A story of Holy Orthodoxy from Communist Russia

About Fr. Seraphim

    Ordinary Wonders

Stories of Unexpected Grace

       by Olesia Nikolaeva

 chapter: "Another Source"

 pages: 17, 18

https://bookstore.jordanville.org/9780884654230

In spite of his constant battle with the passions, Monk Leonid still had one: he was passionate about booklets.  He especially loved those that were forbidden, all kinds of forbidden booklets: simply anti-Soviet ones, spiritually beneficial ones, and ones "in support of the New Martyrs."

We were constantly taking him new booklets printed in samizdat.1  In this way, he got his hands on a booklet by Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), the spiritual son of St. John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, about the end of days.  It was called something like The Future of Russia and the End of the World.  It affected him so much that he sent me to the Lavra to ask for a blessing from the elder Archimandrite Kirill to pass it around.  And when the blessing was received, he hired a typist to retype four copies of this book, which he proceeded to hand out as required reading to his many pilgrims and visitors.  But he didn't know how to pray for this Hieromonk Seraphim: was he living or reposed?

1.  Samizdat is literature produced and distributed without official sanction as its contents would not have been approved by the regime.

No matter how many people he asked, no one could tell him,  This depressed Fr. Leonid very much — he really wanted to pray for Hieromonk Seraphim.  And so he convinced my husband and his novice, the old nun Pelagia, to drive him to the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius to see Elder Kirill.

They arrived after the service had already begun, and Monk Leonid went to the altar directly to Fr. Kirill.

"Fr. Kirill, this Hieormonk Seraphim — is he living or dead?  How do I commemorate him?"

Fr. Kirill became silent, lifted his gaze upward for a moment, grew still, and then crossed himself and said sorrrowfully.:

"May he rest with the saints."

The next day late in the evening, the radio station BBC, to which our radio was tuned, announced that two days ago, the famous Orthodox writer and missionary Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, had died after a long illness. [August

Elder Kirill had learned of this from another source altogether.  

Related

https://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/2009/08/future-of-russia-and-end-of-world.html