“Everything we do is in vain if we do not have a living connection with God...”
— St. Seraphim of Sofia
Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria led the Divine Liturgy in the Church of St. Nicholas (the Russian Orthodox Church's podvorye [embassy church] in Sofia). The service was dedicated to the ninth anniversary of the canonization and the 75th anniversary of the repose of the hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev).
Our hearts and souls rejoice today on the feast of Saint Seraphim of Sofia, just as the hearts of his spiritual children rejoiced and were comforted during the thirty years he served here in Sofia, and after that, for seventy-five years after his departure from this world, when the spiritual support does not cease, the spiritual consolation and joy that we have the opportunity to come here, bow before his relics, touch his tombstone and receive a blessing and sanctification through his holy prayers.
We know from the circumstances of the saint’s life, that it was God’s providence. God directed his path and determined that he comes here to serve in a difficult time. As a hierarch of the Russian Church, first of the Russian Church Abroad and then again of the Moscow Patriarchate, Saint Seraphim served here when the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was separated from communion with the other Local Churches. But as a shepherd, he always gathered his spiritual children, and even then his ministry began to reconcile, gather, and lead his flock to unity. Saint Seraphim showed himself to be an exceptional theologian of his time. His Orthodox bishop’s conscience did not remain indifferent when there was a danger to the purity of the Orthodox faith. This was dictated by his ascetic, true, Orthodox spiritual experience. His sermons show high theology, high education. In Russia he was a teacher and rector of Orthodox seminaries, but he always expressed the truths of our faith and the rules of the spiritual life in simple, understandable words, close to the mind and heart of the faithful. This is characteristic of his sermons. His theology comes from practical experience.
That is why the words of the saint against the Sophian heresy and against the ecumenical movement are so powerful, because in them he saw the danger of losing the Spirit, losing the Grace in the people who choose those paths. In the 90s, when there was not much translated Orthodox literature, when I was making my first steps in the Orthodox faith, his sermons were a great consolation and affirmation. Especially the sermons on the Epiphany, on Pentecost, where he proves that the Grace, the Holy Spirit, Who descended upon the Lord Jesus Christ in the waters of the Jordan River, is the same Grace that we receive in the holy font, in our baptism. It is this Grace that the Bishop zealously tried to explain and teach his children how to preserve, how it is revealed, how it manifests itself, enriches, how to grow in the knowledge of God experientially through this authentic experience and through the search and revelation of this grace of God in our hearts.
“If our Orthodox faith does not lead us ... to a living
communion with God, then why did we believe?”
Moreover, quoting numerous holy fathers, Saint Seraphim said, “Everything we do is in vain if we do not have a living connection with God, if we do not preserve the gift, which we have received, if we do not strive to acquire it and increase it, says St, Seraphim, everything is in vain. We have not known God.” Those were powerful words for me then, because indeed, if our Orthodox faith does not lead us to God, if it does not lead to changes within us, to living communion with God, then why did we believe? Then we believed in some made-up god, some distant god. We believed in anything but the God Who became man and Who said, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20) and Who gave us the great gift of God’s grace.
A great consolation, a source of grace, a spiritual oasis for us is Saint Seraphim. We are blessed that in our capital, in our time, such a saint has shone forth. Not in the past, when we could say that he is unknown, but on the contrary, there are still people who remember him. He is close to us in time, in soul, in experience, because his life was before the eyes of people who lived then—his contemporaries, and who are still alive and remember him. His life, indistinguishable (in the secular sense) in the bustle of the capital city, but at the same time a life of great piety, great purity of life, devotion to prayer and fasting, mercy, love for his spiritual children, with whom he created such strong bonds of love that continue in our time.
“The Holy Spirit cannot come where there is envy,
double standards, where there is hypocrisy.”
We rejoice and glorify God for His great mercy that we can come here and worship. We see that the saints unite us. Today, some remove the names of saints from their lists of saints, from their diptychs, from their liturgical calendars because they belonged to a certain nationality. What a stupid thing that is! The saint stands before God, Who is impartial. The Holy Spirit cannot come where there is envy, double standards, where there is hypocrisy. The Holy Spirit is not well pleased and cannot come there. A person cannot shine in holiness if he divides and treats some in one way and others in another. There is no holiness in this. There is human hypocrisy, human bias, but saints are not like that. And therefore, Saint Seraphim receives everyone who comes here—Bulga-rians, Russians, Romanians, Greeks, everyone who comes to him for help and support. And when people come with purity of heart, with faith and hope, they receive the grace they ask for.
Blessed feast! May God’s blessing, through the prayers of Saint Seraphim, be with us all. Amen.
Saint Seraphim of Sofia reposed on February 13/26, 1950. From the day of Archbishop Seraphim’s repose, his sepulchre in the crypt of the Russian Church of Saint Nicholas in Sofia has been an uninterrupted source of miracles.
For more on the Saint, see here: https://churchsupplies.jordanville.org/products/saint-seraphim-of-sofia-his-life-teachings-miracles-and-glorification?srsltid=AfmBOorSpSfmtNFmfPrfdIuDbaREcquVG4Jacx_h-ivDhMxZ_WbPRcrj
