Seraphim Amelin of Glinsk

Holy Venerable Seraphim Amelin of Glinsk, a schema-⁠archimandrite, was a spiritual elder of the Glinsk Hermitage and its abbot between 1943 and 1958, in the years after its closure. He departed to the Lord on 18 October 1958.

In the world he was called Simeon and was born in 1874 in a pious peasant family in the village of Solomino, Fatezh district, Kursk province. He came to the Glinsk Hermitage in 1893. In 1899 he was tonsured a rasophore, and in 1904 into the mantle, with the name Seraphim. He was sparing of words even before the monastic vows and later even more restrained in speech, learning from the elders that watching every utterance is a means of learning sobriety and undistracted standing before God; as a fruit, he early acquired that peace of Christ for which all true ascetics strive.

From 1899 he worked in the icon-⁠painting workshop, soon being named its head. In 1913 he was ordained hierodeacon, in 1917 hieromonk and received the obedience of sacristan; during the revolution he received the schema in secret, and from 1919 he was treasurer. After the closure of the hermitage he lived in the village of Kovenki, working as a carpenter and locksmith; in 1941 he served in the village parish church that had opened, in 1942 he returned to the hermitage, and between 1943 and 1958 he was its abbot. In the extremely hard conditions of the time (war and post-⁠war ruin, the atheist ideology of the Soviet state) he managed not only to put the daily life of the maimed monastery in order, but above all to revive the tradition of the strict and grace-⁠filled life of the community and of the spiritual guidance of beginners. Deeply respected and loved by the brothers, Venerable Seraphim embodied peace and quiet; at the same time he was an attentive and watchful father, from whose gaze nothing escaped that called for pastoral care.

His name was entered in the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church by decision of the Council of Bishops of 2017. He is commemorated on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk and on 22 September, in the new style.