Segei Iosifovitch Fudel (1900 - 1977)

Monasticism

For some reason, I would like to begin my memoirs with the monastery.

I read some of the truest words about the monastery in the writings of Gregory Skovoroda, a little-known 18th Century Russian philosopher. In one of his letters, he said: “A monk is Christ’s disciple, in all things like his Teacher. You will say that an Apostle is greater than a monk. I agree. Yet only a monk can become an Apostle. One who exercises control over himself is a monk. One who wins over others, becomes an Apostle. While living in solitude, Christ was a monk.”

True monasticism is the eternally living, never ceasing, Christianity of the early Church.

* * *

Nature, the countryside here [in the Zosima Hermitage – Ed.] is unlike that in Optina. Here, in the North, a spruce forest surrounds the monastery. It is amazing how nature reveals itself to people when it is at the walls of the church. One row of windows in the guesthouse opened onto the forest, and I remember how in winter, you would open the wide ventilation pane and apprehend the smell of snows among the spruce trees, and surrounding unfathomable and unimaginable quiet. Everything alive, fresh and incorrupt filled with the aroma of purity.

Wherever there are monks, true disciples of Christ, near them blossom the most precious flowers of the earth; the warmest joy on earth is near their walls.

Church

Deception has always existed, but those stronger people who opposed it always sought out, and always found, the true Church. They went to isolated monasteries and into the forests, to [seek out] elders and fools for Christ, to Amvrossy of Optina or to John of Kronstadt, to people who possessed not only correct faith, but righteous life. In fact it is they, whether living in city or desert, who are the true Church. As Fr. Valentin Sventsitsky said, all manner of evil done by men who only consider themselves to be part of the Church is evil and sin not of the Church, but against the Church.

* * *

The Church can be neither socialist, nor capitalist, nor feudal. It can only be the Church of God, and as it ceases to be only of God, it either ceases to be the Church or is transformed from the Church of Christ to the state church, regardless of the system or court under which it exists. It is precisely this that is the secularization of the Church – whether capitalist, socialist or feudal, cujus regio eius religio: whoever rules, his is the religion (Latin.). Secularization may be to various depths or degrees, but its essence remains the same: substituting lack of faith for faith, and sin for purity.

Our being in the Church is not by right: it is always a Miracle and an Unexpected Joy.

* * *

The Church is the mystery of surmounting loneliness. That should be felt with absolute reality, so that, when you are standing in church, only then do you truly approach the walls of the Church of God. When the ray of love had barely, but perceptibly, begun to melt the ice of loneliness, and you are already unaware of what just before had been erecting barbed wire around you: You notice neither the priest’s lack of faith (whether real or only imagined), nor the anger of “rubric (obsessed) old ladies,” nor the wild curiosity of two fellows who had wandered in, not the commercial transactions being discussed at the candle stand. Through all of that, you move toward someone whose soul is yet blinded, toward someone who perhaps in a moment will hear better and more clearly than you the voice of Man and God, the voice of Jesus Christ.

* * *

Evil has always existed within the boundaries of the Church alongside the never-dying life of Christ’s Church. One should look upon this with eyes wide open; one must always know that “the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table.” St. John Chrysostom was not afraid to recognize that fact, and spoke of the spiritual disease afflicting his local Church. [St.] John of Kronstadt said: “Not having recognized the spirit which kills, you will not recognize the Life-giving Spirit. It is only by seeing the direct contradictions between Good and Evil, life and death, that we will be able to clearly distinguish the one from the other.”

For the Church, the times are such that it is especially important for Christians to see clearly, so that they might “recognize the one and the other.”

* * *

Only the Holy Church is the Church, but the reality of the Holy Church is a mystery not fully open to us: With our eyes, we cannot plainly see the Body of Christ. One could assert that to be in the Church, one must also be in the Truth, in the Holy Things of God. However, we do not know who actually is, or is not, in any given moment. It was for this reason that the Lord said not to gather up the tares “lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.” This must be understood first of all in the sense that now you and I, or she, are tares, and in an hour, both you and I, and she, might become the wheat, or as Irenaeus of Lyon said, “man himself is the reason that he sometimes becomes the wheat, and sometimes the straw.” (Against the Heresies, Book 4, Chapter 4.)

* * *

Two boys, one about 6 years old, the other younger, entered a church. It was obvious that the younger one had never been there, before, and that the older one was acting as a tour guide. At the Crucifix, the younger one froze and with eyes opened wide, he asked, “And why did this happen?” The older one answered confidently, “That was for [speaking] the truth.”

However, we need to recognize the fact that the world is isolated from the Church: we have no right not to know that the world does not want the Church, that it opposes the Church. The Lord’s valedictory speech, recorded by the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John, is a Last Will and Testament. It speaks of the Church as remaining in the world and as surrounded by the world’s hatred and lack of faith.

“Even the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him… (John 14: 17) “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see Me…” (Jn. 14: 19) “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” (Jn. 15: 19). “…ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice…" (Jn 16: 20). “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (Jn. 16: 33). The Lord was victorious on the Cross through His love for that same world.

* * *

Sanctity is the reality of communion with the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the whole question of the Church comes down to its sanctity, its being filled with the Holy Spirit, the individuals of whom the Church consists, being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Once the Church is not holy, it is no longer either One, or Conciliar/Catholic, or Apostolic.

As we can see, the Church as embodied by Its representatives, is losing its sanctity; man therefore believes in It less and less and It has less and less meaning for the world. You cannot fool people with international religious conferences, with their calls for social reforms or actions. In his bitter history, he has already seen and heard too many learned conferences, together with their wonderful programs. Man knows that only God can save him – save him through His Blood and His Power, which in answer to that Blood, all people should have apprehended and received with love and spiritual struggle. That is why it is so frightening to see holiness become so scarce in the world and in the Church. The world does not desire after either spiritual struggle or love.

When things are coming to a close, there will remain but “two or three” whose sanctity remains unconquered. They will be the Church of Christ, and the light of their sanctity will be such that it cannot be contained by this history. That will be the end. Those “two” undefeated ones will show that the Kingdom of God and the Will of God are accomplished on earth as in Heaven, and that all mankind could have become as they are.

Faith

There exists customary, habitual faith and faith that is felt. We always find it easier to remain in the first, no matter what our custom, whether it be of a social or a rational nature, as among the sectarians. Custom does not require anything spiritually difficult of us. A sensed faith requires a life of spiritual struggle, works of love and humility. And only that gives a sensation of the Church, something of which we have so awfully little, something of which we often had not even heard. “What this about sensing the Church! Is this perhaps even some kind of new sectarianism?”

It was but to this sensing of the reality of the Holy Church, to the sensing of Its holy presence in history, that years of imprisonment and exile brought many of us.

I remember one November morning in a prison cell in 1922. Sometimes, if the snows have not yet covered the ground, November mornings are even darker than December mornings. It is the loneliest time of the year, a time of boredom for nature and for the heart. And on such mornings it is especially difficult to get up. You open your eyes, and there is that same dusty lightbulb which, by regulation, is left burning all night. Except for the sound of a door slamming somewhere down below, it is still quiet in the corridor. But I see that Fr. Valentin and Fr. Vasily are already getting up, and suddenly, like a beam of light, a warm, triumphant thought breaks through the wall of inner cold: Yes, today they are going to serve the Liturgy! Today, there on that little table at the window, the flame will once again burn, and once again, through all of the walls and cold, the tin prison cup will be lifted up for all men, for the entire suffering world.

“Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee in behalf of all and for all.” We have nothing but that; yet that is precisely what the world most needs.

Prayer before the icon

It is hard to pray without Icons. An Icon gathers and concentrates prayer, just as a magnifying glass gathers the scattered rays into one burning focal point. The Fathers taught that the Icon is the confirmation of the reality of Christ’s human body, and that whoever spurns the Icon at the same time fails to believe in the reality of the Divine Incarnation, i.e. in the human nature of the Incarnate God.

Prayer

On the one hand, Fr. Valentin Sventsitsky, seemed to be an ordinary married priest with a family, but on the other, he was an experienced teacher of unceasing prayer. It is amazing that, already in 1925, in parish churches in the center of Moscow, he was someone fervently preaching great prayerful podvig [spiritual struggle]. He did a great deal in the realm of advocacy and explanation of the faith, but his main significance rests in his challenge to everyone to pray without ceasing, to maintain an unceasing burning of the spirit.

He said, “Prayer builds the walls around our monasteries in the world."

He, after all, expressed a brief formula to resolve all of the complexities of the problem of evil within the church. He said, “Any sin within the Church is a sin not of the Church, but against the church.” From this it may be understood that a schism within the Church for reasons of a decline in morality, much less a schism for other reasons, is first and foremost religious nonsense, thoughtlessness. Everything we see within the boundaries of the Church that is distorted, unclean, incorrect, is not the Church, and one need not go outside [the Church’s] boundaries to avoid having any association with such things; one need only not participate in them. Then, the words, “…for one who is pure, all is pure…” will be fulfilled.

* * *

“Prayer is born of love.” Is that not the same as to say “Prayer is born of tears?” I came to understand that after hearing a certain contemporary maiden respond to a question someone posed to her in church: “How does one learn to pray?” She was not frightened by such a difficult question, and immediately replied: “Go and weep, and you will learn.” That maiden added to the body of the Ancient Patericon.

* * *

You need to know the teachings of the fathers about the fact that while for a person any virtue – e.g. fasting – can become one’s own as a habit, prayer always remains as it were, not habitual. The fathers used to say that prayer is angelic good work. How often do you become convinced of that unique characteristic of prayer when you lead yourself with such difficulty into your morning prayers, i.e. to step onto such an apparently well-worn path. This is why, the fathers teach, any faltering, any interruption in prayer is so dangerous, and why on the other hand, how grace-filled is forcing oneself as if with a whip, to practice one’s “rule.” The Kingdom of God is taken by force, by forcing oneself. It is likewise said that the Kingdom of God is in the heart. You take your heart in your warm but firm hand, and prayer begins to take root.

Fr. Valentin Sventsitsky taught that ceaseless prayer should not be interrupted even during church services.

Meaning of Life

…the meaning of life is frighteningly simple: to strive always and in every circumstance to preserve the warmth of the heart, knowing that it will be yet needed by someone, that we are always yet needed by someone.

Love

If one takes fasting to be first and foremost abstinence from dislike, and not abstinence from butter, it will be a bright fast, and its duration will be the “happy time of Lent” (Stichera on “Lord I have cried” Tuesday Vespers for the 2nd Week of Great Lent.

"Grant unto my heart the most pure immaculate fear of Thee, in my soul perfect love" (Stichera on “Lord I have cried” Thursday Vespers for the 3rd week of Great Lent).

Dislike, lack of love, is the most awful intemperance, gluttony and self-intoxication, the original affront to the Holy Spirit of God. The Apostle writes, “I beseech you…for the love of the Spirit.” [Romans 15 :30]

Love opposes both pride and malice. According to St Irenaeus of Lyons (Against the Heresies, Vol. 2, Chapter 30), in the evening prayer we ask the Holy Spirit, “the Creator of the world,” to forgive especially those sins which are against love: “If I have … blamed or reproached anyone, or in my anger have detracted or slandered anyone, or grieved anyone, or I have got angry about anything, or have told a lie…, or if a beggar has come to me and I despised or neglected him, or if I have troubled my brother or quarreled with him, or if I have condemned anyone, or have boasted or have been proud… or made fun of my brother’s sin…”

Love and Prayer

The holy fathers, men of prayer, would also say “Love is higher than prayer.” The very people who confirmed that love was the source of prayer would say this.

I once lived in a secluded village. It was Great Saturday. There was no service in the church, and as I was utterly alone, I was preparing to read the Paschal Matins during the night. Suddenly a traveler knocked, and asked to spend the night. I became greatly upset, almost indignant: “So I won’t be able to pray!” And so, in my madness, I directed him to the neighbors. Apparently, both the night and my intention to pray, left with him.

There are sins that are not forgiven for ages.

One must distinguish prayer from that certain, repulsive “prayerful sensuality,” in which is no love and in which you keep in mind only yourself, standing on the “heights of prayer.”

* * *

Sobornost’ [conciliarity] is the unity of a Christian with the Body of Christ. “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Мatthew 18: 20). Sobornost’ is the Divine-human unity of love, i.e. the Church. The Church is in fact Sobornost’, the sobor [council] or sbor [assembly] of Christ’s disciples in the “Temple of His Body.”

“That the two might be one.” By not allowing the pilgrim to come in, by refusing the “love feast,” I refused sobornost with him and with the entire Church. On that Paschal night, having read through all of the appointed texts, it appears that I was already completely outside the Church.

Love and humility

Here is why it is necessary to write about love and lack of love, about sanctity and lack of sanctity: The heart of the religious way of life lies therein.

But to write of love is first of all to write of humility, or to phrase it more exactly, of the humility of love, for love does not seek after its own, it forgets about “its own,” and give up its own in humility. Only humility can forget about itself. Humility is that very nature of giving up oneself, of sacrificing oneself for love. The military pilot Exupйry spoke the following “patristic” words: “To lay down the foundation for love, one has to begin with sacrifice.” Humility is in fact “sacrifice.” “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” (Psalm 50 Septuagint/Psalm 51 KJV)

Humility

In a letter written in 1937, Fr. Seraphim (Batyugov) said the following about humility: “Humility is unceasing prayer, faith, hope and love of a trembling soul which has dedicated its entire life to the Lord. Humility is the door that opens up the heart and renders it capable of spiritual experiences.”

Perhaps the most difficult form of humility is the humility not to demand that others love you. Certainly, you can sigh after it (“O lord! I am freezing!”), but you cannot demand it, even internally. After all, we were given a commandment to love people, but we were never given any commandment that we should demand that others love us. Love means not to demand anything for oneself. And when we achieve that, God’s love, like a shiny little bird, settles down into our hearts and fills everything to overflowing.

* * *

Fr. Valentin Svenstitsky said to me, “We teach of love and humility, and yet as soon as someone on the bus steps on our toes, we immediately hate him.”

The Fathers taught that humility in words [alone] is an exercise in pride. One who strives to achieve Christian thought without having to make any great effort, sometimes with some great sense of enjoyment talks about himself as a “great sinner,” or in response to a request for prayer, responds with the tiresome formula, “My prayer is unworthy.” But just try to sincerely say about yourself, “I am simply not a good person,” or “I am an unclean person,” you will quickly understand how hard - or even impossible - it is for you to say those words.

Prison

Prison is first and foremost a school of human interaction. Of course, it is possible that for one in such a compulsory school to have it turn into a complete fiasco. However, with God’s help, only sorrow for such a person – i.e. the beginning of love for him – will abide in your heart. A contemporary scientist once told me that in his entire life, but one act seemed to him to have been truly significant: not his scientific discoveries and studies, and not his endurance through several years of difficult solitary confinement where he would freeze in the winter; it was the mere fact that once, himself having nothing, he broke apart his cherished prison ration of bread, and gave half to a hungry, complete stranger. He was not boasting of it to me. Rather, he related it to me as a scientist who, affirming some fact that was remarkable, but at the same time absolutely clear to him.

Repentance, confession, fasting

When I read the following words of St. Ephraim of Syria regarding confession, I remembered the force of habit:

“If it is only custom that draws you to the Physician, you will not gain your health… The All-merciful demands love of those who want to come to Him, and if the one who comes brings love and tears, he will receive the gift (of forgiveness) for free.”

Purity and holiness are achieved through repentance. Fr. Alexander Elchaninov would say “The state of being repentant is already a degree of holiness.” To complete the Mystery of Confession, the priest covers the head of the penitent with his epitrachilion, and pronounces the prayer “Receive and unite him (the penitent) to Thy Holy Church.” Even if we should confess daily, he will always pronounce that prayer of churching over each of us. We sin daily, and therefore, on a daily basis, are in need of cleansing and reconciliation to the Church through repentance.

Living without repentance, we live outside the Church.

Confession

Matushka Smaragda attended a church served by a priest who was not a believer. Although Matushka Smaragda knew that, she had nowhere else to go. Therefore, she would go to Confession to that priest in the following way: First she would confess privately, alone in her cell before the icon of St. Spiridon of Tremithus, whom she especially revered, and then would go to church for public Confession. That public Confession was an essential, open, podvig of humility and a lesson on the impermissibility of schism. She once told a close friend that after one of these dual confessions she had a dream in which she saw someone standing on the kliros and handing each person a flower; to her he handed two, and said “This if for your two Confessions.”

Christian rejection of the world. Fasting.

It is very important to understand that Christian rejection of the world not only is not rejection of love toward the world, but quite the contrary, is its first true affirmation. I consciously said “toward the world,” although I could have said “toward people, ” and then no one would have been troubled, and no one would have cited to me the passage from the Epistles “do not love the world.” They remember that passage without understanding it, and they forget the other passage “God so loved the world.” God loved the world, while we do not, and because we do not, we do not want to participate in what is said farther on in that same passage. “God so loved the world that He gave His […] Son” (John 3: 16).

We judge the world with full appreciation of our right to judge it, although again in that passage it says that “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” And how can we, possessing no love, give ourselves for people? Only the sanctity of love can ascend to Golgotha.

To not love the world is first of all not to love oneself, one's darkness and sin, it means first of all to recognize oneself as the world itself, dark and unloving. Then upon the dislike a person has for the world will dawn a ray of love toward people, a great compassion for the world.

* * *

Fasting can be understood only in this world. Fasting is the beginning to overcoming “too much of the human,” the beginning of conquering organic nature in order to take it into the boundless, to allow it to experience the fragrance of Eternity.

Unfortunately, we pass on this inheritance from a disappearing religious era to young Christians in some distorted or misunderstood form.

St. Maximos the Confessor taught: “any ascetic labor that is a stranger to love is not pleasing to God.” And yet, this was a most well-known fact: fasting was done in pride of ascetic struggle, i.e. without love, and therefore often brought us not to a reduction of, but to even greater increase in coldness and enmity toward the world.

Everything in Christianity is determined by and measured against love.

Salvation

The holy fathers said a great deal about the fact that a man’s salvation from sin, or to put it another way, his elevation toward God, comes through his neighbor, through people. Likewise, it is through others that spiritual death comes to him.

We can be ill disposed toward others, pridefully put on airs before them, and pant with lust for them; in those three evils we die. We can also love someone, humble ourselves before him, and look upon him with a pure, chaste eye. It is when this happens within us that we suddenly recognize that every person is an “image not made by hands,” an image behind which stands Christ Himself. The practice of a Christian life therefore rests on always having Christ stand between me and every other person... We should see people only through Christ.

Wisdom

St. Barsonophius the Great, a 6th Century spiritual struggler and bearer of Apostolic faith, spoke best about combining overall human knowledge, or the “wisdom of the world,” and Divine Wisdom [Sophia].

“You must not pay attention only to worldly wisdom, for if a man should not possess the spiritual wisdom [sophia] granted from on high, then the first will be of no use to him. Blessed is he who possesses the one and the other.” (Answer 822). How few in number are those “blessed ones” who have been able to enter into the mystery of that harmony.

Grace

“Focused, unquenchable warmth” in the heart is the grace of God, who took up His abode there, making the heart simple and sincere.

Fr. Nektary of Optina taught: “Ask grace of God… Simply pray,‘O Lord, grant me Thy grace.’” One must not solicit, but rather simply ask, for in so doing, we ask that the heart ever be simple, sincere, and warm. To ask for grace is the same as one who is freezing asking for warmth. “Come then,… let us clothe ourselves in Him, that we may warm ourselves….” (Ikos for Theophany).

Married Life

To live a married life, one needs to have a calling, just as for monastic life.

Reading for strengthening your faith

One often hears from those who have recently entered the Church the question: “What should I read to strengthen my faith?” There is but one book within Christianity – the New Testament - that completely reveals it. All of the others do so [only] to a greater or lesser degree; therefore, the other books which speak positively about Christianity should not be taken unconditionally. The words of St. Barsonuphius the Great bring us into extremely close, intimate contact with the words of the Apostle Paul: such is the power of the spirit of the holy fathers. However, there is also a multitude of books with the most Orthodox of titles, and with the best of intentions, that either cloud or even distort Christianity.

The Apostle said, “The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword…” [Hebrews 4:12]. Only such a sword can cleave through the darkness and tangle of theological and semi-religious literature, and lay out for man a path that is as clear as a beam of light. However, to read the Word of God already requires making a podvig, an effort.

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God”

You want to say to those young Christians who, out of the religious immaturity of youth throw themselves into a search after the externals, e.g. akathists, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” and then perhaps akathists will be added unto you. While they find akathists and then calm down, we are commanded to seek communion with the Lord, and communion with people.

St. Ephraim of Syria would say: Monasticism is not clothing, not (even!) tonsure, but divine desire and living heavenly life.”

We may not even dream of living such a life, but we all should have that “divine desire” a desire for the divine movement of the Holy Spirit. Only that is Christianity’s goal, and St. Seraphim’s talk “on the goal of Christian life” reveals this mystery to us. It calls us, sweeping us from the path the deceptions of externals and cold withdrawal into ourselves, it confirms our single, constant task, that of uniting with the Lord, communing with God.

Life of Saints

One should read saints’ lives, but should not always limit one’s perception of a given saint to the words of the text. One should desire to learn about something that perhaps is not said therein. In “lives” [hagiography] of the saints there is sometimes a certain clouding of the image, of the individuality of the saint; i.e. the saint’s reality in the divine-human sense sometimes hides in an unremitting, unchanging fog, a kind of pious standardization thanks to which the great miracle of a person’s transfiguration, that “breathing of Jesus” every saint carries within his breath, is left unseen and unheard.

There is no fog in the accounts of the lives of St. Sergius and especially of St. Seraphim, although they describe great miracles wrought by them. This is why the image of St. Seraphim is so especially near and dear to us, so all-powerful in relation to us. This is why it is such a joy to throw back your head on a bright summer day, to gaze at the light little clouds and suddenly realize that they, those very clouds, had moved across the sky above Sarov in that same way while the Venerable One himself was walking there. There is such a great revelation in that realization: I truly am living with them under that same undying blue heaven of the Russian Church.

Prayer Rule in Contemporary life

Contemporary city life seems to crowd out a long-practiced prayer rule. That is something that seems [to me] due not only to hostility between life and prayer. Even for a family of believers, it is difficult to set aside an hour of peace in today’s accelerated pace; even for such a family, it is difficult to openly pray. It is precisely this prolonged isolation that interferes with something more essential for the contemporary desert. Therefore, anyone whose life is closely involved with those of others should know the short prayer rule left [to us] by St. Seraphim, a teacher of contemporary Christianity: Recite the “Our Father” and “O Theotokos” three times, and “the Creed” once. Do so in the morning, and as instructed in that rule, go forth about your business, while appealing to God by silent repetition of a short prayer. Bishop Theophan the Recluse taught that any prayer could serve as a short morning prayer – e.g. “God attend to my need” or “Lord have mercy.”

The point of this new prayer rule rests in that it is brief at home, but ceaseless at work, among others. One should come out of one’s corner and [interact with] others, but he should do so with prayer.

Orthodox Saints

At the end of the war, 6 to 8 soldiers were on their way from the besieged area to their homes in the East. They walked along roads and across country, so as not to be caught by the Germans. One evening, totally exhausted, up to their knees in snow, they walked out onto some field. One of them said, “Truly, here’s where we freeze to death.” They set off toward a little light they spied in the distance. It turned out to be an absolutely tiny hut on a rise in the middle of the field. One of the soldiers knocked and entered. There sat a little old man, making valenki [felt boots]. Without being asked, the old man immediately told them to come in and spend the night. They all entered and crashed to the floor, immediately falling asleep in the warmth of the hut. Then somebody opened his eyes. It was already morning. They all lay in a heap, lightly dusted with snow, and not on the floor, but on the ground. Over them was not a roof, but the sky, and somewhere nearby the blagovest’ (Gospel) ring was sounding from a church bell. This happened in Western Ukraine. They jumped up and went toward the sound. When they entered the church, one of them loudly exclaimed, “There’s our host!” and pointed to an icon of St. Nicholas.

At the beginning of the war, the Germans were not far from Zagorsk (the town in which the Trinity-Sergius Lavra is located – ed.). After the night shift at the factory, one of the town residents was on her way home. It happened to be the day of St. Sergius. The sun, just coming up, illuminated the grass and flowers. But in her great fear of the approaching front, the woman did not notice either the flowers or the sun: there were little children in her home. Suddenly, a woman she did not know came up to her, and joined her in her walk. The stranger said, “Fear nothing. We are under the protection of the Venerable One. He said that ‘his city would remain whole unto the ages.’ I will explain, so that you might understand. In the 1920’s, Elder Alexei of the Zosima [Hermitage] lived here. It was here that he died in the late ’20s. The start of [the campaign] to uncover (and desecrate) relics caused the elder much anguish; why had the Lord permitted such things to happen? Once, as he began to pray, the Venerable Once stood next to him and said, “Pray and fast for three days, and then I will tell you what needs to be done.” The next two days, whenever Fr. Alexei would stand up to pray, St. Sergius would again stand next to him. On those days, Fr. Alexei subsisted on prosphora. On the third day, the Venerable One said, “When living people are subjected to such torture, the remains of those who have died must be subjected to them as well. I gave up my body so that my city would remain whole unto the ages.” The narrator added, “at that time they thought he was talking about the spotted fever (typhus) that was rampant in those years; now they understand what he was talking about.”

After listening to the story, the woman came to her home, where everyone was still asleep. Stunned and comforted, she sat down on the porch, and for the first time that morning saw the flowers and the sun.

* * *

Venerable St. Sergius was a saint who lived the 14th Century, and Fr. Aleksei Zosimovsky in the 20th Century. There are always saints in the Church.

Khomiakov would say, “Each of us constantly seeks that which the Church constantly possesses.”

Sanctity in the Church is not allegorical, for it lives in actual people or for actual people, no matter what their number, even if only “two or three gathered in My Name.”

But are we included in those “two or three?” Do we seek, as Khomiakov hoped, the grace of the Holy Spirit, which instructs and draws us to church, illumines and enlightens us, i.e. turns us into saints? Do we at the very least know that we should pray for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, i.e. of our own sanctity?

“O Comforter…having washed away the defilement of my mind, in that Thou art good, show me forth as full of Thy holiness.” (Canon to the Holy Spirit, Tone 1. Ode 1, Troparion 2.)

“O Holy Spirit...grant holiness unto all who believe on Thee." (Ode 8, Troparion 1)

“Come Thou unto us, O Holy Spirit, causing us to partake of Thy holiness, of never-waning light, divine life and most fragrant effusion; for Thou art a River of divinity proceeding from the Father through the Son." (Ode 6, Troparion 2).

Rituals

People, for example Theosophists, who somehow believe in God but do not believe in the Church ordinarily say, “Can it be that God is in need of rituals? Where is the need for this formal aspect? You only need love, beauty, and human compassion.”

When, on his way to see a girl, a man who is in love sees flowers, he picks them, or he buys flowers, to take to her; in no way does he see it as merely a formality. That is precisely the idea behind church ritual.

Love toward God naturally gives rise to beauty and humanity of ritual, apprehended as flowers brought to the feet of God. Faith is love, and is the essence of Christianity – being in love with our God and Lord and also sensing that His Body, the Church, remains and lives on earth. How could those perceptions not find expression in the external actions we call rites and rituals?

If only the external exists, i.e. if there is only an unloving mechanical process, then not only for Christianity, but for all human spheres of activity such as science, it is merely a barren self-deception and deception of others. But to talk about that, is like trying to break down doors that are already open wide; it is something clear to anyone. Formalism, or even worse, sanctimoniousness, i.e. syrupy formalism, is not Christianity, and each of us who already considers himself to be a Christian must pass through this long and narrow path from non-Chrisitianity to Christianity, from dead flowers to living ones.

Ancient Icon

We can best perceive and apprehend the heavenly realm through the prism of ancient icons. We cannot touch the reality of the other side through Raphael or Vasnetsov. In the realm of religious cognition their portraiture is what in architecture is called “false windows,” windows that, while created for purposes of symmetry, do not allow any light to penetrate. The icon is an attempt to cast off the temptation to be pretty, and to penetrate into the mystery of Divine beauty. The mystery is far loftier than nature, and thus the path to it is revealed, in the words of the Apostle, through the “foolishness of preaching.” This is why the preaching of the ancient icon is “…not with enticing word’s of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power…” (I Corinthians 2: 4).

Of course, it is quite possible to pray before a new icon, but at some point in our spiritual life, we begin to feel an attraction to perceiving a different world, to approaching the narrow, patterned, window of the ancient icon and peering through it into the world of the divine.

Meals

Before partaking of either lunch or dinner with us, Fr. Seraphim (Batyugov) would ordinarily read a prayer himself. Upon completion of the meal, he would likewise read, and not just one or two prayers, but sometimes many different prayers, and with particular love, would frankly lead us there as well; after we had consumed ordinary human food, we would be led to those distant, superhuman places which are beyond man. Usually, that series of prayers after meals would begin with something he repeated especially often: “The poor shall eat, and be filled, and those who seek the Lord shall praise Him. Their hearts shall live unto ages of ages.” In that regard, Abba Siluan of Mt. Athos’ wise formula on the norm for food comes to mind: “You should eat [only] so much that after eating you would want to pray. That is to say, if the amount of food consumed does not disturb some path of constant prayer, it is not excessive.”

Ecumenism

“The ecumenical movement is by its very nature a journey into uncertainty.” If there is [now] a “Council of Churches,” the Church has never before existed at any time in our history; i.e. all that was established by the early Christian Church, all of the subsequent patristic teachings about the uninterrupted life of the one Apostolic Church, have been struck out.

In accordance with the Apostlic holding that “God is One, and the Church is One,” we cannot help but consider blasphemous the idea of some kind of church internationalism. To not believe in “one Church” is to not believe in one single Pentecost. Contemporary ecumenism is not a universal Christianity, but merely some kind of universal alliance of Lutherans and those in sympathy with them - some kind of “pan-Lutheranism.”

“The Council of Churches” is a “Council of Disbelief in the Church,” or, as Khomiakov said, “the illusion of unity.” He also said, “The Church is not a state, for it cannot allow conditional union... The Church is not a concordance of disagreements... In the tens of various Christianities functioning together, mankind would fully consciously recognize conscious impotence and camouflaged skepticism.”

Christian atheism

The Russian Orthodox Archbishop Basil of Brussels, describing the essence of the modernist movement developing in the Anglican Church, called it “Christian atheism,” for in the words of the bishop, that renovationist religion rejects “the very foundations of Christian teaching – belief in the person of God, the Creator and Provider, belief in the Divinity of Christ, in His Resurrection and in the life to come.” (Izvestia [The News], 26 June 1969, № 114).

The basis of “Christian atheism” is lack of belief in Christianity as miracle, in the replacement of its path to Eternity with the road to earthly success. It is easiest of all to replace the path to Tabor, the path to grace-filled transfiguration of man’s nature into the Divine Nature with concerns over the earthly diseases of mankind, and [to replace] Christ’s Golgotha with social or scientific work. However, that [path] would already be not Christianity, but lack of belief in Christianity. However, is this only a matter of Anglicanism? There, perhaps they are not afraid to somewhat openly doubt in dogmas, but after all, one need not openly doubt them in order to internally have no faith in them, to not live according to them. The dogma of the Resurrection of the dead body of Christ only becomes a dogma for a person when that person himself begins to partake, through his Golgotha, in Christ’s Resurrection, when he himself dies and he himself is resurrected. When internally there is no faith in the dogmas, does not “Christian atheism” then begin, in the guise of dogmatic externals? Is not Christian atheism merely the final stage of secularization, accommodation to the world throughout the entire Church in ancient times?

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”

“We have no boldness because of the multitude of our sins…” (Hymn to the Theotokos at the 6h Hour).

Fr. Nikolai Golubtsev was bravely facing his approaching death. He said to his brother, “Sing me my favorite pokeimenon.” To the dying man, the brother sang, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”

“Making as a funeral dirge the song”

I remember going with my father along Nikolsky Lane and saying to him that I myself had heard Florensky’s explanation of the words of the Panikhida “making as a funeral dirge the song”: we transform funereal mourning into a hymn of triumphant victory.

“Everything is from, belongs to, and is for Him”

The closer one comes to the end of life, the stronger is his love for the dead. Is this not a premonition of meeting them? You joyfully sense not only them, but also the setting and things associated with them – objects, an old Gospel, a chair, a forest path, the smell of hay, the sound of bells… Apparently, nothing ever dies of what a person somehow needed on earth, of what somehow brought him toward God. Everything is from, belongs to, and is for Him.” If, as Dionysios the Areopagite said, “all things pre-exist in God,” it is impossible for anything good – whether now, in the past, or in the future – to not exist in God. We will encounter everything – all the warmth of the earth, everything cleansed and holy; it will seize and embrace us, and we will never more be separated from it. We are not going to a Hindu Nirvana, but to the House of God, where we will use our eyes to search for, and will find everyone whom we had come to love on earth.

Prayers for stillborn.

A mother experiences great sorrow upon delivering a stillborn child. A certain reverent priest gave me these two prayers about them:

1. “Remember, O man-loving Lord, the souls of Thy infants who have died in their mother’s womb, and therefore did not receive Holy Baptism. Do Thou Thyself baptize them, O Lord, in the sea of Thy generosity and save them by Thy limitless grace. Amen.”

2. (A mother's prayer). “ O Lord, have mercy upon my child which hath died in my womb. Through my faith and tears, and for the sake of Thy mercy, deprive him not of Thy Divine Light.”

Prayer for suicides.

Here I will also write down a prayer for suicides, which was given to us by the Optina Elders: “Recover, O Lord, the lost soul of Thy servant (N____), and if possible, have mercy upon him. Do not count this my prayer for a sin, but let Thy Holy Will be done.