26.

 Write out St. Seraphim of Sarov's description of the whole purpose of the Christian life.

            St. Seraphim of Sarov (+1833), one of the most revered of Russian saints, explained that:

Prayer, fasting, vigils and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God.

Concerning this explanation, in his extensive research on ancient African Orthodox Christianity, Fr. Paisius Altschul shows that the path of influence of Egyptian monasticism has been traced from the Egyptian Thebaid to the farthest corners of the Christian world. In Russia, as elsewhere, he notes, ascetic recluses patterned their spiritual struggle on the monastic principles that had been developed in the Egyptian desert. As for St. Seraphim, although he was separated by fifteen hundred years from the Desert Fathers, the spirituality was the same. Fr. Paisius also notes that the saint did not claim that his teaching was anything new or unique, but only that it had been lost. He further explains that St. Seraphim's ideas are to be seen in the homilies of St. Macarius the Great of Egypt. Both saints often use the same words, images and parables, and both describe the need to acquire the Holy Spirit. Likewise, both explain the Gospel parable of the ten virgins in the same way, stating that the oil needed for the lamps is the grace of the Holy Spirit, and stating that the acquisition of the Holy Spirit is the oil that the virgins lacked. The similarities between the two are striking. Fr. Paisius concludes that the point is not whether St. Seraphim knew the homilies of St. Macarius the Great, but that both saints were partakers of the same tradition and were imbued with the same Holy Spirit.