Brothers and sisters! Today we prayerfully extol a saint close to our times—Venerable Seraphim of Platina, who shone forth in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia during the terrible 20th century. We all know that in the Orthodox Church there are holy servants of God called venerables (monastic saints). The venerables are monks and nuns who, entirely freely and consciously, recognizing and lamenting their sinful brokenness, strove for holiness, seeking to become like Jesus Christ, and succeeded on this path by fulfilling, in humility and repentance, the vows of chastity, obedience, and non-acquisitiveness. In other words, the venerables learned by experience that Orthodoxy is the living communion of God and man—of the heavenly and the earthly, the living and the departed—and that likeness to God is the highest goal and the very essence of the spiritual life of every Orthodox Christian: the unfolding within oneself of the moral qualities of the image of God, with the cooperation of Divine grace. It is no accident that they taught that this possibility is given only in living union with Christ in His Church. “For without Me you can do nothing” says the Lord (John 15:5).

“He who has united his will with the Divine Spirit has become God-like; having received Christ in his heart, he has (truly) become a Christian from Christ, bearing within himself the One Christ, utterly inconceivable and truly inaccessible to all creatures,” wrote Venerable Symeon the New Theologian.

Among the ranks of the saints in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia there shone Saint Seraphim (Rose). He was born on August 13, 1934, in San Diego, California, USA, in a non-Orthodox environment; yet, seeking the truth in this earthly life, he found the living Truth—Christ—in His Holy Church, the Orthodox Church. The young Eugene then became a spiritual son of Saint John of San Francisco, now honored throughout the world—a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. In time he embraced monasticism and became a clergyman of ROCOR, a hieromonk. Through the monastic life, with humility, repentance, and discernment, Venerable Seraphim strove for God-likeness by prayer, fasting, and labor. He defended the truth of the Church in the Russian Church, denounced “Sergianism”—the ruinous, impious alliance of a church organization with God-fighters—spoke about the Catacomb Church and the New Martyrs in the God-fighting land of the Soviets, and opposed the heresy of ecumenism—exposing the modern falling away from Christ and the lukewarmness of Christians, while at the same time counseling caution against ruinous extremes in the spiritual life: indifference and zeal “not according to knowledge.” He brought many to Christ and into unity with the Orthodox Church. Over time he became known to very many Orthodox as a missionary and spiritual writer, the author of numerous works that had a great impact on Orthodox Christians in the USA and in our post-Soviet homeland.

Saint Seraphim reposed in the Lord at the age of 48, on September 2, 1982. He was glorified among the venerables of ROCOR by the ROCA Council of Bishops, under the omophorion of First-Hierarch Metropolitan Agathangel, by that part of ROCOR which did not enter into union with the Soviet false church, on November 08/21, 2024, at the ROCA Synodal Representation in Odessa.

As we know, for us Orthodox Christians, the saints are not “mythical,” distant, unattainable figures. The Savior Himself said: “Have you not read what was spoken to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:31–32). The saints are our close spiritual brothers in the faith, friends and instructors to whom we, still “sailing upon the stormy sea of life,” hasten with prayer for help, being instructed by the example of their much-toiled, repentant lives.

“As a merchant seeking a goodly pearl, you found Orthodoxy and preached the true faith, calling all to repentance. May the light of Christ shine in us through your prayers, O Venerable Seraphim, our father.” (Troparion, Tone 8). Amen.

• Archbishop George
• September 20/02, 2025

Source: InternetSobor