Father Sergius is a story written by Leo Tolstoy between 1890 and 1898 and first published (posthumously) in 1911.

For some weeks Father Sergius had been living with one persistent thought: whether he was right in accepting the position in which he had not so much placed himself as been placed by the Archimandrite and the Abbot. That position had begun after the recovery of the fourteen-year-old boy. From that time with each month week and day that passed Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being replaced by external life.

-Goodreads