Episode Transcript  

One

St. Seraphim of Sarov

Have you ever heard of St. Seraphim of Sarov? He was a Russian Orthodox monk in the nineteenth century, and he’s famous for a lot of reasons. For one thing, he was a great ascetic, doing amazing penances for the love of God. For another, he was once set upon by a gang of criminals and beaten so badly that they thought he was dead, and, although he ended up surviving, it took him many years to recover. And even after his recovery, his back was never the same. In many icons of St. Seraphim, you see him bent almost double because of his damaged spine. And yet at the trial for the robbers, he pleaded with the court for mercy to be shown to his attackers. In other icons, you see St. Seraphim feeding a bear, because due to his holy peacefulness, the wild animals approached him and left him unharmed.

But the most important thing was something he said. It’s a single piece of advice he gave to all Christians. Here it is, “If you acquire a peaceful spirit, a thousand souls around you will be saved.”

Two

The Attractiveness of Peace

“Acquire a peaceful spirit, a thousand souls around you will be saved.” That makes sense. We draw others to faith not by pressure or agitation, but by peace. Who is attracted to anxiety, aggravation, or crankiness? No one. Nobody sees a stressed-out, frantic Catholic and says, “That’s what I want for my life.” 

What draws people is the quiet strength and calm joy of someone who lives in God’s peace. But if we allow the peace of Christ to permeate our souls through meditation and striving to grow in virtue, then maybe the people we come into contact with might actually say, “That’s what I want. Where did you get your peace?” 

And we can answer, in all honesty, “By our friendship with Christ found in prayer.”

Three

The Witness of Peace

The peace of a Christian is a powerful proof that Christians actually believe what they profess. Because if Christians say that they believe in an all-powerful, all-loving God, who is in control of everything and who has arranged that everything will benefit His disciples and will lead to a maximally glorious conclusion to the human story, if we say we believe all that, but then we act as though everything’s a mess and things are falling apart and we’re on our own and we don’t know how we’re going to make it, well, people are going to conclude that we don’t believe what we’re saying.

A peaceful spirit, on the other hand, is the only way to be a consistent witness of the Gospel. So, are you working on a peaceful spirit? Are you trying to act like someone who thinks it’s God is in control, everything is going to be okay, and we are safe? Because the souls of those around you depend on it.

Four

The Transparency of Peace

Consider the surface of a lake under the sun. If the water is calm, the sun is reflected perfectly. But if the water is agitated, the image disappears. So it is with our soul. The more peaceful it is, the more God’s image shines through us and the more His grace acts in us. If our soul is restless, His light is harder to see, and His grace finds less room to work. All the good we do is only a reflection of the Essential Good, who is God, and the more our soul is calm because it trusts completely in God, the more God communicates Himself through us.

Every Christian in the state of grace carries the Trinity within. Our task is to let others glimpse God through us. That happens only when our hearts are calm, trusting in Him, whatever comes. When we are at peace, people can see God in us, and that is why, as St. Seraphim of Sarov said, “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.”

Five

Peace and the Salvation of Those Around Us.

Imagine you could save the people around you by acquiring peace. If your kids and spouse, and friends could all be brought closer to heaven because you became a person of deep peace. Would you strive for peace then?

St. Francis De Sales says if you want peace, do these three things again and again: Do all things out of love for God and for the good of others. Do the good you can, and do it at once, never put it off. Let God do the rest, abandon to Him what is beyond your power.

St. Seraphim and all the saints and angels who are perfectly at peace with you, make us tranquil, calm, undisturbed, so that we can be a bridge for others to come close to you. Amen. 

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