• Other Articles

    Raising the Mind, Warming the Heart

    By Blessed Seraphim Rose of Platina Raising the Mind, Warming the Heart 1. Faith and Reason The writings of the Russian philosopher Ivan Kireyevsky contain some basic ideas which are very apropos for us today. The usual argument between faith and reason, he wrote, is not correct. Reason is such a thing that it must be raised up to a higher level, and this is what the Orthodox Church tries to give. By itself, reason does not offer any more than an understanding of this two-dimensional, corporeal realm, with which most of the critics and scholars of the West are occupying themselves. There is something, however, above this. According to…

  • Articles,  Other Articles,  Zine Articles

    On Forming the Soul

    By Blessed Fr. Seraphim of Platina The soul that comes to Orthodoxy today often finds itself in a disadvantaged or even crippled state. Often one hears from converts after some years of seemingly unfruitful struggles that “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I became Orthodox.” Some sense this when they are first exposed to the Orthodox Faith, and this can cause them to postpone their encounter with Orthodoxy or even run away from it entirely. A similar thing often happens to those baptized in childhood when they reach mature years and must choose whether or not to commit themselves to their childhood faith. From one point of…

  • Articles,  Holy Fathers,  Lives

    Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim Rose

    Father Seraphim was born into a typical white middle class Protestant family in San Diego in 1934. While growing up, he was the proverbial dutiful child and academic achiever. After high school, however, he began to passionately seek the answer to the question “Why?”–and, not finding it in the society in which he had been raised, he began to rebel. He refused to accept the accepted answers. This was at the very beginning of the modern counterculture, the early 1950’s. Father Seraphim became a student of one of the counterculture’s first pioneers, Alan Watts (whom he realized later was totally pseudo) and became a Buddhist Bohemian in San Francisco. He…