St. Seraphim, second round

 

St. Seraphim needed a better picture than the last one, and he needed another post.

Regardless of how this picture looks, he was more than a guy who had a bear for a buddy. The reason for the bear's interest and lack of normal animal-human antipathy was that St. Seraphim had immersed himself in prayer to such an extent that his soul had lost its odor of corruption, if I may put it that way.  He seems to have purified his soul so that he was able to live as in Eden, in harmony with the natural world.  The famous passage in Isaiah says that "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,...the cow and the bear shall graze,...and the lion shall eat straw like the ox."  Fierce creatures will be gentle, and they and humans will not fear each other.  These prophecies seem to come to fruition in the lives of people who devote themselves entirely to prayer.  And St. Seraphim was one of those.
A quotation from St. Seraphim:
"You cannot be too gentle, too kind.  Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other.  Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives.  All condemnation is of the devil.  Never condemn each other."

Ah, that is the kind of world I would like to live in.