Sergius, Abbot of Radonezh, Venerable Wonderworker – glorification

Wondrous is God in His saints! Glorifying His chosen ones, He also arranges our salvation through them.

In difficult times for the Church, when God's special help was needed to strengthen the Orthodox faith in the hearts of people, or when human impiety threatened to suppress piety and faith, in such difficult times God deliberately sent His special chosen ones, who, being filled with the grace of God, with their wondrous life, with their humility, attracted the hearts of people to themselves and became teachers and guides in the spiritual life for all.

One of these great chosen ones of God was St. Sergius, who was given by God to the Russian land precisely at such a difficult time, when the Tatars filled almost all its borders, when the internecine strife of the princes reached bloody battles, when these strife, lawlessness, Tatar violence and the coarseness of the morals of that time threatened the Russian people with complete destruction. For more than a hundred and fifty years, long-suffering Russia languished under the heavy yoke of the Tatars. And finally, the Lord God saw the supplication of Orthodox Russia – the hour of liberation was approaching, in which Sergius appeared as a true sorrower of his native land.

But in order to throw off the barbarian yoke and bring the foreigners into the fold of the Christian Church, it was necessary to raise and strengthen the moral forces that had been humiliated by centuries of enslavement and despondency. It was to this moral education of the people that St. Sergius devoted his life. The most powerful means accessible and understandable to that age was a living example, the visual implementation of a moral rule. He began with himself, and by a long solitude, full of labors and hardships in the midst of a dense forest, he prepared to be the leader of the other desert dwellers. The biographer, who himself lived in the brotherhood raised by Sergius, describes with vivid features how it was brought up, with what gradualness and love for man, with what patience and knowledge of the human soul.

In this narration one can see a practical school of good manners, in which, in addition to religious and monastic education, the main worldly sciences were the ability to devote oneself to the common cause, the habit of intense work, and the habit of strict order in studies, thoughts, and feelings. The teacher worked patiently daily on each individual brother, on the individual characteristics of each brother, adapting them to the goals of the entire brotherhood. Observation and love for people gave the ability to quietly and meekly tune the human soul and extract from it, as from a good instrument, its best feelings.

In this way a friendly brotherhood was brought up, which, according to contemporary testimonies, made a deep edifying impression on the laity. The world came to the monastery, looked with an inquisitive eye at the order of life and what he saw, the life and atmosphere of the desert brotherhood taught him the simplest rules, by which human Christian community life is strong. In the monastery everything was poor and scanty, or, as one peasant who came to the monastery of St. Sergius to see the glorified majestic abbot expressed it in disappointment, "everything is bad, everything is poor, everything is orphaned." It happened that all the brethren sat almost without a piece of bread for whole days. But everyone was friendly with each other and friendly to the newcomers, there were traces of order and reflection in everything, everyone did his job, everyone worked with prayer, and everyone prayed after work. A hidden fire was felt in everyone, which without sparks and flashes was revealed by the life-giving warmth that enveloped everyone who entered into this atmosphere of work, thought and prayer. The world saw all this and left encouraged and refreshed. For fifty years the Monk Sergius did his quiet work in the Radonezh hermitage; For half a century, people who came to him, along with the water from his spring, drew consolation and encouragement from his wilderness, and, returning to their circle, shared it drop by drop with others. And these drops of moral influence, like leaven that causes life-giving ferment, sinking into the masses, imperceptibly changed the direction of minds, rebuilt the entire moral structure of the soul of the Russian man of the fourteenth century.

St. Sergius, by the example of his holy life, by the very possibility of such a life, made the sorrowful people feel that not all that was good in them had yet been extinguished and frozen, and helped them to look into their own inner darkness and discern there still smouldering sparks of the same fire with which he himself burned. And the people, accustomed to tremble at the very name of the Tatar, finally gathered their courage, rose up against the enslavers and not only found the courage to stand up, but also went to look for the Tatar hordes in the open steppe and there fell on the enemies like an indestructible wall, burying them under their many thousands of bones.

The feeling of moral vigor and spiritual strength, which St. Sergius breathed into Russian society, was even more vividly and fully perceived by Russian monasticism. In the life of Russian monasteries from the time of Sergius, a remarkable change began: the desire for monasticism was noticeably revived. Old Russian monasticism was an accurate indicator of the entire worldly society: the desire to leave the world intensified not because of the accumulation of misfortunes in the world, but in proportion as moral forces rose in it. St. Sergius, with his monastery and his disciples, was a model and initiator in this revival of monastic life, "the head and teacher of all the monasteries in Russia," as the chronicler calls him. He likened and continues to liken to his spiritual nature all people who are in close contact with him. He nourished with his strong spirit entire hosts, entire generations of monastics. Up to 70 monasteries were founded by his disciples and the disciples of his disciples; his spiritual descendants were one of the main spiritual forces that contributed to the spiritual transformation of various semi-pagan tribes, scattered throughout the space of northern and central Russia, into one whole Great Russian tribe, united, animated, and sealed by the spirit of Orthodoxy. And our chroniclers had every reason to call St. Sergius the abbot of All Russia, and the Holy Church worthily and righteously magnifies him as the Chosen Governor of the Russian land!

The homeland of St. Sergius was the land of Rostov, so "he came out of us, he was flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones, and he rose to such a height that we did not even hope that it would be accessible to any of our people." And the monk walked the common path of sorrows and podvig of the cross before he appeared as that wondrous grace-filled man, as we see him in the last years of his life. The wondrous promise of the Lord was fulfilled: "If any man love me, he shall keep my word; and My Father will love him, and I will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him (John 14:21-23). St. Sergius experienced the mystery of the Life-Giving Trinity, because by his life he was united with God, he partook of the very life of the Divine Trinity, that is, he attained the measure of deification possible on earth, becoming a partaker of the Divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). And in his soul the Holy Trinity "created a dwelling"; he himself became "the abode of the Holy Trinity", and all with whom the monk communicated, he raised and joined to it. His disciple and describer of his life justly remarks that Sergius was "as one of the great fathers of old." For his strong faith, he was vouchsafed to behold the stone of faith – Peter; for his virginal purity – the virgin and friend of Christ John, and for his greatest humility – the humblest of the earth-born Lady of the world, the Most Holy Mother of God. In the humble heart of the ascetic quietly shone the ineffable light of God's grace, warming his entire spiritual being. All the gifts of God were abundantly communicated to him: the gift of miracles, and the gift of prophecy, and the gift of consolation and edification, counsel and spiritual understanding. For his spiritual gaze, it was as if there were no material barriers, no distance, no time itself: he saw what was far away, as if it were near, he saw the future, as if it were the present. For the holiness of his life, he was loved and revered and respected by almost everyone more than his humble state at that time allowed. A great multitude came to him from various countries and cities, and among those who came were monks, princes, nobles, and ordinary people "living in the countryside."

As a ship burdened with a multitude of treasures quietly approaches a good haven, so the God-bearing Sergius approached the exodus from this temporal life. The sight of death did not frighten him, because he had been preparing for it with the feats of his whole life. He was already over 70 years old. His incessant labors exhausted his senile strength, but he never omitted a single service of God, and "the more he grew old in age, the more he was renewed in zeal," giving himself an instructive example to the youth.

Six months before his death, the great ascetic was honored with a revelation about the time of his departure to God. He summoned the brethren to him and, in the presence of all, handed over the administration of the monastery to his ever-present disciple, the Monk Nikon (Comm. 17/30 November), and he himself began to remain silent. September 1391 came, and the monk elder fell grievously ill... Once more he gathered around him all his disciples and once more stretched out his last instruction to them.

How much simplicity and power there is in this dying teaching of the dying father of monks! How much love for those whom he leaves! He desired and commanded that his spiritual children should follow the same path to the Kingdom of Heaven that he himself had walked throughout his entire life. First of all, he taught them to remain in Orthodoxy: "The foundation of every good deed, every good intention, according to the teaching of the word of God, must be faith; without faith it is impossible to please God. But the Orthodox faith, based on the teaching of the Apostles and Fathers, is alien to high-mindedness, which often leads to lack of faith and unbelief and leads away from the path of salvation." Further, the monk bequeathed to the brethren to preserve oneness of mind, to observe purity of soul and body and love without hypocrisy, he advised them to shun evil lusts, he prescribed moderation in food and drink, humility, love of strangers and a complete search for the things above, heavenly, with contempt for the vanity of life. He reminded them of much of what he had said before, and finally commanded them not to bury him in church, but to lay him in a common cemetery, together with the rest of the departed fathers and brethren.

Silently stood with drooping heads the sorrowful children of Sergius and with heartache they listened to the last instructions of their beloved elder. It was especially sad for them to hear the last will of their humble abbot regarding the place of his final rest. The mere sight of his grave in the church of God in the midst of a council of praying brethren could serve as a certain consolation for them. But the elder did not want this, and the disciples did not want to upset his humility with their contradiction, and every word involuntarily died on their lips. "Do not grieve, my children," the elder comforted them with love, "I depart to God, Who calls me, and I entrust you to the Almighty Lord and His Most-Pure Mother: She will be your refuge and a wall from the arrows of the enemy!"