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An Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Cardoza, shares his thoughts on humility and the road to sainthood. He presents the deeper meaning behind suffering, sanctification, and what it truly means to follow Christ.
An honest and heartfelt conversation between Orthodox Priest Fr. Seraphim Cardoza and Evangelical Pastor Perry Atkinson. Rev. Archpriest Seraphim Cardoza was a former evangelical pastor of a hippie church who found his way to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In 1995, he was ordained and assigned to minister to a small ROCOR congregation in Medford, Oregon, US.
Fr. Seraphim Cardoza passed away in October 2023.
Video source: theDoveTV (July 31, 2013),
watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/rfzCtO6Ch8A
Fr. Seraphim:
“Just raise your hand, accept Jesus and everything’s okay!” And they found out, I found out, you found out, we found out: the more you want to be like Christ, the more you have to travel the same road that He traveled.
You know… “Praise the Lord! Yes to Jesus! Good.” What kind of… you know something… Forgive me for saying this, it’s really lacking in the Western church, one thing that I see lacking—and you might not want me after this—is humility. Well, how would you describe humility from your tradition and perspective?
They had their heroes, every saint, my Saint Seraphim, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, St. Paisios of Mount Athos, and you could just go on and on… Perry, they didn’t just read the Scriptures, they lived the Scriptures. There was a monk who went to his abbot and he said, “I want to become a saint.” I want to become—you see, I know a young man actually said that. I said: “Be careful because the road to sainthood is lined with suffering.”
So the abbot said, “Okay, go find a holy man and live with him.” It was passed down from generation to generation, the lives of the Saints, every one of the Russian saints, Romanian saints, Bulgarian saints, Orthodox saints. It was not a life of ease; it was a life of suffering in a different sense because truly, if we take suffering in the right sense, it does bring us closer to Christ. Whether it’s our children, whether it’s our finances, whether it’s our business, it brings us closer to Christ.
So they had their heroes, they had their signposts. Perry, in the West—forgive me—yes, we have so-and-so, I’m thinking of Billy Graham, God bless him, huge rallies. So everybody in my era wanted to have these huge rallies. I was going to be a minister and have these huge rallies, there wasn’t a whole. “Just raise your hand, accept Jesus and everything’s okay!” They found out, I found out, you found out, we found out: the more you want to be like Christ, the more you had to travel the same road that He traveled.
And so I think, I believe, I know, for instance, our St. Innocent from our church. You read his life—he suffered 15 years, almost starving, before he even got his parish out in Siberia somewhere. It’s been 18 years; I’m kind of getting there. He had tremendous suffering; he died a very holy man, miracles during and after his life.
I’ll finish this thought. St. Innocent’s uncle was a saint. And a saint means someone totally sanctified—your church teaches sanctification. I wonder how many really are—not for me to judge—probably Mrs. So-and-so down the corner, you know, the old lady in the corner. His uncle was a saint, his grandfather was a saint. You just don’t say, “Well, he’s a saint, he’s in heaven.” You don’t do it that way—they suffered for Christ.
Humility… people think I joke a lot, and I do. You put yourself beneath everybody else, and you do not believe you’re better than anybody else. And if someone was to do something good to me, I would know I didn’t deserve it. I would know that, and I would right away think, “How can I pay him back?” Humility is something you can’t teach, but find a humble person and live with them.
A humble person… in our culture, that’s been equated with weak. Oh no, oh no…
