Forming Young Souls
"Not of this World: The Life and
Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose" by Monk Damascene Christensen
(ch. 97, p. 894-909)
No source of
instruction can be overlooked in the preparation
-St Basil the Great (+379)
-Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina (+1913)
Not too many years ago a young monastic aspirant went to
Fr. Herman loved to
tell this story, based upon a true occurrence, as he sat with his brothers
around the refectory table. He himself had had a similar experience when, as a
19-year-old boy, he had been made to read classic Russian novels by Fr. Adrian.
While he had longed to discuss "spirituality," Fr. Adrian had instead
turned the topic of conversation to some character or idea in the works of
Dostoyevsky, Goncharev, etc.
Fr. Seraphim, from his
own experience in dealing with young people, saw the wisdom behind the approach
of Fr. Adrian and the Athonite elder mentioned above. In an essay entitled
"Forming the Soul" he carefully articulated the Orthodox philosophy
behind it:
"The education of
youth today, especially in
"Few are those
today who can clearly express their emotions and ideas and face them in a
mature way; many do not even know what is going on inside themselves. Life is
artificially divided into work (and very few can put the best part of
themselves, their heart, into it because it is 'just for money'), play (in
which many see the 'real meaning' of their life), religion (usually no more
than an hour or two a week), and the like, without an underlying unity that
gives meaning to the whole of one's life. Many, finding daily life
unsatisfying, try to live in a fantasy world of their own creation (into which
they also try to fit religion). And underlying the whole of modern culture is
the common denominator of the worship of oneself and one's own comfort, which
is deadly to any idea of spiritual life.
"Such is something
of the background, the 'cultural baggage,' which a person brings with him today
when he becomes Orthodox. Many, of course, survive as Orthodox despite their
background; a few come to some spiritual disaster because of it; but a good
number remain crippled or at least spiritually underdeveloped because they are
simply unprepared for and unaware of the real demands of spiritual life.
"As a beginning to
the facing of this question (and hopefully, helping some of those troubled by
it), let us look here briefly at the Orthodox teaching on human nature as set
forth by a profound Orthodox writer of the 19th century, a true Holy Father of
these latter times-Bishop Theophan the Recluse (t1894). In his book What is
Spiritual Life and How to Attune Oneself to It, he writes:
Human life is complex and many-sided. In it there is a side of the
body, another of the soul, and another of the spirit. Each of these has its own
faculties and needs, its own methods and their exercise and satisfaction. Only
when all our faculties are in movement and all our needs are satisfied does a
man live. But when only one little part of our needs is satisfied-such a life
is not life .... A man does not live in a human way unless everything in him is
in motion .... One must live as God created us, and when one does not live thus
one can boldly say he is not living at all.
"The distinction
made here between 'soul' and 'spirit' does not mean that these are separate
entities within human nature; rather, the 'spirit' is the higher part, the
'soul' the lower part, of the single invisible part of man (which as a whole is
usually called the 'soul'). To the 'soul' in this sense belongs those ideas and
feelings which are not Occupied directly with spiritual life-most of human art,
knowledge, and culture; while to the 'spirit' belong man's strivings towards
God through prayer, sacred art, and obedience to God's law.
"From these words
of Bishop Theophan one can already spot a common fault of today' s seekers
after spiritual life: Not all sides of their nature are in movement; they are
trying to satisfy religious needs (the needs of the spirit) without having come
to terms· with some of their other (more specifically, psychological and
emotional) needs, or worse: they use religion illegitimately to satisfy these
psychological needs. In such people religion is an artificial thing that has
not yet touched the deepest part of them, and often some upsetting event in
their life, or just the natural attraction of the world, is enough to destroy
their plastic universe and turn them away from religion. Sometimes such people,
after bitter experience in life, return to religion; but too often they are
lost, or at best crippled and unfruitfu1."3
Fr. Seraphim saw this
"plastic" approach to religion most graphically when a young pilgrim,
having spent time at another monastery in America, came to Platina talking all
about elders, hesychasm, Jesus Prayer, true monasticism, and the ascetic wisdom
of the Holy Fathers. One day Fr. Seraphim saw him walking around the monastery
singing rock songs, snapping his fingers and bouncing with the rhythm.
Surprised, Fr. Seraphim asked him if he didn't think this might go against all
his interest in spirituality, but the young man just shrugged his shoulders and
replied: "No, there's no contradiction. Whenever I want spirituality, I
just switch on the Elder"-meaning that he could take out his rock tape and
put in a tape of his Elder giving a spiritual discourse.
The fact that this
young man could compartmentalize his life like this, Fr. Seraphim understood,
showed that something was missing in the basic formation of his soul. To
explain what is meant by this formation, he again referred in his article to a
passage from St. Theophan the Recluse:
A man has three layers of life: that of spirit, of the soul, and of
the body. Each of these has its sum of needs, natural and proper to a man.
These needs are not all of equal value, but some are higher and others are
lower; and the balanced satisfaction of them gives a man peace. Spiritual needs
are the highest of all, and when they are satisfied, then there is peace even
if the others are not satisfied; but when spiritual needs are not satisfied,
then even if the others are satisfied abundantly, there is no peace. Therefore,
the satisfaction of them is called the one thing needful.
When spiritual needs are satisfied, they instruct a man to PUL into harmony
with them the satisfaction of one's other needs also, so that neither what
satisfies the soul nor what satisfies the body contradicts spiritual life,
but helps it; and then there is a full harmony in a man of all the movements and
revelations of his life, a harmony of thoughts, feelings, desires, undertakings,
relationships, pleasures. And this is paradise!
"In our own
day," Fr. Seraphim pointed out, "the chief ingredient missing from
the ideal harmony of human life is something one might call the emotional
development of the soul. It is something that is not directly spiritual, but
that very often hinders spiritual development. It is the state of someone who,
while he may think he thirsts for spiritual struggles and an elevated life of
prayer, is poorly able to respond to normal human love and friendship; for If
a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that
lovest not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath
not seen? (I John 4:20).
"In a few people
this defect exists in an extreme form, but as a teaching it is present to some
extent in all of us who have been raised in the emotional and spiritual
wasteland of our times.
"This being so,
it is often necessary for us to humble our seemingly spiritual impulses and
struggles to be tested on our human and emotional readiness for them. Sometimes
a spiritual father will deny his child the reading of some spiritual book and
give him instead a novel of Dostoyevsky or Dickens, or will encourage him to
become familiar with certain kinds of classical music, not with any 'aesthetic'
purpose in mind-for one can be an 'expert' in such matters and even be
'emotionally well-developed' without the least interest in spiritual struggle,
and that is also an unbalanced state-but solely to refine and form his soul and
make it better disposed to understand genuine spiritual texts."4
What Fr. Seraphim said here of spiritual fathers is even more true of
natural parents, for the "formation of the soul" should begin in
early childhood. During a lecture at the 1982 St. Herman
Pilgrimage, Fr. Seraphim gave parents some practical advice on how to use
whatever is positive in the world for their children's benefit:
"The child who has
been exposed from his earliest years to good classical music, and has seen his
soul being developed by it, will not be nearly as tempted by the crude rhythm
and message of rock and other contemporary forms of pseudo-music as someone who
has grown up without a musical education. Such a musical education, as several
of the Optina Elders have said, refines the soul and prepares it for the
reception of spiritual impressions.
"The child who has
been educated in good literature, drama, and poetry and has felt their effect
on his soul-that is, has really enjoyed them-will not easily become an addict
of the contemporary movies and television programs and cheap novels that devastate
the soul and take it away from the Christian path.
"The child who has
learned to see beauty in classical painting and sculpture will not easily be
drawn into the perversity of contemporary art or be attracted by the garish
products of modern advertising and pornography.
"The child who
knows something of the history of the world, especially in Christian times, and
how other people have lived and thought, what mistakes and pitfalls people have
fallen into by departing from God and His commandments, and what glorious and
influential lives they have lived when they were faithful to Him-will be
discerning about the life and philosophy of our own times and will not be
inclined to follow the first new philosophy or way of life he encounters. One
of the basic problems facing the education of children today is that in the
schools they are no longer given a sense of history. It is a dangerous and
fatal thing to deprive a child of a sense of history. It means that he has no
ability to take examples from the people who lived in the past. And actually,
history constantly repeats itself. Once you see that, it becomes interesting
how people have answered problems, how there have been people who have gone
against God and what results came from that, and how people changed their lives
and became exceptions and gave an example which is lived down to our own times.
This sense of history is a very important thing which should be communicated to
children.
"In general, the
person who is well acquainted with the best products of secular culture-which
in the West almost always have definite religious and Christian overtones-has a
much better chance of leading a normal, fruitful Orthodox life than someone who
knows only the popular culture of today. One who is converted to Orthodoxy
straight from 'rock' culture, and in general anyone who thinks he can combine
Orthodoxy with that kind of culture-has much suffering to go through and a
difficult road in life before he can become a truly serious Orthodox Christian
who is capable of handing on his faith to others. Without this suffering,
without this awareness, Orthodox parents will raise their children to be
devoured by the contemporary world. The world's best culture, properly
received, refines and develops the soul; today's popular culture cripples and
deforms the soul and hinders it from having a full and normal response to the
message of Orthodoxy.
"Therefore, in our
battle against the spirit of this world, we can use the best things the world
has to offer in order to go beyond them; everything good in the world, if we
are only wise enough to see it, points to God, and to Orthodoxy, and we have to
make use of it."5
Years earlier, when he first gave his "Orthodox Survival
Course" in 1975, Fr. Seraphim spoke specifically about how certain types
of art can help children to grow up in sexual morality.
"In our present
society, boys by the time they are 14 or 15 years old know all about sexual
sins, much more than even married people used to know. They know exactly what
is going on in the movies, they see it, and the whole atmosphere in which they
live is one of indulgence. 'Why fight against this sort of thing?' it is said.
'It's natural.' Obviously, they are being prepared for a life of indulgence in
sin.
"Such a boy may be given the standard
of truth, which is chastity, virginity; but this is a very high and difficult
standard if all he has in his mind is the abstract idea of chastity in order to
fight against this all-pervading atmosphere of sensuality which attacks not
only the mind but also the heart-and the body directly. He sees everywhere
billboards which lead to temptation, and the magazines which he can now look at
are frightful; and all this is much stronger than the single idea of being
pure. In fact, everybody will laugh at that idea, and the poor boy will have a
very difficult time not just in resisting, but even in seeing that he should
resist temptation, because all the evidence is against it except for that
one little abstract truth that he should be pure. In this respect he can be
helped by literature ....
"The boy can read something like David
Copperfield, which describes a boy growing up: not some kind of monk or
ascetic hero, but just an ordinary boy growing up in a different time .... It's
true that this is a worldly book about people living in the world-but that
world is quite different. Already you get a different perspective on things:
that the world has not always been the way it is now; that the standard which is
now in the air is one kind of world and there are other kinds; and that this is
a different, normal world in which, although the element of sex is present, it
has a definite role. You get strength from seeing what was normal in that time,
from the way Dickens describes this young boy growing up and falling in love.
He is embarrassed to be around the girl and never thinks about dirty things
because nothing like that ever comes up; whereas if you read any contemporary
novel that's all you get. This book shows a much higher view of love, which is
of course for the sake of marriage, which is for the sake of children. The
whole of one's life is bound up with this, and the thought never comes up in
this book that one can have some kind of momentary satisfaction and then pass
on to the next girl. David Copperfield is full of dreams of this woman, how he
is going to live with her and be a big man of the world. It is assumed that he
has sexual relations after he is married, but this is involved with what one is
going to do with one's whole life.
"Again, this gives strength to a boy
who is himself occupied with precisely these temptations. When he asks
questions like, 'How do I behave towards a girl?'-an abstract sort of standard
doesn't help much. But if he sees how this fictional person, who is very true
to life at a different age, was so embarrassed, so concerned, so polite, so
idealistic and tender, this inspires him to behave himself more normally,
according to past standards. And in such a novel we see how many sides there
are to the whole question of love and sex, how complicated it is in our whole
human nature. Although no Orthodoxy is preached, the whole atmosphere is filled
with at least a large remnant of Christian values, and this gives a definite
help to the boy on his own level, not on some spiritual level, but on the level
of his leading an everyday life in the world.
"Also, Dickens
communicates an extremely warm feeling about life, about human relationships,
which is not given in school today. And this very feeling of warmth about human
relationships might have more effect on keeping a boy pure than giving him the
abstract standard of Orthodoxy ....
"The warmth of
Dickens can help break through one-sided rationalism better than years of
arguments, because even if you accept the truth you can still be cold and
rationalistic and insensitive. Simply reading Dickens can already produce in
one tears of gratitude for having the true religion of love. The earnestness
and compassion of Dostoyevsky can help break through one's self-love and
complacency. Even someone like Thomas Mann who doesn't have the qualities of
great warmth and compassion can give one a deeper insight into the wrongness of
the path of Western life."
In the same lecture Fr. Seraphim recalled an incident from his
youth in which his own soul was formed according to a standard of truth:
"In college,
before I had much sensitivity about architecture, my German professor gave a
talk one day as we were walking between two buildings built about thirty years
apart in much the same Spanish stucco style. He asked, 'Can you tell me the
difference between those two buildings? Look closely: one has bricks, it has
lines; the other is of cement, it's flat, nothing. One is warm, the other cold;
one has some kind of human feeling to it, the other has nothing, it's just
abstract; one is suitable for a person to live in .. .' This gave me a very
deep lesson, that even a small thing like the presence of lines or the small
ornaments on Victorian architecture which are in no way utilitarian-all this
gives some kind of quality. Today the feeling for anything more than what is
absolutely necessary has been lost. This utilitarianism, this practicality, is
very deadening. Of course it is cheaper to make things purely utilitarian and
therefore all this is logical; still, we have lost a great deal. When parents
can at least show a child that 'This building is good; that one IS not, it's
rather dead,' such a basic education will help him so that he will not simply think
that whatever is modern or most up-to-date is the best. This is not simply a
course in art, but a course in life, part of growing up which parents and
teachers can give between the lines of a formal education. All this involves a
sense of art. By contrast, the contemporary upbringing in schools emphasizes
crudity, coldness, and inability to judge what is better and what is
worse-total relativity, which only confuses a person and helps fit him into the
world of apostasy. There must at least be a minimum of a conscious battle to
help raise a child with different influences."
From all that has been said, one can get a sense of the seriousness
with which Fr. Seraphim regarded the education of the boys and young men whom
God had placed under his charge.
By the school year of
1981-'82, Theophil was in his 'Twelfth-Year Course," in which Fr. Seraphim
strove to teach him English grammar, Russian grammar, world literature, music
appreciation, history, Church music,· and Typicon.
During the same year,
Fr. Seraphim taught a course on the "Orthodox World View." An
extended version of his "Survival Course" of 1975, it required tests
and term papers. His first incentive to teach it had come in August of 1981,
when an 18-year-old Jordanville seminarian had visited the monastery with his
parents. The parents, who were long-time friends of the Brotherhood, were
worried about their son's future. Like so many people his age who had been
raised in our modern fragmented society, the seminarian was unable to express
or face his emotions and ideas, and was unsure of what was going on inside
himself. As Fr. Seraphim noted: "He does not want to do anything else but
prepare himself for service in the Church, but he is also very much afraid of
the depression which came over him last year in Jordanville (and lasted for
months), based upon idleness, inability to apply what he reads in spiritual
books to the reality of his life, etc. He is presently in a 'bored' state, and
without close supervision he is afraid (and we agree) that he will lose all
interest in serving the Church."
Learning all this from
the seminarian and his parents, the fathers came up with an idea: to let him
stay at the monastery and do his course work there, under Fr. Seraphim's
guidance and instruction. After praying about it and receiving Holy Communion
the next day, the young man accepted the proposal. Fr. Seraphim wrote to Bishop
Laurus in Jordanville asking if he could still receive his seminary degree
under this arrangement. "From what we know of him over the past several
years," Fr. Seraphim wrote, "he seems to be a highly gifted and
motivated boy who could easily perform the necessary work; and under close
supervision we believe his emotional problem (which seems to be bound up with
immaturity) can also be handled." After some discussion, the Jordanville
faculty accepted Fr. Seraphim's proposal.
Soon another
18-year-old Jordanville seminarian, George, also came to do his course work at
Platina. Of Protestant background, George was from
During the 1981 Summer
Pilgrimage, yet another young man came to stay at the monastery: a college
student named Gregory from the Santa Cruz Orthodox fellowship. (It had been at
Gregory's apartment that Fr. Seraphim had stayed when he had gone to
Including both
monastery brothers and "lay" students, seven men took part in the
full course, with several more young men and women coming up to attend lectures
regularly on the weekends. A tremendous amount of material was covered in a
nine-month period. Fr. Seraphim devoted much time to dogmatic theology and the
history of the Church, acquainting the students with the lives and thought of a
great many Holy Father~. At the same time he taught much of what they would
normally learn in universities, again according to a definite way of seeing that
made sense of it all. Among the people covered in the course were: the
religious teachers Joachim of Fiore, Martin Luther, Adam Weishaupt, and
Teilhard de Chardin; the Western philosophers Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Voltaire,
Hegel, Marx, Rousseau, and Proudhon; the scientists Copernicus, Kepler,
Lamarck, Lyell, Darwin, and Haeckel; the literary figures Homer, Dante, Milton,
Samuel Richardson, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Jonathan Swift, Jane
Austen, Diderot, Byron, Pushkin, Leontiev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Dickens,
and Wordsworth; and the political figures and thinkers Julian the Apostate,
OliverCromwell, Boris Gudonov, Peter I, Nicholas I (Fr. Seraphim's favorite
Tsar), Bakunin, Fourier, Thomas, Burke, Pobedonostsev, Owen, Napoleon, Hitler,
Donoso Cortes, Saint-Simon, Metternich, and de Maistre. Fr. Seraphim discussed
the works of scores of painters and sculptors from the ancient to the ultra-modern.
He taught about the music of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic
periods, and about the new standards of music which came after these; even the
contemporary phenomenon of the "Beatles" was brought out according to
the Orthodox world view.
Fr. Seraphim's students
did not know then how fortunate they were. This was by far the most in-depth
course he had ever taught, and he would not live to give another one. As he
himself well knew, such a broad education in world knowledge and experience
based on Orthodox principles is virtually - extinct in our times.
In addition to the
Orthodox World View course, Fr. Seraphim taught a course in English
grammar-poetry-composition, and Fr. Herman taught one in Church history and
literature. The students spent about twelve hours per week in these classes, to
which the two seminarians added another ten hours of supervised work for the
second-year seminary course, the material for which had been sent by the
fathers and teachers at Jordanville.
A few of the students
were unable to concentrate on reading more than a page at a time or to retain
what they had read. For them Fr. Seraphim extended himself by having them read
interesting books such as Crime and Punishment out loud to him
every day, with a brief discussion following. This, he recorded, "had
immediate good results, both in level of understanding and interest."
Fr. Seraphim wrote an
outline for the third, fourth, and fifth-year seminary courses for the two boys
from Jordanville, which were to include all the main classes offered at Holy
Trinity Seminary; but he died right before the third-year course was to begin.
We have mentioned how the Platina fathers had taken time out to form
the souls of the younger generation by having them listen to classical music.
Nowadays, however, it is not only the youth who need such a formation: most of
today's parents also have been formed on crude forms of music. At the St.
Herman Pilgrimages, therefore, everyone was given a taste of refined Christian culture
through the fathers' musical presentations. At the pilgrimage in 1979, when Fr.
Seraphim was giving his course on the prophecies of Daniel, he played a
recording of Handel's Balshazzar's Feast, based on the book of Daniel;
and in 1981, while giving his Genesis course, he played Haydn's Creation
Oratorio. Fr. Herman would play other pieces, especially by his favorite
composer Mozart, and would talk about them. One 19-year-old pilgrim recalls:
"Before coming to
the 1981 Pilgrimage, I had listened almost exclusively to pop and rock music.
My first real exposure to classical music came at the monastery. The fathers
explained how rock music is (generally speaking) music of the body; the best
classical music is music of the soul; and the music of the Church is the music
of the spirit (or higher part of the soul). In order to lead ourselves to the
realm of the spirit, we have to rise above the fleshly and prepare the ground
of our souls. Presented in this context, it made sense to me why one would
listen to classical rather than rock music. I remember that when Fr. Herman
played Mozart's 24th Piano Concerto for us, it really moved me in my soul.
Something deep inside me responded to it a part of me I had hardly known
existed.
"Going back to my
dorm room at college, I did not immediately throw out all my old albums, but I
did begin a weaning process, listening mostly to classical and good folk music.
People down the hall were playing The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Bruce
Springsteen, while I was playing Rimsky Korsakov, Sibelius, and Celtic harp
music. My fellow students began to respond. Their souls, too, had been starving
on a diet of fleshly music. They would stop by my room and ask, 'What is that
beautiful music you're playing? Can I borrow that album?'"
Even the modern art
form of film was used by Fr. Seraphim as a means of forming the soul. As he
once explained: "Some parents say, 'Oh, the world is so bad, I refuse to
let my children go to the movies; I refuse to have anything to do with the
world, I want to keep them pure.' But these children will get involved with the
world no matter what, and the fact that they are deprived of any kind of dushevni
diet - i.e. that which feeds the middle part of the soul-means that most
likely they will grab what they can get when they can get it. Therefore, it is
better to choose those movies which at least have no evil in them and no
inclination to sin."
Right after the Feast
of Christmas in the years 1980 and '81, Fathers Herman and Seraphim rented a
movie-projector and carefully selected films for the young people to view:
classics such as Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Dickens' Nicholas
Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, and The Pickwick Papers, as well as Tom
Brown s School Days.
With all that Fr.
Seraphim said above about Charles Dickens, it should be remembered that, during
his early years of Orthodox zealotry, he had been like the monastic aspirant on
Once Fr. Seraphim was
asked about movies that portray Christian virtue. "There are a lot of
them," he replied, "but they don't make them any more. Maybe they do
once in a while, but it is very rare. Old movies, especially ones that are
dramatizations of novels or classic plays, are often very well done and there
is a point to them. Everything in Dickens is that way; it is full of
Christianity. He doesn't mention Christ even, but it is full of love. In The
Pickwick Papers, for example, the hero Mr. Pickwick is a person who refuses
to give up his innocence in trusting people. Finally he gets put in the
debtors' prison because he trusted someone. There comes to him the man who put
him in prison and seduced his relative, and Pickwick weeps over him and gives
him money so he can buy a meal, because he has no money to buy food in debtor's
prison. One sees this criminal, this person who is taking advantage of everyone,
and one little tear forms in his eye. At the end Mr. Pickwick is triumphant,
because he trusted men; and he wins because people's hearts are changed.
"There are lots of
old movies like this which show either the passions of men, the innocence of
men, or various Christian virtues. In fact, these 19th-century novels on which
they are based are very down-to-earth and real; and they show how to live a
normal Christian life, how to deal with these various passions that arise. They
do not give it on a spiritual level, but by showing it in life, and by having a
basic Christian understanding of life, they are very beneficial. I don't know
of any movies nowadays that are that way. Maybe here and there you can find
one, but they have all become so weird.... For example, Dickens is heartwarming
with regard to normal, everyday life, but the recent movie E. T. is
heartwarming with regard to some kind of freakish thing, which becomes
something like a saviour.
"I think that we
should seek out more of these old movies. For a group-say, a church group-to
get together and show these old movies would be very good, especially for the
young people."
Besides showing films
on special occasions, Fr. Seraphim took time out to bring the young men at the
monastery to live performances of classical drama. Noting Fr. Seraphim's
spiritual freedom in this and other attempts to form young souls, Fr. Alexey
Young recalls:
"Several times Fr.
Seraphim came by our house on his way to and from
"This was
consistent with instruction he gave me whenever the Theophil came to spend the
summer: 'Let him watch TV-even soap operas!-if he wants, and take him to
movies. Theophil is fascinated by the world, and it's best that he get it out
of his system now. Just be sure that you watch everything with him and discuss
it thoroughly so that he can put it in a true spiritual context.' This
seemed very wise to me, too. He believed that a small, regulated 'dose' of
worldliness could act like a vaccination and might ultimately result in
'immunity' from worldly attractions.
"On one occasion
he asked me to take Theophil to see Mozart's Don Giovanni at the San
Francisco Opera, which we did; and another time he asked me to take him to
Marlowe's Dr. Faust in
"I also recall how
he encouraged Michael Anderson to read Plato and other philosophers, discussing
all of this with him in detail - Michael laboriously made his way through these
texts. Fr. Seraphim showed him how all of this was linked up with Orthodoxy and
Patristics ....
"Similarly with
music: quite early on I'd told him that I supposed we would have to give up
Mozart, etc., if we were going to be really serious about spiritual growth. His
response: 'You poor man!' I can still hear him say it! Then he explained the
place of beauty in the spiritual world, and how great art of any kind works
with the totality of man's spiritual nature. This was the first time I'd been
introduced to this idea. Later on I discovered it myself in some of the Holy
Fathers, and I've often shared it with others in the ensuing years. But until
then I'd had a somewhat 'puritanical' view of these things ....
"Years after Fr.
Seraphim left us I came across this verse (II Tim. 1:7) and immediately thought
of him, as it seems to summarize his own approach- anyway, as I experienced
it-: 'For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and
of a sound mind '... In general I would say that anyone who really opened
up to him-and unfortunately that wasn't very many-received a veritable
treasure-trove of wisdom from him. Little of this was appreciated until after
he was dead."
Like any father, Fr. Seraphim suffered over the sons in his
care. Each of the young souls he was forming, including those we have not
mentioned, had its own secret wounds and scars. One of them had been an
unwanted child, formed in a loveless environment with no father and a
religiously unbalanced mother; another, although he did come from a loving
home, could not seem to "find himself' as he grew into manhood and no
longer had his parents to buffer him from the hard realities of life; another
young man, who had come from a broken home and been moved about from father to
mother, had wounds that still needed healing; and yet another brother had come
to the monastery out of a dark underworld of drugs, crime, and black
magic-influences which still plagued him.
Late at night, Fr.
Herman would often see Fr. Seraphim praying for these young men and for all the
troubled people who had entered his life: victims of the nihilistic modern
society whose essence he had identified so many years before. The boys
themselves would already be sleeping soundly in their beds, while Fr. Seraphim,
in the cold, dark church illuminated by a lone candle, would be prostrated
before the Holy Table. Weeping, he would implore God to bless, protect, and heal
them.
The brothers never knew
of this until after his repose, when they fully