leisure for prayer (see above). “Whoever continues in this way,” he said, “will not be deprived of God’s mercy. Prayer is the path to the Lord. One who receives holy Communion devoutly, and not merely once a year, will be saved, prosperous, and long-lived even on this earth. Remember the apostolic words: ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in everything’ (1 Thess. 5:17). In such a blessed and peaceful state of soul, I believe that by God’s great goodness, grace will be marked upon the family line of the one who communes. Before the Lord, one who does His will is worth more than a multitude of the lawless.”

As for letters in particular, Father Seraphim often knew their contents without opening them, and gave answers, usually saying something like: “Here is what tell them from the poor Seraphim,” and so forth. This is attested by many God-fearing persons who dealt with Father Seraphim either personally or through correspondence. After the elder’s death, many unopened letters were found in his cell, for all of which, however, oral answers had been given in their time.

Elder Seraphim’s prayers were so powerful before God that there are instances of the sick being raised from the very bed of death. Thus, in May 1829 the wife of Alexei Guryevich Vorotilov, a resident of Gorbatovsky district in the village of Pavlovo, fell gravely ill. Vorotilov had great faith in the power of Father Seraphim’s prayers, and the elder, according to the testimony of those who knew them, loved him as if he were his own disciple and confidant. Vorotilov immediately set out for Sarov and, despite arriving there at midnight, hastened to Father Seraphim’s cell. The elder, as if expecting him, was sitting on the porch of the cell and, seeing him, greeted him with these words: “What is it, my joy—have you come to poor Seraphim at such an hour?” Vorotilov, in tears, told him the reason for his hasty arrival in Sarov and begged him to help his ailing wife. But Father Seraphim, to Vorotilov’s deepest grief, declared that his wife was fated to die from her illness. Alexei Guryevich then, streaming with tears, fell at the feet of the ascetic and, with faith and humility, besought him to pray for the return of her life and health. Father Seraphim at once entered into a prayer of the mind for about ten minutes, then opened his eyes and, lifting Vorotilov to his feet, said joyfully: “Well now, my joy, the Lord is granting your wife life. Go in peace to your home.” With joy Vorotilov hastened home. There he learned that his wife had felt relief precisely at the minutes when Father Seraphim had been laboring in prayer. And soon she recovered entirely.

In September 1831 there arrived in Sarov a landowner of Simbirsk and Nizhny Novgorod Provinces, Collegiate Counselor Nikolai Alexandrovich Motovilov, who was completely ill and received a miraculous healing through the prayers of Father Seraphim. In a memorandum preserved at the Diveyevo community he writes thus of his healing: “The great elder Seraphim healed me of severe and incredible, great rheumatic and other illnesses, with general weakness throughout the body, paralysis of the legs which were contracted and swollen at the knees, and bedsores on the back and sides, from which I had suffered incurably for more than three years. The healing came about in the following manner. I ordered myself to be conveyed, gravely ill, from the village of Britvino in my Nizhny Novgorod Lukoyanov estate, to Father Seraphim. On the 5th of September 1831 I was brought to the Sarov Hermitage; on the 7th of September and on the 8th, the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, I was granted two conversations—the first ones—with Father Seraphim, before and after the midday meal, in his monastery cell; but I had not yet received healing. But when on the following day, the 9th of September, I was brought to him at his nearby woodland hermitage, near his well—four men carrying me in their arms and a fifth supporting my head—and they brought me to him as he was conversing with the people, who came to him in great numbers at that time, near a large and very thick pine tree still standing on the bank of the Sarovka river on his little hayfield meadow, and there they set me down. At my request to help and heal me, he said: ‘But I am not a doctor; one must go to doctors when one wishes to be treated for some illness.’ I described to him in detail my afflictions and that I had tried all the principal methods of treatment, but had received healing from none of them, and that therefore I placed no hope for my salvation in anything else and had no other hope of receiving healing from my ailments except only through God’s grace. But being a sinner and not having the boldness to approach the Lord God myself, I was asking for his holy prayers, that the Lord might heal me. And he put a question to me: ‘Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is the God-Man, and in His Most Pure Mother of God, that She is the Ever-Virgin?’ I answered: ‘I believe.’ ‘And do you believe,’ he continued to question me, ‘that the Lord, as He formerly healed instantly and by His one word or by His touch all the infirmities that were in men, so even now can just as easily and instantly as before heal those who need help by His one word alone; and that the intercession of the Mother of God to Him on our behalf is all-powerful, and that by this Her intercession the Lord Jesus Christ can even now instantly and by one word heal you completely?’ I answered that I truly believe all of this with all my soul and heart, and that if I did not believe I would not have ordered myself to be brought to you. ‘And if you believe,’ he concluded, ‘then you are already well!’ ‘How am I well?’ I asked, ‘when my people and you yourself are holding me in your arms!’ ‘No!’ he said to me, ‘You are completely and entirely well in your whole body now!’ And he told those of my people who were holding me in their arms to step away from me, and he himself, taking me by the shoulders, lifted me from the ground and, setting me on my feet, said to me: ‘Stand firm, plant yourself more steadily on the ground, like this; do not be afraid, you are completely well now.’ And then, looking at me joyfully, he added: ‘There, do you see how well you are standing now.’ I answered: ‘Of course I am standing well, because you are holding me well and firmly.’ And he, removing his hands from me, said: ‘There, now I am no longer holding you, yet you are still standing firmly without me; walk boldly, my dear one, the Lord has healed you—walk, and move from where you stand.’ Taking me by the hand with one hand, and with the other gently pushing me by the shoulders, he led me over the grass and uneven ground, around the great pine, saying: ‘There, your God-loving one, how well you are walking!’ I answered: ‘Yes, because you are pleased to lead me well!’ ‘No,’ he said to me, removing his hand from me: ‘it is the Lord Himself who has been pleased to heal you completely, and it was the Mother of God Herself who entreated Him for this—you will go on without me now and will always walk well; go then…’ and he began to push me so that I would walk. ‘But this way I shall fall and hurt myself…’ I said. ‘No,’ he contradicted me, ‘you will not hurt yourself, but will walk firmly…’ And when I felt some kind of strength that had descended upon me from above at that moment, I took heart a little and walked firmly; then he suddenly stopped me and asked: ‘Well, are you now convinced that the Lord has truly healed you in all things and entirely? The Lord has taken away your iniquities and cleansed your sins. Do you see what a miracle the Lord has worked with you today? Always believe in Him without the slightest doubt—in Christ our Savior—and firmly hope in His mercy toward you; love Him with all your heart and cleave to Him with all your soul, and always firmly hope in Him and give thanks to the Queen of Heaven for Her great mercies toward you. But since your three-year suffering has sorely exhausted you, do not walk a great deal all at once now, but gradually: little by little accustom yourself to walking, and guard your health as a precious gift from God’… And having conversed with me at some length after that, he sent me off to the guesthouse completely well. And so, my people went on their own from the forest and the nearby hermitage to the monastery, thanking God and marveling at His wondrous mercies toward me, manifested before their very eyes, while I myself sat with the guesthouse father, Father Gury, firmly and without any human support as I sat in the carriage, and returned to the guesthouse of the Sarov Hermitage. And since many pilgrims had been present with me at my healing, they returned to the monastery before me, proclaiming to everyone this great miracle.”

E) Elder Seraphim’s Help in Various Ailments of the Soul

Elder Father Seraphim gave help to those afflicted with sorrows, stricken with ailments of the soul, and tormented by evil spirits. Thus, one brother of Sarov, finding himself in a state of despondency close to despair, asked another to share a few minutes of sorrow with him. These two brothers left the monastery after vespers and walked around the outer wall, comforting one another through conversation. As they drew near the stables, past which a path led to Seraphim’s spring, the grieving brother wished to turn aside so as not to encounter Father Seraphim in such a painful state of spirit. But before they had managed to leave the path, they suddenly saw the elder near at hand, coming toward them. The elder appeared to them in rather unusual attire. Part of his white cassock was tucked up, in the manner of a workman, under his belt, and the skirts hung down. Over him was an enormous green levantine cloth shawl, one end of which dragged along the ground while the other was wrapped around his neck. The two brothers fell at his feet. The elder, like a tender father, blessed them with extraordinary warmth, and then sang the following verse—the ninth ode of the canon sung in every grief and affliction of the soul (the Paraklesis): “Fill my heart with joy, O Virgin, you who received the fullness of joy, destroying sinful grief.” Then, stamping his foot, he said: “We have no right to give way to despondency, for Christ has conquered all things, has raised Adam, has freed Eve, has put death to death.” The elder’s state of soul seemed to pour itself into the souls of the grieving brothers, and they, brought to life by his joy, returned to the monastery in a peaceful and serene disposition of heart.

A widow with three small children, weighed down by the burden of raising them, complained bitterly about her hard lot. Having heard much of Father Seraphim’s compassion, she resolved to go to him, ask his blessing, and share her grief. After blessing her, the elder said: “Do not grumble at your lot—your sorrow will end soon; one will be your provider.” A week later, two of the children died. Their mother was struck by this unexpected death and went again to Father Seraphim, hoping he would resolve the perplexities troubling her soul. Seeing her and anticipating her words, the elder said: “Pray to the Protectress, the Most Holy Mother of God, and to all the saints—you have greatly offended them by cursing your children. Confess everything to your spiritual father, and from now on restrain your anger, lest you become a great sinner. For the last time I bless you—only forgive them.” After these words the elder blessed the widow, gave her the Cross he wore on his chest to kiss, and withdrew to his cell for other labors.

Father Seraphim healed the demon-possessed by his presence, by the Cross, and by prayer. “I was a witness,” said a peasant from Likhachevka who worked at Sarov, “of how several men brought with the greatest difficulty to the entrance of Father Seraphim’s hermitage cell a woman possessed by a demon, who resisted the entire way, and at the porch steps fell down, threw her head back, and cried out: ‘It will burn, it will burn!’ Father Seraphim came out of his cell, and since the woman would not open her mouth, he forcibly poured a few drops of holy water into it. I, and all of us, saw that in that very instant something like a smoky cloud flew out of her mouth. Then the elder made the sign of the cross over her and with a blessing offered a holy prayer above her, and the possessed woman came to herself and began to pray on her own. Afterward, seeing her in the Sarov cathedral in perfect health, I asked: ‘How does she feel now?’ — ‘Thanks be to God,’ she answered, ‘I no longer feel the former illness.’”

G) Healings and prophecies together

Father Seraphim sometimes combined the working of healings with prophecies about the future fate of those who were cured, or of those who were with them. Such was the case with Father Melchizedek, a monk of the Arzamas Savior Monastery. While still in the world, married with children, he had traded in fish and built a stone cellar for storage, but had not had time to fit it with a proper door. His five-year-old son, playing on the cellar steps with another boy, fell backward down into it, and after this began to cry at night, and a great sadness settled over the household. The child’s legs became paralyzed; not a single toe moved; the whole body wasted away until nothing was left but bones and skin, and the legs hung limp as whips. When anyone tried to bend his legs, the knees crackled like springs; the same happened when they were straightened. However much the parents treated their son, medicines brought no benefit—on the contrary, a severe ache appeared in his chest as well. At last, after consulting with each other, the parents decided to travel with the sick child to Sarov to see Father Seraphim. Along the way, over the corduroy roads and bridges, they carried him in their arms, and the sick boy wept constantly from the unbearable pain in his chest and begged to go back home, where it was more comfortable to lie down; yet his parents, undeterred, arrived in Sarov. Coming to Father Seraphim’s cell and learning that he was at his hermitage, they waited patiently for his return. When Father Seraphim came back to the monastery he blessed everyone, and the sick child he also kissed on the head. The parents explained about their son’s illness. Father Seraphim said: “Do not treat him with anything—pray to God,” and gave the boy something to drink and some dried bread. On the journey home the boy was calmer, and his parents, having stopped treating him, prayed to God for him continually. Some time later the sick child’s mother had a dream in which she was told that for her son’s healing she should bring the wonderworking icon of the Kazan Mother of God (this icon is in the city of Arzamas, in the Church of the Kazan Mother of God) into the home. Accordingly, the icon of the Mother of God was brought into the home; they served an all-night vigil and a moleben with the blessing of water. At the end of the moleben, the priest blessed the sick boy with the Cross, gave him holy water to drink, and then he venerated the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God, which remained in the house until morning. In the morning, after a thanksgiving moleben to the Mother of God had been served, the icon was carried back to the church with joy and reverence. Upon returning from the church, the mother took the sick child on her lap; at that moment his legs, which until then had not moved properly, suddenly bent and straightened again, then bent once more and straightened again. The parents, seeing this, wept from astonishment and joy, and their son, rising to his feet, walked with unsteady steps—and from that time he began to walk better: his legs recovered completely, and he suffered from them no more.

At that same meeting, when the sick child had been brought to Father Seraphim, the elder, among other things, said to the boy’s father: “You—leave the world.” For a long time the father pondered what this might mean, and then began to persuade his wife to go with their daughter to a convent, intending to enter a monastery himself as well. His wife objected: “But where do you propose to put the parents” (who lived with them)? “For the parents,” the husband replied, “we need to build a cell and provide for their upkeep.” Seeing no progress from this quarter, his wife answered plainly that she had no wish to go to a convent. There the matter rested. Then, after some time had passed, his wife, his father, and his mother all died within a single year, and the father and son entered the Vysokogorsky Hermitage that same year, while the daughter was placed in the Nikolaevsky Arzamas women’s convent. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of Father Seraphim, spoken in the form of a hint.

Madame M. V. Nikashina related the following account of Father Seraphim’s healings and prophecies:

“My husband and I wished to see the God-pleasing elder Seraphim and traveled to the Sarov Hermitage; but upon arriving there we did not find Father Seraphim in his monastery cell—he was in the forest, at his hermitage labors. We went there, and before long the elder himself met us on the way. He immediately turned to my husband with the words: ‘Here is what, dear friend—the prophet David writes: Lord, I have loved the beauty of Your house and the place where Your glory dwells. It is very good, dear friend, to adorn the temples of the Lord.’ Father Seraphim said this by the gift of clairvoyance, foreseeing how much my husband loved to adorn the churches of God.”

“After that, Father Seraphim invited us to his monastery cell, and we began to ask his blessing for a trip to Moscow to see our landowner—to petition either for emancipation or, at the very least, for the landlord to release my husband from his duties as manager. But Father Seraphim, after hearing our words, took my husband by the hand, led him to the icon of the Mother of God ‘Tenderness,’ and said: ‘I ask you, for the sake of the Mother of God, do not relinquish your post. Your management brings glory to God—you do not wrong the peasants. Do not listen to anyone who speaks ill of you or your wife. There is no road for you to Moscow—your road is this: I blessed one manager to ask for his freedom upon the death of his master, who during his lifetime had purchased an estate in the south and sent him there to receive it and put it in order. When that master died, his mistress gave the manager his freedom and granted him such power of attorney over the estate that she virtually handed herself over to him.’ Father Seraphim told this parable about my husband, with whom indeed everything afterward came to pass exactly as he had predicted several years before its fulfillment.”

“My husband suffered from the following strange ailment: the moment he caught even the slightest chill, blood would rush to his face, the veins would become tense, the nerves—especially the nasal ones—would become unusually irritated, and he would first feel a strange tickling in his nose, and then begin to sneeze without stopping. This exhausting sneezing would last sometimes an entire day, sometimes two, and utterly prostrated him. The Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod doctors advised him in the strongest terms to get treatment for this dangerous illness, and warned that a polyp might eventually develop. But since my husband had no time to attend seriously to his treatment, the illness soon grew much worse. We then decided to travel to Sarov to see Father Seraphim.”

“Upon our arrival, the elder, after blessing us, immediately took a bottle of water from the stove, told my husband to bow his head, and began to pour water from the bottle over it himself; then he told him to wash with that water and handed him a towel from his own neck so that he could dry himself. From that time on my husband’s illness completely disappeared, and he lived for another seven years.”

“Once, as Father Seraphim was blessing us on our return from Sarov to our home, he said to me: ‘Here now, dear woman—a man and two women came to me and began to say the prayer; I did not let them in; and when they began to knock loudly on the door and I could do nothing about it, I lay down to sleep.’ Then he added: ‘Do you understand this, dear woman?’ Afterward, when we came to the inn yard, we found there a certain official from Nizhny Novgorod who had arrived in Sarov with his wife and began to implore me to go with them to Father Seraphim, saying they did not dare go alone and feared that Father Seraphim would not receive them. My husband also asked me to go with them.”

“We went, and when we reached the porch of the cell we heard Father Seraphim moving about in his entrance hall. I said the prayer as usual, but Father Seraphim did not respond with the customary ‘Amen’ and did not open the door. My companions began to beg insistently, but he fell silent. Then the man began to knock loudly on the door, and presently we heard Father Seraphim lie down to sleep right by his door where we were standing, and after a few minutes he began to snore. Only then did I understand what man and what two women he had spoken of at our parting, and we were compelled to go back to the inn without having seen the elder.”

“In the last year of my husband’s life I was in Sarov, in Father Seraphim’s hermitage. I found him there gathering scraps of wood by the rampart, along the road. Noticing me, he called me over to himself and said: ‘Here, dear woman—the holy Fathers have blessed me to gather these scraps of wood for the Diveyevo orphans; when winter comes they will need to heat their stoves.’ Then, taking me by the hand, he walked me along the road to his garden beds, where onions and potatoes had been planted, and said: ‘And here, dear woman, is my wealth; this is how I live. But the wealth of your dear husband will pass into other hands—do not be downcast about that.’ Indeed, a few months later my husband passed away, and all the rest came to pass just as the wondrous elder had foretold.”

“Once I was very ill with a stomach ailment and had begun to treat myself; but since nothing helped, I came to Father Seraphim and told him of my illness. To this the elder replied: ‘If you, dear woman, continue to seek treatment, you will very, very soon bring your life to an end. Bear this illness in silence—and it will pass once you stop treating it.’ He then added: ‘And when you go to the Queen of Heaven, what things you will see there!’ In accordance with Father Seraphim’s blessing, I stopped seeking treatment, and my illness indeed passed. Afterward I traveled to the village of Palitsy, where there is a wonderworking icon of the Mother of God; and there, at the lodging where I happened to stay, I saw an old woman binding up her wounds, which covered her entire body. In the morning, on the way to the liturgy, I saw another terrible sight: a girl was being led along, paralyzed, swollen, and trembling in every limb. Then I involuntarily recalled the words of Father Seraphim, which at first had seemed incomprehensible to me: ‘When you go to the Queen of Heaven, what things you will see there!’”

“Once I visited Father Seraphim with my own sister, who had been married to a priest but was now widowed. As the elder blessed my sister, he said to her: ‘Your life too, dear woman, is blessed all the way to your falling asleep.’ To this my sister answered him: ‘Forgive me, Father, for Christ’s sake—I keep sinning by quarreling with my father, because he handed over his position to my brother yet continues to live at my expense.’ Father Seraphim replied: ‘With whom, dear woman, should a person live if not with their parent?’ My sister answered him: ‘I have a son, Father, who is finishing his course of study this year, and I have hopes for him.’ But Father Seraphim replied again: ‘There is no hope for that, dear woman—none at all.’ And indeed, my sister’s son died shortly afterward.”

“Once, while I was in Sarov on a Sunday, I went after the late liturgy to Father Seraphim, and after he had blessed me he asked: ‘Were you at the liturgy, dear woman?’ I answered: ‘I was, Father.’ Then he asked: ‘Did you see how we sang the funeral service for a woman as a full choir? I have just come from the church. Our abbot made her a fine coffin. Do you understand this, dear woman?’ — and he repeated his question several times. I thought that he was surely foretelling my own imminent death, and went home with these thoughts. On the road I stopped at the village of Soboleva, which belongs to the Pokrov parish, to visit my own aunt; but there, to my great sorrow, I learned that my aunt had recently died and had been buried on that very same Sunday, after the liturgy, on the day I had been with Father Seraphim and he had spoken to me of the deceased. The archpriest, out of devotion, had made her a coffin at his own expense and buried her with a full choir. Then I understood the wondrous clairvoyance of Father Seraphim.”

“That same archpriest had previously had no faith in Father Seraphim; but when I told him of this last prophecy of the elder, he expressed a desire to meet him personally. And so, the moment he entered Father Seraphim’s cell upon arriving in Sarov, the elder greeted him with the priestly kiss and with the words: ‘May the Lord God and the Protection of the Mother of God bless you, dear friend’—at which point he called him by name—and then he named all those saints in whose honor the seven chapels of the Pokrov church had been dedicated. From that time on the archpriest always held Father Seraphim in the deepest veneration.”

“Once I brought Father Seraphim some wax candles; he immediately asked me: ‘Are you going to Diveyevo, dear woman?’ I answered: ‘Give your blessing, Father—I am bringing three icons there.’ Then Father Seraphim said: ‘In that case, take the candles along as well—either way, prayer will be offered for you.’ Then he said: ‘Do you know bees, dear woman? When the queen sits in the hive, the bees are all around her. So too do the young women of Diveyevo now abide with the Mother of God.’ To this I said to him: ‘Ah, Father! How blessed are those girls, that they always abide with the Mother of God!’ But the dear Father replied to me: ‘Why envy the girls? It is also good to be a widow; the Prophetess Anna was a widow—was it bad for her? And you, love my young women, honor them, and do not wait for them to come to you—seek them out yourself.’ Some time after that I was widowed; and from Diveyevo, Irina Prokopyevna sent a sister to me with a letter inviting me to the community. Then I remembered the words of Father Seraphim: ‘Do not wait for my young women to come to you—seek them out yourself’—and I resolved to enter the Diveyevo community.”

Madame Serafima Korsakova related the following circumstance concerning her husband. “When my husband, Andrei by name, a resident of the city of Ardatov, was eleven years old, he fell gravely ill with his eyes. For nine months he was in the most distressing and pitiful condition; at last his mother resolved to take him to Sarov. But when they arrived at the monastery on August 3, 1829, Father Seraphim had for reasons known to himself again withdrawn into temporary seclusion and was receiving no one. They waited some five days… Then the elder once again opened his doors to all who thirsted for his blessing, guidance, and healing. Seeing the sick youth with his mother, he invited them in, saying: ”Come!“ After blessing them, he began to blow on the boy’s ears and eyes, and at the same time placed the seal of the sign of the cross on his head. In conclusion, blessing the sick boy, he said: ”You will be well.“ And as the sick boy was leaving the cell, Father Seraphim said: ”You will be married to a Serafima.“ And to the mother he said: ”It is a sin not to honor the feast day.“ By these words he revealed the sin she had committed against God’s commandment on the way to Sarov. As soon as they had left the elder’s cell, the blind Andrei began to see the light of God, and within a month his sight returned to him entirely. The fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the name of his future wife was confirmed when I, Serafima, became his wife.”

Z) Prophecies of Elder Seraphim

There were very many cases in which Father Seraphim foresaw and foretold the future.

G. I. M. Kr. told the following account concerning his relative V. I. Br., a resident of Nizhny Novgorod. She had married a widower who had two children, and was extremely unhappy in the marriage. Her relatives finally wished her to leave her husband. But before initiating any proceedings she traveled to Sarov to consult Father Seraphim. The elder said to her: “Do not under any circumstances leave your husband—I, a sinful monk Seraphim, earnestly beg you of this; all the unpleasantness you endure will soon come to an end.” Indeed, in no more than six months her husband died, and God helped her to place his orphaned children in state institutions for their upbringing.

To one pious woman who had come to Sarov, he revealed that a famine was approaching and advised her to lay in a stock of grain so as not to suffer need. The woman mentioned this prophecy in casual conversation to the Sarov hieromonk Father Iakov, who was her spiritual father. When the brothers also learned of it from Elder Iakov at the second meal that same day, some of them received this news with faith, imploring the Lord God to avert His wrath, while the doubting and grumbling criticized the elder. But events bore out his words. Shortly after the prophecy, a famine indeed began. Grain prices rose with each passing week. Even the sources from which grain had been obtained for the starving region ran dry. The price of a chetvert of grain stood between twenty and twenty-four rubles, in the old reckoning, in assignation notes.

From 1831 onward Elder Seraphim again warned many of an impending famine. Meeting with Abbot Nifont, he kept repeating to him as well: “There will be a famine, there will be a famine!” And to avert the calamity, he advised the monastery authorities to lay in a six-year supply of grain, observing that during his lifetime a famine had come for the fourth time already, and yet the Sarov Hermitage had never suffered a shortage of grain.

A priest, A. N., later an archpriest at the Arzamas Nikolaevsky women’s monastery, also came to him. Elder Father Seraphim greeted him in the customary priestly manner. Then, in the course of their conversation, he predicted to him that he would become a dean, an exhorter of schismatics, and would suffer much in his lifetime on account of deacons who held that grace unworthily. Father Avraamy witnessed the fulfillment of these words upon himself. He confirmed that the guidance he had heard from the elder regarding the duties of a dean had greatly assisted him in properly fulfilling that office.

The devout widow Pelagia Ivanovna Shkarina, a resident of the city of Arzamas, testifies that from her youth she had desired to enter monasticism. But Father Seraphim, having known her some five years before his death, foretold to her that she would be an orphan, that she would marry, would have seven children—and he named the names of all of them—and then would be widowed. However distant these predictions seemed, they all came to pass exactly.

A woman from the merchant class of the city of Balakhna, by the surname Zayaeva, also came to Father Seraphim. The elder strongly advised her to enter a convent; she refused. He disclosed the reasons for his counsel: “You will,” he said to her, “be unhappy in marriage, you will have many children, then you will lose your husband, you will remain a widow, and you will suffer even greater poverty than you would while married.” Zayaeva did not heed the elder’s advice, married, and later bitterly regretted it, for all the words of Father Seraphim were fulfilled in her.

In another instance, a young woman of the merchant class from Arzamas, Nozhevnikova by name, came to him. She was living in great poverty. Father Seraphim, hearing her complaint about want, foretold that in marriage she would be wealthy, but that afterward she would again drag out a life filled with many sorrows.

In the Arzamas Nikolaevsky women’s monastery there lived two sisters, serf girls. Seeing them, Father Seraphim said: “Within a year your masters will take you into their household service for five years.” The young women were with the elder along with their brother. To this brother he said: “And for you the Lord will extend your life to eighty years—which is a rarity nowadays—if only you preserve yourself from mortal sins.” All of this came to pass just as Father Seraphim had foretold.

Nadezhda Fyodorovna Ostrovskaya related the following: “My own brother, Lieutenant Colonel V. F. Ostrovsky, often stayed in Nizhny Novgorod with our maternal aunt, Princess Gruzinskaya, who held Father Seraphim in great veneration. On one occasion, for some reason, she sent him to the Sarov Hermitage to see this clairvoyant elder. Father Seraphim received my brother very graciously, and among other good counsels suddenly said to him: ‘Ah, Brother Vladimir—what a drunkard you will become!’ These words caused my brother extreme distress and sorrow. He had been endowed by God with many fine gifts and always employed them to the glory of God; he held Father Seraphim in deep devotion, and to those under his command he was like a tender father. He therefore considered himself very far from such a designation, which was unbecoming to his rank and way of life. The clairvoyant elder, seeing his agitation, said to him further: ‘However, do not be troubled or sad: the Lord sometimes permits those who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices—and this in order that they may not fall into an even greater sin, which is pride. Your temptation will pass, by the mercy of God, and you will spend the rest of your days in humility; only do not forget your sin.’ The wondrous prophecy of the man of God was indeed afterward fulfilled in reality. Through various unfortunate circumstances, my brother fell into this unhappy passion—drunkenness—and, to the common grief of his family, spent several years in this wretched state. But at last, through the prayers of Father Seraphim and through his own simplicity of heart, he was granted mercy by the Lord: he not only abandoned his former vice but transformed his whole way of life entirely, striving to live according to the commandments of the Gospel, as befits a Christian.”

A. A. Tum-ya, while still a child of about twelve years old, once traveled with her mother to the Sarov Hermitage to have the privilege of seeing Father Seraphim and receiving his blessing. This was in 1830. Upon arriving in Sarov, she happened to learn from her nanny of some poor, exhausted prisoner in heavy chains who was passing by the monastery and was a pitiable sight. Seeing this unfortunate man, she was deeply moved by his condition but did not give him alms on the spot only because she happened to have no money with her at that moment; later, however, having found a silver fifty-kopeck coin, and having no smaller one, she decided to give it to the poor man. When they came to Father Seraphim, the clairvoyant elder, who had never seen them before, immediately called the girl over to himself and, having blessed her, said affably: “Now that was well done—giving that little fifty-kopeck piece to the poor man.” And at the same time, quite unexpectedly, he addressed her as “Your Excellency.” Her mother, extremely surprised by this greeting, tried to explain to the elder that this title did not belong to them at all; but he, continuing his conversation with them, addressed the girl by the same title as before. And so they returned home without having learned the reason for this remarkable greeting from the elder, and for a long time were at a loss to understand what it might mean. But afterward it became clear to them when A. A. Tum-ya, having reached adulthood, married a general. Then were fulfilled the prophetic words of the man of God, who had long foreseen the future by the grace given him by the Lord.

Vyacheslav Andreyevich Pletmintsev, a Moscow townsman, had never thought of marrying and had always been amazed at those people who took on the obligations of matrimony. At one point he happened to be traveling from Ryazan to Arzamas. Along the way he stopped at the Sarov Hermitage and there heard of Father Seraphim for the first time. “Let me stop in and see him,” thought Pletmintsev, “—maybe he will have something to tell me.” He came to the elder, and the elder first blessed him and then handed him three pieces of dried bread, saying: “This one is for you, this one is for your wife, and this one is for your little son.” Pletmintsev did not believe the elder’s words at first; but upon arriving in Arzamas, he did indeed marry after some time, and, in fulfillment of the holy elder’s prophecy, had a son.

Natalya Ivanovna Bogdanova, who was devoted with her whole soul to the Sarov elder Father Seraphim, visited him frequently, wishing to enjoy his comforting conversations and guidance. Spending her youth as an unmarried young woman, she had given no thought at all to marriage; but once, while visiting Father Seraphim, she was suddenly struck by an unexpected prophecy from him. Father Seraphim, handing her a little cap sewn from linen, said: “Here, take it—it will come in useful when you give birth to a child. You will marry a distinguished gentleman, but for about three years after entering into matrimony you will have to endure various sorrows; do not be afraid, but trust in the Lord, and He will comfort you, and you will be happy.” Taking this little cap from the elder, Bogdanova kept it like an inestimable gift and would not bring herself to tell anyone about it, waiting for the fulfillment of Father Seraphim’s wondrous prophecy. A considerable time after this meeting with the elder, she did indeed marry, in accordance with his prophecy, being already past thirty years of age. When the time came for her to give birth, the little cap given by Father Seraphim was placed on the infant. His words about family troubles in the early years of marriage were also fully borne out. But afterward she lived happily.

To others the elder foretold death, wishing that they would not pass into eternity without Christian preparation. Thus a certain D. I. came to him—the manager of a factory located in Yekaterinburg district, Perm Province—with his wife and children. Father Seraphim, knowing none of them and having heard nothing of any of them before, called each of them by name and assigned to each the year, month, and day of their death. To the father he said that he would live twenty years more, and to the mother—twelve years more. It afterward became known in Sarov that she had indeed died at the time foretold by Father Seraphim. No information is available regarding the manager himself.

To one resident of the non-district town of Kadom (Tambov Province), he foretold, for the man’s correction, a divine punishment whose consequence would be his death. The wife of this man came to Father Seraphim. The elder received her with fatherly love and, among other counsels and instructions, urged her to speak to her husband—who had at that time been elected a member of the town council—so that he might reform himself from intemperance, insolence, unjust oppression, and mercilessness toward others. “If your husband does not give up these passions that have taken root in him,” said the elder, “he will certainly be punished by God for it.” Saying this, he took a bundle of matches from the stove, handed them to the woman, and added: “Here—take these matches and keep them.”

The fatherly blessing of Father Seraphim visibly gladdened that woman, while the predicted punishment of her husband, should he fail to reform, greatly troubled her. More than once afterward she and her household and acquaintances pondered the meaning of the elder’s simple yet strange gift; but none of them could explain its significance. At last the dreadful hour came in which the meaning of the gift became clear and the prophecy of Father Seraphim was fulfilled. One day the sky began to fill from all sides with terrible thunderclouds, and by evening a fearsome storm had gathered. All the people of Kadom turned to God in prayer.

The woman who had visited Father Seraphim also began to pray together with her husband; meanwhile two of her small children were sleeping during that fearsome time, one near the window and the other a little farther away. Suddenly a powerful thunderclap burst directly over their house, and in one instant, in the wake of a lightning flash, the wooden cornice was torn from the window and splintered into the finest splinters; the greater part of them were driven into the face and beard of the woman’s husband. Struck by this blow, he lived only a very short while and soon died.

Meanwhile neither the children, who were sleeping almost right by the window, nor the brackets holding the cornice in the window frame, nor the mother, who was praying beside her husband, was touched in the least by that very same blow. After that, the poor woman recalled the words of Father Seraphim and understood the full meaning of his seemingly strange gift.

To Father Antony, the superior of the Vysokogorsky Hermitage, he predicted an unexpected transfer to another monastery. The reader has already encountered cases of such prophecies earlier in the life of Father Seraphim. The present circumstance came about as follows.

In January 1831, Father Antony set out to see Father Seraphim in Sarov for guidance, on account of persistent thoughts about death that were causing him great distress. Arriving in Sarov in the evening and stopping nowhere on the way, Father Antony went directly to Father Seraphim’s cell. Before reaching it he encountered some of the brothers of the Sarov Hermitage, who told him that Father Seraphim had not yet returned from his hermitage. It was already close to five o’clock in the evening and growing dark. The newcomer stopped, uncertain whether to go somewhere or to wait there. At that moment the brothers standing with him, catching sight of the elder approaching from a distance, announced: “There—Father Seraphim is coming.” The elder walked in his usual attire, with a sack on his shoulders, leaning on an axe. Father Antony immediately went up to him and bowed in the customary manner.

“What is it?” the elder asked him.

“I have come to you, father, with a troubled soul,” Father Anthony answered.

“Come, come, my joy, into the cell,” the elder said warmly.

They entered together. Alone in the cell, Father Anthony implored the elder Seraphim to tell him plainly: would what his sorrowful thoughts were suggesting actually come to pass? Was death truly drawing near?

“Whether I am sitting in my cell,” the superior Anthony said, “or whether I go out into the monastery grounds, I have a feeling that I am seeing the hermitage for the last time. From this I conclude that I will soon die, and I have already chosen a spot for my grave.”

The superior had come to Father Seraphim in order to receive, if death were indeed approaching, the elder’s blessing to spend the remaining time in stillness and attentive preparation for eternal life.

“I wish to know about my death,” Father Anthony concluded, “solely in order to change my way of life—so that, resigning my duties, I might devote my remaining days to silent watchfulness.” He added that news of his death would hold no terror for him.

Father Seraphim listened to the account without changing his posture, holding the superior Anthony by the hand. When the latter had finished, the blessed elder looked at him with love and said:

“You are mistaken, my joy—quite mistaken! The providence of God is entrusting you with a great lavra.”

Father Anthony thought that the elder Seraphim was trying to distract him from his sorrowful thoughts, and so, interrupting him, he said:

“Father! That will not comfort me or quiet my thoughts. I implore you—tell me directly: are my thoughts of death a sign from God of my imminent end? If so, I will ask for your prayers for my soul and will receive your word in peace and gratitude. I wish to meet the hour of death with fitting preparation.”

Father Seraphim answered with angelic gentleness:

“Your thoughts are mistaken; I tell you that the providence of God is entrusting you with a great lavra.”

The superior replied: “How could the Vyskogorsk Hermitage ever become a lavra? God grant that it does not fall lower than where it stands now.”

To Father Anthony’s great astonishment, the elder Seraphim, without changing his mind, began to ask him to receive hospitably any of the brothers from Sarov who might come to the lavra, or whom he himself might send.

Still under the same impression as before, the superior continued:

“Father! Who from Sarov would want to transfer to the poor Vyskogorsk Hermitage? And if anyone wished to, or if you sent anyone, you know my constant readiness to do whatever you desire—but in practice this cannot happen.”

Father Seraphim, as though walking the same road without wavering, said: “Do not forsake my orphans when the time comes to you!”

The superior could restrain himself no longer. In a surge of boundless love and reverence for the elder, he rushed to him, embraced him, and wept for a long time. Not grasping the meaning of the words spoken earlier, he fastened his attention on the word “orphans”; it seemed to him that the elder was speaking of his own impending death. Blessed Seraphim continued: “Remember my parents, Isidor and Agafya.” Then he began to counsel him: to submit in all things to the will of the Lord; to be diligent in prayer; to fulfill his duties strictly; to be merciful and forbearing toward the brothers: “Be a mother to the brothers,” he said, “not a father—and in general be merciful to all, and humble in yourself. Humility and carefulness in life,” he said, “is the beauty of the virtues.” Then Father Seraphim embraced the superior several times, blessed him with the cross that hung on his chest, and said:

“Now go in the name of the Lord. It is time for you—they are waiting for you!”

As he left the cell, the superior could not account to himself for what the words of the blessed elder meant, or with what he had departed from the cell. Nevertheless, like a treasure, he laid the elder’s words up in his heart. The thought of death remained as though suppressed by fresh impressions, yet had not yet been resolved.

On leaving the cell, Father Anthony was met by a messenger sent from the Sarov abbot, Father Nifont, with an invitation to call on him. That was what the elder’s words had meant: “It is time for you—they are waiting for you.”

After visiting with Abbot Nifont, who lay ill in bed at that time, Father Anthony took his leave and hurried back to his hermitage on matters of the community. At the guesthouse he found his carriage already prepared and set off on the road with an unsettled impression, wishing to give himself over to reflection in solitude.

The horses trotted quietly homeward. Nothing, it seemed, prevented the superior, Father Anthony, from sinking into the affairs, circumstances, and thoughts that occupied him. Then suddenly he heard the monk riding with him, sitting up front, begin to weep, unable to hold back his tears or compose himself.

When the superior asked with concern what he was weeping about, the monk replied that upon arriving at Sarov he had met Father Seraphim returning from the hermitage to his cell in the monastery, who had said to him: “Now you are also facing a parting from your superior.” He said nothing more, only adding: “Go and call him to me.” So precisely did Father Seraphim know of the impending change in the life of Superior Anthony.

Meanwhile time passed; January went by, then February; March came, and with it Great Lent. On the second day of the month, a Monday in the first week of the fast, after performing his turn at the unceasing reading of the Psalter—which each brother carried out for two hours—the superior went to his place. There a letter from the Metropolitan of Moscow was brought to him. Father Anthony went into his cell. In the letter His Eminence Filaret invited the superior to take the position of vicar at the Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, owing to the death of Archimandrite Afanasy. Enclosed was also a note to the Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod, Afanasy, requesting the prompt release of Father Anthony from his duties as superior of the Vyskogorsk Hermitage and his departure for Moscow.

From that moment all the words of the elder Seraphim became clear to Father Anthony—words spoken two months before, determining his transfer to a great lavra, at a time when the previous vicar was still alive and well and there had been no talk of replacing him.

The person who shared this account with us added that the events following Father Anthony’s transfer to the Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, also foretold by the elder Seraphim, had all been fulfilled and continued to be fulfilled with the greatest exactness, as though Father Seraphim had been reading the future destinies of men from the book of God’s decrees.

It is fitting here to cite two letters about Father Seraphim written to the abbot of the Pavlo-Obnorsk Monastery, Father Joasaph, by two members of the clergy.

I

In your letter you express the thought that Father Seraphim gave prophecies to my father during the latter’s visits to the Sarov Hermitage while still alive. From my father I heard only two prophetic predictions spoken by Father Seraphim, which I can affirm on my priestly oath. The second: in the village of Lesnoye Konobeyevo, where my father served as a priest, there were two wooden churches; Father Seraphim had told my father four years in advance that your churches would fall. My father, being firm in spirit and well versed in Holy Scripture, replied to those words as follows:

Your Reverence, our churches are of solid construction and rest on stone foundations, so it would be difficult for them to collapse—but he repeated just the same: “No, they will fall.” My father, after thinking, said to him: You, Father Seraphim, are speaking of my bodily temple—citing to this end the words of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. ch. 6, v. 19). He repeated: I am speaking of material churches, and you will build a church of stone. To this my father replied that he was not in a position to do so. He said to him: The Kazan Queen of Heaven will assist you, and your landowner will not abandon you in this; and during the construction of the church, positions as archpriest will be offered to you in cities—do not agree to leave your village, do not exchange eternal glory for temporal glory. And indeed, four years later both wooden churches burned down in a great fire, as did the entire village of Konobeyevo; this was in 1828. After this, my father placed all his hope in the swift Protectress and, leaving his family—at that time two sons and two daughters were still unsettled, as was the household—he set out for Tambov to His Eminence Evgeny to ask his blessing, and obtaining from the Ecclesiastical Consistory a collection book for the construction of a new stone church, he traveled for this purpose for seven years through various provinces, visited Moscow twice, and with the help of the Queen of Heaven laid the foundation for a stone church the very year after the fire. The landowner, for every amount that my father collected in a given year by means of the collection book, ordered a third of the capital to be issued from his estate office for the building of the church. Thus, with the help of the Queen of Heaven, by 1835 the main church—a magnificent structure—was already built and consecrated in honor of the Renewal of the Temple of the Resurrection of Christ, and two side-chapels had previously been consecrated: the first in honor of the Holy Trinity, the second in honor of the Kazan Mother of God, who, despite limited means, helped my father to build the church. During the construction of the church, positions as archpriest in cities were indeed offered to my father, but he, remembering the words of Father Seraphim, could not bring himself to leave this village. That is the first prophecy of the universally beloved Father Seraphim. The second prediction was made by Father Seraphim to my father regarding a family matter—specifically this: my father wished that one of us two sons would succeed him in his priestly position (a third son was much older and had by that time entered monastic life). Father Seraphim therefore asked him about me and my middle brother (at the time we were both studying in the lower grades)—which of us he would bless to take his place. Father Seraphim asked my father: whom do you wish? My father answered: my middle son, Nikolai. “No, the younger son will take your place.” And indeed, I, a sinner, did succeed to my father’s position; I have served as a priest for twenty-seven years; I lived with my father for sixteen years in the same house; I served at the church on the Field side of Konobeyevo, while my father served at his own, the church he had built. These two sides are separated by only the river Tsna. When his strength declined, my father handed his position over to me and remained in the office of dean, after which, as noted above, in 1857 he peacefully gave up his spirit to the Lord God. Would you care to write about this to my elder brother, Father Archimandrite Nikon, in Sevastopol, Tauric Province—the superior of the Balaklava St. George’s Monastery—and to our cousin His Eminence Filaret, Archbishop of Chernigov and Nezhin? Our fathers were brothers by blood and served at the same church (my father as archpriest, theirs as priest); they know more about this than I do. They visited the Sarov Hermitage, it seems, as many as twice, and had the personal happiness of seeing Father Seraphim; when they were studying in the seminary he foretold to them that they would enter monastic life. He told my brother that he would be in the place bearing the letters A and N, where his grandfather was buried; the grandfather had been a priest in the village of Konobeyevo, then handed his position over to my father and went to the Cherneyev Monastery (the monastery is twenty versts from our village). Our grandfather passed away at that monastery, and by Father Seraphim’s prophecy my brother was indeed directly consecrated to the rank of archimandrite at the Cherneyev Monastery. I can share with you no further information, and I ask for your holy prayers over me.

Your Reverence’s humble servant—of Tambov Province, Shatsk District, the village of Lesnoye Konobeyevo—Dean, Archpriest Vasily Dmitriev Konobeyevsky.

May 16, 1865.

II

Your letter of the 19th of November I received on the 12th of December and herewith reply to it. Indeed, in my youth, before completing my seminary course, in 1827, I lived at the Sarov Hermitage for up to three weeks in the month of August by the command of the man of God, Father Seraphim, and during that time I was repeatedly honored with private conversation with Father Seraphim, in which he said to me: why do you wish to become a monk—surely you find marriage repugnant? I answered: I have never had any ill thoughts about the holy mystery of marriage, but I wish to become a monk in order to serve the Lord more freely. After this, putting on his epitrachelion, the elder said: blessed is your path! But see that you write down the following words of mine—not on paper, but on your heart.

This is the precious counsel given to me by the God-inspired elder. It is more precious to me than anything in the world. The instructions of the man of God I, unworthy as I am, receive on a level with the instructions of the holy fathers of Athos and Sinai. I would not have told this to anyone, but your letter compelled me to reveal what the elder imprinted on my heart—and what, since his death, remains indelible in my soul.

In the second conversation, Father Seraphim said: “I know your father. Your village and two churches with their bell towers will burn, but your father is destined to build a new, magnificent stone church with a bell tower and two outbuildings; on the western side there will be an outbuilding for the poor, and after a second fire he himself will have occasion to live in one of them.” All the prediction of the man of God was fully fulfilled. The village and churches burned in 1828, and in the 1840s there was a second fire in which the home of the father, Archpriest Konobeyevsky, burned, and he was obliged to live for a long time in the outbuilding that had been built by the church.

“Well now—do you have a cousin?” Father Seraphim asked. I answered: I do. “He is studying at the academy; he was born with a gift; he will season, season everything right up until his death.” This precious prediction referred to His Eminence Filaret of Chernigov. “You have a sick niece with you—bring her to me tomorrow.”

The next day I brought my niece with me, a girl of fifteen, and led her into Father Seraphim’s cell. He took a vessel of oil, anointed her brow, eyes, ears, and hands, saying: “The servant of God, the nun, is being anointed.” (This girl was later tonsured as a nun in the Tambov women’s monastery.)

“Farewell—come back to me in nine days.” That time was a sorrowful one for me, for blasphemous thoughts assailed me so violently that I could not enter the church; I was on the point of leaving the hermitage, but Hieromonk Hilarion restrained me, saying: “The elder knows what he is doing.” When the nine days had passed, worn down by the enemy’s assaults, I could barely make it to the entrance hall. As I approached his cell and had not yet had time to say the prayer, Father Seraphim opened the door and fell at my feet, saying: “Forgive me for the temptation you have suffered—it was so that you would know what sorrows you will face when you enter monastic life; but do not lose heart!” After this he put on his stole, heard my confession, and ordered me to receive Holy Communion at the late Liturgy; and as soon as I had received it, all the darkness departed from me into the dark.

In the third and final conversation, Father Seraphim said: “When you go to become a monk, you will have to start from the mother’s cradle—from your own diocese—and only then will you be sent to a distant land. Do not lose heart, and sing with a glad spirit: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.’”

During my three-week stay I had occasion to observe in Father Seraphim an extraordinary gift of clairvoyance. A government official from Nizhny Novgorod, holding the rank of general, had arrived with his family to receive counsel and a blessing from the elder. Several times he came to the door and was not admitted—though his family was received—and he himself could only hear through the door the voice and words of Father Seraphim: “I am not at home; this is not a convenient time for me.” The official was puzzled by these words and could not understand them, and he earnestly wished to have them explained. Seeing that I went to see the elder often, he asked me to accompany him; and when we had said the prayer, Father Seraphim opened the door and received the official warmly. To his words—that he had come five times and had not been deemed worthy to receive a blessing—Father Seraphim replied: “Here is why I did not receive you: because your own servants say to those who come to you in their need, ‘The master is not at home; it is not a convenient time.’ By that refusal you anger your neighbor and so anger God himself.” The general, receiving this instruction with Christian humility, bowed at his feet and promised never to allow such a thing again.

Asking your holy prayers for my unworthiness, with my highest esteem I remain forever the abbot of the Balaklava St. George Monastery, Nikon.

December 17, 1865.

More than once he made prophecies to the Sarov Hermitage concerning events that touched it in one way or another, both near and distant. When, for example, the first cholera epidemic appeared in Russia, Father Seraphim openly foretold that it would come neither to Sarov nor to Diveyevo. The Sarov elders, who had seen Father Seraphim with their own eyes and heard his encouraging conversations, were witnesses that these prophecies of his were fulfilled with complete exactness—so much so that during the first cholera epidemic not a single person died in either Diveyevo or Sarov. There was also the time when Major General Anton Yefimovich Makhotin came to him, together with his wife who had faith in the elder, to receive a blessing and instruction. Father Seraphim greeted them warmly and spoke with him graciously. This happened on a Friday. The elder asked the visitors how long they intended to stay at the monastery and advised them not to depart before Sunday, after the late Liturgy: “On Sunday, in our monastery,” he said, “there will be a celebration and a thanksgiving service.” The general inquired about the reason for this celebration and thanksgiving service from a monk at the guesthouse and even from the prior, Father Nifont. All replied that there was no celebration planned or anticipated. But while the prior was discussing this with the general, a monastery servant entered and handed over a packet of letters received from the post. Among the papers, completely unexpectedly for everyone, turned out to be a decree announcing the birth of a grand duchess, on account of which the following day, Sunday, a solemn thanksgiving service to God was performed in the Sarov cathedral church before the Liturgy, and bells rang throughout the monastery all day long. This account was concluded by the general with the remark that Father Igumen Nifont shared his astonishment at that time over Father Seraphim’s gift of clairvoyance.

The Sarov forest under Igumen Nifont was already yielding great benefit to the monastery. Everyone had come to look upon it as a source of income for the community; yet Father Seraphim foresaw and foretold well in advance a storm that broke many trees in the forest, over which the Sarov authorities were greatly grieved.

Father Seraphim told Alexei Guryevich Vorotilov more than once that some day three powers would rise up against Russia and greatly exhaust her; but that for the sake of Orthodoxy, the Lord would have mercy on her and preserve her. At the time, these words, being a prophecy of the future, were not understood; but subsequent events showed that the elder had been speaking of the Crimean campaign.

From the time he emerged from seclusion, the elder ate only once a day, and always in the evening. His clothing during this period was not uniform. He always wore a cassock of black heavy cloth. In summer he put on a white linen smock over it, and in winter he wore a sheepskin coat and mittens. In autumn and early spring he wore a kaftan of thick black Russian cloth. Against rain and heat he put on a half-mantle made of a whole piece of leather with cut openings for putting it on. Over his clothing he girded himself with a white and always clean towel and wore his copper cross. For monastery work in summer he went out in bast shoes, in winter in felt boots; when going to church for the services he put on leather shoes as was fitting. On his head he wore a kamilavka in both winter and summer. Moreover, when required by the monastery’s rule, he put on his mantle; and when approaching to receive Holy Communion, he vested in his stole and cuffs and then, without removing them, received pilgrims in his cell. A wealthy man who had visited Father Seraphim and observed his poverty began to say: “Why do you wear such rags?” Father Seraphim replied: “The royal prince Joasaph counted the monastic mantle given him by the hermit Varlaam as higher and more precious than the royal purple” (Menaion, November 19th).

Father Seraphim struggled very strictly against sleep. In his later years it became known that he would give himself over to nightly repose sometimes in the entrance hall and sometimes in his cell. He slept sitting on the floor, with his back leaning against the wall and his legs stretched out before him. At other times he would rest his head on a stone or on a wooden block. Sometimes he would lie down on the sacks, bricks, and logs that were in his cell. As he drew near to the moment of his departure, he began to take his rest in the following manner: he would kneel down and sleep face to the floor, resting on his elbows with his hands supporting his head.

His monastic self-denial and his love and devotion to the Lord and the Mother of God were so great that when one gentleman, Ivan Yakovlevich Karatayev, came to him for a blessing in 1831 and asked whether he would like to send any word to his own brother and other relatives in Kursk—to which city Karatayev was traveling—the elder, pointing to the icons of the Savior and the Mother of God, said with a smile: “These are my kin; but for living relatives I am already a living dead man.” On another occasion some Kursk merchants stopped in to see Father Seraphim after the Makaryev fair. Having blessed them, the elder asked: “Did you trade well?” They told him about their trading. When all conversations with the elder were finished and they were receiving a blessing for their journey, the merchants asked: “What shall we tell your little brother, Father?” “Tell him,” replied Father Seraphim, “that I pray for him to the Lord and His Most Pure Mother day and night.” With that they departed, and the elder, raising his hands on high, repeated several times in rapture: “There is nothing better than the monastic life, there is nothing better than the monastic life!”

The time left to Father Seraphim beyond sleep and attending to those who came to him he spent in prayer. Fulfilling his prayer rule with all diligence and zeal for the salvation of his own soul, he was at the same time a great intercessor and advocate before God for all living and departed Orthodox Christians. For this purpose, while reading the Psalter, he unfailingly recited from his whole heart the following prayers at each psalm:

In his prayer for the departed and the living, a special significance was held by the wax candles that burned in his cell before the holy icons. This was explained in November 1831 by the elder Father Seraphim himself in a conversation with N. A. Motovilov. I—related Nikolai Alexandrovich—seeing at Father Seraphim’s cell a great many oil lamps, and in particular many piles of wax candles both large and small on various round trays, on which the wax that had dripped from the candles over many years had formed mounds as it were of wax, thought to myself: “Why does Father Seraphim light such a multitude of candles and lamps, creating an unbearable heat in his cell from all the fire?” And he, as though compelling my thoughts to fall silent, said to me:

“You wish to know, your God-lover, why I light so many lamps and candles before the holy icons of God? Here is why. I have, as you know, many persons who are devoted to me and who are benefactors to my little mill orphans. They bring me oil and candles and ask me to pray for them. When I read my prayer rule I commemorate them, first once in the beginning. But since, on account of the multitude of names, I cannot repeat them at every place in the rule where it is required—for that would leave me without enough time to complete my rule—I place all these candles for them as an offering to God: for each person one candle, for some I light one large candle for several persons at once, and for others I keep a lamp burning continually; and where I ought to commemorate them according to the rule, I say: ‘Lord, remember all those people, your servants, for whose souls I, poor Seraphim, have lit before you these candles and lamps.’ And that this is not some human invention of mine, poor Seraphim, nor merely a simple act of devotion grounded on nothing divine, I will cite in support the words of divine Scripture. In the Bible it is said that Moses heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him: ‘Moses, Moses! Say to your brother Aaron that he shall light lamps before Me day and night; for this is pleasing before Me, and is a sacrifice acceptable to Me.’ And so, your God-lover, that is why the holy Church of God has received the custom of lighting lamps, or oil lamps, in the holy churches and in the homes of faithful Christians before the holy icons of the Lord, the Mother of God, the holy Angels, and the holy men who have been pleasing to God.”

While praying for the living—and especially for those who had asked his intercessory help—Father Seraphim always commemorated the departed as well, and he offered prayers for them in his private cell prayers according to the rule of the Orthodox Church. On May 25, 1832, a certain person came to him and afterward wrote down her conversations with him.

Speaking of many things, the elder recalled the Diveyevo community, praised the sisters for their way of life and their labors, and then, with a sigh, said a prayer of repose for the newly departed maiden Elena. This was Elena Vasilyevna Mantorova, already known to us—the head of the Seraphimo-Diveyevo community. That day was the fortieth day after her death.

On another occasion Father Seraphim himself recounted the following circumstances: “Two nuns died, both of whom had been abbesses. The Lord revealed to me how their souls were led through the aerial toll-houses, how they were examined at the toll-houses and then condemned. For three days I, poor one, prayed, asking the Mother of God on their behalf. The Lord, in His goodness, by the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, had mercy on them: they passed through all the aerial toll-houses and received forgiveness from the mercy of God.”

Father Igumen Joasaph, in the world the novice Ivan Tikhonov, relates the following concerning a wound that Father Seraphim received from an evil spirit: “A neighboring peasant caused Father Seraphim a great deal of distress, doing everything he could to harm the Diveyevo community—so much so that I once complained to him bitterly and asked him to take some extreme measures against this wicked man to drive him away from the community. Father Seraphim told me to come to him in his cell that evening; and when I came, he began to speak to me as follows: ‘Concerning this man of whom you spoke to me—I too will say that he is bestial in nature; but let us leave him to the will of God and the Heavenly Queen; She will deal with him.’ And this was indeed fulfilled in due course. ‘But if you try to remove him now, know that he can still do you and the community much harm.’ And after these words the elder suddenly assumed a menacing aspect and, by all his movements seeming to show himself armed against some adversary, said: ‘But when you have to stand against an enemy—then you must stand.’ Then, resuming his former meek appearance, he revealed a wonderful secret about himself—namely: how he had once learned, though he did not explain whether by revelation or whether someone had told him, that one utterly wretched, lost soul was as if in the very claws of Satan; what she had sinned, the elder also did not explain; and how, when he stretched out his prayer on her behalf to the Savior and the Mother of God and saw her afterward, by God’s mercy, flying free from Satan’s claws as a perfectly pure dove; and how at last the satanic host, unable to bear its loss, poured out all its fury upon him. At this point the elder, as though by way of confirmation, unbuttoned his outer garment and, taking my hand, let me feel the wound that had been inflicted on him—already healed, by his account. I felt it and saw it: it was on the elder’s back between his shoulder blades, perfectly soft, and resembled a hanging piece of flesh the size of a goose egg. He was buried with this wound. Having let me see and feel it, the elder added that the pain from this affliction was as sharp as the pain in a finger when one holds it to a burning candle—that is, if it were burning but not burning up.” “And had not the Lord and the Heavenly Queen,” said the elder, “healed me, no one else could have healed me.”

On one occasion it was observed that during prayer the elder Seraphim was standing in the air. This account was given by Princess E. S. Sh.

A sick nephew of hers, G. Ya., had arrived from St. Petersburg. Without delay she took him to Sarov to see Father Seraphim. The young man was gripped by such illness and weakness that he could not walk on his own and was carried into the monastery enclosure on his bed. Father Seraphim at that time was standing at the door of his monastic cell, as though waiting to receive the bedridden man. He immediately asked that the sick man be brought into his cell, and, turning to him, said: “You, my joy, pray, and I will pray for you—only be sure to lie as you are lying now and do not turn to the other side.” The sick man lay there for a long time, obeying the elder’s words. But his patience weakened, and curiosity urged him to look and see what the elder was doing. Turning around, he saw Father Seraphim standing in the air in a posture of prayer, and from the shock and extraordinary nature of the vision he cried out. Father Seraphim, having completed his prayer and coming over to him, said: “Now you will be telling everyone that Seraphim is a saint, praying in the air… The Lord will have mercy on you… But look—guard yourself with silence and tell no one until the day of my passing, or else your illness will return.” G. Ya. did in fact rise from his bed and, though leaning on others, walked out of the cell on his own feet. At the monastery guesthouse he was besieged with questions about what Father Seraphim had done and said—but, to everyone’s astonishment, he did not say a single word. The young man, having recovered completely, returned again to St. Petersburg and some time later came back once more to the estate of Princess Sh. There he learned that the elder Seraphim had passed from his labors, and he then told the story of his prayer in the air. This one instance of such prayer was discovered by chance; but certainly the elder was raised into the air by the grace of God more than once during his prolonged prayer vigils.

One can say, without exaggeration, that all of Russia already knew and venerated Father Seraphim at that time; at the very least, the fame of the great ascetic spread everywhere. Well-known ascetics who lived at the same time as he, who knew the elder Seraphim in spirit, deeply respected his moral stature and gave others the most exalted testimonials about him, for everyone looked upon him as a city set on a hill. Priests and bishops of the Orthodox Church who led a spiritual and holy life had a deep reverence for the Sarov ascetic. Some bishops wrote letters to Father Seraphim and sought his counsel, though not a single one was found after the elder’s death. Anthony, Archbishop of Voronezh, frequently sent him gifts as well, especially holy icons—upon receiving which Father Seraphim, pointing to the likenesses of the saints, would often say: “See what personages show us the way to eternity!” By word and perhaps even in writing, Father Seraphim responded to the inquiries of the archpastors. Some of their letters he left without any reply. For Anthony, Archbishop of Voronezh, he bore a special love and respect, though he had never seen him; and whenever conversation turned to this archpastor, he called him “the great bishop of God.” Nothing had yet been heard of the holy one of God, Mitrofan; there had been as yet no revelations or visions—yet Father Seraphim, in a few words written in his own hand, was already congratulating His Grace Anthony on the opening of the holy relics of God’s servant Mitrofan. Anthony showed this note to certain persons; it is believed to be preserved to this day among his papers. In spirit Father Seraphim knew many of the contemporary priests who shone with piety and holiness of life; he deeply revered such men and would direct his visitors to them for edification and guidance. Among these is known Father Alexei Gnevashev, priest of the village of Basurman in Simbirsk Province, Kurmysh District, who died at the age of 85 on April 21, 1848. Father Seraphim considered him a great ascetic and would often speak of him thus: “This man, by his prayers for Christian souls, is like a candle lit before the throne of God. Here is a laborer who, though he has taken no monastic vows, stands above many ascetics. He shines like a star on the Christian horizon.”

In the life of the recluse Georgy of the Zadonsk Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery, published by Grigorov, there is included one incident that happened to Father Georgy and was recounted by him to the novice P. A., from whose notes it was extracted.

“One day,” says P. A., “coming to Father Georgy’s cell, I noticed an unfamiliar portrait on the wall and asked: ‘Whose is that?’ ‘Don’t you know?’ answered Georgy. ‘That is the late Father Seraphim of the Sarov Hermitage! His God-pleasing life was known to everyone’—and so the conversation continued about him. Among other things, Georgy, after a moment’s thought, said: ‘Do you know what he did to me? I suppose I should tell you. For a long time I was tormented by the thought of leaving this place and moving to some other monastery, more secluded—for here letters and visitors distract me greatly; sometimes it would be wrong to refuse, and sometimes it is necessary to reply because they write about serious matters. For nearly two years I struggled in indecision with this thought, telling no one about it; and meanwhile I was greatly troubled by it, turning over in my memory all the places where I might conveniently withdraw. One day my cell attendant came in to inform me that a pilgrim from the Sarov Hermitage had brought me greetings and a blessing from Father Seraphim, and beyond that had something to say to me personally by his commission. I gave my blessing for him to enter, and he began thus: Father Seraphim bids you be told—it is shameful, he says, to have sat so many years in seclusion and be overcome by such enemy-bred thoughts as to abandon your place. Go nowhere. The Most Holy Theotokos commands you to remain here. Having said this, the pilgrim bowed and went out, while I stood as though rooted to the spot, marveling at the miraculous revelation of my secret thoughts to someone who not only did not know me but had never seen me—and we had never even written to one another. However, coming to my senses shortly, I asked my cell attendant to call the pilgrim back to me, hoping to learn something more from him; but he could be found neither in the monastery nor outside it. From that time on my spirit was at peace, and I ceased to think about moving to another place.’”

Among the spiritual relationships of the elder Seraphim with other contemporary ascetics, and among their common endeavors directed toward one goal, the following case is extraordinarily remarkable. A certain townswoman of Tomsk, Maria Ikonnikova, who had traveled widely among the holy places, came to the city of Achinsk to the elder Daniel to receive his blessing for future pilgrimages. He met her before she could even reach his cell, and, casting upon her the most wrathful look, began to speak in a loud voice:

“What are you doing coming to me, you empty pilgrim? I have long been expecting you. Now you will remember me. Why do you wander about the world deceiving God and people? People give you money for candles and prayer services, and you spend it on your own whims: you traveled many stages by hired horse carts, spending money given to God; and in such-and-such a place you drank wine and bought so much of it; and in such-and-such a place you engaged in vain chatter. Now you have had enough wandering about the world. Go and live in Tomsk. Support yourself by your own handiwork—knit stockings. And when you grow old, collect alms for your sustenance. But listen well—travel no more across Russia.”

As he delivered this instructive speech, the elder threatened the pilgrim woman with his walking stick, and when he had finished his words, went into his cell. The pilgrim woman, bowing to him, set off for Tomsk without a word, settled at home, took up her handiwork, and resolved to wander no more.

Only after half a year had passed did relatives and acquaintances, on their way to Kiev, persuade Maria Ikonnikova to be their guide, as a seasoned traveler. At first she refused, but then went with them; and along the way, being in Sarov, she stopped in to see Father Seraphim for a blessing before the road. The elder received all her companions warmly, blessed them, gave them dried bread, but to their guide, Maria Ikonnikova, he said not a word, gave no blessing, and actually drove her away from himself. A week later the Tomsk travelers began to prepare for the journey, and Maria Ikonnikova, having resolved to ask Father Seraphim for a blessing for the road, approached the door of his cell and called out through tears: “Father Seraphim! Bless me for the journey—my companions want to leave.” And Father Seraphim, coming out of his cell, looked sternly at her and called out loudly:

“Why did you go roaming across Russia? Brother Daniel told you not to travel across Russia anymore. Now go back home!”

“Father! Bless me to go just this one last time,” said the pilgrim woman; “I will not travel anymore after this.”

“I have told you: go back; and to go forward you have no blessing!” the elder again called out loudly.

“Father,” said the pilgrim woman, “how am I to go back alone? It is such a long road, and I have not a single kopek to my name.”

“Go, go back!” Father Seraphim insisted. “Even without money you will be carried by horse all the way to Tomsk.”

After this the elder blessed her, gave her a single dried crust, and closed the door behind himself. The pilgrim woman said farewell to her companions and returned home. In Nizhny Novgorod she found fellow travelers—Tomsk merchants—who took her all the way to Tomsk. Such is the distance over which the servants of God see and hear one another in the spirit!

Knowing and revering holy people, acting for the good of his neighbors in accord with them both in spirit and in the purpose of the Christian faith, Father Seraphim also kept watch over brothers who had fallen into sin. In his cell, as already mentioned above, a great multitude of candles always burned before the holy icons. Visitors coming to the elder brought candles and oil for this purpose, and sometimes left money for purchasing them—which Father Seraphim did not always accept. Regarding this multitude of candles, Father Seraphim said the following: “If anyone has faith in me, poor Seraphim, then for that person a candle burns before the holy icon in my cell. And if a candle fell over, that was a sign for me that that person had fallen into mortal sin. Then I would kneel before the mercy of God and pray for him.” Thus Father Seraphim spoke to the peasant Vasily Petrovich Vavilov, who resided in the city of Arzamas, worked in Diveyevo, and enjoyed the elder’s particular attention and trust. So it came about that another of Father Seraphim’s favorites, Mr. Vorotilov, was on the point of falling into mortal sin. Father Seraphim, seeing this, began to pray on his knees, that the Lord might save his soul from that ruinous sin. The Lord is merciful: He saved him. And so, upon their next meeting, the elder noted to Vorotilov that at such-and-such a time and in such-and-such a place “we were, by the mercy of God, saved from hell by the prayers of poor Seraphim.”

One year and ten months before his death, Father Seraphim was found worthy of a visitation by the Mother of God.

This visitation took place in the early morning of the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1831. “Father,” recounted the elder Evpraxia of the Diveyevo community (in the world, Eudokia), “two days beforehand he told me to come to him on that day. When I arrived, he announced: ‘We shall have a vision of the Mother of God’—and, bending me down face-first, covered me with his mantle and read over me from a book. Then, raising me up, he said: ‘Well, now hold on to me and do not be afraid of anything.’ At that moment a sound arose, like the sound of a forest in a great wind. When it subsided, singing was heard, resembling church singing. Then the door of the cell opened of itself, it grew bright—brighter than daylight—and a fragrance filled the cell, like frankincense but better. Father was kneeling with his hands raised to heaven. I was frightened. Father rose and said: ‘Do not be afraid, child—this is no calamity; this is mercy sent to us from God. See, our most glorious, Most Pure Mistress, the Most Holy Theotokos, is coming to us!’ Two angels came in front, each holding in his hand a branch covered with freshly blossomed flowers. Their hair resembled golden-yellow flax and lay loosened on their shoulders. They took their places in front. After them came Saint John the Forerunner and Saint John the Theologian. Their clothing was white, gleaming with purity. After them came the Mother of God, and after Her, twelve maidens. The Queen of Heaven wore a mantle such as is depicted on the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos of Sorrows, gleaming and of indescribable beauty—I cannot say what color it was—fastened at the neck with a large round clasp adorned with crosses variously decorated, though with what I do not know, and I remember only that it shone with extraordinary light. The garment over which the mantle was worn was green, girded high with a belt. Over the mantle was something like a stole, and on the hands cuffs, which, like the stole, were adorned with crosses. In stature She seemed taller than all the maidens. On Her head was a lofty crown adorned with crosses of various designs, beautiful and wondrous, shining with such light that one could not look at it with one’s eyes—nor at the clasp, nor at the very face of the Queen of Heaven. Her hair was loosened on Her shoulders, and it was longer and more beautiful than that of the angels. The maidens walked after Her in pairs, wearing crowns, in garments of various colors, of various heights, with various faces and hair of various colors lying also on their shoulders; all were of great beauty, but some were more beautiful than others, and they stood in a circle around all of us. The Queen of Heaven was in the center. The cell became spacious, and the whole ceiling was filled with lights, as though of burning candles. It was brighter than midday; the light was of a special kind, unlike daylight—brighter and whiter than sunlight. I was frightened and fell. The Queen of Heaven came to me and, touching me with Her right hand, said: ‘Rise, maiden, and do not be afraid of us. Maidens just like you have come here with me.’ I did not feel myself rise. The Queen of Heaven was pleased to repeat: ‘Do not be afraid—We have come to visit you.’ Father Seraphim was no longer kneeling but standing before the Most Holy Theotokos, and She spoke with him as graciously as if with her own kinsman. Overcome with great joy, I asked Father Seraphim where we were—I thought I was no longer alive; then, when I asked him who this was, the Most Pure Theotokos told me to approach the maidens and ask them myself. They stood in order on either side, as they had walked: in the first places stood the great-martyrs Barbara and Catherine; in the second, the holy first-martyr Thekla and the holy great-martyr Marina; in the third, the holy great-martyr and queen Irene and the venerable Eupraxia; in the fourth, the holy great-martyrs Pelagia and Dorothea; in the fifth, the venerable Macrina and the martyr Justina; in the sixth, the holy great-martyr Juliana and the martyr Anisia. I approached each of them; each one told me her name and the feats of her martyrdom and life for Christ’s sake, in accordance with what is written about them in the Menaion; and all said: ‘It was not so easily that God granted us this glory—it came through suffering, through reproach. And you too shall suffer.’ The Most Holy Theotokos said much to Father Seraphim that the participant in the vision could not hear; but this she did hear: ‘Do not abandon my maidens’—meaning the Diveyevo sisters. Father Seraphim replied: ‘O Mistress! I am gathering them, but by myself I cannot govern them.’ To this the Queen of Heaven replied: ‘I will help you in everything, my beloved one. Lay obedience upon them; if they fulfill it, they shall be with you and near to Me; but if they lose their wisdom, they shall be deprived of the portion of these My close maidens—there shall be no such place and no such crown for them. Whoever offends them shall be struck by Me; whoever serves them for the sake of the Lord shall be remembered before God.’ Then, turning to me, She said: ‘Look at these My maidens and at their crowns: some of them have abandoned earthly kingdoms and riches, desiring the eternal and heavenly kingdom; they have loved voluntary poverty, they have loved the Lord alone—and for this, see what glory and honor they have been found worthy of. As it was before, so it is today. Only the former martyrs suffered openly, while today’s suffer in secret, with sorrows of the heart—and their reward will be the same.’ The vision ended with the Most Holy Theotokos saying to Father Seraphim: ‘Soon, my beloved one, you will be with us,’ and blessing him. And all the saints took leave of him: Saint John the Forerunner and John the Theologian blessed him, and the maidens exchanged handshakes with him. I was told: ‘This vision has been granted to you through the prayers of Father Seraphim, Mark, Nazarius, and Pachomius.’ And then in one instant everything became invisible. The vision lasted not less than an hour. Father, turning to me afterward, said: ‘See, dear Mother, what grace the Lord has deemed us, poor ones, worthy of. In this manner I have already had the twelfth visitation from God. And you too the Lord has deemed worthy. See what joy we have attained! We have reason for faith and hope in the Lord. Overcome the enemy, the devil, and against him be wise in all things; the Lord will help you in all things. Call on the Lord and the Mother of God for your help, and remember me, poor one, in your prayers. Remember and say in prayer: Lord, how shall I die? How, O Lord, shall I come to the terrible judgment? How, O Lord, shall I give answer for my deeds? O Queen of Heaven, help me!’”