Father Sergius | Page 4

Had his fiancee's lover been a private person he would have killed him,
but it was his beloved Tsar.
Next day he applied both for furlough and his discharge, and professing
to be ill, so as to see no one, he went away to the country.
He spent the summer at his village arranging his affairs. When summer
was over he did not return to Petersburg, but entered a monastery and
there became a monk.

His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but he
replied that he felt God's call which transcended all other
considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he,
understood him.
She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those
who considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him
correctly. By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed
most important to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the
service, and he now ascended a height from which he could look down
on those he had formerly envied. . . . But it was not this alone, as his
sister Varvara supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him
something else--a sincere religious feeling which Varvara did not know,
which intertwined itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for
pre-eminence, and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom
he had thought of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong
that they brought him to despair, and the despair led him--to what? To
God, to his childhood's faith which had never been destroyed in him.

II
Kasatsky entered the monastery on the feast of the Intercession of the
Blessed Virgin. The Abbot of that monastery was a gentleman by birth,
a learned writer and a starets, that is, he belonged to that succession of
monks originating in Walachia who each choose a director and teacher
whom they implicitly obey. This Superior had been a disciple of the
starets Ambrose, who was a disciple of Makarius, who was a disciple
of the starets Leonid, who was a disciple of Paussy Velichkovsky.
To this Abbot Kasatsky submitted himself as to his chosen director.
Here in the monastery, besides the feeling of ascendency over others
that such a life gave him, he felt much as he had done in the world: he
found satisfaction in attaining the greatest possible perfection
outwardly as well as inwardly. As in the regiment he had been not
merely an irreproachable officer but had even exceeded his duties and
widened the borders of perfection, so also as a monk he tried to be

perfect, and was always industrious, abstemious, submissive, and meek,
as well as pure both in deed and in thought, and obedient. This last
quality in particular made life far easier for him. If many of the
demands of life in the monastery, which was near the capital and much
frequented, did not please him and were temptations to him, they were
all nullified by obedience: 'It is not for me to reason; my business is to
do the task set me, whether it be standing beside the relics, singing in
the choir, or making up accounts in the monastery guest-house.' All
possibility of doubt about anything was silenced by obedience to the
starets. Had it not been for this, he would have been oppressed by the
length and monotony of the church services, the bustle of the many
visitors, and the bad qualities of the other monks. As it was, he not only
bore it all joyfully but found in it solace and support. 'I don't know why
it is necessary to hear the same prayers several times a day, but I know
that it is necessary; and knowing this I find joy in them.' His director
told him that as material food is necessary for the maintenance of the
life of the body, so spiritual food--the church prayers--is necessary for
the maintenance of the spiritual life. He believed this, and though the
church services, for which he had to get up early in the morning, were a
difficulty, they certainly calmed him and gave him joy. This was the
result of his consciousness of humility, and the certainty that whatever
he had to do, being fixed by the starets, was right.
The interest of his life consisted not only in an ever greater and greater
subjugation of his will, but in the attainment of all the Christian virtues,
which at first seemed to him easily attainable. He had given his whole
estate to his sister and did not regret it, he had no personal claims,
humility towards his inferiors was not merely easy for him but afforded
him pleasure. Even victory over the sins of the