St. Seraphim, like Francis of Assisi, talked to animals. One day two nuns saw him deep in conversation with a bear. The bears of the Russian forests are very ferocious, and the two women were terrified. But Seraphim reassured them and showed them that he who is sanctified lives in peace with all creation, just as Adam did before the Fall.

People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without, as if he were an object, for with him there is no outside nor can the Creator be set side by side with the creature.

For every person is a gaping space waiting to be filled with God.

Our nature is to worship, but unless that element is directed towards God it becomes "a senseless impersonal force, carrying us away in its momentum. It becomes a search for ecstasy - no matter what kind achieved through destruction...The worshipful integraton of nature in the person is inverted in a hellish imprisonment of the individual in nature."

Prayer and Theology are inseparable. True Theology is the adoration offered by the intellect. The intellect clarifies the moment of prayer, but only prayer can give it the fervor of the Spirit. Theology is light, prayer is fire.

It is therefore essential to let the 'heart spirit' settle like calm water. Then it becomes a tranquil lake in which the sky is reflected, in which the face of Christ can be seen.

St. Seraphim, like Francis of Assisi, talked to animals. One day two nuns saw him deep in conversation with a bear. The bears of the Russian forests are very ferocious, and the two women were terrified. But Seraphim reassured them and showed them that he who is sanctified lives in peace with all creation, just as Adam did before the Fall.