A Word about Venerable Seraphim (Rose)

Archbishop George of Chișinău and Moldova | August 20 / September 2, 2025

 

 

Brothers and sisters! Today we prayerfully glorify the saint close to our time, Venerable Seraphim of Platina, who shone forth in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in the dreadful 20th century. We all know that in the Orthodox Church there are holy servants of God called venerable ones. The venerable are monastics, who completely freely and consciously, knowing and lamenting their sinful corruption, strove for holiness, endeavored to be like Jesus Christ, and succeeded on this path, fulfilling in humility and repentance the vows of celibacy, obedience, and non-possession. In other words, the venerable, by experience, came to know that Orthodoxy constitutes the living communion of God and man, of the heavenly and the earthly, of the living and the departed, and that likeness to God is the highest goal and essence of the spiritual life of any Orthodox Christian — it is the revelation within oneself of the moral qualities or properties of the image of God, with the cooperation of Divine grace. It is not by chance that they taught that this possibility is granted only in living union with Christ in His Church. “Without Me ye can do nothing,” — according to the word of the Lord (Jn. 15:5).

“Whoever united his will with the Divine Spirit, that one became God-like; having received Christ into his heart, he (truly) became a Christian from Christ, having within himself the One Christ formed, utterly incomprehensible and truly inaccessible to all creatures,” — wrote Venerable Symeon the New Theologian.

Among the ranks of saints in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad shone forth Venerable Seraphim (Rose). He was born on August 13, 1934, in San Diego, California, USA, in a non-Orthodox environment, but seeking the truth in this earthly life, he found the living Truth of Christ in His Holy Church — the Orthodox Church. Then, still the young Eugene, became a spiritual son of Saint John of San Francisco, now venerated throughout the whole world, a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. In time he embraced monasticism and became a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a hieromonk. Venerable Seraphim, through the monastic way of life, with humility, repentance, and discernment, strove for godlikeness by prayer, fasting, and labor. He defended churchly truth in the Russian Church, denounced “Sergianism” — the ruinous ungodly union of the church organization with the God-fighters, spoke of the Catacomb Church and the new martyrs in the God-fighting land of the Soviets, opposed the heresy of Ecumenism — exposing the contemporary falling away from Christ, the lukewarmness of Christians, and at the same time advised to beware of ruinous extremes in spiritual life: indifference and zeal not according to knowledge. He brought many to Christ and to union with the Orthodox Church. In time he became known to very many Orthodox as a missionary and spiritual writer, author of numerous works which had great influence on Orthodox Christians in the USA and in our post-Soviet homeland.

Venerable Seraphim reposed in the Lord at the age of 48, on September 2, 1982. He was glorified in the rank of venerable ones of the ROCOR, by the Hierarchical Council of the ROCOR, under the omophorion of the First-Hierarch Metropolitan Agafangel, by that part of the ROCOR which did not enter into union with the Soviet false church, on November 08/21, 2024, at the Synodal Representation of the ROCOR in Odessa.

As we know, for us Orthodox Christians, the saints are not “mythical” distant, unreachable persons. The Savior Himself said: “Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mt. 22:31–32). The saints are our close spiritual brethren in the faith, friends and instructors, to whom we, still “sailing upon the stormy sea of life,” have recourse with prayer for help, being instructed by the example of their much-labored repentant life.

“As a merchant seeking goodly pearls, thou didst find Orthodoxy, and didst preach the true faith, calling all to repentance. May the light of Christ shine in us through thy prayers, Venerable Seraphim our father.” (Troparion Tone 8). Amen.

 

Russian source:

http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/arkhiepiskop-georgij-slovo-o-prep-serafime-rouz