Ven. Seraphim of Platina

Archbishop George: A Word on Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

  posted on Internet Sobor in 2025
  Author: Metropolitan Agafangel. Publication date: September 2, 2025. Category: Авторская колонка.

source:
  http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/arkhiepiskop-georgij-slovo-o-prep-serafime-rouz

Brothers and sisters!  Today, with prayerful reverence, we honor a saint close to our own time: the Venerable Seraphim of Platina, who shone forth within the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia during the terrible twentieth century.  We all know that the Orthodox Church recognizes certain holy servants of God known as *Venerable* — a title given to monastics.  These are monastics who, fully freely and consciously — while recognizing and mourning their own sinful brokenness — strove for holiness and sought to become like Jesus Christ.  They succeeded on this path by fulfilling, in humility and repentance, the vows of celibacy, obedience, and non-possessiveness.  In other words, they came to know through experience that Orthodoxy is a living communion between God and man, between the heavenly and the earthly, between the living and the departed.  They understood that becoming like God — the highest goal and essence of the spiritual life for any Orthodox Christian — means unfolding within oneself moral qualities and the image of God through the cooperation of Divine grace.  It is no coincidence that they taught that this possibility is granted only through living union with Christ in His Church.  "Without Me you can do nothing," as the Lord said (John 15:5).

St. Symeon the New Theologian wrote:  "He who has united his will with the Divine Spirit has become godlike; having received Christ into his heart, he has (truly) become a Christian from Christ, bearing within himself the image of the One Christ — Who is utterly beyond grasp and truly inaccessible to all created beings."

Among the ranks of the saints of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, the Venerable Seraphim (Rose) shines forth. Born on August 13, 1934, in San Diego, California, into a non-Orthodox environment, he sought the truth in this earthly life and found the living Truth — Christ — within His Holy Church, the Orthodox Church.  As a young man, Eugene became the spiritual son of the now globally venerated Saint John of San Francisco, a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.  In time, he embraced the monastic life and became a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, serving as a hieromonk.  Through his monastic life — characterized by humility, repentance, and spiritual discernment — Venerable Seraphim strove for God-likeness through prayer, fasting, and labor.  He upheld the truth within the Russian Church, denouncing "Sergianism" — that pernicious and ungodly alliance between the Church organization and the God-fighting regime; he spoke of the Catacomb Church and the New Martyrs in the atheistic Soviet state; and he opposed the heresy of ecumenism, condemning the modern falling-away from Christ and the lukewarmness of Christians.  At the same time, he counseled against the dangerous extremes of spiritual life: indifference and zeal without understanding.  He led many to Christ and to union with the Orthodox Church. He eventually became widely known among the Orthodox faithful as a missionary and spiritual writer, the author of numerous works that have profoundly influenced Orthodox Christians in the United States and in our post-Soviet homeland.

Venerable Seraphim departed to the Lord at the age of 48 on September 2, 1982.  He was glorified among the Venerable Saints by the Council of Bishops of ROCOR — specifically, the part of ROCOR that did not enter into union with the Soviet pseudo-church — under the omophorion of First Hierarch Metropolitan Agafangel, on November 8/21, 2024, at the ROCOR Synodal Representation in Odessa.

As we know, for us Orthodox Christians, the saints are not distant, inaccessible, or "mythical" figures.  The Savior Himself said: "Have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘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" (Matthew 22:31–32).  The saints are our close spiritual brothers in the faith, friends, and mentors to whom we — still "sailing the stormy sea of ​​life" — turn with prayers for help, finding guidance in the example of their arduous lives of repentance.

"Like a merchant seeking fine pearls, you found Orthodoxy, 
preached the true faith, and called all to repentance. 
May the light of Christ shine within us through your prayers,
O Venerable Father Seraphim." 
(Troparion, Tone 8). 

Amen.
+ Архиепископ Георгий
20/02 сентября 2025 г.

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new 2026 professional digital photo files 

available for download in Joanna's Shared Library

see Fr. Seraphim's Folder

3 files named: 2026 Tom Glynn icon Seraphim 

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