Dear Brother in Christ, Macarios [Schaefer?],<\/p>\n
Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sorry to be so late answering your letter. We\u2019ve been working day and night on The Northern Thebaid (which is now complete except for cover), and now the Calendar, and I just haven\u2019t answered any letters.<\/p>\n
About becoming a novice: if Nicholas feels that he should, and the authorities bless it, then that seems to be the path for him. But if you don\u2019t feel any great urge to take this step, there\u2019s no need to rush it. Such a decision will mature in its own time. Your status as a seminarian is already definite enough to give you protection against many of the devil\u2019s wiles, and the decision to become a novice is something extra, which perhaps you don\u2019t need yet.<\/p>\n
We are glad to hear of your progress in Russian and in general. May Christ our God keep you in His grace. But be always trembling before God, expecting temptation on any side, and trusting in God and His Most Holy Mother and the saints to get you through. The path of salvation is a narrow one, but with God\u2019s help we can stay on it, because that is what He has called us for!<\/p>\n
Please pray for us.<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,
\nSeraphim, monk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Brother in Christ, Macarios [Schaefer?], Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. I\u2019m sorry to be so late answering your letter. We\u2019ve been working day and night on The Northern Thebaid (which is now complete except for cover), and now the Calendar, and I just haven\u2019t answered any letters. About becoming a novice: if Nicholas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}