In the service, composed on the day of the repose of St. Sergius, September 25, one can clearly see who the God-bearing Father Sergius was for his contemporaries. The hymn-writer, who sings of his life and feats, first of all depicts the monk as a citizen of Russia. The author of the service needs to show the national significance of St. Sergius, his participation in the fate of the Russian land, his pain for the victory of the Russian army, the pain of his soul for the needs of the state. And only after the image of St. Sergius as a great citizen has been sufficiently fully depicted, does the compiler of the service bless him as the head of the monks. For all this, he needs two canons, of which only in the second does he deal in more detail with the work of St. Sergius as a father of monks.

Here there is every reason to consider the activity of St. Sergius among the brethren as the activity of the elders. Already at Little Vespers, the "multitude of monks" gathered by the monk are mentioned, and it is said that we are "thy children, and the sheep of thy verbal teachings".50 This thought is set forth in more detail and more clearly in the stichera on Lord, the invocations of Great Vespers, where, imitating the stichera written on the podvig of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, the hymn-writer exclaims: "Walking the narrow path, Thou didst say to thy disciples, O Blessed Sergius: let us not be afraid of the Lenten feat, that we may escape the terrible torment of Gehenna." And below: "Saying patiently to Sergius: For paradise, which was destroyed, we now lay aside the soft garments for the sake of the incorruptible vestments."51

In the canons to the Monk, among other doxologies, we find abundant indications of his elderly work. "Thou didst give thee a good image to thy disciples, and hast drawn many souls for salvation, who have been separated from worldly addiction,"52 we read in the third canto of the canon. "Thou hast been honoured with the radiance of the Holy Spirit, and thou hast adorned thyself with a luminous life, demanding the orders of monastics without exhaustion and receiving with love the ranks of monastics."53 Further in the canons, this idea expands: the venerable elder is a guide to the salvation of many people by the grace of the Holy Spirit given to him. "Thou didst appear to the other heaven on earth by a divine gesture, O most blessed, Thou didst bring up the flock of words, as a living angel with flesh, O God".54 The same essentially thought is given below: "The grace of the Holy Spirit dwelt in thee, the evil spirits of the persecutor, and the monastic instructor who showed it."55 And therefore St. Sergius is again and again called "a lamp of much light, who raised up to Christ a multitude of monks,"56 and also "who brought the fasting councils by a new life".57 Such is the great work of St. Sergius, a man who is blessed as "a lamp of the verbal dawn that shines upon us, and the abode of the Most Divine Trinity,"58 and as a teacher, "ruling his fatherland with true rule"59 and with his teachings, "as a ladder of heaven, raising us to the height of virtues".60

In the life of St. Cyril of Beloezersk one can find strikingly beautiful descriptions of how he and St. Ferapont were looking for a place to build a monastery. The monks ascended a high mountain, saw many forests and lakes of the surrounding region, "and loved this place", and here their great souls set aside to dwell and create a monastery. Everyone who has visited these places, full of waters and hills, knows how truly beautiful the landscape of this region is, how breathtaking it is from the beauty of the land seen from a high hill. Many with gratitude and faith contemplate on this mountain the imprint of the feet of the Monk Cyril, preserved on the compacted stone for many centuries. It was from here that the Monk contemplated the beauty of the place he had chosen to dwell. The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was and remains the pearl of our homeland, firmly imprinting the great spirit of prayer and senile reasoning of St. Cyril and his disciples.

Along with this great Belozerskaya Lavra, the humble Ferapontov Monastery, imperceptibly nestled among the hills and small lakes, is especially dear to the soul of the Orthodox. It was this monastery, a modest shelter of monks, that happened to become a true treasury of Russian icon painting, a monastery in which the frescoes of the great Dionysius and his sons have been preserved.

These same northern regions, which at one time were the outskirts of our land, brought up the spirit of St. Nilus of Sorsky, who left us a written document of spiritual life and guidance for the elders, which in no way differs in its power and depth from the writings of the elders of the first centuries of monasticism. In the introduction to his "Ustav on the Skete Life," St. Nilus says: "Since many of the Holy Fathers taught by various conversations how to do things of the heart, to watch over the mind, and to guard the mind, then I, a great sinner and foolish, having collected from the spiritual Fathers what they had said on this subject, wrote it for the remembrance of myself and others."61

In the first Homily of the "Ustav" the monk teaches about mental warfare, distinguishing: preposition, combination, addition, captivity, and so on. In the Second Homily the Monk Nilus writes: "The best and most reliable warfare can be when the thought is cut off at the very beginning and when there is unceasing prayer." "Let no one despise prayer," repeats the monk in Homily 4, "neither the healthy nor the infirm.

If you remember all the wondrous venerable ascetics of the Russian North: Pelshem, Vologda, Olonets and Valaam, Prilutsk and Solovetsky, Obnorsk and Glushitsky, you will truly repeat the words of one clergyman who exclaimed on the feast of the Russian Saints: "There is no other country where there would be so many saints as in the Russian land. And therefore the Russian land will never perish, having so many intercessors and mourners for it! And no one will ever take possession of the Russian land!"

These holy defenders remained in separate monasteries, and in their monasteries the precepts of the elders' leadership glowed, until the time came for new state changes, and with them the impoverishment of the spirit of monastic and elderly work. The synodal period of the Russian Church, especially the 18th century, was marked by the closure of many monasteries, the introduction of severe laws, so that many who wished to take monastic vows and live a true monastic life were forced to leave the borders of the Russian state. The true concept of spiritual life and elder leadership became even more impoverished during this period. From this epoch only the names of individual luminaries of spiritual life have survived: St. Demetrius of Rostov, St. Mitrophanius, Bishop of Voronezh, St. Innocent of Irkutsk. But the Russian Church sought the lost spiritual paths; it was this search that the Lord revealed in the clairvoyant work of the Monk Paisius Velichkovsky.

Restoration of the eldership in Russia

Thou wast cheerful in form, and Thou didst bow Thy ears to those who asked Thee for help, and Thou didst stretch out Thy hands to lift them up... (Kontakion to the Monk Paisius Velichkovsky)

Russian monasticism, and especially the leadership of the elders, needed to be restored, to acquire those high and salvific foundations that it had from its beginning in Kievan Rus, which were preserved, strengthened, and grew during the difficult years of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, and which had to experience external and internal impoverishment in the era of Peter's reforms and subsequent reigns.