Who is Seraphim Rose?

 Who is Seraphim Rose? A man who make me to look with different eyes to America, and, more important, to rest of the world.
Seraphim Rose is one of the biggest personalities of christian orthodoxy in our time, and he was an american.

The life of this man was really an miracle. He used to say: “I was in hell, I know how it is”.

Before to become an orthodox monk and to receive the name Seraphim, his name was Eugene Dennis Rose (1934-1982). He was baptized when he was 14 years in Methodist Church. After a few years, he abandoned christian faith. His goal was oriental spirituality, and he became initiated in zen-buddhism and chinese traditional thinking. He studied in Academy of Asian Studies.
Not after long time, the young Rose started to suffer. Nietszche philosophy, yoga and zen practice and influence of beat generation (drugs, uncontrolled sexuality, rejecting of social values, asian spirituality), all these destroyed the life of Eugene Dennis Rose,like he recognized later. Depression and anger make him an alcoholic and drugs addict.Of course, his relationship with God was very bad, even he wanted always to find some clues for God existence.

One of his friends advice him to go to an orthodox church, a russian one. He was there, just for curiosity. And from that moment his life changed completely. He was baptized in orthodox ritual (which is by the way the most complete of all) and he became monk in 1970 (he was 36). His searchings in all kind of religions, doctrines or theories was finished .
He became in an short time an impressive personalities of orthodoxy and helped to spread in America (where was completely unknown excepting eastern emigrants from Europe). He lived in Platina monastery (California) with other orthodox monks. His writings and his life make him famous not only in America but also in Europe, in Great Britain, Russia, Romania, Serbia or Greece. Even if he is not cannonized orthodox believe that he is a saint. Who read some of his writings (can be found on internet, amazon.com i think) will feel that this man acquired the grace of God.
He is considered to be the first american who follow the teachings of Holy Fathers (apostles and the first christian saints).
In the last years of his life he used to repeat to everyone:

”Is later then you think”. 

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