The life of St Serapion of Pskov
Trained deeply in Scripture, he more than once spoke openly to defend the Orthodox faith against pressure to abandon it, and when the demand for his conversion grew too dangerous to resist quietly, he withdrew instead to the wilderness near Pskov, becoming one of the first disciples gathered around the ascetic Euphrosynus.
Early in that discipleship he stumbled: without asking leave, he tried to strike out on his own for a life of total solitude, but a serious injury to his leg brought him back to humility, and he returned in repentance to his elder's guidance. From then on he gave himself to an extraordinarily austere life, receiving the highest monastic habit and keeping fifty-five years of silence, carrying out every task set before him and absorbing every insult without protest. So completely had he worn away his body through fasting that one who later wrote of his life described him as scarcely more than bones wrapped in skin. He died in 1480, and Euphrosynus himself buried him; their relics were later placed side by side, teacher and disciple not parted even in death.
