The Spiritual Character and Paternal Legacy of Archbishop [St.] Seraphim (Sobolev) of Blessed Memory

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Commemoration of His Repose (February 13/26, 1950)

By the Sisterhood of the Convent of the Holy Protection Sofia, Bulgaria

 

 

PREFACE

by His Eminence, Bishop [Metropolitan] Photii of Triaditza

“I will glorify those who glorify Me" (I Kings 2:30)

The fiftieth anniversary of the repose of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) (1881-1950) will fall in the coming year (2000). His name is dear and close to the hearts of all of us. Many of us are not contemporaries of Archbishop Seraphim; indeed, only a few of us knew him personally. However, a child’s trusting and simple love for Vladyka [the Slavic term for “Master,” a pious appellation for an Orthodox Bishop— Trans.], be it ever so hesitant and fickle, flickers somewhere deep in our hearts, which are wounded by sin. This love of ours is a response, as far as such lies within us, to his overwhelming paternal love for us.

The stream of believers to the tomb of the ever-memorable Hierarch [in the Russian Church of St. Nicholas, in Sofia—Trans.] has not ceased over the last half century. Through the respect of the people, God glorifies His chosen one, whose earthly life was a marvellous glorification of the Creator. Angelic chastity, unusual humility and humble-mindedness, overflowing love for God and neighbor, perspicacity, and Grace-filled help, given on many occasions—these things delineate the radiant image of his holiness.

According to St. John of Damascus, “We honor the Saints because they are united to God, have received Him as an indweller, and have become by Grace, through participation in Him, what He is Himself by nature” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, ch. 15, Patrologia Grceca, Vol. XCIV, col. 1164B). If we wish truly to love and honor Vladyka Seraphim, all we need do is simply strive to remain his children. This internal nexus between spiritual child and spiritual Father is an intimate one. The deeper it is, the more it modestly avoids external ostentation. If only we could assimilate through our minds, hearts, and consciousness at least a portion of the Grace-filled mind, heart, and consciousness of Vladyka Seraphim, which streamed from his entire Christ-like personality. Let us walk to the end the path which he paved through such an arduous spiritual podvig. Let a spark of his childlike faith and ardent love for the Savior consume all of our complexity—all of our cunning—, our lack of faith, our small-mindedness, our self-love, and our love of sin. Let him guide us on the way to truth, which he himself traversed to the end. For the snares of falsehood and its father, the Evil One, dog us at every step: Can we survive, by ourselves, on the path towards Truth, given the confusion of the contemporary world, which rejects Christ, and the many temptations that eat away at the fife of our Church? Can we tell the difference between zeal and fanaticism? Can we tell the difference between a Grace-filled warmth of heart and unhealthy feelings, sentimentalism, and prelest in spiritual life? Can we draw the line between strictness and harshness? Can we discern the boundary beyond which a mild manner and gentleness degenerate into pleasing men?

Indeed, we can stumble at any step. But we implore our beloved Father not to leave us. Let us wish time and time again to be his children. Let us wish to belong to Christ, now and forever. Let us wish this, despite our weaknesses and despite our unworthiness. It is doubtless for this reason that, when we serve a Panikhida to our ever-memorable Father, Archbishop Seraphim, our souls are filled with a feeling of special brightness; and so it is that, when with our mouths we sing, “Grant rest, O Lord, to the soul of Thy departed servant,” our hearts tremble as they whisper: “O radiant Father Seraphim, pray to God for us.”

+ Bishop Photii Primate of the True (Old Calendar) Orthodox Church of Bulgaria

+ + +

On November 1/14, 1920, the flagship “Chersonese” slowly left the port of Sebastopol and put out into the open sea. This was the last ship to depart from the port before the invasion of the Bolsheviks. On board were six hundred cadets under the leadership of General Ilchaninov and General Stogov, the commandant of Sebastopol. They were all fleeing the country for good. At the quay, many people waved good-bye to their friends and relatives on board the receding ship. The refugees gazed sadly at the fading coastline of their motherland, and all of their human hopes were dashed. Crucified like a martyr at its Golgotha, Russia was vanishing from sight. Amid clouds of dust, the Bolshevik cavalry could be seen advancing on the town.

A young Bishop of medium height, with a pale, haggard face, was standing among the refugees.

“Vladyka, give your blessing to Russia,” a man entreated him.

Hiding his emotions, Vladyka thoughtfully raised his hands and slowly blessed both the land, receding into the distance, and the people, who continued to wave good-bye.

This Bishop was the thirty-nine-year-old Seraphim (Sobolev), who had been Consecrated to the Episcopacy only one month earlier, on October 1/14, the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, at the Cathedral of Simferopol. And now, on that wet and gloomy autumn day, he was beginning the sad life of a refugee.

It was not so much the coup d’etat, or the murders, or the famine, or the epidemics which raged in Russia—overwhelmed as it was by revolutionary madness—that compelled him to go into exile. He realized that the Russian Church was undergoing a period of persecutions, that many Bishops, Priests, and monks were perishing in prison, and that thousands of them would meet their deaths. He, himself, had heard the cries of monks from the Monastery of St. Mitrofan of Voronezh, as they were buried alive. News of the martyrdom of his fellow-monks was arriving from all over the country. His heart was full of ardent love for Christ, and he was prepared to suffer for the Faith. However, God’s meek and gentle chosen one did not want to decide for himself, but to obey the will of God.

No sooner had the bloody insurrection started in Russia, than he went to the righteous and discerning Elder, Hieromonk Aaron, who lived in the Zadonsk Monastery (near Voronezh), to ask him whether he should remain in Russia, where he was most likely to die a martyric death, or flee the country, in accordance with the words of the Gospel: “But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another” (St. Matthew 10:23). The blessed Elder Aaron answered enigmatically: “May God grant that you go to a lovely, small country.” “What do you mean?” asked Father Seraphim (he was still an Archimandrite at the time). “Life itself will show you,” the Elder answered with a smile.

When on October 29, 1920 (Old Style), the Red Army was only thirty kilometers away from Simferopol, Bishop Seraphim faced up to the question of his future fate. He went to the Bemov metochion of the Krim Monastery, where the wonderworking Kursk Icon of the Mother of God was located. In a fervent prayer, the young Bishop appealed to the Queen of Heaven for help, confessing his willingness to suffer for Christ and imploring her to show him the path which God had appointed for him. He then visited the local Archbishop, Dimitry of Tavria, and asked this diocesan Hierarch, whom God had anointed, to bless him to remain in Russia. “No,” replied Vladyka Dimitry, “I cannot do that. If something bad should happen to you, I would suffer for having given you my blessing.”

After a short conversation, they decided to cast lots. On one piece of paper they wrote, “leave,” and on the another, “do not leave.” The white-haired Archbishop went into his house-chapel, which was on the first floor of his Episcopal residence. After praying for a long time before the Icon of the Mother of God, he picked one of the pieces of paper. On the lot, which the young spiritual Father received as it were from the hand of God, was written: “leave.”

Thus was Archbishop Seraphim’s fate decided: God’s will was that the young Hierarch, who was endowed with Grace, talents, and spiritual wisdom, should serve the Holy Church and bear the cross of Episcopal service. At that time, according to his own words, that service was tantamount to martyrdom, though bloodless. But he followed the path shown to him by the Queen of Heaven.

* * *

Nikolai Borisovich Sobolev (Archbishop Seraphim’s name in the world) was born in Ryazan, in Western Russia, on December 1/14, 1881. Since early childhood, he bore the seal of God’s elect. Quiet, kind, tenderhearted, and sympathetic towards people, he was exceptionally serious for his age. He attended the seminary in Ryazan, and subsequently the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1908. In his senior year at the Academy, at his own request, he was tonsured into monasticism with the name “Seraphim,” in honor of the long-revered and recently glorified ascetic struggler of Sarov [his Glorification took place in 1903—Trans.]. Shortly afterwards, he was Ordained Deacon (Hierodeacon) and Priest (Hieromonk).

After his graduation from the Academy, the young Hieromonk was appointed a teacher in the Pastoral School in Zhitomir, and subsequently Inspector of the Ecclesiastical School in Kaluga. In 1912, he became Inspector of the Kostroma Theological Seminary and, in 1913, Rector of the Voronezh Theological Seminary. His blessed personality, with its beneficial influence, left a deep impression on people’s souls.

For Russia, those years were hard and fateful. Seminarians and students were often the victims of vehement revolutionary propaganda and anarchist agitation. The erupting volcano of the revolution was not a chance phenomenon; for a century, dark, evil forces had been working subversively to demoralize Russian society, indoctrinating the people with anarchy, unrestrained freethinking, atheism, blasphemy, theomachy, and all sorts of pernicious teachings. These infernal forces made use of all of their treachery and cunning to destroy the Orthodox empire, which impeded the machinations of the “mystery of iniquity” (II Thessalonians 2:7). Unfortunately, the Russian intelligentsia, captivated by freethinking and sentimental fantasies, renounced the Orthodox Faith of their ancestors and thus contributed to the downfall of Holy Russia.

Spiritually enlightened and wise, Vladyka Seraphim was a stranger to these new trends; he was aware of the madness of the raging revolution and its disastrous developments, which altered the course of history in an apocalyptic way. He was reared on the spiritual milk of Orthodox sanctity, in which he grew up, and was steeped in the wisdom of the Holy Fathers and the fragrance of Orthodox asceticism. From his deeply pious and suffering mother, he had, from his childhood, adopted the devotional spirit of Holy Russia. Owing to her husband’s serious illness, his mother had to look after her children all by herself. Young Kolya [a diminutive form of “Nikolai”—Trans.] witnessed her ardent prayers before the holy Icons in the Icon comer of their home, where, with tears in her eyes, his mother begged for help in her sorry plight and the hardships of life. The devout young man also drew on the lives of the Saints, which he read over and over again with an insatiable love, rendering homage to their God-pleasing struggles. In pre-revolutionary Russia there were many living paragons of righteousness and of a saintly way of life, and Vladyka Seraphim came to know many of them personally. In his student days, he was acquainted with Archpriest John Sergiev, the renowned wonder-worker of Kronstadt, who was fond of him. During one of his visits to Kronstadt, he received a symbolic blessing, which filled him with the illuminating Grace of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, St. John prophetically blessed the future Hierarch—precisely at the High Place in the Altar of St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Later, as an inspector at the Ecclesiastical School in Kaluga, in the vicinity of the Optina Monastery, the young Hieromonk Seraphim frequently visited the famous Optina Elders, Joseph, Barsanuphius, and Anatoly (Potapov), confessed to them, and enriched his spiritual experience at the glowing hearth of their sanctity. Vladyka Seraphim was also acquainted with some of the well-known fools for Christ in Russia, and he used to tell us edifying stories about the extraordinary humility with which they invariably concealed their ascetical feats.

The secret life in Christ, which God’s chosen one kindled in his Christ-loving heart from his earliest years, filled his soul with the flame of Grace and its spiritual gifts. All of this did not go unnoticed by those around him. Even at the Theological Academy, the future First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), kept an eye on the spiritual development of the young theologian. By his authority and decisiveness, Hieromonk Seraphim twice broke up unruly meetings of his fellow-students, who were infected by liberal and revolutionary attitudes. In 1920, Metropolitan Anthony raised him to the rank of Bishop, and subsequently, in 1934, to the dignity of Archbishop. The Principal of the Pastoral School in Zhitomir, Archimandrite Gabriel, who later became a martyr, lovingly called the young Hieromonk “Abbochka” (from “Abba,” or spiritual guide), because of his spiritual maturity.

The waves of emigration took Bishop Seraphim first to Constantinople and then, for a few months, to the theological school on the island of Halke. In May of 1921, the Higher Church Administration appointed him Rector of the St. Nicholas Church, which was attached to the Russian Embassy in Sofia, and of the St. Alexander Nevsky Russian Monastery near Yambol. Three months later, he was appointed administrator of the Russian parishes in Bulgaria.

* * *

On May 6/19, the day on which the memory of St. Job the Much-Suffering is celebrated, Bishop Seraphim arrived in Bulgaria. This “lovely, small country,” about which the discerning Elder Aaron had prophesied, proved to be the destiny assigned to him by God, where he was to bear his Archpastoral labors and sorrows. There, he gained a profound mastery of the science of sciences, by living a life of piety and holiness, which bore rich fruit.

By nature, Bishop Seraphim had a gentle and meek character. He was distinguished for his deep humility and sincere love for his neighbor. In all of his words and actions, there shone forth a blessed simplicity and peace in Christ. His pure, dispassionate heart was insusceptible to any kind of agitation, which is ultimately the result of pride and selfishness. Not even the slightest hint of censure or malevolence did he utter with his refined lips. His prayers often worked miracles, and his words were prophetic and insightful. Love towards his enemies and pastoral self-sacrifice—these supreme manifestations of a man alive in Christ—were as natural to him as breathing.

Vladyka Seraphim’s spiritual teaching was full of patristic wisdom. He had, himself, acquired the ascetical experience of Orthodox spiritual warfare. The righteous Bishop rejected unhealthy manifestations in spiritual life and their replacement with all sorts of soul-endangering pseudo-spiritual experiences, as well as an unhealthy quest for alleged miracles, pseudo-visions, and pseudo-revelations. He emphasized that the most marvellous miracle of God was the restoration of the soul by Grace, the spiritual labor of making oneself a new man in Christ.

As a Divinely wise spiritual guide, he drew people’s attention towards the inner life, towards unseen warfare with thoughts suggested by the enemy of our salvation, the Evil One: “Do not ally your will with that of the demons!” was one of his basic pastoral admonitions. Vladyka Seraphim taught humility, simplicity, and obedience, sincere love for one’s neighbor, unceasing remembrance of God, and heartfelt prayer to Him. “In our brother we must see an Angel, and we must look upon his sin as an illness,” he often said repeatedly. Filled with the Grace of the Comforter, he possessed the extraordinary gift of comforting those who were in trouble. “Winter is severe, but Paradise is sweet,” he used to tell the despondent. “The end is near at hand; life passes quickly. On earth we are visitors—migrating birds.”

Archbishop Seraphim spent twenty-nine years of his life in Bulgaria and grew to love this “lovely, small country” as his second homeland. It was here that he wrote his theological works. It was here that he gave pastoral advice to his spiritual children, who were humbly to preserve and hand down sparks of his Patristic spirituality, so that the living links of Orthodox tradition might remain unbroken. At the end of his life, Archbishop Seraphim managed to fulfill a longstanding wish of his soul, oriented as he was to monasticism; i.e., to found a convent where he might bequeath his paternal testament. This was our convent.

In our age of apostasy, Archbishop Seraphim is a rare example of a saintly Hierarch endowed with Grace and a crystal-clear pastoral conscience. He considered spiritual life in Christ, the virtues, and devotion to be inseparable from professing the eternal Truth of the Orthodox Faith and from the duty to preserve it unaltered. For him, the profession and preservation of the Truth were part of his life in Christ, Who is Himself the Life and the Truth (St. John 14:6). And all of this he performed with steadfastness and firmness, yet meekly, without displaying the slightest passion. Showing us the way by his own example and precepts, Vladyka Seraphim taught that obedience is not an end in and of itself, but a sign of love for the Lord: love which proves itself in fulfilling Christ’s commandments and all that Christ’s Holy Church has decreed. Archbishop Seraphim’s vocal opposition to ecumenism and any distortion of the Divine dogmas of the Faith has served to guard Orthodoxy to this very day. And God glorified his fidelity, summoning his sanctified soul precisely on the Sunday of Holy Orthodoxy (February 13/26, 1950).

After his death, Archbishop Seraphim’s faithful spiritual children—among whom were the ever-memorable Archimandrite Panteleimon (Staritsky) (+1980) and Archimandrite Seraphim (Alexiev) (+1993) [both assistant professors in the theological faculty of the University of Sofia, and both dismissed from their posts for refusing to accept the New Calendar innovation, when it was introduced into the Orthodox Church of Bulgaria—Trans.]—fulfilled his paternal legacy, that is, not to have anything to do with the heresies of ecumenism and modernism, a legacy and testament which the Bulgarian Old Calendar Orthodox Church maintains today under the omophorion of Bishop Photii [also a former professor at the University of Sofia—Trans.].

In telling the story of Archbishop Seraphim’s life, we could not help remembering the words of the wonder-worker of Sarov, which he addressed to his spiritual children: “My joy, acquire the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved!” Archbishop Seraphim was indeed a blessing of God for the land of Bulgaria. His sojourn in this country was a time of spiritual sowing, which bore its fruits in Christ. Having acquired Christ’s peace in his lifetime, he today leads thousands of human souls to salvation.

 

Original Bulgarian source: Πραβοεπαβεκ Kanendap 2000, pp. 51- 64.

English source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XIX (2002), Nos. 3-4, pp. 2-8.