The Other Works of
St. Nikolai Velimirovic

Prayers by the Lake (1922)

In 1920, St. Nikolai was transferred to the ancient Diocese of Ohrid in Macedonia. He settled at the Monastery of St. Naum, on the southern shore of Lake Ohrid — one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe. The monastery had been founded in 905 by St. Naum of Ohrid himself. Nikolai was born on St. Naum's feast day.

At the lake he wrote one hundred prayers. Numbered I through C, without titles, they form a single continuous work of ascending meditation. Prayers by the Lake (Molitve na Jezeru) was published in 1922 with an introduction by the young Hieromonk Justin Popovic, later glorified as St. Justin of Celije.

The prayers move between eternity and time, Creator and creation, sin and restoration. St. Justin Popovic compared them to the Psalms of David.

The opening prayer begins in shame:

Water, doves, mountains, stars, fish — the lake fills every page. In Prayer VII, Nikolai begs the natural world to help him worship:

"Would that I could make musicians out of stone, and dancers out of the sand of the lake, and minstrels out of the leaves of all the trees in the mountains, so that they might help me glorify the Lord."

In Prayer XXVII: "Your birds awaken me in the morning, and the murmur of the lake lulls me to sleep in the evening... the sun speaks to me about the radiance of Your countenance, and the stars about the harmony of Your being."

St. Basil the Great grounded this vision in his Hexaemeron:

Nikolai wrote what Basil taught. The lake was his training ground.

The most famous prayer is the seventy-fifth. Written in 1922 — twenty years before his imprisonment at Dachau — it reads like prophecy:

The prayer builds to its conclusion: "Enemies have taught me to know — what hardly anyone knows — that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends."

Orthodox readers have consistently compared Prayers by the Lake to the Psalms of David. The Sebastian Press edition (2021), edited by Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic with the Mika/Scott translation and St. Justin's original 1922 introduction, is the most complete English edition. The work has been published in at least twenty-three editions across seven languages.

Missionary Letters (1932–1935)

In January 1932, a monthly magazine titled A Missionary's Letters began publication in the Diocese of Ohrid. Each issue contained about ten letters from the bishop to his spiritual children. Over three years, the collection grew to more than three hundred letters.

Priests, monks, merchants, officers, soldiers, workers, peasants — they all wrote to him. Concrete questions. Universal answers.

A man struggling with poverty and suicidal thoughts wrote to the bishop. Nikolai answered that God gave the commandment "Don't steal" but no commandment "Don't beg" — and that begging without real need is stealing, but begging out of genuine necessity is not.

The letters have been published in English as three volumes of A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality — Volumes VI, VII, and VIII, covering Letters 1–100, 101–200, and 201–300. They function as a pastoral treasury — direct access to a saint's counsel on the full range of human struggle.

The Universe as Symbols and Signs (1932)

St. Nikolai addressed two errors about the visible world. The first is materialism — the belief that only visible nature is real. The second is the Eastern error — the belief that visible nature is illusion.

Orthodox theology holds a third position. The visible world is real, but it is not the highest reality. Creation is a symbol of its Creator. Every object, every event, every natural phenomenon points beyond itself.

The sun is the symbol of God. An eclipse signals how small things — everyday troubles — can block what is truly important. The whole book is a guide to reading nature through Scripture.

St. Maximos the Confessor taught centuries earlier that every created thing contains a logos — a divine principle or reason — that points back to the Logos, Christ. The visible world is a book written by God. Symbols and Signs teaches the reader how to read it.

Published in English by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Homilies and Sermons

In 1912, Father Nikolai — then a young seminary professor — published his first book: Sermons at the Foot of the Mount. It sold over 1,800 copies in its first edition — for Serbian religious publishing, a bestseller. The title expressed his lifelong posture: "Christ spoke on the mount; I dare to speak only at the foot of the mount."

A sequel, New Sermons at the Foot of the Mount (1923), offered ten sermons as a commentary on the Prologue of the Gospel of John — "In the beginning was the Word" — and the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke.

His mature Homilies (Besede), written during the 1920s and 1930s, provide commentary on the Gospel readings for all Great Feasts and Sundays of the liturgical year. Published in English by Lazarica Press.

From these homilies:

The Life of St. Sava (1951)

St. Sava — born Rastko Nemanjic in 1173 — was a prince of Serbia who renounced his throne. He fled to Mount Athos, became a monk, founded the great monastic house of Hilandar, and in 1219 was appointed the first archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church. He died in 1236. The Serbian people venerate him as their spiritual enlightener.

St. Nikolai wrote Sava's biography in exile. After his liberation from Dachau, he could not return to communist Yugoslavia. He settled in America and taught at Orthodox seminaries. In 1951, living at St. Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois — a monastery he had helped establish in the 1920s — he published The Life of St. Sava.

The work is direct and clear. Brief chapters trace Sava's life from his departure as a young prince to his death and glorification. Nikolai's meditations on each episode draw out the spiritual meaning. Published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press in 1989 with an introduction by Veselin Kesich.

Serbia's most beloved modern saint wrote the definitive biography of Serbia's most beloved ancient saint. Seven centuries apart, the same faith.

The War and the Exile

St. Nikolai's life was split by war. His earlier works — the Prologue, Prayers by the Lake, the Missionary Letters, the Homilies — were written during two decades of relative peace in his Ohrid and Zica dioceses. Then came the German occupation.

Two other works belong to his years of captivity: Three Prayers in the Shadow of German Bayonets and a Petitionary Canon and Prayers to the Most Holy Mother of God, through whose intercession he believed he had survived. The full account of his imprisonment is here.

In America, he continued writing. The Faith of the Saints (1949) is an Orthodox catechism written in English — eight chapters on the fundamentals of Orthodox Christianity, including the "Our Father" prayer and the Ten Commandments. Cassiana — the Science on Love appeared in 1952. The Only Love of Mankind was published after his death in 1958.

The Complete Nikolai Velimirovic Books in English

The complete works of St. Nikolai Velimirovic fill twenty-three volumes, published in Serbian by Glas Crkve (Voice of the Church) in Valjevo, Serbia.

In English, the major publishers are:

Aphorisms. Epic hagiography. Lakeside prayers. Prison diaries. Philosophical works on nature. Pastoral letters to a suicidal peasant. Twenty-three volumes, and one thread: a man who saw God everywhere — in the water, in the letters of his people, in the symbols of the visible world, in the barbed wire of a concentration camp.

He saw God, and he wrote what he saw. Twenty-three volumes at the foot of the mount.