The significance of saint Sergius

THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF SAINT SERGIUS
IN ORTHODOX MONASTICISM

By HELENA KONTZEVICH

ST. SERGIUS WAS BORN within a century after the Mongolian invasion, when Kievan Russia with its secular and spiritual culture had been removed from the face of the earth.

Kiev – this Constantinople on a smaller scale – which was in its brilliance and development the first city of Europe, was turned into a pile of ruins. The inhabitants of southern Russia moved north, concealing themselves in the dense forests. Monastic life died out for a whole century. Only Novgorod the Great and the districts surrounding it were untouched by the Tatar invasion, and there life was not disrupted.

But little by little the Russian people began anew to build their way of life and spiritual culture. The principality of Moscow began to come to the fore, having in the 14th century together with Novgorod its epoch of rebirth and flowering. Churches were built and ancient Russia, like other Orthodox countries – Serbia, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Greece – furnished in this century iconographic examples of unsurpassed beauty.

Against this background of general inward advance arises the marvellous figure of St. Sergius – a great Saint who shone out not only during his earthly life, but who has continued to live and act throughout the whole extent of Russian history. According to the chronicler he was "head and instructor of all monasteries in Russia." In the words of the historian Kliuchevsky, before St. Sergius there were founded in all only some tens of monasteries, while after him 150 were founded.

In the 14th century unbroken contact was maintained between Byzantium and the Slavic countries. We see in the Lives of Russian saints of that period not a few who travelled in the East, and Greek ascetics likewise came to Russia. In the reign of Prince Dimitry Donskoy, a contemporary of St. Sergius, there came to Moscow from Constantinople the venerable Greek Priest-monk Dionysios. He served as abbot in the Kamenny Monastery on the Volga, where he "handed down the Rule of the Holy Mountain." He was the foundation of a whole branch of northeastern monasticism. Besides Greek metropolitans, there were also priests and deacons who travelled to Russia. St. Lazar of Murmansk came from Greece to the far north and founded there a monastery.

Among the Russians who went to Mt. Athos we see St. Sergius of Nuromsk, later a close disciple of St. Sergius. Epiphanius, the biographer of St. Sergius, visited Constantinople, the Holy Land, and other holy places. St. Arseny of Konevets travelled twice to Mt. Athos. St. Athanasios, the founder of the Vysotsky Monastery, a disciple of St. Sergius, lived in Constantinople, and there transcribed religious literature. In the following century St. Nil Sorsky went to Athos and, upon returning, he introduced the skete type of monastic life into Russia.

Thus, thanks to this living personal contact, the spiritual currents reigning in Byzantium were spread directly to ancient Russia. In similar fashion this happened too in other Orthodox countries.

The friend of St. Sergius, Metropolitan Alexis, who had lived some time in Constantinople, was placed in the See of Moscow by Patriarch Philotheos, a well-known Palamist. Metropolitan Alexis knew Greek and, according to tradition, translated the Gospel into Slavonic. The century of St. Sergius was the century of St. Gregory Palamas, the century of the famous disputes of the Hesychasts with Varlaam and Akindin. This was the period when there was a special flourishing in the East among monks and laymen of the inward activity, that is, the purification of the heart from passions by means of constant invocation of the Name of God, the Jesus Prayer. A favorable condition for this activity is provided by the solitude of the wilderness. Following this summons, at the very dawn of Christianity an innumerable multitude of ascetics turned their steps to the Egyptian desert. "If a man will not say in his heart 'In the world I am alone with God,' he will not find peace," said Abba Alonius.

Like these ascetics, the youth Bartholomew secluded himself in a virgin forest. We see him like the holy Fathers of ancient times, an example of meekness, giving the brethren an image of that preeminence which was indicated in the words of the Saviour: He who would be first among you, let him be servant to all (St. Mark 10:43). Equally with everyone he worked in the kitchen, chopped wood, carried water, sewed clothes and shoes for the brethren, rolled church candles, milled grain in a hand mill, and baked prosphora. In the course of time he was favored by the same fiery manifestation of the Holy Spirit while he was serving the Divine Liturgy, as happened to St. Anthony the Great, concerning which St. Anthony relates from his personal experience (see in The Philokalia, vol. 1).

St. Sergius propagated the spirit of asceticism to his disciples and to those ascetics of advanced spiritual life who came to him to learn from him the highest spiritual activity. The nearest disciples of the Saint, among others, were: Sts. Nikon of Radonezh, Cyril of Belozersk, Paul and Silvester of Obnorsk, and Sava of Storozhevsk. To them he transmitted his spirit. And thus there was established a Northern Thebaid, which produced saints and ascetics who had the pure spirit of the Gospel. Fifty monasteries sprang from his immediate disciples alone, while their disciples in turn established forty more. The heavenly promise made during the visitation of the Mother of God, and at another time revealed in the vision of birds flocking about his monastery, was kept; the monastery exists even today in spite of the ruthless persecution of Orthodoxy in the USSR.

The relics of St. Sergius for almost six centuries have drawn every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and performed miracles according to their faith. The Bolsheviks dared to take the relics out and put them in a museum. However, in the Second World War, fearing the anger of the people, they were forced to return the relics to the Holy Trinity Lavra. Thus the gates of the Lavra have not yet closed and the lamps have not been extinguished over the Saint's tomb.

The significance of St. Sergius in Orthodox monasticism is great. The tradition of St. Sergius is without doubt the mainstream of monastic sanctity in Russia. Himself a prophet and spiritual leader, a guide of souls and clairvoyant starets, a God-bearing holy father and great miracle-worker to this day, St. Sergius is a holy example who not only has guided myriads of righteous Christians to heavenly blessedness, but may yet inspire many others in these last days to undertake the hard path of podvig, whether in remote monasteries or in the world, that leads to salvation.