inundado por um mistério de luz que é Deus e N´Ele vi e ouvi -A ponta da lança como chama que se desprende, toca o eixo da terra, – Ela estremece: montanhas, cidades, vilas e aldeias com os seus moradores são sepultados. - O mar, os rios e as nuvens saem dos seus limites, transbordam, inundam e arrastam consigo num redemoinho, moradias e gente em número que não se pode contar , é a purificação do mundo pelo pecado em que se mergulha. - O ódio, a ambição provocam a guerra destruidora! - Depois senti no palpitar acelerado do coração e no meu espírito o eco duma voz suave que dizia: – No tempo, uma só Fé, um só Batismo, uma só Igreja, Santa, Católica, Apostólica: - Na eternidade, o Céu!
St. Seraphim left the extreme practices of the hermits and stylites and returned to the world. "An earthly angel and a heavenly man," he transcended even monasticism. He was no longer a monk retired from the world nor a man living among people. He was both, and in surpassing both, he was essentially a witness to the Holy Spirit. He said this in his famous conversation with Nicolas Motovilov:
It is not to you alone that it has been given to understand these things, but through you to the whole world, in order that you may be strengthened in the work of God and be useful for many others. As to the fact that you are a lay person and that I am a monk, there is no need to think of that . . . The Lord seeks hearts filled with love for God and their neighbor. This is the throne on which he loves to sit and on which he will appear in the fulness of his heavenly glory. "My child, give me your heart and all the rest I shall likewise give you," because it is in the heart of man that the Kingdom of God exists . . . The Lord hears the prayers of the monk as well as those of a simple lay person, provided both have a faith without error, are truly believers and love God from the depths of their hearts, for even if their faith is only a grain of mustard seed, both of them will move mountains.
[Little Russian Philokalia, vol. I, Platina, CA: St. Herman Press, 1991, pp 116-117.]
Both, the monastic and the lay person, are a sign and a reference to the "wholly Other." St. Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote in the same vein to ecclesiastical authorities: "Do not be in a hurry to multiply monks. The black habit does not save. The one who wears a white habit, the clothing of an ordinary person, and has the spirit of obedience, humility and purity, that one is an untonsured monk, one of interiorized monasticism." [N. Gorodetzky, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1976, 48.]
The monasticism that was entirely centered on the last things formerly changed the face of the world. Today it makes an appeal to all, to the laity as well as to the monastics, and it points out a universal vocation. For each, it is a question of adaptation, of a personal equivalent of the monastic vows.
An extract from , translation by Michael Plekon and Alexis Vinogradov, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1998.