Homily on the Day of the Repose and Second Uncovering of the Relics of Saint Seraphim of Sarov
By Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
(Delivered on January 2/15, 1978)
By Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
(Delivered on January 2/15, 1978)
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Next to the icon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, whose memory we celebrate today, there lies in our church, under glass, a small scrap of cloth. It is a gift received several years ago: a fragment of the shirt that Saint Seraphim was wearing when he was attacked by robbers in the forest and beaten by them nearly to death. He could have defended himself; he was strong in body and unbreakable in spirit; he was armed with a heavy axe. But after the image of Christ — Who, like a lamb before its shearers, is silent; after the Old Testament image of Christ, the Man of Sorrows, Who accepts not only humiliation but also blows and wounds and death, giving Himself up without resistance, and through this receiving the power to forgive — so too Seraphim gave himself into the hands of the robbers. To the shedding of blood he believed in Christ; to the readiness to pour out his blood and exhaust his life he believed in Christ.
And this drop of his blood, which we see on this piece of cloth — how many thoughts and how much reverence it calls forth. A man like us was able to believe so deeply in love, in God’s defenselessness, in the fact that the Lord gave Himself to us completely, without a single word of complaint, without a movement of the hand to ward off the blow, without a prayer that God’s power would deliver Him, that He Himself gave Himself over to others.
No one demands such a sacrifice, such courage, from us; what is expected of us is faithfulness in life, not in death. No one now requires us to seal our faith and fidelity to Christ with blood. And yet how faint-hearted we are, how fearful; how easily we forget that we are Christ’s, and resort to measures to protect our life, our honor, our property — everything that is ours, which is not Christ’s but belongs to the world, to the spirit of paganism. Let us think about this drop of blood and about what it says to us. Let us not praise Seraphim for it — he does not need our praise. Only one who himself, in deed and not only in word, has walked a similar path, and having experienced its difficulties, can praise another for how courageously, how patiently, how beautifully he reached the goal. Our praise does not even express amazement, but only surprise that such people exist.
And how sad it is for ourselves, for all of us, that we have now become so diminished, that we are amazed by what was so ordinary, so natural, some fifteen centuries ago. When you read the pages of the calendar, you see: here ten thousand people were burned in Nicomedia; there one person died a lonely death… Men, women, and children did not hesitate to give their lives, to give them to the end, to live them according to Christ and to give them back, to return them to God, in a manner worthy of their Christian name. Now no one asks us to return our life; but Christ calls us to live it in a manner worthy of Christ.
And so, let us look once more at this scrap of cloth, at this drop of blood, at the countenance of Saint Seraphim, and set before ourselves the question: And I? How do I respond when before me there stands not even a threat, but mockery? How do I respond when temptation stands before me? How do I live day by day, when the Lord gently and firmly calls me, and a dark power insistently, seductively, and roughly beckons me? Where do I stand?
May the Lord help us to ponder this. In former times people stood before life and death when they became Christ’s; we do not stand before such a threat — at least not yet. But they stood firm, because for them Christ was life, and to depart from Him was unthinkable; while we depart, depart constantly… How sad this is, how painful!
Was it for this that Christ lived, was it for this that He died — that we might only marvel and hope that by His suffering of soul and His death on the Cross we will be saved from danger, from ourselves? Was it not rather that He died in order to bring into being a new kind of people: fearless people, people who have believed in love, in that love which gives its own life, asking nothing in return except the joy of loving? May the Lord bless and have mercy on us! Let us remember: He is the Way, and He has walked before us the whole path of life, and He has the right to bear witness that a person can walk this path and, by the power of God, overcome all things. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.