Answer to a Brother Who Asked for Instruction on Pursuing the Hermit Life

A certain monk, intending to withdraw into the wilderness, came to Father Seraphim, who was living in the wilderness, and asked him: “Father, others say that withdrawing from community life to the wilderness is Pharisaism, and that by such a change one shows contempt for the brothers—or even condemns them.” Father Seraphim replied to this: “It is not our business to judge others, and we withdraw from the community not out of hatred toward them, but chiefly because we have received and bear upon ourselves the angelic rank, which is incompatible with being in a place where the Lord God is angered by word and deed. Therefore, by separating ourselves from the community, we withdraw only from hearing and seeing what is contrary to God’s commandments—which occurs frequently in a large community. We do not flee from people, who share our nature and bear the same name of Christ, but from the vices they commit, just as Arsenius the Great was told: ‘Flee from people, and you will be saved.’”

One monk had been blessed by his abbot to begin the hermit life, and the abbot himself wrote to Father Seraphim, asking him to receive that monk and to instruct him in the spiritual life just as he instructed himself. When this monk came to Father Seraphim with this letter, Seraphim received him with great warmth and blessed him to build another cell not far from his own. When the monk began to ask him for instruction, he said to him out of the deepest humility that he himself knew nothing, and reminded him of the Savior’s words: “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29); then he added: “According to the understanding of St. John Climacus, we must be taught not by an angel or a human being, but by the Lord Himself.”