Seraphim of Sarov

Lived

1754–1833

Era

Modern

Where

Sarov, Russia

Tradition

Eastern Orthodox

A thousand nights on a rock, and then an open door

A Russian monk who spent years in near-total solitude in the forest, including a long period praying on a rock, was crippled for life by robbers whom he then refused to prosecute, and after some thirty years of seclusion opened his cell to anyone who came.

Why it matters

For the last eight years of his life he received thousands, greeting each as "my joy" — a startling reversal after decades of withdrawal, and the reason he became the most loved of Russian saints. His conversation with Motovilov, on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit as the whole aim of Christian life, is a central text of Russian spirituality. He is much of what the nineteenth-century revival of the elders in Russia was built on.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.