Sofia, March 3, 2025
Photo: podvorie-sofia.bg
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the repose of the Holy Hierarch and Wonderworker St. Seraphim (Sobolev) of Boguchar, a Russian hierarch who served for decades in Bulgaria.
His feast was celebrated on February 27 at the Russian representation Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Sofia where St. Seraphim served and where his crypt is located. The service was led by His Holiness Patriarch Daniil of Bulgaria, together with His Grace Bishop Gerasim of Melnik and Bulgarian and Russian clergy, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reports.
Despite it being a weekday, the church was filled with believers who came to worship God and honor St. Seraphim.
At the end of the service, a moleben to the saint was served in the center of the church.
Photo: podvorie-sofia.bg
Pat. Daniil gave a sermon dedicated to the spiritual legacy of St. Seraphim—his prayerful intercession and his example of true theology, which stems from his authentic Orthodox ascetic struggle:
We know from the circumstances of the saint’s life, that it was God’s providence. God directed his path and determined that he comes here to serve in a difficult time. As a hierarch of the Russian Church, first of the Russian Church Abroad and then again of the Moscow Patriarchate, Saint Seraphim served here when the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was separated from communion with the other Local Churches. But as a shepherd, he always gathered his spiritual children, and even then his ministry began to reconcile, gather, and lead his flock to unity. Saint Seraphim showed himself to be an exceptional theologian of his time. His Orthodox bishop’s conscience did not remain indifferent when there was a danger to the purity of the Orthodox faith. This was dictated by his ascetic, true, Orthodox spiritual experience. His sermons show high theology, high education. In Russia he was a teacher and rector of Orthodox seminaries, but he always expressed the truths of our faith and the rules of the spiritual life in simple, understandable words, close to the mind and heart of the faithful. This is characteristic of his sermons. His theology comes from practical experience.
His Holiness also emphasized St. Seraphim’s fight against the heresy of ecumenism: “That is why the words of the saint against the Sophian heresy and against the ecumenical movement are so powerful, because in them he saw the danger of losing the Spirit, losing the grace in the people who choose those paths.”
Photo: podvorie-sofia.bg
“A great consolation, a source of grace, a spiritual oasis for us is St. Seraphim,” the Patriarch said. He emphasized how important St. Seraphim’s homilies were for his own spiritual growth as he took his first steps in the faith in the 1990s.
Read His Holiness’ full homily at Orthodox Ethos.
Then the rector of the Russian metochion, Archpriest Vladimir Tischuk, gifted the Patriarch an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Seven Arrows.
After the Prayers of Thanksgiving, Pat. Daniil venerated the grave of St. Seraphim in the church crypt.
Read more about St. Seraphim in “Defender of Orthodoxy Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev)The newly-canonized saint, Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) of Boguchar (Bulgaria), has been known by the faithful since his lifetime as a defender of the Orthodox faith in the face of various new trends decisions that faced the Orthodox Church worldwide during the very complicated twentieth century.
“>Defender of Orthodoxy, Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev),” and ““Visit me at my grave, and I will help you”The Bulgarians know of “Grandpa Vladyka Seraphim” not as a theologian, but more as an ascetic of piety and saint whom God bestowed with the abundant grace of performing miracles.”>Visit Me at My Grave, and I Will Help You: Miracles of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev).”
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Source: Orthodox Christianity
