In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Next to the icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov, whose memory we celebrate today, there is a small piece of cloth under glass in our church; this is a gift received several years ago--a particle of the shirt that St. Seraphim was wearing when he was caught in the forest by robbers and beaten within an inch of his life by them. He could have defended himself—the saint was physically strong, invincible in spirit, and was holding a heavy axe. But just as Christ, Who, like a Lamb before Its shearers, was silent, like the Old Testament image of Christ the Man of sorrows, Who accepts not only humiliation, but also beating and wounds and death, giving Himself up without resistance, and through this receiving the power to forgive, so St. Seraphim gave himself up into the hands of thieves. He believed in Christ to the point of blood, to the point of readiness to shed his blood and empty his life.
And this drop of his blood that we see on the piece of cloth—how much reflection and reverence it inspires! A man like us was able to believe so much in love, in God's defenselessness, in the fact that the Lord gave Himself to us completely—without a single word of complaint, without moving His hand to ward off the blow, without praying that the power of God would deliver Him from this—and in the fact that He Himself gave Himself up to others…
No one demands such a sacrifice, such courage from us. We are expected to be faithful by our lives and not deaths, and no one now demands from us that we seal our faith and devotion to Christ with blood. How cowardly and frightened we can be, how easily we forget that we are Christ's, and resort to different measures to protect our lives, our honor, our property, all that is our own but is not Christ's and belongs to the world, to the spirit of paganism… Let's contemplate this drop of blood and what it tells us. Let's not praise St. Seraphim for it—he doesn't need our praise. Only he who by deed and not only by word has walked a similar path, 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 there are such people.
And how sorry we are for ourselves, for all of us, that we have now become so petty that we marvel at what was so ordinary, so natural some fifteen centuries ago. When we read the pages of the Church calendar, we see: here 10,000 people were burned to death in Nicomedia; there one person died a lonely death... Men, women, children did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives, to give them up to the end, to live them according to Christ’s will and give them back to God, worthy of their Christian names. Now no one is asking us to return them, but Christ is calling on us to live them in a way that is worthy of Christ.
And so, let us take another look at this piece of cloth, at this drop of blood, at the image of St. Seraphim, and ask ourselves the question: “What about me? How do I respond when facing not even a threat, but mockery? How do I respond when I'm tempted? How do I live from day to day when the Lord calls me meekly and firmly, and at the same time the dark forces tempt me in a demanding, seductive and ruthless way? Where do I stand?”
May God help us think seriously about this. In ancient times people had to choose between life and death when they became Christ’s. We are not facing this threat, at least not yet. But they stood firm, because for them Christ was life, and it was unthinkable for them to move away from Him. But we are moving away, moving away—all the time… How pathetic, how painful it is!
Did Christ live for this, did He die for this--so that we would only marvel and hope that by His Passion, by His death on the Cross we would be saved from danger from our own selves? Didn’t He die to bring into being a new kind of people--fearless people who believe in love, in the love that makes one give his life without demanding anything but the joy of loving?… May the Lord bless us and have mercy on us! Let us keep in mind that He is the way, He has walked the whole path of life before us, and He has the right to testify that a person can walk this path and overcome everything by the power of God. Amen.
Delivered on January 15, 1978
