The beauty and luxury shown in the videos of the Sergiev Posad monastery immediately called to mind the descriptions the Russians used when explaining why they adopted the Greek religious tradition in The Tale of Bygone Years. The embroidered gold vestments of the priests, the vaulted ceilings covered with gold moldings and saints portraits, and the layered choral music all evoked the sentiment of the words, “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth…for on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty” (The Tale of Bygone Years 67). However, this “splendor” contrasted sharply with St. Theodosius’s self-abnegation in Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius. St. Theodosius as a “divine youth” dressed in “poor and patched” clothing as a child against his parents’ wishes for him to look more presentable, because he “willed even more to be like one of the poor” (Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius 120-121). As he grows older, St. Theodosius does everything in his power to “humble his soul with moderation and mortify his flesh through labor and religious striving” (Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius 126). Nestor, the monk who authored this story, praises St. Theodosius’s “humility” multiple times throughout the story whenever he describes St. Theodosius’s extreme self-denial. Why is St. Theodosius’s self-deprivation of sensory pleasures so praised in Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius when the Russian Orthodox services are valued for the presence of sensory pleasures? St. Theodosius’s behaviors were seen by his parents to “bring shame” on his family; perhaps his behavior was on the one hand reviled and on the other revered because it deviated from the cultural norm of appreciating material luxury. Those who understood his holiness were able to be in awe of his almost super-human actions.