Blessed Seraphim Rose - 5.25 x 7 (Maple)

When Christ said "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This is a call to a life of theosis, personal communion with God.  The son of God became man so that man can become god's by grace. There are certain 20th century Saints that one instantly thinks of when they hear the word theosis. St Paisios, St Joseph The Hesychast, St Porphyrios, St Olga. These are all men and women who became god's by grace and are written on Icons now in our parishes around the world as a reminder of God's plan for man. There was a time before they were called Saints, a waiting period if you will where the Church waits on their intercessions, stories start popping up about these holy men and women appearing to people both physically and in dreams. This is the first of many signs of Saint hood.

You'll often see Icons written that say Blessed and not St. Why do we do this? It's a beautiful part of the Orthodox faith where we participate in coming into agreement that these Blessed Elders both men and women became god's by grace and the outward showing is a sign of Saint hood where we wait in anticipation for their canonization. 

Blessed Seraphim Rose is one of these holy men. You can call him Saint or Blessed, it's up to you. His canonization is a process, we all know it's coming, the train has left the station if you will, we just don't know when it will arrive. Even though technically not canonized, he is depicted around the world on Icons as St Seraphim. This is a sign of a Saint.

Blessed Seraphim Rose was a ROCOR Priest and Hieromonk who co-founded the St Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, Ca. He was born in San Diego, Ca in 1934, to a Protestant middle class family. Blessed Seraphim growing up was an intellectual thinker.  He was often labeled as a genius by the friends that he had. He became disillusioned with Protestantism as he got older and became an athiest. He started searching, dabbling in every religion he could find, searching for truth and eventually landed on buddhism. 

In 1956 he came out as a gay man and entered into a relationship with another man. In 1961 he would encounter Orthodoxy for the first time from a friend who gave was Orthodox and gave him The Way of The Pilgrim and invited him to vespers. This was a pivotal moment in Fr Seraphim's life. Blessed Seraphim would go on to comment on the time of his life prior to coming to the faith, "I was in hell. I know what hell is."

After realizing that Orthodoxy was truth and that God was real, he ended the relationship he had and was received into the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in San Francisco. It's pretty amazing to think about Blessed Seraphim attending Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco while St John Maximovitch was still alive! With St Johns blessing in 1964 he opened an Orthodox bookstore next to Holy Virgin Cathedral. In 1965 with St John's blessing he would found the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood which took up shop next door to the cathedral. After St John's repose in 1966 Blessed Seraphim along with Fr Herman from the brotherhood would go on to found the St Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, Ca in 1970. The monastery would go on to found St Herman Press where they would publish books at the monastery, along with The Orthodox Word magazine.

Blessed Seraphim would write many books in his time at the monastery. His books were smuggled into the Soviet Union during the control of communism and spread like wild fire! Blessed Seraphim is loved perhaps more in Russia today than he is in America.

Blessed Seraphim would eventually repose in 1982 from gastrointestinal issues at the age of 48. We are looking forward to the day that Blessed Seraphim becomes a Saint. We will be there with this Icon in hand to celebrate!

This 5.25 x 7 Icon of Blessed Seraphim in maple is the perfect medium sized Icon to have hanging in your Iconostasis at home or on a mantle!

Note on wood products - All wood warps, that is something you have to remember with these icons. Warping over time will occur but it wont affect the icon. We use Feed-N-Wax for all of our icons which is our wood sealant and we recommend touching up the icons with this product as needed. If you get water spots from having the icon blessed the easiest way to get rid of them is to apply the Feed-N-Wax product mentioned above to the areas with the water spots and they should go away.

Note that the icon you will receive will vary slightly from picture shown. 

All of our icons are made to order, sculpted by Lydia Riley and made in Montana.