Father Sergius | Page 5

flesh, greed and lust,
was easily attained. His director had specially warned him against the
latter sin, but Kasatsky felt free from it and was glad.
One thing only tormented him--the remembrance of his fiancee; and
not merely the remembrance but the vivid image of what might have
been. Involuntarily he recalled a lady he knew who had been a
favourite of the Emperor's, but had afterwards married and become an
admirable wife and mother. The husband had a high position, influence

and honour, and a good and penitent wife.
In his better hours Kasatsky was not disturbed by such thoughts, and
when he recalled them at such times he was merely glad to feel that the
temptation was past. But there were moments when all that made up his
present life suddenly grew dim before him, moments when, if he did
not cease to believe in the aims he had set himself, he ceased to see
them and could evoke no confidence in them but was seized by a
remembrance of, and--terrible to say--a regret for, the change of life he
had made.
The only thing that saved him in that state of mind was obedience and
work, and the fact that the whole day was occupied by prayer. He went
through the usual forms of prayer, he bowed in prayer, he even prayed
more than usual, but it was lip-service only and his soul was not in it.
This condition would continue for a day, or sometimes for two days,
and would then pass of itself. But those days were dreadful. Kasatsky
felt that he was neither in his own hands nor in God's, but was subject
to something else. All he could do then was to obey the starets, to
restrain himself, to undertake nothing, and simply to wait. In general all
this time he lived not by his own will but by that of the starets, and in
this obedience he found a special tranquillity.
So he lived in his first monastery for seven years. At the end of the
third year he received the tonsure and was ordained to the priesthood
by the name of Sergius. The profession was an important event in his
inner life. He had previously experienced a great consolation and
spiritual exaltation when receiving communion, and now when he
himself officiated, the performance of the preparation filled him with
ecstatic and deep emotion. But subsequently that feeling became more
and more deadened, and once when he was officiating in a depressed
state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service
would not endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit
remained.
In general in the seventh year of his life in the monastery Sergius grew
weary. He had learnt all there was to learn and had attained all there
was to attain, there was nothing more to do and his spiritual drowsiness

increased. During this time he heard of his mother's death and his sister
Varvara's marriage, but both events were matters of indifference to him.
His whole attention and his whole interest were concentrated on his
inner life.
In the fourth year of his priesthood, during which the Bishop had been
particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought not to decline
it if he were offered an appointment to higher duties. Then monastic
ambition, the very thing he had found so repulsive in other monks,
arose within him. He was assigned to a monastery near the metropolis.
He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept the
appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and moved to the
other monastery.
The exchange into the metropolitan monastery was an important event
in Sergius's life. There he encountered many temptations, and his whole
will-power was concentrated on meeting them.
In the first monastery, women had not been a temptation to him, but
here that temptation arose with terrible strength and even took definite
shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began
to seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius
sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire. He
was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to
keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his
sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep
watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and to
fulfil his duties.
Besides this, a great pitfall for Sergius lay in the fact of his extreme
antipathy to his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man who was making a
career for himself in the Church. Struggle with himself as he