St. Seraphim of Sarov

Prokhor Moshnin was born in Kursk to a pious merchant family. A childhood fall from a bell tower left him miraculously unharmed; an apparition of the Theotokos in his youth confirmed his calling to monasticism. At nineteen he entered the Sarov hermitage and was tonsured Seraphim, 'fiery one.'

For sixteen years he lived as a hermit in a hut six miles from the monastery, growing his own food, reading the Scriptures from cover to cover each week, and standing on a granite rock in prayer for a thousand consecutive nights. Wild bears came to his hand for bread; a band of robbers beat him nearly to death and left him crooked-backed for the rest of his life.

After fifteen years of total enclosure and silence he was commanded by the Theotokos to open his door to the world. Tens of thousands came, peasants, generals, governors, the dying, the demon-troubled, and he greeted each one with the Paschal salutation: 'Christ is risen, my joy!'

His Conversation with the layman Nicholas Motovilov, recorded in the winter of 1831, is the most famous Russian Orthodox spiritual text of the nineteenth century. He foretold his own repose, and on January 2, 1833 he was found dead on his knees before his beloved icon, the candle still burning beside him.