50. On Saint Seraphim’s Love for the Fatherland

Just as in a garland woven of beautiful flowers the more one examines it the more one is struck by the brightness of its colors and the charm of its shades, so too in the lives of the holy saints of God, the more deeply one looks into them the more new virtues, new labors, and new examples of piety one discovers. It will not be hard to be convinced of this if, to that end, we trace even just a single life of a single saint of God. Take, for example, the life of Saint Seraphim. Having offered you quite a few homilies drawn from it, we had thought that we had exhausted it entirely. Yet in fact it turned out otherwise. Reading it again and again, we found in it, to our consolation, still one more virtue of the holy elder—and with it we shall now endeavor to acquaint you, beloved brothers.

Before the time when hostile malice armed itself against the sacred power of the tsar and produced unrest in Saint Petersburg, the venerable elder’s disciple John once went to him and saw him gazing intently into his spring. There he also saw that a certain military man was walking at a brisk pace toward the venerable elder. When the man approached the elder and began to ask for his blessing, the elder withheld it from him and said: “Go back to where you came from.” The visitor stretched out his hands again, but the venerable elder now reproached him with redoubled sternness: “I told you, go back to where you came from!” Struck by the wrathful look and voice of the holy elder, the military man humbled himself—but still again asked for his blessing. But the venerable elder not only withheld it as before, but this time cried out so loudly and mercilessly as though to the greatest adversary and apostate of the Church. The disciple of the venerable elder, seeing him in such terrible wrath, was disturbed and thought: could the elder perhaps be under some kind of temptation? — for it was even frightening to look at him in those moments.

When the military visitor had departed, the venerable elder said to his disciple: “Did you see that man who came to me?” The disciple replied that he had. Then the holy elder turned his gaze again toward his spring and said further to his disciple: “Look into the spring; it is that which showed me who this man is.”

The disciple looked into the spring and saw it completely disturbed. At that moment the water in it was as turbid and muddy as water in a well when the well is being cleaned to remove silt, moss growths, debris, and all manner of filth. When afterward the disciple glanced at the elder, he said: “You see how troubled this spring is—even so this man who came here wishes to trouble Russia.” The disciple was struck with awe at the saint’s remarkable insight, and equally at the zeal for God that he displayed against this hidden enemy of the Church, of the sovereign, and of the fatherland. Shortly afterward it became known that the Lord had openly exposed and destroyed all the impious schemes of the conspirators. So there before you, brothers, is yet another virtue of the elder of God: his ardent love for his homeland. You have surely noticed how he—always a calm and most gentle elder—was stirred to indignation against the enemy of the fatherland, with what anger he burned against him, how he raised his voice and cried out several times: “Go, go back to where you came from!” Was it not ardent love for his homeland, we ask again, that spoke through the lips of the Venerable One at that moment? And was it not this same love that involuntarily compelled him to be roused against the enemy of his homeland and to burn with such intense wrath toward him? Yes—it, and it alone, so to speak, overflowed the heart of the elder of God at that time, and it alone fought against the one who intended to bring confusion and sedition into our beloved fatherland. But apart from this incident, the Venerable One revealed his love for his homeland on many occasions. Thus, he urged the statesmen who came to him always to remain faithful to the sovereign and to the fatherland. He constantly reminded them of their duty to be prepared to sacrifice everything, including their very lives, for the homeland. And, out of his love for the latter, he would always speak of it with enthusiasm and praise. “Russia,” he would say, “will always be glorious, fearsome to her enemies, and unconquerable, having faith and piety as her shield and the breastplate of righteousness; for these reasons even the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Life, p. 154). What could be greater than such love for the fatherland? What better relationship to it could one desire of anyone at all?

Yes, truly the Venerable One was a faithful son of his homeland, always ready to lay down even his very soul for his friends! Let us follow his example, brothers, and strive to establish ourselves in love for our fatherland. To that end, let us always look upon it as our own home, in which the tsar is the father, and all of us, in spirit and in love, are his own children. Amen.

The lamp-lighting prayers, according to the rubrics, are to be read at sunset and when the time comes at Vespers to light the lamps, which is why they are called lamp-lighting prayers. New Tablet, ed. 1870, p. 93.

That is, to the sisters living in the Diveevo women’s community near Sarov, for which Saint Seraphim during his lifetime took particular care. At the present time it is a women’s monastery with nine hundred nuns.

The final closing words were taken by us with minor alterations from the homilies of Archbishop Eusebius. See Part 3, p. 832.

This likely refers to the tragic events of December 14, 1826.