January 15 - SECOND FIND (1991) OF THE POWERFUL REVEREND SERAPHIM, SAROV MIRACLE.

January 15 -  SECOND FIND (1991) OF THE POWERFUL REVEREND SERAPHIM, SAROV MIRACLE.

In January 1991, in the storerooms of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, which was located in the building of the Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad, unexpectedly for everyone were found the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, one of the most revered Russian Orthodox saints.

The Venerable Seraphim of Sarov was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church in the countenance of saints in the summer of 1903 with the active participation and even at the insistence of St. Nicholas II, who personally highly honored the elder of Sarov. By the time of his glorification, the veneration of the Monk Seraphim was already widespread throughout Russia. Information about cases of his gracious help, stories about his miracles, the memories of those who knew him personally, and the spiritually useful teachings of the elder - all this was passed on among the Orthodox people from generation to generation, preserved for posterity and communicated to the church hierarchy. It was also known about the prediction of the Monk Seraphim that his relics would be found, and then in the year of persecution for the Christian faith would be lost again, as it subsequently happened exactly.

Shortly after the October coup, the Bolsheviks erected an unheard of persecution not only of Orthodoxy, and this persecution began not so much with the living witnesses of the Orthodox faith, as with already deceased confessors, glorified in the saints. A blasphemous campaign to uncover and remove the holy relics was unleashed. Special commissions, in which for the appearance of legality included representatives of the clergy, opened the reliquary with the holy relics, drew up reports on their examination, and then took away the holy relics in an unknown direction.

The considerable confusion of believers that arose at the sight of such impunity for sacrilege was inexpressible. The only consolation was that, as one of the eyewitnesses of those events, Professor I.M. Andreev, "the mockery of the relics of saints cannot be considered otherwise than the complicity of the saints in the nationwide suffering and torture: the whole Russian people suffer, and the Russian saints suffer with it." The correctness of these words was confirmed by the repeated appearance of Russian saints to the Orthodox people who revered them with words of comfort, encouragement and blessing for the feat of fidelity to Christ.

Sometimes the pious Orthodox Christians were able to hide the particles of holy relics in their homes, some of the holy relics were secretly kept by the clergy, but most were betrayed.

So it happened with the relics of the Monk Seraphim, which too, as he himself predicted, fell into the unknown. Only two facts were documented: on 17 December 1920 the relics, which were kept in the Diveevsky monastery near Arzamas, were opened, and on 16 August 1921 were closed and taken away. There was another known fact: at the end of the 1920s the relics of the Monk Seraphim were exhibited for viewing in the Moscow Holy Monastery, where at that time an antireligious museum was organized. The relics were probably there until 1934, when the Holy Monastery was blown up.

The subsequent history began to clarify only in 1990 and this story is most fully conveyed by His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II in the word he said in the Trinity Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky Lavra on January 12, 1991, the day after the signing of the protocol on the transfer of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov to the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Already at the first meeting with the director of the Museum of the History of Religion," said Patriarch Alexy II  "we agreed that the relics, as Orthodox shrines, should be returned to the Church."

The first shrine that was returned was the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky. Soon the relics of the Monks Zosima, Savvatii, and Herman Solovetsky were transferred to the Church. It was believed that there were no other relics in the museum, but in connection with the planned move from the Kazan Cathedral, the museum staff checked the storerooms anew and in the room where the tapestries were kept, found the relics sewn in the burlap. When they were opened, they read the inscription on the glove: "Reverend Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!" Whose relics are they? Apart from the inscription on the glove, there was no other information: no number or description.

"The story of the removal of the relics of Reverend Seraphim is this. From Sarov they were taken to Arzamas, from Arzamas - to the Don monastery. Then the trail is lost," continues His Holiness the Patriarch.

Remembering how difficult it was for the believing people to come to terms with the fact that the relics were lost, Patriarch Alexy II testifies: "In many places we found some items that were attributed to the reverend: his axe, parts of his clothes, robes, mittens."

Patriarch Alexy II began the search for an act of opening the relics of the Monk Seraphim, which was soon found. "And, having compared the two acts on canonization in 1903 and on the autopsy in 1920," says His Holiness Patriarch "I sent to Leningrad two archpastor, Bishops Eugene of Tambov and Michurinsk and Arseniy of Istrinsk, who investigated the relics ... The archpastors who were examining the relics testified to the sense of grace and fragrance of the relics they had to examine. After the comparison, there appeared the certainty that these were indeed the relics of St. Seraphim. There were eleven days left until the transfer. The shrine was made, in which the relics were transferred on the eve of their return to the Russian Orthodox Church".

The relics of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov were transferred to Moscow and installed in the Epiphany Cathedral for worship. From this cathedral, where for several months Orthodox believers were going and venerating nonstop, the long journey of the holy relics through the cities and towns began - on their way from Moscow to Diveevo. This peculiar all-Russian "procession on wheels" (the relics were transported in a minibus, followed by the Patriarch's car) stopped in cities and monasteries on the way, where the Patriarch served the Liturgy and countless akathists to the Monk Seraphim. On 1 August 1991, on the day of the memory of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, his holy relics were returned to the Diveevo monastery, founded by the Monk Seraphim. It was one of the brightest wonders of Russian church history of the XX century.