25 September/8 October

Of all Russian saints, Saint Sergius is perhaps the most inaccessible and mysterious. His life was so simple, so transparent that one can only observe it: he loved God from his childhood with simple and undivided love and throughout his life he was simple with an ever growing simplicity. This is true to such an extent that in the ultimate analysis the more one brings one's eyes to bear upon him the less one feels that there is anything one can say about him. More than any other Russian saint, he seems the most distant and developed in the most profound contemplative silence. Yet, he is surprisingly close to us. He is close to us because, standing before God as he does with his heart and his soul whole and undivided, he prays for all of us, and from time to time we feel the full force of God's grace coming to us in return for his prayers.

Let us offer our prayers with constancy and with absolute simplicity, with all the purity of heart which is accessible to us, to the meek, simple and, at the same time, inexorably whole and pure saint of the Russian land. Let us pray for ourselves, so that through his prayers we also can find the way of simplicity and integrity. Let us pray for the whole world, let us pray also and particularly for that country which he loved so profoundly, so intensely and so selflessly so that it can know again, as it did in his time after the terrible Tartar yoke, that blessed thaw, peace, love and concord among men built on the faith in God, in man, in the fact that the Lord is the Lord of this world's history and that, in the ultimate analysis, every event in this life is a part of the mystery of the salvation of the world.

But in order for us to be able to pray we must wholly believe that God is truly among us, that it is truly He who mysteriously rules all events of this world, however terrible these events may be at times. But we must believe not only in words, not only with our minds; we must surrender our lives and ourselves into the hands of God; we must seek the meaning of the word of God and, without mercy for ourselves or others, be the creators, not just listeners, of the word of God, the word of the Holy Spirit. And, if we enter into the mystery of silence and prayerful contemplation by our very lives, by the way we listen to the words of God and fulfill his will, then through us also, as through Saint Sergius, in however insignificant a measure, God's grace will descend upon those who are around us, near or far, upon all those whom God so loved that He sent His Only Begotten Son to crucifixion and death, so that men can believe in love both human and Divine, believe and start living according to this belief. Amen.