St. Seraphim of Vyritsa

St. Seraphim of Vyritsa was born Vasily Muraviev on 31 March 1866 into a Russian peasant family. Rising by his own diligence, he became a prosperous merchant and fur trader in St. Petersburg, a devoted husband and father who nonetheless longed for God and quietly gave much of his wealth to churches, monasteries, and the poor throughout his years in the world.

After the Revolution, having given away his fortune, he and his wife each entered the monastic life, and he was tonsured at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, taking the name Seraphim, and became its spiritual father, or confessor. In his last years, worn by illness, he settled in the town of Vyritsa near Leningrad, where, through the darkest years of Stalin's terror and the Second World War, a stream of the suffering came to the bedridden elder for counsel, comfort, and prayer, and he was granted gifts of consolation and foresight. He died on 3 April 1949 and was glorified as a saint in 2000.