A Conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Nicholas
Motovilov
Concerning the Aim of a Christian Life
by N. A. Motovilov
(translated by A. F. Dobbie-Bateman)
The following document is the record of a conversation between Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833) and his disciple Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov—including Motovilov’s remarkable personal testimony of the Spiritual Blessing-Transmission He directly experienced in Saint Seraphim’s company. The event took place in November 1831, and the record of it was written down immediately afterwards by Motovilov himself.
It was Thursday. The day was gloomy. Snow lay deep on the ground and snowflakes
were falling thickly from the sky when Father Seraphim began his conversation
with me in the plot near his hermitage over against the river Sarovka, on the
hill which slopes down to the river-bank. He sat me on the stump of a tree which
he had just felled, and himself squatted before me.
“The Lord has revealed to me,” began the great elder, “that in your childhood
you longed to know the aim of our Christian life and continually asked questions
about it of many and great ecclesiastical dignitaries.”
Let me here interpose that from the age of twelve this thought had ceaselessly
vexed me, and I had, in fact, approached many clergy about it; but their answers
had not satisfied me. This was not known to the elder.
“But no one,” continued Father Seraphim, “has given you a precise answer. They
have said: ‘Go to church, pray to God, fulfill the commandments of God, do good;
such is the aim of the Christian life.’ Some were even irritated against you as
being occupied with irreverent curiosity and told you not to seek things higher
than yourself. But they did not answer as they should have. And now poor
Seraphim will explain to you in what really this aim consists. Prayer, fasting,
watching, and all other Christian acts, however good they may be, do not alone
constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as the
indispensable means of reaching this aim.
The true aim of our Christian life is to acquire the Holy
Spirit of God. But mark, my son, only the good deed done for Christ’s sake
brings us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. All that is not done for His sake,
though it be good, brings neither reward in the life to come nor in our life
here the grace of God. Wherefore our Lord Jesus Christ has said: He that
gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. Not that a good deed can be called
anything but ‘gathering,’ since even though it be not done for Christ’s sake,
yet it is good. The Scripture says: In every nation he that feareth God and
worketh righteousness is so pleasing to God that the Angel of the Lord appeared
at the hour of prayer to Cornelius, the God-fearing and righteous centurion, and
said: ‘Go to Joppa to Simon the tanner; there shalt thou find Peter and he will
tell thee the words of everlasting life, whereby thou shalt be saved and all thy
house.’
“Thus the Lord uses all His Divine means to give such a man for his good works
the opportunity not to lose his reward in the future life. But to this end we
must begin here by a right faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who
came into the world to save sinners, and by winning for ourselves the grace of
the Holy Spirit, who brings into our hearts the Kingdom of God and lays for us
the path to win the blessings of the future life. The acceptability to God of
good deeds not done for Christ’s sake is limited to this, that the Creator gives
the means to make them effective; it rests with man to make them effective or
not.
Wherefore the Lord said to the Hebrews: ‘If ye had not seen,
ye would have had no sin; but now ye say, we see, and your sin remaineth with
you.’ A man like Cornelius finds favor with God for his deeds, though done not
for the sake of Christ; let him then but believe in the Son of God and all his
works will be accounted as done for Christ’s sake just for faith in Him. But in
the opposite event a man has no right to complain that his good has had no
effect. It never does, unless the good deed be done for Christ’s sake, since
good done for Him both claims in the life of the world to come a crown of
righteousness and in this present life fills men with the grace of the Holy
Spirit; as it is said: ‘Not by measure doth God give the Holy Spirit; the Father
loveth the Son and giveth all things into His hands.’
“So it is, my little lordling of God! In acquiring this Spirit of God consists
the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, watching, fasting, almsgiving,
and other good works done for Christ’s sake are only the means for acquiring the
Spirit of God.”
“How do you mean acquire?” I asked Father Seraphim. “I do not somehow
understand.”
“To acquire is the same as to gain,” he answered. “You understand what acquiring
money means. Acquiring God’s Spirit, it’s all the same. You know well enough
what it means in the worldly sense, my son, to acquire. The aim in life of
ordinary people is to acquire or make money, and for the nobility it is in
addition to receive honors, distinctions and other rewards for their services to
the government. The acquisition of God’s Spirit is also capital, but
grace-giving and eternal, and it is gained in very similar ways, almost the same
ways as monetary, social, and temporal capital.
“God the Word, the God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, likens our life to a market,
and the work of our life on earth He calls buying, and says to us all: ‘Buy till
I come, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.’ That is to say,
economize the time for receiving heavenly blessings through earthly goods.
Earthly goods are virtuous acts performed for Christ’s sake and conferring on us
the grace of the Holy Spirit, without whom there is not and cannot be any
salvation; for it is written: ‘By the Holy Spirit is every soul quickened and by
purity exalted, yea, is made bright by the Three in One in holy mystery.
The Holy Spirit itself enters our souls, and this entrance
into our souls of Him the Almighty and this presence with our spirit of the
Triune Majesty is only granted to us through our own assiduous acquisition of
the Holy Spirit, which prepares in our soul and body a throne for the
all-creative presence of God with our spirit according to His irrevocable word:
I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall
be My people.
“Of course, every virtuous act done for Christ’s sake gives us the grace of the
Holy Spirit, but most of all is this given through prayer; for prayer is somehow
always in our hands as an instrument for acquiring the grace of the Spirit. You
wish, for instance, to go to church and there is no church near or the service
is over; or you wish to give to the poor and there is none by or you have
nothing to give; you want to preserve your purity and there is not the strength
in you to succeed because of your own constitution or because of the insistent
snares of the enemy, which on account of your human weakness you cannot
withstand; you wish to perform some other virtuous act for Christ’s sake and the
strength or the opportunity is lacking.
This in no way affects prayer; prayer is always possible for
everyone, rich and poor, noble and simple, strong and weak, healthy and
suffering, righteous and sinful. Great is the power of prayer; most of all does
it bring the Spirit of God and easiest of all is it to exercise. Truly, in
prayer it is vouchsafed to us to converse with our Good and Life-giving God and
Savior, but even here we must pray only until God the Holy Spirit descends on us
in measures of His heavenly grace known to Him. When He comes to visit us, we
must cease to pray. How can we pray to Him, ‘come and abide in us, cleanse us
from all evil, and save our souls, O Gracious Lord, when He has already come to
us to save us, who trust in Him and call on His holy name in truth, that humbly
and with love we may receive Him, the Comforter, in the chamber of our souls,
hungering and thirsting for His coming?”
“Yes, father, but what about other virtuous acts done for Christ’s sake in order
to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit? You speak of prayer alone.”
“Acquire, my son, the grace of the Holy Spirit by all the other virtues in
Christ; trade in those that are most profitable to you. Accumulate the capital
of the grace-giving abundance of God’s mercy. Deposit it in God’s eternal bank,
which brings you unearthly interest, not four or six per cent, but one hundred
per cent, for one spiritual shilling and even more, infinitely more. Thus, if
prayer and watching give you more of God’s grace, pray and watch; if fasting
gives much of God’s Spirit, fast; if almsgiving gives more, give alms. In such
manner decide about every virtue in Christ.
“Trade thus spiritually in virtue. Distribute the gifts of the grace of the Holy
Spirit to them that ask, as a candle, burning with earthly fire, lights other
candles for the illumining of all in other places, but diminishes not its own
light. If it be so with earthly fire, what shall we say about the fire of the
grace of God’s Holy Spirit?”
“But, father,” said I, “you continue to dwell on the acquisition of the grace of
the Holy Spirit as the aim of the Christian life. How and where can I see it?
Good deeds are visible. Is the Holy Spirit then to be seen? How am I going to
know whether He is with me or not?”
“At the present time,” the elder replied, “thanks to our almost universal
indifference to the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and thanks to our
inattentiveness to the working of His Divine purpose in us and of the communion
between man and God, we have come to this, that one might say we have almost
entirely departed from the true Christian life. These words seem strange to us
now that the Spirit of God spake by the lips of Moses: ‘And Adam saw the Lord
walking in paradise’; or those words which we read in the Apostle Paul: ‘We went
to Achaia and the Spirit of God came not with us, we returned to Macedonia and
the Spirit of God came with us.’
More than once in other passages of Holy Scripture is told the story of God’s appearance to men. Some people say these passages are incomprehensible; could men really see God? But there is nothing incomprehensible here. This failure to understand comes about because we have wandered from the spacious vision of early Christians. Under the pretext of education we have reached such a darkness of ignorance that now to us seems inconceivable what the ancients saw so clearly that even in ordinary conversation the notion of God’s appearance did not seem strange to them.
Men saw God and the grace of His Holy Spirit, not in sleep or
in a dream, or in the excitement of a disordered imagination, but truly, in the
light of day. We have become very inattentive to the work of our salvation,
whence it comes about that many other words also in the Holy Scriptures we do
not take in the proper sense; and all because we do not seek the grace of God,
because in the pride of our minds we do not allow it to enter our souls, and
therefore we have no true enlightenment from the Lord, which is sent into the
hearts of men, to all who hunger and thirst in heart for God’s truth.
“When our Lord Jesus Christ had accomplished the whole work of salvation, after
His resurrection, He breathed on the Apostles to restore the breath of life
which had been lost by Adam, and gave them that same grace of the Holy Spirit of
God which had been Adam’s. On the day of Pentecost He triumphantly sent down on
them the Holy Spirit in the rushing of a mighty wind like tongues of fire, which
sat upon each one of them and entered in and filled them with the strength of
Divine flame-like grace; whose breath is laden with dew, and it creates joy in
the souls partaking of its power and influence.
And, when this same fire-inspired grace of the Holy Spirit is given to all the faithful in Christ in the sacrament of Holy Baptism, they seal it in the chief places appointed by the Holy Church on our flesh, as the eternal vessel of this grace. The words are: ‘The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ On what do we miserable creatures set our seal except on the vessels which preserve some precious treasure? But what can be higher and more precious in the world than the gifts of the Holy Spirit sent us from above in the sacrament of Baptism? For this baptismal grace is so great, so necessary, so life-giving for man, that it will never be taken away even from the heretic until his very death; that is, until the term which has been set by the Providence of God to man’s earthly trial—for what will he be of use and what will he accomplish in the time and with the grace given him by God?
If we were never to sin after our baptism, we should remain forever holy, spotless, exempt from all foulness of flesh and spirit, like the saints of God. But the trouble is that, though we increase in stature, we do not increase in the grace and mind of God, as our Lord Jesus Christ increased; but on the contrary, growing dissipated bit by bit, we are deprived of the grace of God’s Holy Spirit and become sinners of many degrees and many sins. But, when a man, stirred by the Divine Wisdom which seeks our salvation, is resolved for her sake to rise early before God and keep watch for the attainment of his eternal salvation, then must he in obedience to her voice hasten to repent truly of all his sins and to perfect the virtues that are their contrary, and thus by virtuous acts done for Christ’s sake to acquire the Holy Spirit, which works in us and sets up in us the kingdom of God.
Notwith-standing man’s repeated falls, notwithstanding the
darkness around the soul, the grace of the Holy Spirit which is given at our
baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit shines
still in the heart with the Divine immemorial light of the precious merits of
Christ. When the sinner turns to the way of repentance, this Christ-Light
smooths out all trace of past sin and clothes the former sinner once more in a
robe of incorruption woven from the grace of the Holy Spirit about the
acquisition of which, as the aim of the Christian life, I have been speaking so
long.
“Still more will I tell you, that you may the more clearly know what to
understand by the grace of God, how to recognize it and how in particular its
actions are revealed in those enlightened therewith. The grace of the Holy
Spirit is the light which lighteneth man. The Lord has more than once revealed
for many witnesses the working of the graces of the Holy Spirit in those whom He
has sanctified and illumined by His great outpourings. Think of Moses after his
talk with God on Mount Sinai. People were unable to look on him, with such
unwonted radiance did he shine; he was even forced to appear before the people
under a veil. Think of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor: His garments
were glistering like snow and His disciples fell on their faces for fear. When
Moses and Elias appeared to Him, then, in order to hide the effulgence of the
light of God’s grace from blinding the eyes of the disciples, a cloud, it is
written, overshadowed them. Thus the grace of God’s Holy Spirit appears in light
inexpressible to all to whom God reveals its power.”
“How then,” I asked Father Seraphim, “am I to know that I am in the grace of the
Holy Spirit?”
“It is very simple, my son,” he replied; “wherefore the Lord says: ‘All things
are simple to them that get understanding.’ Being in that understanding, the
Apostles always perceived whether the Spirit of God abided in them or not; and,
being filled with understanding and seeing the presence of God’s Spirit with
them, they affirmed that their work was holy and pleasing to God. By this is
explained why they wrote in their epistles: ‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit
and to us.’ Only on these grounds did they offer their epistles as immutable
truth for the good of all the faithful. Thus the Holy Apostles were consciously
aware of the presence in themselves of God’s Spirit. And so you see, my son, how
simple it is!”
I replied: “Nevertheless I do not understand how I can be firmly assured that I
am in the Spirit of God. How can I myself recognize His true manifestation?”
Father Seraphim replied: “I have already told you, my son, that it is very
simple and have in detail narrated to you how men dwell in the Spirit of God and
how one must apprehend His appearance in us. What then do you need?”
“My need,” said I, “is to understand this well!”
Then Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: “We are both
together, son, in the Spirit of God! Why lookest thou not on me?”
I replied: “I cannot look, father, because lightning flashes from your eyes.
Your face is brighter than the sun and my eyes ache in pain!”
Father Seraphim said: “Fear not, my son; you too have become as bright as I. You
too are now in the fullness of God’s Spirit; otherwise you would not be able to
look on me as I am.”
Then, bending his head towards me, he whispered softly in my ear: “Give thanks
to the Lord God for His ineffable mercy! You have seen that I did not even cross
myself; and only in my heart I prayed mentally to the Lord God and said within
myself: ‘Lord, vouchsafe to him to see clearly with bodily eyes that descent of
Thy Spirit which Thou vouchsafest to Thy servants, when Thou art pleased to
appear in the light of Thy marvellous glory.’ And see, my son, the Lord has
fulfilled in a trice the humble prayer of poor Seraphim. Surely we must give
thanks to Him for this ineffable gift to us both! Not always, my son, even to
the great hermits, does the Lord God show His mercy. See, the grace of God has
come to comfort your contrite heart, as a loving mother, at the intercession of
the Mother of God herself. Come, son, why do you not look me in the eyes? Just
look and fear not! The Lord is with us!”
After these words I looked in his face and there came over me an even greater
reverential awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling brilliance of
his midday rays, the face of the man who talks with you. You see the movement of
his lips and the changing expression of his eyes, you hear his voice, you feel
someone grasp your shoulders; yet you do not see the hands, you do not even see
yourself or his figure, but only a blinding light spreading several yards around
and throwing a sparkling radiance across the snow blanket on the glade and into
the snowflakes which besprinkled the great elder and me. Can one imagine the
state in which I then found myself?
“How do you feel now?” Father Seraphim asked.
“Unwontedly well!” I said.
“But well in what way? How in particular?”
I answered: “I feel a calmness and peace in my soul that I cannot express in
words!”
“This, my son,” said Father Seraphim, “is that peace of which the Lord said to
His disciples: ‘My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto
you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because I chose
you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. But be of good cheer; I
have overcome the world.’ So to them that are hated of the world but chosen of
the Lord, the Lord gives that peace which you now feel, the peace which, in the
words of the Apostle, passeth all understanding. What else do you feel?” asked
Father Seraphim.
“An unwonted sweetness!” I replied.
He continued: “This is that sweetness of which it is said in Holy Scripture:
‘They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of Thy house, and Thou shalt
give them drink of Thy sweetness as out of the river.’ See, this sweetness now
overflows and pours through our veins with unspeakable delight. From this
sweetness our hearts melt and we are filled with such blessedness as tongue
cannot tell. What else do you feel?”
“An unwonted joy in all my heart!”
Father Seraphim continued: “When the Spirit of God descends to man and
overshadows him with the fullness of His outpouring, then the human soul
overflows with unspeakable joy, because the Spirit of God turns to joy all that
He may touch. This is that joy of which the Lord speaks in His Gospel: ‘A woman
when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she is
delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a
man is born into the world. In the world ye shall be sorrowful; but when I see
you, your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you.’
Yet however comforting may be this joy which you now feel in
your heart, it is nothing in comparison with that in which the Lord Himself said
by the mouth of His Apostle that this joy neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man the good things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him. The earnest of that joy is given to us now,
and, if from this there is sweetness, well-being and merriment in our souls,
what shall we say of that joy which has been prepared in heaven for them that
weep here on earth? You too, my son, have had tears enough in your life; see now
with what joy the Lord consoles you while yet here! What else do you feel, my
son?”
I answered: “An unwonted warmth!”
“But why warmth, my son? See, we sit in the forest, the winter is out and about,
the snow is underfoot, there is more than an inch of snow on us and still the
snowflakes fall. What warmth can there be?”
I answered: “Such as there is in the bath-house, when they pour the water on the
stone and the steam rises in a cloud.”
“And the smell?” he asked me. “Is it the bath-house smell?”
“No!” I replied. “There is nothing on earth like this fragrance. When in my dear
mother’s lifetime I was fond of dancing and used to go to balls and parties, my
mother would sprinkle me with a scent which she had bought at the best
fashion-shops in Kazan. But those scents did not give out such fragrance!”
Father Seraphim, smiling kindly, said: “My son, I know it just as you do, and I
purposely ask you whether you feel it so. It is the very truth, my son! No
pleasure of earthly fragrance can be compared with that which we now feel, for
the fragrance of God’s Holy Spirit surrounds us. What earthly thing can be like
it? Mark, my son! You have told me that around us it is warm as in the
bath-house; but look, neither on you nor on me does the snow melt, and above us
it is the same. Of course this warmth is not in the air but in us. It is that
very warmth about which the Holy Spirit in the words of the prayer makes us cry
out to the Lord: ‘Warm me with the warmth of Thy Holy Spirit!’ Warmed therewith
the hermits have not feared the winter frost, being clad, as in warm coats, in
the cloak of grace woven of the Holy Spirit.
So in very deed it must be, for the grace of God must dwell within us, in our heart, because the Lord said: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’ By the Kingdom of God the Lord meant the grace of the Holy Spirit. See, this Kingdom of God is now found within us. The grace of the Holy Spirit shines forth and warms us, and, overflowing with many and varied odors into the air around us, regales our senses with heavenly delight, as it fills our hearts with joy inexpressible.
Our present state is that of which the Apostle says: ‘The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace in the Holy Spirit.’ Our faith consists not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. In this condition we now find ourselves together. Of this condition the Lord said: ‘There are some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Kingdom of God coming in power.’
Of such unspeakable joy, my son, the Lord God has now thought
us worthy! This is what it means to be in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, about
which St. Macarius of Egypt writes: ‘I too was in the fullness of the Holy
Spirit.’ With this fullness of the Holy Spirit the Lord now has filled us to
overflowing, poor as we are. Come now, there is no more need to ask, my son, how
men may be in the grace of the Holy Spirit! Will you remember this manifestation
of God’s ineffable mercy which has visited us?”
“I know not, father,” I said, “whether the Lord will grant me always to remember
this mercy of God as vividly and clearly as now I feel it.”
“I think,” Father Seraphim answered me, “that the Lord will help you always to
retain it in your memory, since otherwise His goodness would not have bowed so
instantly to my humble prayer and would not so readily have anticipated
hearkening to poor Seraphim; the more so that not for you alone is it given to
understand this, but through you to the whole world in order that you yourself
might be confirmed in God’s work and might be useful to others. The fact, my
son, that I am a monk and you are a layman need not keep us. God requires a
right faith in Himself and His Only-begotten Son. For this the grace of the Holy
Spirit is given abundantly from above.
The Lord seeks a heart filled with love of God and neighbor: this is the throne whereon He loves to sit and whereon He appears in the fullness of His heavenly glory. ‘My son, give me thine heart,’ He says, ‘and all the rest I Myself will add unto you.’ For the Kingdom of God is in the human heart. The Lord is nigh unto them that call upon Him in truth, and there is in Him no respect of persons; for the Father loveth the Son and will give all things into His hands, if only we too love our Heavenly Father truly as sons. The Lord hears equally the monk and the simple Christian layman, so be they are both right believers, and both love God from the depth of their soul, and both have faith in Him, if only as a grain of mustard-seed; and they both shall move mountains. One shall move thousands and two shall move multitudes.
The Lord Himself says: ‘All things are possible to him that believeth.’ Father Paul the Apostle exclaims with his whole voice: ‘I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me.’ But surely more wonderfully even than this does our Lord Jesus Christ speak of them that believe in Him: ‘He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father and will pray to Him for you, that your joy may be fulfilled. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My Name; ask and ye shall receive.’
Thus, my son, whatever you may ask of the Lord God, you will
receive all, provided only that it were for the glory of God or the good of your
neighbor; for He relates the good of a neighbor to His glory, wherefore He says:
‘All that ye have done unto one of the least of these, ye have done unto Me.’
Then have no doubt that the Lord God will fulfill your petitions, if only they
are to God’s glory and the good and edification of your neighbors. But, even if
something were necessary for your own need or good or profit, that too just as
quickly and graciously will the Lord God send you, so be that extreme need and
necessity insist. For the Lord loves them that love Him; the Lord is good to all
men and will do the will of them that fear Him and will hear their prayer.”