Feast day: September 25

St. Sergius of Radonezh

Abbot · 1314–1392

Patron of Russia

The most beloved saint of Russia, a hermit whose forest cell grew into the great Trinity monastery, who revived Russian monasticism and blessed his people in their struggle for freedom.

Sergius of Radonezh is the most beloved saint of Russia, often called the spiritual father of the Russian nation. Born about 1314 to a noble family near Rostov that fell into poverty and was displaced by political upheaval, he was a shy and devout boy who, the famous story goes, struggled to learn to read until a mysterious monk blessed him and the gift was suddenly given.

After the death of his parents he withdrew, with his brother, into the deep forest north of Moscow to live as a hermit, building a small wooden cell and church to the Holy Trinity in the wilderness. He endured terrible hardship and solitude — and gradually, drawn by his holiness, other monks gathered, until there grew up around him the great monastery of the Holy Trinity, the heart of Russian monasticism.

Humble to the end — he refused high office, dressed in rags, and worked with his own hands even when revered throughout the land — Sergius became the counsellor of princes and the peacemaker of a divided Russia. Most famously, he blessed the Grand Prince Dmitri before the battle of Kulikovo in 1380, in which the Russians first broke the power of the Mongol Tatars, an event of immense national meaning.

He died in 1392. The monastery he founded, the Trinity–Sergius Lavra, remains the spiritual centre of Russian Orthodoxy, and Sergius himself is venerated as the patron and protector of Russia — a saint whose gentle holiness helped knit a nation together.

From a single hut in the woods he renewed the faith of a whole nation, and his blessing before the battle of Kulikovo helped rally Russia against its overlords.

Image: AnonymousUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/13253a.htm