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Glory to God for all and for all deeds, for which the great and thrice-holy name is always glorified, which is also eternally glorified! Glory to the Most High God, glorified in the Trinity, Who is our hope, light and life, in Whom we believe, for Whom we were baptized, in Whom we live, and move, and have our being! Glory to Him who showed us the life of a holy man and spiritual elder! After all, the Lord knows how to glorify those who glorify Him and bless those who bless Him, and He always glorifies His saints, who glorify Him with a life pure, pleasing to God, and virtuous.

We thank God for His great goodness, which has descended upon us, as the Apostle said: "Gratitude to God for His ineffable gift!" His tomb is with us and before us, and by always coming to him with faith, we receive great consolation for our souls and great benefit; truly this is a great gift given to us by God.

I am amazed at how many years have passed, and the life of Sergius has not been written. And I was seized with great sorrow that twenty-six years had passed since the death of the holy elder, wonderful and most good, and no one dared to write about him — neither people far from him, nor those close to him, nor great people, nor ordinary people: the famous did not want to write, and the simple did not dare. One or two years after the death of the elder, I, accursed and impudent, dared to do this. Sighing before God and calling on the name of the elder in prayer, I began to write down in detail something about the life of the elder, secretly saying to myself: "I do not exalt myself before anyone, but I write for myself, as a reserve, and for memory, and for use." Twenty years before I had scrolls prepared with notes, in which were written some chapters about the life of the elder for memory: some in scrolls, some in notebooks, although not in order, the beginning at the end, and the end at the beginning.

Thus I waited at that time and in those years, wishing that someone more important than I and more intelligent than I would write, and I would go to bow down to him, so that he would teach and enlighten me. But when I inquired, I heard and learned for sure that no one was going to write about him anywhere; And when I remember or hear about this, I think and ponder: why did his quiet, miraculous, and virtuous life remain undescribed for so long? For several years I dwelt, as it were, in idleness and in contemplation, immersed in bewilderment, in sorrow, wondering in my mind, overwhelmed with desire. And I was seized with a passionate desire to somehow begin to write, even if only a little of the many, about the life of the venerable elder.

And I found certain elders, wise in their answers, judicious and reasonable, and I asked about Sergius, so that they would calm my desire, and I asked them whether I should write. And they answered: "As bad and as unseemly as it is to inquire about the lives of the wicked, so it is unbecoming to forget the lives of holy men, and not to describe, and to consign them to silence, and to leave them in oblivion.

After all, the Great Basil writes: "Be an imitator of those who live righteously, and seal their lives and deeds in your heart." You see how he commands that the lives of the saints be written, not only on parchment, but also in one's heart for the sake of benefit, and not to conceal or conceal: for the king's secret should be kept, and the works of God should be preached as a good and useful deed."

And so I had to inquire and question the ancient elders, well informed, truly knowing his life, as the Holy Scriptures say: "Ask your father, and he will tell you, and your elders, and they will tell you." All that I heard and learned, the fathers told me, that I had heard something from the elders, and that I had seen something with my own eyes, and that I had heard something from the lips of Sergius himself, and that I had learned something from the man who had served him for a long time and poured water on his hands, and that I had heard something else from his elder brother Stephen, who was the father of Theodore, Archbishop of Rostov; Other things I learned from other ancient elders, reliable eyewitnesses of his birth, and upbringing, and learning to read and write, his maturation, and youth until his tonsure; and the other elders were eyewitnesses and truthful witnesses of his tonsure, and the beginning of his wilderness life, and his appointment to the hegumenship; And I had other narrators and storytellers about other events.