Tonight we lift our eyes to one of the most beloved and most fearsome icons in the Orthodox world: Saint Spyridon of Tremithous, the Wonderworker, bishop of Cyprus, whose feast we keep on December 12. In the icon he stands in full episcopal vestments, but his omophorion is simple shepherd’s wool, his panagia a plain wooden cross, and on his head the strange conical peasant cap woven from rushes that only he, among all bishops, is ever shown wearing. In his left hand he holds the Gospel; in his right, a small clay tile, because with a humble brick he once silenced the greatest philosophers of the empire. His face is gentle, almost shy, yet his eyes burn like coals under the Cypriot sun. 

 Tonight we do not gaze upon an ancient icon painted in egg tempera on cypress wood. We contemplate a living icon, a photograph that has already begun to shine with uncreated light: Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) of Platina, reposed September 2, 1982, at the age of forty-eight. In the black-and-white image most of us know, he stands in a simple riassa, his beard still dark, his eyes looking straight through the camera, through you, into eternity. There is no halo yet, but if you have prayed in front of that photograph, you know the halo is there all the same.