Some Writings of Saint Herman of Alaska

“Should you not above all praise the Lord, aspire to Him and seek Him? For years I have been learning to love God, and I cannot say I have fully perfected my ability to love Him, sinner that I am! How shall we love our God Almighty? If you love somebody, you always keep that person in your mind and seek to please him or her constantly. Your heart and mind are preoccupied with the one you love. Is that the way you love God? Do you often appeal to Him? Do you always keep Him in your mind? Do you always pray to Him and do His will?”

“The true Christian is a warrior who battles through the hordes of the invisible enemy to reach his divine homeland.”

“Blessed are the ways of God the merciful! With his inscrutable Providence, he showed me a new phenomenon which I have never encountered in all my long years on Kodiak. Just after Easter, a young woman who had heard of me but never seen me before came to visit. Having been told about the incarnation of God the Son and eternal life, she was seized with such a great desire to love Jesus Christ that she would not leave my abode. Astounded at her spiritual transformation, I recalled the Savior’s teachings: ‘What is hidden from the wise is seen by the innocent.’ Now, other women readily follow in her footsteps and young men also are increasingly attracted by my hermitage...”