It is a strange and terrible mercy that America—this modern Babylon, as you have rightly named her—should also be the reluctant cradle of new saints. Out of the glare of neon and the quiet, dead hum of the machine world, the figure of Seraphim Rose rises like a bone from the desert, bearing witness to what the heart still dares to hope: that Christ has not left us, even here, even now.
There is something profoundly incarnational in Rose’s journey, something that whispers of that deeper Christianity which the world has nearly forgotten—the Christianity that does not float in abstractions but plants its feet in the dust of the earth. In Rose’s life, and in the harsh soil of Platina, the mystery of the Word made flesh finds a new and fearsome echo. His was not an escape from the world, but a transfiguration of it; a rediscovery that the very wood of abandoned shacks, the calloused hands, the hunger of the body, and the sorrow of the heart, are not obstacles to grace but the very instruments through which grace carves a man into the image of the Crucified.
This, perhaps, is the lost inheritance we are only now beginning to seek again: incarnational mysticism. Not the airy flights of intellect or the sterile ecstasies of sentiment, but the trembling realization that God has pressed Himself into the grain of our days—the rough, weather-beaten world where men still bleed and labor and love poorly. Rose saw that the soul’s ascent to God is not through some gnostic ladder, but down, down into the agony and the beauty of real life, where Christ has already pitched His tent among us.
It is easy, too easy, to imagine salvation as something clean and elsewhere. But the Orthodox bells that startled Rose’s heart on that Paschal night still toll for us, if we have ears to hear: Christ is risen not in theory, but in the very sinews of this sorrowing world. He is hidden in the smallness of our lives, and it is only the willing crucifixion of our cleverness, as Rose understood, that allows us to see Him.
Father Seraphim’s legacy is not merely in his writings, though they are precious; it is in his terrible and beautiful insistence that God is not far from any of us. Even the deserts of Babylon are soaked, if we but knew it, with the blood and breath of the living God.
But I always have my questions ; they nag at me and will not leave me alone. Why do we proclaim the "airy flights of intellect" and the "sterile ecstasies of sentiment" ? I hear this proclamation... everywhere these days, and in all quarters, Christian or radically atheist. What does this mean ?
Is it sterile of me to disagree with you, and ask you to tell me more ?
What I see... and sometimes live, is the tremendous struggle to find satisfaction ? in the acts of my daily life, labor or not. More, to find the energy to continue doing these acts, like cooking, cleaning, as I get older.
But daily life, the sphere ? of daily life, has always been the most difficult place to live in, it seems to me. Whether one is atheist, or a religious believer.
"Willing crucifixion of our cleverness" ? Around me, I see too many people who have lost the capacity to read the world around them ; they have lost a LITERACY of their surrounding world, like the capacity to sometimes know the names of the plants in their immediate environment, how they are cared for, what they can be... used... for, for example. They are profoundly alienated from their surrounding world, and it makes them suffer. But I see too much invocation to abandon thinking in any form, and will not go down this road.
I... think ? believe ? that we have so much cultivated our faith that any form of suffering ("path", as in "pathology", "pathos") must be... relieved, destroyed, taken away, that we are suffering from being deprived of vital suffering that helps us understand that we are living beings.
And we have relieved suffering in the belief that doing so would not generate suffering elsewhere, a different kind of suffering. This was... naïve of us.
The quest of Seraphim Rose makes me think of the young man who took off and left it all behind to go "Into the Wild". (Can't remember his name.) I had the book written by a journalist in my hands, but it left me deeply unsatisfied, because maybe his motivations were similar to Seraphim Rose's ? He was looking for something, and the journalist seemed to turn him into a nutto...
Your questions are necessary. I don’t hear sterility in them at all—only a deep wrestling with the tension between thought, suffering, and the daily acts that bind us to life. I, too, believe that to abandon thinking is no cure; what we need is a thinking that descends into reality, that stays faithful to the world rather than floating above it. Your reflection on vital suffering resonates—perhaps it is only through enduring, not evading, that we remain truly alive
Yes, thinking that descends into reality, thinking that is intricated in reality.
I will give you an example of what concerns me : when my thirty year old daughter was in high school, there was a girl in her class who could not understand that in looking at a map, the rivers did not all descend/move according to the way that they appeared on the map. I call this a difficulty in linking/associating our representations of the world to what we are seeing, hearing, for example. This kind of dissociation destroys the links between our productions and the world around us. But we have to construct the links between our representations and what we are seeing/hearing, etc. And these links are vital, I believe, et creating a sense of meaning in our surrounding world.
I like what you say about enduring. In the word "enduring", I hear "duration". If you look at what we are doing/undoing with our verbs, for example, resorting to an eternal ? present tense evacuates duration. I am not sure that there is any kind of duration in the present tense.. and we need duration in order to be able to endure.
Maybe this kind of thinking sounds sterile to you, and maybe it is, but it keeps me afloat these days, TRYING TO UNDERSTAND MY WORLD to the best of my ability, and to create links, and help other people create links that are under attack.
And I firmly believe that we can only be as alive as our language/speech will allow us to be. And that this is what incarnation is about. I am not very concerned about Jesus's incarnation right now, but... about mine, for example, and the ability to be inCARNate of the people around me. Many of my people are suffering from dis incarnation... Yes, they are SUFFERING from being deprived of the necessary suffering entailed in the human condition. They are suffering from being put into little golden ? cages, and up on a shelf, the way I used to be, but no longer am.
Thank you for the introduction to Father Rose. After seeing your essay in The Free Press last week, I read Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. It came at the right time and saved me from a multitude of errors.
Father Seraphim's homosexual history has long been intentionally hidden which I feel is unfortunate because, given the current gender-bender ideology being forced upon us all, it could not be more relevant or offer more hope for those lost souls caught up in this demonic wickeness who are looking for the Truth. Father Seraphim's story of personal transformation proves that healing from this illness - and it is an illness - is indeed possible.
Yes, there is a tendency to hide it or play it down, and I think that is a shame, and self-defeating. I would have thought he was an example for gay Orthodox Christians, as well as for the rest of us, as to what self-discipline can achieve.
As a newly baptised man with a homosexual history which almost consumed me I concur wholeheartedly. Any hint of it before vis a vis Seraphim Rose has been only that, Paul is the first person I've read who's stated the truth plainly, and it's of immense help and inspiration to me.
Nearly none of my friends of any spiritual persuasion can conceive of me living a chaste life now without it seeming a 'sacrifice,' which of course is precisely the point. Sexual immorality, especially in the homosexual world, are so entrenched that abstinence confuses even well meaning people, but I've never felt so free as I do having renounced it all. What I'm gaining cannot be expressed in words but freedom from slavery is not a remote concept to me now.
This is another fantastic article on Father Seraphim Rose that discusses his homosexuality. The author himself lived a gay lifestyle for 10 years in San Francisco before re-embracing the Catholic Church he grew up with. He finally left and was baptized into the Orthodox Church 4 years ago.
Thank you so much for the article link, I'm slowly making my way through reading it! It's full of information I didn't know and inspires in me a renewed appreciation for this remarkable man.
Just finished reading this article…..thank you for putting up the link. It is very informative and has given me both insight and hope. Fr Seraphim Rose was a most remarkable man and, it is quite something to still be able to bring peace to troubled minds so many years after his death. Thank you and God Bless.
The snares of sexual 'liberation' are many and of course seem appealing at first, but the emptiness at the heart of all hedonism is exactly the same and can take you to very dark places...
Keep praying for him. I am 50 years old. It's never too late. And God bless you too!
The first time I heard anything substantive about his life (not just a stray quote or so of his) the fact that he had been gay before his conversion was included. Though it is true that those who follow him as some sort of guru (unfortunately that does exist) will deny it. Rod Dreher very recently posted about Rose too, and one of the commenters were rather irate that Rod also mentioned this fact.
It's interesting that there is so much pushback about this aspect of his life since we have Saint Mary of Egypt who lived one of the most sexually profligate lives ever and who it given primacy of place during Great Lent. It is a strange disconnect.
No one in these comments has mentioned the spiritual journey of Henri Nouwen, who was, in my opinion, truly a saint of the Catholic persuasion. He evidently struggled with homosexual tendencies although he never expressed these feelings openly in any of his books. The concept of Christians as God's beloved creatures is so very important in my Christian walk.
Hmmm. One of the ironies of his journey though hinted at by Paul’s article was that he was introduced to Orthodoxy via a homosexual relationship. God uses all sorts of things in interesting ways.
Thank you, Paul. It’s always such a joy to read your thoughtful essays. I love learning about pioneers like Father Seraphim and can’t wait to read his books.
People often fixate on the extreme nature of human spiritual triumph - it makes for the most interesting story.
I do wonder. Can a family man in a relationship with God ever be a saint? He doesn’t seek to be recognised by the Church, for his deeds are done as his heart dictates. He doesn’t even go to church. He is one who toils for the betterment of his community, quietly goes about his daily grind, sometimes even watches a TV show. Sometimes loses his temper, has thoughts and impulses he grapples with. Yet, he still has a deep relationship with God, lives to the best of his ability, by His word.
God and him have a mutual, quiet pact, an understanding of the world that is felt, more so than spoken for. This believer lives in the world of man, right smack in the middle.
Are imperfect saints needed in our cities morse so than in the woods?
And how does God call upon each one of His children to do His will? Surely, there is no one solution as twins are rare, and the stars twinkle.
Well, the true saints are known only to God. We name as saints those whose lives have been great spiritual examples on this Earth. More monastics tend to be named for the simple reason that they have given up everything in order to serve God. They struggle harder, and they have fewer (or perhaps just different) impediments.
But normal 'worldly' people like you and I achieve sainthood too. Staying in Orthodox America, the newest saint of all is a very ordinary (and yet extraordinary) woman who served God in all things through her daily labour:
Going to church matters, though, from the Orthodox perspective, because it is in church that we meet Christ. The consumption of the Eucharist - His blood and body - is a form of spiritual medicine that helps heal us and push us on. I've certainly experienced this personally many times.
But of course, we are all called to different paths. Fr Seraphim's will not be for many people - but his example can inspire us all.
"I do wonder. Can a family man in a relationship with God ever be a saint? He doesn’t seek to be recognised by the Church, for his deeds are done as his heart dictates."
Such men do become saints. Saints by definition have humility and therefore do not seek recognition or glory.
"He doesn’t even go to church. He is one who toils for the betterment of his community, quietly goes about his daily grind, sometimes even watches a TV show. Sometimes loses his temper, has thoughts and impulses he grapples with. Yet, he still has a deep relationship with God, lives to the best of his ability, by His word."
This is where your question becomes contradictory. If he doesn't go to church then in what sense is he a member of the Church and why would he be canonised by the Church? Your question essentially presupposes that the Church is not required because muddling through on your own and being a good person is enough. That's not what the Church teaches so its not going to canonise someone that takes that approach.
"God and him have a mutual, quiet pact, an understanding of the world that is felt, more so than spoken for. This believer lives in the world of man, right smack in the middle."
Is it a pact between him and God, or is it just his own idea of how things should be done? For a pact you need two sides, we have to be careful about ascribing to God our own will or assuming he validates whatever we want or choose.
Apart from the "He doesn’t even go to church." I agree with you.
I wish there were more recognition of ordinary people living ordinary lives, with ordinary joys and suffering, but with extraordinary sanctity. I notice that the Catholic Church has recently been canonising more married people; weren't the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux canonised recently?
Thank you, Paul. I pray you’re healing from whatever ills are encumbering you.
Sharing this piece could not have come at a better time for me, as I witness the decline of my husband who is suffering through Parkinson’s disease. It reminded me to take solace and joy from suffering. Remembering that God never leaves us! As an Orthodox Christian of almost five years holding on to the joyful sorrow of Pascha gives me strength. Although extreme to most of us, what Seraphim Rose brings to the Orthodox table should be lauded. Blessed Sunday to all!
Paul, thank you for this and for caring enough about us to write while travelling and busy with other commitments. I view these pieces as part of my pastoral journey so they are meaningful and moving for me.
I met Eugene Rose, then Father Rose, during a visit he made to San Francisco after he had moved to far northern CA and then again when I was on a fly fishing trip to the area, and you are right there were rattlesnakes galore there!
I also spent a good portion of my business career in the Silicon Valley area and watched the industry grow from a group of engineers excited by pushing the edges of science to a consumer driven mess in which vice became virtue under the influences of financial capitalism, a variation of Marxist struggle and the challenging of the biological construct of humanity brought about by the rise of biotechnology. The scientific changes were hard enough to fathom but the cultural changes that came in their wake were and still are almost incomprehensible. Someone said that science can tell you what is but it cannot tell you what it means and that has been true of the advance of technology.
There has been more than one time when I seriously toyed with the monastic life. I once spent thirty days at a Trappist community to see if I was really being called. At the end the abbot said to me 'you are a refugee and you aren't Thomas Merton'. while hurtful he was correct.
Just as I use Merton and Fr. Rose and the stories of faith of the early fathers as grounding, I know that my path leads me elsewhere and I think it leads me to stay in everyday life and try to be an apostle by example. These pieces help me slowly to turn the flood of information we all face, hopefully into wisdom.
So I guess the WEF is right. We will own nothing and be happy! Just kidding but I have been at both ends of the spectrum, being able to have anything I want and being homeless. Wasn't happy in either situation. People will focus on Mr Rose willing poverty but thats not the point I think. Its his desire to live for our Lord no matter what.
Thank you for this. I think that there are big ideological fights going on over this question. Way back when, my mother proudly exhibited me to her friends, saying that I was not attached to objects, and things. My mother, a good, church going Protestant woman, who had an incandescent faith, moreover. As though being poor were automatically a ticket towards saintliness. Not being attached to objects is also a way of not being.... attached. As someone who has fought for a very long time to become attached, it is ironic to hear these appeals. If we are not attached, we can drift, like so many tumbleweeds that are floating around the Southwest. Or we can drift through the Internet sphere, too.
"I haven’t been well these last few days, and have not been able to write my usual Sunday Pilgrimage instalment. I hope to be back on the road next week."
I wonder is there is a link between neurodivergence and these intense saints, I have met one or two Orthodox monks and got to know them, I do sense this with them, there is almost a benefit in being so ill served by the world, that monastic life offers a perfect alternative for their natural wiring. I say this as I have an unschooled child who suffered burnout due to school, she has suspected high masking Autism and PDA (persistent need for autonomy) and she's made a little monastery of her room! She needs calm and silence and has intense focus on her interests, the world out there...just doesn't serve her. It's a generalisation for sure...but I wonder about it often!
I have noticed this myself in the Catholic saint world, especially among founders of monastic rules. I have wondered if the set rules, the love/need of quiet/structure, an affinity for animals and creation is in some cases a sign of a possible neurodivergent, "on the spectrum" mind. Sadly, this same cohort makes up a large percent of the homosexual and trans community - possibly because they find acceptance of their sometimes odd behaviors in those communities. Also, I've noticed that some in this group are naively gullible and easily talked into things when young. As a parent of kids on the edge of the spectrum, I have had to keep extra watch over this gullible side - and fortunately they still value mom's opinion. Also fortunately, they take their faith seriously. Some spectrum kids I know struggle with abstract thinking and belief in the spiritual, but fortunately mine have found it easier - perhaps I have Narnia, Tolkien and fairytales to thank for that:)
I met a nun at Mull Monastery who is Autistic, she said the great thing about Orthodoxy is that the services are all the same, no surprises! I score high on the online ADHD tests and I am Orthodox, but I struggle to attend each week as I know I will burn out with the structure. Interesting isn't it!
Thanks, Paul, for posting your essay on Seraphim Rose here! I see him as a kindred spirit! Born only 8 years before me (I’m 83 now), we have a similar path in some respects. Only he found the Orthodox way, and I ended up a presbyter / πρεσβύτερος in a Reformed church. Thanks to your essay I just bought his book, *Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future* in Kindle (to get it quick), as here in Cyprus it takes a while – and is expensive – to ship here; though I may get the print edition also. This country is often considered the heart of pure Greek Orthodoxy.
My path has otherwise been different than his. Before Christ arrested me on my way to death (in 1968), I was part of the 60’s counterculture and its potent entheogens (psychedelics), but I was ordained to be His poet, an archetypal seer with a sort of madness to go to the heart of things, and failing to maintain what turned into an agonizing discipleship due in great measure to errors taught me by older disciples and teachers, I went back to my old dark ways. I “backslid”.
But I had been awakened, and born anew of Christ’s Spirit, and now, back in the depths of the Woodstock sorceries (for that’s what those drugs were, grass included), I found myself in the abyss in the human heartlands. This is the back cover of my first book in 2017: https://bit.ly/4jKAv2X . It sort of gives the storyline of that tome – a personal story, then expanding into a larger vision. It’s in the Lord’s hands how that takes off; He’ll see to that.
Now I have a second book (much smaller than the first – hopefully under 100 pages!), to fine-tune details of what is coming down the pike for humankind – both God’s children in Christ, and those against His children – as those are the two camps as we draw near the end of the age; no middle ground.
It is not pretty what is coming. But it needs to be made clear what we – God’s children in Christ – need to prepare for, spiritually and mentally, at the hands of the Antichrist and his hordes. The technical – Biblical – name for the atrocity-to-come is Armageddon.
As the U.S. is the HQ of global Babylon, it will suffer seismic judgments before the rest of the nations – except perhaps political Israel, which also is a target for the justice of God, as He separates the wheat from the chaff there. Within the first book, there is a 60-page booklet titled, *A Poet Arises In Israel*. A Jew, I speak to my people.
In a few days I have a friend from the U.K. coming to preach and teach in my place for around a month, and I will use that time to get the new book ready to print, and off to be formatted for Amazon to print. For all works I receive no royalties; only what it costs Amazon to print. Plus I will make digital copies widely available.
I look forward to reading Seraphim Rose’s book. And I’ll be glad to meet and confer with him when I’m called Home myself, in the scene depicted in Revelation 20:4-6.
I absolutely love this. Saraphim Rose is one of my favorite Orthodox thinkers. If there were ever to be a modern saint for nihilistic lost Americans, especially from Gen-X on down, it’s him.
I was recently baptized as an Orthodox Christian after living for over a decade in the dark forest of unbelief and nihilism. I was very much one of those 'Lost Western People' who had largely given up on the hope of there being any higher meaning. I spent years on a spiritual journey, studying worldly philosophy and reading about history. Everywhere I looked, I could find fragments of the truth. But never the truth in fullness. This led me into despair. The nihilism, paired with the despair, eventually led me back to God.
While I was a catechumen, I finally felt I had found the fullness of the truth in Christ and his Church. But I didn't quite know how to contextualize everything that had happened on my journey to that point. Looking back on my wandering in the dark forest, it was all a bit of a mess, unclear, the pain of my experiences muddying the waters. This lack of clarity unknowingly also carried over to my understanding of the world around me.
Then, early on in my catechesis, our parish priest suggested we catechumens read 'Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age' by Fr. Seraphim Rose. I was already somewhat familiar with Fr. Seraphim by then, so I had a feeling going into the reading that it would be an insightful one.
And yet, it was more than simply insightful. Father Seraphim Rose took my disorganized and disjointed observations and experiences living in our decaying and nihilistic culture and contextualized them perfectly. He could've written the 'Four Stages of the Nihilist Dialectic' about my own journey through the dark forest of unbelief. Suddenly, I could understand my own experiences and the world around me in clarity.
This book has also heavily influenced my understanding of 'The Machine' and its rapid development in our time. After all, it only makes sense for something such as the Machine to flourish in a society that has no pillar of truth within it. In the absence of faith in God, we, in our nihilism, will seek to make our own god. May the Lord have mercy on us.
I look forward to continuing on learning more about Father Seraphim Rose, reading more of his writings, and listening to more of his teachings. I hope one day to make a pilgrimage out to his monastery/grave. I do pray that he is one day canonized if God wills it.
"The logic of unbelief leads inexorably to the Abyss; he who will not return to truth must follow error to its end." - Fr. Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age
I know this place, and there are others in Northern California where seekers have gathered to leave the “world” behind in search of the Kingdom of Divine LOVE here and now. We need these ascetics, extreme as they may seem, to show us a different way. I have chosen to be “in the world, while not of it,” in my own way as one who has also returned to the faith of my youth but in a brand new way.
It is a strange and terrible mercy that America—this modern Babylon, as you have rightly named her—should also be the reluctant cradle of new saints. Out of the glare of neon and the quiet, dead hum of the machine world, the figure of Seraphim Rose rises like a bone from the desert, bearing witness to what the heart still dares to hope: that Christ has not left us, even here, even now.
There is something profoundly incarnational in Rose’s journey, something that whispers of that deeper Christianity which the world has nearly forgotten—the Christianity that does not float in abstractions but plants its feet in the dust of the earth. In Rose’s life, and in the harsh soil of Platina, the mystery of the Word made flesh finds a new and fearsome echo. His was not an escape from the world, but a transfiguration of it; a rediscovery that the very wood of abandoned shacks, the calloused hands, the hunger of the body, and the sorrow of the heart, are not obstacles to grace but the very instruments through which grace carves a man into the image of the Crucified.
This, perhaps, is the lost inheritance we are only now beginning to seek again: incarnational mysticism. Not the airy flights of intellect or the sterile ecstasies of sentiment, but the trembling realization that God has pressed Himself into the grain of our days—the rough, weather-beaten world where men still bleed and labor and love poorly. Rose saw that the soul’s ascent to God is not through some gnostic ladder, but down, down into the agony and the beauty of real life, where Christ has already pitched His tent among us.
It is easy, too easy, to imagine salvation as something clean and elsewhere. But the Orthodox bells that startled Rose’s heart on that Paschal night still toll for us, if we have ears to hear: Christ is risen not in theory, but in the very sinews of this sorrowing world. He is hidden in the smallness of our lives, and it is only the willing crucifixion of our cleverness, as Rose understood, that allows us to see Him.
Father Seraphim’s legacy is not merely in his writings, though they are precious; it is in his terrible and beautiful insistence that God is not far from any of us. Even the deserts of Babylon are soaked, if we but knew it, with the blood and breath of the living God.
Beautiful. Thank you.
A beautiful text, thank you.
But I always have my questions ; they nag at me and will not leave me alone. Why do we proclaim the "airy flights of intellect" and the "sterile ecstasies of sentiment" ? I hear this proclamation... everywhere these days, and in all quarters, Christian or radically atheist. What does this mean ?
Is it sterile of me to disagree with you, and ask you to tell me more ?
What I see... and sometimes live, is the tremendous struggle to find satisfaction ? in the acts of my daily life, labor or not. More, to find the energy to continue doing these acts, like cooking, cleaning, as I get older.
But daily life, the sphere ? of daily life, has always been the most difficult place to live in, it seems to me. Whether one is atheist, or a religious believer.
"Willing crucifixion of our cleverness" ? Around me, I see too many people who have lost the capacity to read the world around them ; they have lost a LITERACY of their surrounding world, like the capacity to sometimes know the names of the plants in their immediate environment, how they are cared for, what they can be... used... for, for example. They are profoundly alienated from their surrounding world, and it makes them suffer. But I see too much invocation to abandon thinking in any form, and will not go down this road.
I... think ? believe ? that we have so much cultivated our faith that any form of suffering ("path", as in "pathology", "pathos") must be... relieved, destroyed, taken away, that we are suffering from being deprived of vital suffering that helps us understand that we are living beings.
And we have relieved suffering in the belief that doing so would not generate suffering elsewhere, a different kind of suffering. This was... naïve of us.
The quest of Seraphim Rose makes me think of the young man who took off and left it all behind to go "Into the Wild". (Can't remember his name.) I had the book written by a journalist in my hands, but it left me deeply unsatisfied, because maybe his motivations were similar to Seraphim Rose's ? He was looking for something, and the journalist seemed to turn him into a nutto...
Your questions are necessary. I don’t hear sterility in them at all—only a deep wrestling with the tension between thought, suffering, and the daily acts that bind us to life. I, too, believe that to abandon thinking is no cure; what we need is a thinking that descends into reality, that stays faithful to the world rather than floating above it. Your reflection on vital suffering resonates—perhaps it is only through enduring, not evading, that we remain truly alive
Yes, thinking that descends into reality, thinking that is intricated in reality.
I will give you an example of what concerns me : when my thirty year old daughter was in high school, there was a girl in her class who could not understand that in looking at a map, the rivers did not all descend/move according to the way that they appeared on the map. I call this a difficulty in linking/associating our representations of the world to what we are seeing, hearing, for example. This kind of dissociation destroys the links between our productions and the world around us. But we have to construct the links between our representations and what we are seeing/hearing, etc. And these links are vital, I believe, et creating a sense of meaning in our surrounding world.
I like what you say about enduring. In the word "enduring", I hear "duration". If you look at what we are doing/undoing with our verbs, for example, resorting to an eternal ? present tense evacuates duration. I am not sure that there is any kind of duration in the present tense.. and we need duration in order to be able to endure.
Maybe this kind of thinking sounds sterile to you, and maybe it is, but it keeps me afloat these days, TRYING TO UNDERSTAND MY WORLD to the best of my ability, and to create links, and help other people create links that are under attack.
And I firmly believe that we can only be as alive as our language/speech will allow us to be. And that this is what incarnation is about. I am not very concerned about Jesus's incarnation right now, but... about mine, for example, and the ability to be inCARNate of the people around me. Many of my people are suffering from dis incarnation... Yes, they are SUFFERING from being deprived of the necessary suffering entailed in the human condition. They are suffering from being put into little golden ? cages, and up on a shelf, the way I used to be, but no longer am.
Thank you for the introduction to Father Rose. After seeing your essay in The Free Press last week, I read Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. It came at the right time and saved me from a multitude of errors.
You don't mention that once Rose became Orthodox he gave up having "lovers"!
I would have thought that was obvious - certainly once he became a monastic!
Unfortunately, monks, not only in the Catholic church, but Orthodox as well, have not been immune to this 😕.
Well, we all have a tendency to fall. The question is how fast we get up again.
Be Well Paul. Lots of Love to you and a much needed recovery x
Father Seraphim's homosexual history has long been intentionally hidden which I feel is unfortunate because, given the current gender-bender ideology being forced upon us all, it could not be more relevant or offer more hope for those lost souls caught up in this demonic wickeness who are looking for the Truth. Father Seraphim's story of personal transformation proves that healing from this illness - and it is an illness - is indeed possible.
Yes, there is a tendency to hide it or play it down, and I think that is a shame, and self-defeating. I would have thought he was an example for gay Orthodox Christians, as well as for the rest of us, as to what self-discipline can achieve.
As a newly baptised man with a homosexual history which almost consumed me I concur wholeheartedly. Any hint of it before vis a vis Seraphim Rose has been only that, Paul is the first person I've read who's stated the truth plainly, and it's of immense help and inspiration to me.
Nearly none of my friends of any spiritual persuasion can conceive of me living a chaste life now without it seeming a 'sacrifice,' which of course is precisely the point. Sexual immorality, especially in the homosexual world, are so entrenched that abstinence confuses even well meaning people, but I've never felt so free as I do having renounced it all. What I'm gaining cannot be expressed in words but freedom from slavery is not a remote concept to me now.
This is another fantastic article on Father Seraphim Rose that discusses his homosexuality. The author himself lived a gay lifestyle for 10 years in San Francisco before re-embracing the Catholic Church he grew up with. He finally left and was baptized into the Orthodox Church 4 years ago.
https://josephsciambra.com/fr-seraphim-of-platina-the-life-and-death-of-the-unlikeliest-russian-orthodox-monk/
Thank you so much for the article link, I'm slowly making my way through reading it! It's full of information I didn't know and inspires in me a renewed appreciation for this remarkable man.
Just finished reading this article…..thank you for putting up the link. It is very informative and has given me both insight and hope. Fr Seraphim Rose was a most remarkable man and, it is quite something to still be able to bring peace to troubled minds so many years after his death. Thank you and God Bless.
And congratulations on your new life in Christ!
Thanks again. Glory to God!
I have a son who seems to be getting more and more entrenched into homosexuality.
I keep praying for him and it has given me great hope to read your comment…..it’s just a relief to see this being discussed.
Many thanks and God bless you.
The snares of sexual 'liberation' are many and of course seem appealing at first, but the emptiness at the heart of all hedonism is exactly the same and can take you to very dark places...
Keep praying for him. I am 50 years old. It's never too late. And God bless you too!
The first time I heard anything substantive about his life (not just a stray quote or so of his) the fact that he had been gay before his conversion was included. Though it is true that those who follow him as some sort of guru (unfortunately that does exist) will deny it. Rod Dreher very recently posted about Rose too, and one of the commenters were rather irate that Rod also mentioned this fact.
It's interesting that there is so much pushback about this aspect of his life since we have Saint Mary of Egypt who lived one of the most sexually profligate lives ever and who it given primacy of place during Great Lent. It is a strange disconnect.
No one in these comments has mentioned the spiritual journey of Henri Nouwen, who was, in my opinion, truly a saint of the Catholic persuasion. He evidently struggled with homosexual tendencies although he never expressed these feelings openly in any of his books. The concept of Christians as God's beloved creatures is so very important in my Christian walk.
Hmmm. One of the ironies of his journey though hinted at by Paul’s article was that he was introduced to Orthodoxy via a homosexual relationship. God uses all sorts of things in interesting ways.
"All things work for good for those who love God."
We are of the world, yet we are not.
Thank you, Paul. It’s always such a joy to read your thoughtful essays. I love learning about pioneers like Father Seraphim and can’t wait to read his books.
People often fixate on the extreme nature of human spiritual triumph - it makes for the most interesting story.
I do wonder. Can a family man in a relationship with God ever be a saint? He doesn’t seek to be recognised by the Church, for his deeds are done as his heart dictates. He doesn’t even go to church. He is one who toils for the betterment of his community, quietly goes about his daily grind, sometimes even watches a TV show. Sometimes loses his temper, has thoughts and impulses he grapples with. Yet, he still has a deep relationship with God, lives to the best of his ability, by His word.
God and him have a mutual, quiet pact, an understanding of the world that is felt, more so than spoken for. This believer lives in the world of man, right smack in the middle.
Are imperfect saints needed in our cities morse so than in the woods?
And how does God call upon each one of His children to do His will? Surely, there is no one solution as twins are rare, and the stars twinkle.
Well, the true saints are known only to God. We name as saints those whose lives have been great spiritual examples on this Earth. More monastics tend to be named for the simple reason that they have given up everything in order to serve God. They struggle harder, and they have fewer (or perhaps just different) impediments.
But normal 'worldly' people like you and I achieve sainthood too. Staying in Orthodox America, the newest saint of all is a very ordinary (and yet extraordinary) woman who served God in all things through her daily labour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Michael
Going to church matters, though, from the Orthodox perspective, because it is in church that we meet Christ. The consumption of the Eucharist - His blood and body - is a form of spiritual medicine that helps heal us and push us on. I've certainly experienced this personally many times.
But of course, we are all called to different paths. Fr Seraphim's will not be for many people - but his example can inspire us all.
There’s a great book called “Ascetics in the World” that talks about those very types of people.
"I do wonder. Can a family man in a relationship with God ever be a saint? He doesn’t seek to be recognised by the Church, for his deeds are done as his heart dictates."
Such men do become saints. Saints by definition have humility and therefore do not seek recognition or glory.
"He doesn’t even go to church. He is one who toils for the betterment of his community, quietly goes about his daily grind, sometimes even watches a TV show. Sometimes loses his temper, has thoughts and impulses he grapples with. Yet, he still has a deep relationship with God, lives to the best of his ability, by His word."
This is where your question becomes contradictory. If he doesn't go to church then in what sense is he a member of the Church and why would he be canonised by the Church? Your question essentially presupposes that the Church is not required because muddling through on your own and being a good person is enough. That's not what the Church teaches so its not going to canonise someone that takes that approach.
"God and him have a mutual, quiet pact, an understanding of the world that is felt, more so than spoken for. This believer lives in the world of man, right smack in the middle."
Is it a pact between him and God, or is it just his own idea of how things should be done? For a pact you need two sides, we have to be careful about ascribing to God our own will or assuming he validates whatever we want or choose.
Apart from the "He doesn’t even go to church." I agree with you.
I wish there were more recognition of ordinary people living ordinary lives, with ordinary joys and suffering, but with extraordinary sanctity. I notice that the Catholic Church has recently been canonising more married people; weren't the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux canonised recently?
Thank you, Paul. I pray you’re healing from whatever ills are encumbering you.
Sharing this piece could not have come at a better time for me, as I witness the decline of my husband who is suffering through Parkinson’s disease. It reminded me to take solace and joy from suffering. Remembering that God never leaves us! As an Orthodox Christian of almost five years holding on to the joyful sorrow of Pascha gives me strength. Although extreme to most of us, what Seraphim Rose brings to the Orthodox table should be lauded. Blessed Sunday to all!
Paul, thank you for this and for caring enough about us to write while travelling and busy with other commitments. I view these pieces as part of my pastoral journey so they are meaningful and moving for me.
I met Eugene Rose, then Father Rose, during a visit he made to San Francisco after he had moved to far northern CA and then again when I was on a fly fishing trip to the area, and you are right there were rattlesnakes galore there!
I also spent a good portion of my business career in the Silicon Valley area and watched the industry grow from a group of engineers excited by pushing the edges of science to a consumer driven mess in which vice became virtue under the influences of financial capitalism, a variation of Marxist struggle and the challenging of the biological construct of humanity brought about by the rise of biotechnology. The scientific changes were hard enough to fathom but the cultural changes that came in their wake were and still are almost incomprehensible. Someone said that science can tell you what is but it cannot tell you what it means and that has been true of the advance of technology.
There has been more than one time when I seriously toyed with the monastic life. I once spent thirty days at a Trappist community to see if I was really being called. At the end the abbot said to me 'you are a refugee and you aren't Thomas Merton'. while hurtful he was correct.
Just as I use Merton and Fr. Rose and the stories of faith of the early fathers as grounding, I know that my path leads me elsewhere and I think it leads me to stay in everyday life and try to be an apostle by example. These pieces help me slowly to turn the flood of information we all face, hopefully into wisdom.
Look forward to seeing you at the Wagon Box
So I guess the WEF is right. We will own nothing and be happy! Just kidding but I have been at both ends of the spectrum, being able to have anything I want and being homeless. Wasn't happy in either situation. People will focus on Mr Rose willing poverty but thats not the point I think. Its his desire to live for our Lord no matter what.
Thank you for this. I think that there are big ideological fights going on over this question. Way back when, my mother proudly exhibited me to her friends, saying that I was not attached to objects, and things. My mother, a good, church going Protestant woman, who had an incandescent faith, moreover. As though being poor were automatically a ticket towards saintliness. Not being attached to objects is also a way of not being.... attached. As someone who has fought for a very long time to become attached, it is ironic to hear these appeals. If we are not attached, we can drift, like so many tumbleweeds that are floating around the Southwest. Or we can drift through the Internet sphere, too.
"I haven’t been well these last few days, and have not been able to write my usual Sunday Pilgrimage instalment. I hope to be back on the road next week."
LIFE, its just one damn thing after another. :-)
Yet...if we can but see, Life is just one blessed thing after another.
Well Said!
I wonder is there is a link between neurodivergence and these intense saints, I have met one or two Orthodox monks and got to know them, I do sense this with them, there is almost a benefit in being so ill served by the world, that monastic life offers a perfect alternative for their natural wiring. I say this as I have an unschooled child who suffered burnout due to school, she has suspected high masking Autism and PDA (persistent need for autonomy) and she's made a little monastery of her room! She needs calm and silence and has intense focus on her interests, the world out there...just doesn't serve her. It's a generalisation for sure...but I wonder about it often!
I have noticed this myself in the Catholic saint world, especially among founders of monastic rules. I have wondered if the set rules, the love/need of quiet/structure, an affinity for animals and creation is in some cases a sign of a possible neurodivergent, "on the spectrum" mind. Sadly, this same cohort makes up a large percent of the homosexual and trans community - possibly because they find acceptance of their sometimes odd behaviors in those communities. Also, I've noticed that some in this group are naively gullible and easily talked into things when young. As a parent of kids on the edge of the spectrum, I have had to keep extra watch over this gullible side - and fortunately they still value mom's opinion. Also fortunately, they take their faith seriously. Some spectrum kids I know struggle with abstract thinking and belief in the spiritual, but fortunately mine have found it easier - perhaps I have Narnia, Tolkien and fairytales to thank for that:)
I met a nun at Mull Monastery who is Autistic, she said the great thing about Orthodoxy is that the services are all the same, no surprises! I score high on the online ADHD tests and I am Orthodox, but I struggle to attend each week as I know I will burn out with the structure. Interesting isn't it!
Thanks, Paul, for posting your essay on Seraphim Rose here! I see him as a kindred spirit! Born only 8 years before me (I’m 83 now), we have a similar path in some respects. Only he found the Orthodox way, and I ended up a presbyter / πρεσβύτερος in a Reformed church. Thanks to your essay I just bought his book, *Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future* in Kindle (to get it quick), as here in Cyprus it takes a while – and is expensive – to ship here; though I may get the print edition also. This country is often considered the heart of pure Greek Orthodoxy.
My path has otherwise been different than his. Before Christ arrested me on my way to death (in 1968), I was part of the 60’s counterculture and its potent entheogens (psychedelics), but I was ordained to be His poet, an archetypal seer with a sort of madness to go to the heart of things, and failing to maintain what turned into an agonizing discipleship due in great measure to errors taught me by older disciples and teachers, I went back to my old dark ways. I “backslid”.
But I had been awakened, and born anew of Christ’s Spirit, and now, back in the depths of the Woodstock sorceries (for that’s what those drugs were, grass included), I found myself in the abyss in the human heartlands. This is the back cover of my first book in 2017: https://bit.ly/4jKAv2X . It sort of gives the storyline of that tome – a personal story, then expanding into a larger vision. It’s in the Lord’s hands how that takes off; He’ll see to that.
Now I have a second book (much smaller than the first – hopefully under 100 pages!), to fine-tune details of what is coming down the pike for humankind – both God’s children in Christ, and those against His children – as those are the two camps as we draw near the end of the age; no middle ground.
It is not pretty what is coming. But it needs to be made clear what we – God’s children in Christ – need to prepare for, spiritually and mentally, at the hands of the Antichrist and his hordes. The technical – Biblical – name for the atrocity-to-come is Armageddon.
As the U.S. is the HQ of global Babylon, it will suffer seismic judgments before the rest of the nations – except perhaps political Israel, which also is a target for the justice of God, as He separates the wheat from the chaff there. Within the first book, there is a 60-page booklet titled, *A Poet Arises In Israel*. A Jew, I speak to my people.
In a few days I have a friend from the U.K. coming to preach and teach in my place for around a month, and I will use that time to get the new book ready to print, and off to be formatted for Amazon to print. For all works I receive no royalties; only what it costs Amazon to print. Plus I will make digital copies widely available.
I look forward to reading Seraphim Rose’s book. And I’ll be glad to meet and confer with him when I’m called Home myself, in the scene depicted in Revelation 20:4-6.
This is the front cover of my new book, to be in print soon: https://bit.ly/4aLnulG
Thanks for your latest essay! Good to meet a kindred spirit, though I think he is godlier than I!
I absolutely love this. Saraphim Rose is one of my favorite Orthodox thinkers. If there were ever to be a modern saint for nihilistic lost Americans, especially from Gen-X on down, it’s him.
I was recently baptized as an Orthodox Christian after living for over a decade in the dark forest of unbelief and nihilism. I was very much one of those 'Lost Western People' who had largely given up on the hope of there being any higher meaning. I spent years on a spiritual journey, studying worldly philosophy and reading about history. Everywhere I looked, I could find fragments of the truth. But never the truth in fullness. This led me into despair. The nihilism, paired with the despair, eventually led me back to God.
While I was a catechumen, I finally felt I had found the fullness of the truth in Christ and his Church. But I didn't quite know how to contextualize everything that had happened on my journey to that point. Looking back on my wandering in the dark forest, it was all a bit of a mess, unclear, the pain of my experiences muddying the waters. This lack of clarity unknowingly also carried over to my understanding of the world around me.
Then, early on in my catechesis, our parish priest suggested we catechumens read 'Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age' by Fr. Seraphim Rose. I was already somewhat familiar with Fr. Seraphim by then, so I had a feeling going into the reading that it would be an insightful one.
And yet, it was more than simply insightful. Father Seraphim Rose took my disorganized and disjointed observations and experiences living in our decaying and nihilistic culture and contextualized them perfectly. He could've written the 'Four Stages of the Nihilist Dialectic' about my own journey through the dark forest of unbelief. Suddenly, I could understand my own experiences and the world around me in clarity.
This book has also heavily influenced my understanding of 'The Machine' and its rapid development in our time. After all, it only makes sense for something such as the Machine to flourish in a society that has no pillar of truth within it. In the absence of faith in God, we, in our nihilism, will seek to make our own god. May the Lord have mercy on us.
I look forward to continuing on learning more about Father Seraphim Rose, reading more of his writings, and listening to more of his teachings. I hope one day to make a pilgrimage out to his monastery/grave. I do pray that he is one day canonized if God wills it.
"The logic of unbelief leads inexorably to the Abyss; he who will not return to truth must follow error to its end." - Fr. Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age
I know this place, and there are others in Northern California where seekers have gathered to leave the “world” behind in search of the Kingdom of Divine LOVE here and now. We need these ascetics, extreme as they may seem, to show us a different way. I have chosen to be “in the world, while not of it,” in my own way as one who has also returned to the faith of my youth but in a brand new way.
We also need their prayers that enable and encourage the Spirit of Truth’s strength in us.
Holy Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!