The Significance of Fr. Seraphim Rose for the American Christian of Today

On September 2, 2017 By zosimasIn Monastic Saints, Monastic Writings, SpiritualityLeave a comment

This serious article is a valuable resource for those of us seeking to live the Life in Christ in these last days, and may be read and re-read profitably.

Fr. Seraphim Rose (†1982) is a saint for our time, a trustworthy guide and example for us as we struggle against the deluge of apostasy, madness, and demonic activity which has been unleashed on the world.

The life of Fr. Seraphim Rose shows us that the way to recover our souls as Westerners is to return to the roots of the real culture of the West—Patristic Christianity, to form our souls, not of the pablum and poison of contemporary culture, but on apostolic faith, catacomb spirituality, Orthodox piety, and the mind of the fathers.

The American Acquisition of the Patristic Mind

The Significance of Fr. Seraphim Rose for the Christian of Today

by Vincent Rossi, Pravoslavie/OrthoChristian, September 2, 2017:

Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina (reposed September 2, 1982)

In the back of the St. Herman Calendar published by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, there is a page entitled Remember Your Instructors, on which we find among others the name of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose of Platina.

Why do we need to remember our instructors? The purpose of remembering our instructors is, it seems to me, threefold:

first, to reverence their memory as holy, wise, and beloved counselors and teachers (as St. Paulinus of Nola said, “Only if the sky can forego its stars, earth its grass, honeycombs their honey, streams their water, and breasts their milk will our tongues be able to renounce their praise of the saints, in whom God is the strength of life and the fame of death”);

second, to pray for the repose of their souls and to seek their intercession on behalf of our continuing spiritual warfare here on earth (“Give rest to our fathers and brethren who have departed this life before us, and through the prayers of them all have mercy on my unhappy self in my depravity,” says St. Peter of Damascus in the prayer at the end of Compline);

and third, to imitate their example (as St. Basil the Great points out, “The righteous themselves do not want glory, but we who are as yet in this life need remembering them, so as to imitate them”).

In a sense, this third purpose for remembering our instructors, to imitate their example, implies the other two, and is the really important reason for us to keep fresh in our memories the lives of those who handed down the Orthodox faith and tradition to us.

I believe the example of Fr. Seraphim Rose, both in his life and in his work, contains a key that is of universal Orthodox significance in these last days, and is especially important for all those seeking to find and struggling to preserve true Orthodoxy in the West.

I believe the example of Fr. Seraphim Rose, both in his life and in his work, contains a key that is of universal Orthodox significance in these last days, and is especially important for all those seeking to find and struggling to preserve true Orthodoxy in the West. For Fr. Seraphim is our contemporary, a man who lived and breathed the same deadly modern atmosphere of godless humanism, atheistic hedonism, and soulless ecumenism that is the common experience of all modern children of the West.

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St Herman, Elder & Wonderworker of Alaska

On August 9, 2016August 9, 2016 By zosimasIn Monastic Saints, Spirituality1 Comment

First Saint of the North American Thebaid

Saint Herman of Alaska, America’s first canonized saint, was an Orthodox Christian monk of holy life who lived in Valaam Monastery in Russia.

In 1794, along with nine other monastics he was sent to Alaska to evangelize the natives there. In time St. Herman would become the sole survivor of the original missionaries.

Throughout his long life he cared for the natives of the Kodiak area, nursing them in their illnesses, educating them, and defending them from the abuse of the Russian fur-traders. By his meekness and firm faith he won the love and respect of all who came to know him, and inspired many to follow Christ. Eventually settling on nearby Spruce Island, he lived a mostly eremitic life, while also establishing an orphanage for the children of parents who had died during epidemics.

By the power of God, St. Herman was able to see into the hearts of others, as well as into the future. He worked miracles during his life, such as stopping a forest fire and a tsunami by his prayers. To this day he remains a wonderworker, healing the souls and bodies of those who ask for his intercessions before the throne of God.

The Importance of St Herman for Orthodox Christians in America Today

When we really stop to reflect upon what Blessed Father Herman accomplished in Alaska — and what his significance is for us today — we should be stunned by his humility, his selflessness, and his simple and pure dedication and obedience to his original mission to bring the Orthodox Faith to his new land.

The greater part of his forty-plus years in Alaska he lived alone, tirelessly caring for the native Alaskan peoples who, seeing the Love of Christ embodied in their beloved “Apa” (grandfather) became themselves pious and faithful Orthodox Christians. We should be similarly moved and converted in our hearts by Elder Herman’s witness. As one monastic writer in North America has put it:

The first saints God raises up in a country contain a special message about what Orthodoxy must be like for that nation. Thus, Sts. Boris and Gleb for Russia—the passion bearers. And it is not a coincidence that Holy Russia begins with passion bearers and ends with passion bearers (the royal martyrs) and a whole host of New Martyrs!

So what is the lesson the Lord wants American Orthodox like us to learn from St. Herman? He was a meek and humble monk, not even a priest, but a strong witness against injustice and a confessor of the true Faith. These are the qualities, I believe, that Orthodoxy in America must emulate. But so far, we aren’t. We are obsessed with jurisdictional administrative issues, while the inner life of the Church—which leads to repentance and deification through humility—is largely neglected at the official, organizational, level…

We need a ‘revival’ inspired by St. Herman!

— Schema-Hieromonk Ambrose (Young)

Therefore, let us persevere in our faith and in doing good, being inspired in the depths of our hearts by our beloved Elder and Wonderworker, St Herman of Alaska, that we may embody his teaching:

From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and strive to fulfill His holy will!

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Doubt and the Monastic Journey

On August 8, 2016August 7, 2016 By zosimasIn Monastic Calling, Monastic WritingsLeave a comment

“To the reader, it will hardly sound surprising that the evil one is far from thrilled to hear that a man or woman wishes to profess monastic vows. If we imagine the whole body of the Church as an army of the faithful here on earth regarding the spiritual life, monks and nuns are like the elite special-ops teams. We stand on the front lines of the battle for the world, and the enemy sends the fiercest attacks against us.”

by Monk Kilian, Pravmir, July 7, 2010:

Within the Tradition of our Church, monastic tonsure is considered a sacrament, a holy mystery, and thus forms for the monk or nun a liminal event in life.

tonsure01 — (Photo of monastic tonsure included with the original article in Pravmir.)

Many sources consider tonsure to the schema a “second Baptism,” and having been recently tonsured myself as a stavrophore monk, I can vouch for the aptness of this description. Tonsure is the beginning of another life: all sins are washed away, the old man is laid aside, and a new person is born with a new name, given by the abbot or abbess and taken by the newly-enrolled soldier of Christ in love and obedience.

Like any mystery in the Church, tonsure itself and life as a fully professed monk is hard to put into words; I must admit I was a bit daunted by the task of speaking of doubt and tonsure simply because it defies expression on many levels. As with baptism or marriage, you cannot fully know what to expect on the other side of the font or the next day after the wedding. At these thresholds of our life in the Church, we have to leap out in faith, trusting that God is leading us along His path.

I had been a monastic for five years before my tonsure, and when I first entered the monastery, I was chomping at the bit to be tonsured into the schema. I had no clue about the hard work, both physical and spiritual, that monastic life would lay on me in order to peel away at least some of the passionate crust around my heart in order to begin to see who I really was, and who God wanted me to be.

Yet this process, as necessary as it may be, is also very frightening. Over the past few years, I’ve had to confront my own weaknesses in a very matter-of-fact way. I’ve had to humble myself (or be humbled, as it were) and deny myself: my way of thinking, my desires for my life, my understandings of where life was going.

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What is a Holy Pilgrimage?

On October 17, 2015February 9, 2017 By zosimasIn Pilgrimage, Prayer, Spirituality1 Comment

This article, originally a talk given by the author at the Skete of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Moss Beach, California some twenty years ago, breathes the fragrance of the Thebaid, and movingly conveys the Orthodox ‘phronema’, the Mind of the Church, which reminds us that,

“The whole aim of our life is to become holy, that is to become saints, to achieve union with God…”

Somehow, the process of pilgrimage is key to the success of that effort.

In this life-long effort,

“a holy pilgrimage is something which is ‘set apart’ and different from our normal day-to-day activities; it is supposed to be something ‘other-worldly’…”

“Therefore”, Fr. Ambrose urges us, “we must have an understanding of the ‘inner’ pilgrimage, the pilgrimage within our hearts,” the pilgrimage which leads to repentance and conversion.

The Church provides us with the “map” for this journey, this life-long, life-changing pilgrimage, which can lead us, as he says, “from this life to the next, from earthly life to eternal life.”

Venturing on holy pilgrimages to the sacred monasteries across North America can help transfigure and change our hearts, so that we, in truth, may begin to live our entire life as pilgrims sojourning towards our heavenly homeland.

Fr. Ambrose, Pascha 2013; Skete of the Entrance of the Theotokos, Hayesville OH.

by Schemahieromonk Ambrose (Young), of the Entrance of the Theotokos Skete, Hayesville OH.

In October of 1888 the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, not yet an Orthodox Christian but still a Lutheran, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with her Russian Orthodox husband, the Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovitch. From Jerusalem she wrote the following to her grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain:

“My very dear Grandmama,

“All our journey we have had very little time for writing letters, but having a quiet morning I use the opportunity of sending you a few lines from this Holy Town. It is such an intense joy being here and nay thoughts constantly fly to you all, praying God to bless you with every possible blessing…. It is such a dream to see all these places where Our Lord suffered for us and such an intense comfort to have been able to come to Jerusalem …. one can quietly pray and recall all that, as a little child, one already heard with such religious awe.” (Quoted in Lubov Millar, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke)

In today’s world, especially in Europe and America where there is a certain amount of affluence, individuals and families do not go “on pilgrimage”; they “take vacations.” They go skiing, or they go to Disneyland, or they travel as tourists to see some interesting — but usually non-Orthodox, non-religious — places and sites.

Our forefathers in the old countries, however, knew nothing about such things as vacations; they only knew about pilgrimages. They lived longing for the day when they could go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of some wonderworking icon or a saint. This was their concept of a vacation — something that would nourish the soul rather than give rest to the body, for the body, they knew, would soon disappear into the grave, when the soul would go on into eternity and there find its reward or punishment, according to the way of life it had led with the body on this earth.

The title of this article is “What is a Holy Pilgrimage?” Such a title suggests that there is such a thing as a “holy” pilgrimage as opposed to an “unholy,” profane, or secular journey.

The English word “holy” comes from the Middle English, halig, which is derived from the Old English, hal (hail), which means “whole” or complete, not divided or broken up. This seems to reflect the Savior’s own command to us, that we be perfect, even as your Father Who is in Heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48). He could as well have said, “Be ye holy, even as your Father Who is in Heaven is holy.” Or “Be ye whole…” (Our English word “heal”–as when the Lord healed the paralytic–comes from exactly the same Old English term for “whole” and “holy.”) So, by “holy” we commonly mean something or someone that is exalted or worthy because it is perfectly good and righteous or filled with virtue. We also use the word “holy” interchangeably with “divine” or “heavenly”; thus, we say “Holy God,” or “the Most Holy Mother of God.” A less common but very useful word is “hallow,” which also comes from the same root as holy and whole, but means something that has been made holy or is set apart for holy use. Thus, we sometimes speak of a shrine as a “hallowed place.”

All of these words –whole, heal, hallow–are therefore closely related in English to our word “holy.”

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