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Text Sermons : ~Other Speakers A-F : Desert Fathers : The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 3

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spend so much labor? It is that that I spoke of, and that leads to either sense or
stupidity in people.'

" 'Forgive me, dear brother, I asked not just out of mere curiosity, but from
friendliness and Christian sympathy, and even more because about two years ago I
came across a case which gave rise to the question I put to you. It was like this:
There came to our house a certain beggar with a discharged soldier's passport. He
was old and feeble, and so poor that he was almost naked and barefoot. He spoke
little, and in such a simple way that you would take him for a peasant of the steppes.
We took him into the guesthouse, but some five days later he fell seriously ill, and so
we moved him to this very summerhouse, where we kept him quiet, and my wife and
I looked after him and nursed him. But after a while it was plain that he was nearing
his end. We prepared him for it and sent for our priest for his confession, communion,
and anointing. The day before he died, he got up and asked me for a sheet of paper
and a pen and begged me to shut the door and to let no one in while he wrote his
will, which he desired me to send after his death to his son at an address in
Petersburg. I was astounded when I saw him write, for not only did he write a
beautiful and absolutely cultured hand, but the composition also was excellent,
thoroughly- correct, and showing great delicacy of touch. In fact, I'll read you that will
of his tomorrow. I have a copy of it. All this set me wondering, and aroused my
curiosity enough to ask him about his origin and his life.

" After making me solemnly vow not to reveal it to anyone until after his death, he
told me, for the glory

of God, the story of his life. "I was Prince X ---- ," he

began. "I was very wealthy and led a most luxurious and dissipated life. After the
death of my wife, my son and I lived together, he being happily settled in military
service; he was a captain in the guards. One day when I was getting ready to go to a
ball at an important person's house, I was very angry with my valet. Unable to control
my temper, I struck him a severe blow on the head and ordered him to be sent away
to his village. This happened in the evening, and next morning the valet died from the
effects of the blow. This did not affect me very seriously. I regretted my rashness but
soon forgot the whole thing. Six weeks later, though, I began seeing the dead valet,
in my dreams to begin with—every night he disturbed me and reproached me,
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incessantly repeating, 'Conscienceless man! You are my murderer!' As time went on,
I began seeing him when I was awake also, wide awake. His appearances grew
more and more frequent with the lapse of time, till the agitation he caused me
became almost constant. And in the end he did not appear alone, but I saw at the
same time other dead men whom I had treated very badly, and women whom I had
seduced. They all reproached me ceaselessly and gave me no peace, to such an
extent that I could neither sleep nor eat nor do anything else. My strength grew utterly
exhausted, and my skin stuck to my bones. All the efforts of skilled physicians were
of no avail at all. I went abroad for a cure, but after trying it for six months, I was not
benefited in the slightest degree, and those torturing apparitions grew steadily worse
and worse. I was brought home again more dead than alive. I went through the
horrors and tortures of hell in fullest measure. I had proof then that hell exists, and I
knew what it meant! While I was in this wretched condition I recognized my own
wrongdoing. I repented and made my confession. I gave all my serfs their freedom
and took a vow to afflict myself for the rest of my days with as toilsome a life as
possible and to disguise myself as a beggar. I wanted, because of all my sins, to
become the humblest servant of people of the very lowest station in life. No sooner
had I resolutely come to this decision than those disturbing visions of mine ceased. I
felt such comfort and happiness from having made my peace with God that I cannot
adequately describe it. But just as I had been through hell before, so now I
experienced paradise, and learned what that meant also, and how the kingdom of
God is revealed in our hearts. I soon got perfectly well again and carried out my
intention, leaving my native land secretly, furnished with a discharged soldier's
passport. And now for the last fifteen years I have been wandering about the whole
of Siberia. Sometimes I hire myself out to the peasants for such work as I can do.
Sometimes I find sustenance by begging in the name of Christ. Ah, what blessedness
and what happiness and what peace of mind I enjoy in the midst of all these
privations! It can be felt to the full only by one who by the mercy of the Great
Intercessor has been brought out of hell into paradise."

" 'When he came to the end of his story he handed me the will to forward to his
son, and on the following day he died. And I have a copy of that will in a wallet lying
on my Bible. If you would like to read it I will get it for you now. . . . Here you are.'
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"I unfolded it and read thus:

In the name of God the glorious Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
My dearest son,

It is fifteen years now since you saw your father. But though you have had no
news of him, he has from time to time found means to hear of you, and cherished a
father's love for you. That love impels him to send you these few lines from his
deathbed. May they be a lifelong lesson to you!

You know how I suffered for my careless and thoughtless life; but you do not
know how I have been blessed in my unknown pilgrimage and filled with joy in the
fruits of repentance.

I die at peace in the house of one who has been good to me, and to you also; for
kindnesses showered upon the father must touch the feeling heart of a grateful son.
Render to him my gratitude in any way you can.

In bestowing on you my paternal blessing, I adjure you to remember God and to
guard your conscience. Be prudent, kindly, and considerate; treat your inferiors as
benevolently and amiably as you can; do not despise beggars and pilgrims,
remembering that only in beggary and pilgrimage did your dying father find rest and
peace for his tormented soul. I invoke God's blessing upon you, and calmly close my
eyes in the hope of life eternal, through the mercy of the Great Intercessor for men,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your father, X ------------------------------------------------

"Thus my host and I lay and chatted together, and my turn I put a question to him. 'I
suppose you are not without worries and bothers, with this guesthouse of yours? Of
course there are quite a lot of our pilgrim brotherhood who take to the life because
they have nothing to do, or from sheer laziness, and sometimes they do a little
thieving on the road; I have seen it myself.'

" There have not been many cases of that sort,' was the answer. 'We have for the
most part always come across genuine pilgrims. And if we do get the other sort, we
welcome them all the more kindly and try the harder to get them to stay with us.
Through living with our good beggars and brothers in Christ they often become
reformed characters and leave the guesthouse humble and kindly folk. Why, there
was a case of that sort not so long ago. He was a man belonging to the lower middle
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class of our town here, and he went so thoroughly to the bad that it came to the point
of everybody driving him away from their doors with a stick and refusing to give him
even a crust of bread. He was a drunken, quarrelsome bully, and what is more he
stole. That was the sort of person he was when one day he came to us, very hungry,
and asked for some bread and wine, for the latter of which he was extraordinarily
eager. We gave him a friendly reception and said, "Stay with us and we will give you
as much wine as you like, but only on this condition, that when you have been
drinking, you go straight away and lie down and go to sleep. If you get in the slightest
degree unruly or troublesome, not only shall we turn you out and never take you back
again, but I shall report the matter to the police and have you sent off to a penal
settlement as a suspected vagabond." He agreed to this and stopped with us. For a
week or more he certainly did drink a great deal, to his heart's content. But because
of his promise and because of his attachment to the wine, which he was afraid of
being deprived of, he always lay down to sleep afterward, or took himself off to the
kitchen garden and lay down there quietly enough. When he was sober again the
brothers of the guesthouse talked persuasively to him and gave him good advice
about learning to control himself, if only little by little to begin with. So he gradually
began to drink less, and in the end, some three months later, he became quite a
temperate person. He has taken a situation somewhere now, and no longer leads a
futile life of dependence on other people's charity. The day before yesterday he came
here to thank me.'

"What wisdom! I thought, made perfect by the guidance of love! and aloud I said,
'Blessed be God, who has so shown His grace in the household under your care.'
After this talk we slept for an hour or an hour and a half till we heard the bells for
matins. We got ready and went over to the church. On going in we at once saw the
lady of the house, who had been there some time already with her children. We were
all present at matins, and the Divine Liturgy went straight on afterward. The head of
the house with his little boy and I took our places within the altar,11 while his wife and
the little girl stood near the altar window, where they could see the elevation of the
holy gifts. How earnestly they prayed as they knelt and shed tears of joy! And I wept
to the full myself as I looked at the light on their faces. After the service was over, the
gentlefolk, the priest, the servants, and the beggars all went off together to the dining
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room. There were some forty or so beggars, and cripples and sick folk and children.
They all sat down at one and the same table, and how peaceful and silent it all was! I
plucked up my courage and said quietly to my host, 'They read the lives of the saints
during meals in monasteries. You might do the same. You've got the whole series of
books.' " 'Let us adopt the plan here, Mary,' said he, turning to his wife, 'it will be most
edifying. I will begin, and read at the first dinnertime, then you at the next, then the
batyushka,12 and after that the rest of the brothers who know how to read, in turn.'

"The priest began to talk and eat at the same time. 'I like listening, but as for
reading—well, with all respect I should like to be let off. You have no idea what a
whirl I live in when I get home, worries and jobs of all sorts, first one thing has to be
done and then another, what with a host of children and animals into the bargain—
my whole day is filled up with things to do. There's no time for reading or study. I've
long ago forgotten even what I learned at the seminary.' I shuddered as I heard this,
but our hostess, who was sitting near me, took my hand and said, 'Batyushka talks
like that because he is so humble, he always makes little of himself, but he is really a
man of most kindly and saintly life. He has been a widower for the last twenty years
and is bringing up a whole family of grandchildren. For all that he holds services very
frequently.' At these words there came into my mind the following saying of Nicetas
Stethatus in The Philokalia: 'The nature of things is judged by the inward disposition
of the soul,' that is, a man gets his ideas about his neighbors from what he himself is.
And he goes on to say, 'He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of
the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the
sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to
shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust.'

"We fell silent again. Opposite me sat one of the beggars from the guesthouse
who was quite blind. The master of the house was looking after him. He cut up his
fish for him, gave him his spoon, and poured out his soup.

"I watched carefully and saw that this beggar always had his mouth open and that
his tongue was moving all the time, as though it were trembling. Surely, thought I, he
must be one of those who pray. And I went on watching. Right at the end of dinner an
old woman was taken ill. It was a sharp attack, and she began to groan. Our host and
his wife took her into their bedroom and laid her on their bed, where the lady stayed
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to look after her. Her husband meanwhile ordered his carriage and went off at a
gallop to the town for a doctor. The priest went to fetch the Reserved Sacrament, and
we all went our ways.

"I felt as it were hungry for prayer, an urgent need to pour out my soul in prayer,
and I had not been in quiet nor alone for forty-eight hours. I felt as though there were
in my heart a sort of flood struggling to burst out and flow through all my limbs. To
hold it back caused me severe, even if comforting, pain in the heart, a pain that
needed to be calmed and satisfied in the silence of prayer. And now I saw why those
who really practice interior self-acting prayer have fled from the company of men and
hidden themselves in unknown places. I saw further why the venerable Isikhi called
even the most spiritual and helpful talk mere idle chatter if there were too much of it,
just as Ephrem the Syrian says, 'Good speech is silver, but silence is pure gold.'

"As I thought all this over, I made my way to the guesthouse, where everyone was
resting after dinner. I went up into the attic, where I quietly rested and prayed.

"When the beggars were about again, I found the blind man and took him off to
the kitchen garden, where we sat down alone and began to talk. 'Tell me, please,'
said I, 'do you for the sake of your soul say the prayer of Jesus?'

" 'I have said it without stopping for a long while.'

" 'But what sort of feeling do you get from it?'

" 'Only this, that day or night I cannot live without the prayer.'

" 'How did God show it you? Tell me about it, tell me everything, dear brother.'

" 'Well, it was like this. I belong to this district and used to earn my living by doing
tailoring jobs. I traveled about different provinces going from village to village, and
made clothes for the peasants. I happened to stay a fairly long time in one village in
the house of a peasant for whose family I was making clothing. One day, a holy day it
was, I saw three books lying near the icons, and I asked who it was in the household
that could read. "No one," they answered; "those books were left us by an uncle; he
knew how to read and write." I picked up one of the books, opened it at random, and
read, as I remember to this very hour, the following words: "Ceaseless prayer is to
call upon the name of God always, whether a man is conversing, or sitting down, or
walking, or making something, or eating, whatever he may be doing, in all places and
at all times, he ought to call upon God's name." Reading that started me thinking how
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simple that would be for me. I began to say the prayer in a whisper while I was
sewing, and I liked it. People living in the same house with me noticed it and began
to make fun of me. "Are you a wizard or what?" they asked, "going on whispering all
the time?" or "What are you muttering charms about?" So to hide what I was doing, 1
gave up moving my lips and went on saying the prayer with my tongue only. In the
end I got so used to the prayer that my tongue went on saying it by itself day and
night, and I liked it. I went about like that for a long while, and then all of a sudden I
became quite blind. Almost everyone in our family gets "dark water"13 in the eyes.
So, because I was so poor, our people got me into the almshouse at Tobolsk, which
is the capital of our province. I am on my way there now, only the gentry have kept
me here because they want to give me a cart as far as Tobolsk.'

" 'What was the name of the book you read? Wasn't it called The Philokalia?'

" 'Honestly, I don't know. I didn't even look at the title page.'

"I fetched my Philokalia and looked out in part four those very words of the
patriarch Callistus which he had said by heart, and I read them to him.

" 'Why, those are the very same words!' cried the blind man. 'How splendid! Go on
reading, brother.'

"When I got to the lines, 'One ought to pray with the heart,' he began to ply me
with questions. 'What does that mean? How is that done?'

"I told him that full teaching on praying with the heart was given in this same book,
The Philokalia. He begged me eagerly to read the whole thing to him.

" 'This is what we will do,' said I. 'When are you starting for Tobolsk?'

" 'Straight away,' he answered.

" 'Very well then, I am also going to take the road again tomorrow. We will go
together and I will read it all to you, all about praying with the heart, and I will show
you how to find where your heart is, and to enter it.'

" 'And what about the cart?' he asked.

" 'What does the cart matter! We know how far it is to Tobolsk, a mere hundred
miles. We will take it easy, and think how nice it will be going along, just us two
together alone, talking and reading about the prayer as we go.' And so it was agreed.
"In the evening our host came himself to call us all to supper, and after the meal we
told him that the blind man and I were taking the road together, and that we did not
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need a cart, so as to be able to read The Philokalia more easily. Hearing this he said,
'I also liked The Philokalia very much, and I have already written a letter and got the
money ready to send to Petersburg when I go into court tomorrow, so as to get a
copy sent me by return of post.'

"So we set off on our way next morning, after thanking them very warmly for their
great love and kindness. Both of them came with us for more than half a mile from
their house. And so we bade each other good-bye.

"We went on, the blind man and I, by easy stages, doing from six to ten miles a
day. All the rest of the time we spent sitting down in lonely places and reading The
Philokalia. I read him the whole part about praying with the heart, in the order which
my departed starets had shown me, that is, beginning with the writings of Nicephorus
the monk, Gregory of Sinai, and so on. How eagerly and closely he listened to it all,
and what happiness and joy it brought him! Then he began to put such questions to
me about prayer as my mind was not equal to finding answers to. When we had read
what we needed from The Philokalia, he eagerly begged me actually to show him the
way the mind finds the heart, how to bring the divine name of Jesus Christ into it, and
how to find the joy of praying inwardly with the heart. And I told him all about it thus:
"Now you, as a blind man, can see nothing. Yet as a matter of fact you can imagine
with your mind and picture to yourself what you have seen in time past, such as a
man or some object or other, or one of your own limbs. For instance, can you not
picture your hand or your foot as clearly as if you were looking at it? Can you not turn
your eyes to it and fix them upon it, blind as they are?'

" 'Yes, I can,' he answered.

" 'Then picture to yourself your heart in just the same way, turn your eyes to it just
as though you were looking at it through your breast, and picture it as clearly as you
can. And with your ears listen closely to its beating, beat by beat. When you have got
into the way of doing this, begin to fit the words of the prayer to the beats of the heart
one after the other, looking at it all the time. Thus, with the first beat, say or think
"Lord," with the second, "Jesus," with the third, "Christ," with the fourth, "have mercy,"
and with the fifth "on me." And do it over and over again.-This will come easily to you,
for you already know the groundwork and the first part of praying with the heart.
Afterward, when you have grown used to what I have just told you about, you must
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begin bringing the whole prayer of Jesus into and out of your heart in time with your
breathing, as the Fathers taught. Thus, as you draw your breath in, say, or imagine
yourself saying, "Lord Jesus Christ," and as you breathe again, "have mercy on me."
Do this as often and as much as you can, and in a short space of time you will feel
a'slight and not unpleasant pain in your heart, followed by a warmth. Thus by God's
help you will get the joy of self-acting inward prayer of the heart. But then, whatever
you do, be on your guard against imagination and any sort of visions. Don't accept
any of them whatever, for the holy Fathers lay down most strongly that inward prayer
should be kept free from visions, lest one fall into temptation.'

"The blind man listened closely to all this and began eagerly to do with his heart
what I had shown him, and he spent a long while at it, especially during the nighttime
at our halting places. In about five days' time he began to feel the warmth very much,
as well as a happiness beyond words in his heart, and a great wish to devote himself
unceasingly to this prayer, which stirred up in him a love of Jesus Christ.

"From time to time he saw a light, though he could make out no objects in it. And
sometimes, when he made the entrance into his heart, it seemed to him as though a
flame, as of a lighted candle, blazed up strongly and happily in his heart, and rushing
outward through his throat flooded him with light; and in the light of this flame he
could see even far-off things. This did indeed happen once. We were walking through
a forest, and he was silent, wholly given up to the prayer. Suddenly he said to me,
'What a pity! The church is already on fire; there, the belfry has fallen.'

" 'Stop this vain dreaming,' I answered, 'it is a temptation to you. You must put all
such fancies aside at once. How can you possibly see what is happening in the
town? We are still seven or eight miles away from it.'

"He obeyed me and went on with his prayer in silence. Toward evening we came
to the town, and there as a matter of fact I saw several burnt houses and a fallen
belfry, which had been built with ties of timber, and people crowding around and
wondering how it was that the belfry had crushed no one in its fall. As I worked it out,
the misfortune had happened at the very same time as the blind man spoke to me
about it. And he began to talk to me on the matter. 'You told me,' said he, 'that this
vision of mine was vain, but here you see things really are as I saw them. How can I
fail to thank and to love the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shows His grace even to sinners
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and the blind and the foolish! And I thank you also for teaching me the work of the
heart.'

" 'Love Jesus Christ,' said I, 'and thank Him all you will. But beware of taking your
visions for direct revelations of grace. For these things may often happen quite
naturally in the order of things. The human soul is not bound by place and matter. It
can see even in the darkness, and what happens a long way off, as well as things
near at hand. Only we do not give force and scope to this spiritual power. We crush it
beneath the yoke of our gross bodies or get it mixed up with our haphazard thoughts
and ideas. But when we concentrate within ourselves, when we draw away from
everything around us and become more subtle and refined in mind, then the soul
comes into its own and works to its fullest power. So what happened was natural
enough. I have heard my departed starets say that there are people (even such as
are not given to prayer, but who have this sort of power, or gain it during sickness)
who see light even in the darkest of rooms, as though it streamed from every article
in it, and see things by it; who see their doubles and enter into the thoughts of other
people. But what does come directly from the grace of God in the case of the prayer
of the heart is so full of sweetness and delight that no tongue can tell of it, nor can it
be likened to anything material; it is beyond compare. Every feeling is base
compared with the sweet knowledge of grace in the heart.'

"My blind friend listened eagerly to this and became still more humble. The prayer
grew more and more in his heart and delighted him beyond words. I rejoiced at this
with all my soul and thanked God from my heart that He had let me see so blessed a
servant of His. We got to Tobolsk at last. I took him to the almshouse, and leaving
him there with a loving farewell, I went on my own way.

"I went along without hurrying for about a month with a deep sense of the way in
which good lives teach us and spur us on to copy them. I read The Philokalia a great
deal, and there made sure of everything I had told the blind man of prayer. His
example kindled in me zeal and thankfulness and love for God. The prayer of my
heart gave me such consolation that I felt there was no happier person on earth than
I, and I doubted if there could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of
heaven. Not only did I feel this in my own soul, but the whole outside world also
seemed to me full of charm and delight. Everything drew me to love and thank God:
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people, trees, plants, and animals. I saw them all as my kinsfolk; I found on all of
them the magic of the name of Jesus. Sometimes I felt as light as though I had no
body and were floating happily through the air instead of walking. Sometimes when I
withdrew into myself, I saw clearly all my internal organs and was filled with wonder
at the wisdom with which the human body is made. Sometimes I felt as joyful as if I
had been made czar. And at all such times of happiness, I wished that God would let
death come to me quickly and let me pour out my heart in thankfulness at His feet in
the world of spirits.

"It would seem that somehow I took too great a joy in these feelings, or perhaps it
was just allowed by God's will, but for some time I felt a sort of quaking and fear in
my heart. Was there, I wondered, some new misfortune or trouble coming upon me
like what had happened after I met the girl again to whom I taught the prayer of
Jesus in the chapel? A cloud of such thoughts came down upon me, and I
remembered the words of the venerable John Karpathisky, who says that 'the master
will often submit to humiliation and endure disaster and temptation for the sake of
those who have profited by him spiritually.' I fought against the gloomy thoughts, and
prayed with more earnestness than ever. The prayer quite put them to flight, and
taking heart again I said, 'God's will be done, I am ready to suffer whatever Jesus
Christ sends me for my wickedness and pride.' And those to whom I had lately shown
the secret of entry into the heart and interior prayer had even before their meeting
with me been made ready by the direct and secret teaching of God.

"Calmed by these thoughts, I went on my way again filled with consolation, having
the prayer with me and happier even than I had been before. It rained for a couple of
days, and the road was so muddy that I could hardly drag my feet out of the mire. I
was walking across the steppe, and in ten miles or so I did not find a single dwelling.
At last toward nightfall I came upon one house standing by itself right on the road.
Glad I was to see it, and I thought I would ask for a rest and a night's lodging here
and see what God sent for the morrow; perhaps the weather would get better. As I
drew near, I saw a tipsy old man in a soldier's cloak sitting on the zavalina. I greeted
him, saying, 'Could I perhaps ask someone to give me a night's lodging here?'

" 'Who else could give it you but me?' he shouted. 'I'm master here. This is a post-
house, and I am in charge of it.'
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" 'Then will you allow me, sir, to spend the night at your house?'

" 'Have you got a passport? Give some legal account of yourself.'

"I handed him my passport and, holding it in his hands, he again asked, 'Where is
your passport?'

" 'You have it in your hands,' I answered.

" 'Well, come into the house,' said he.

"He put his spectacles on, read the passport through, and said, 'All right, that's all
in order. Stay the night. I'm a good fellow really. Have a drink.'

" 'I don't drink,' I answered, 'and never have.'

" 'Well, please yourself, I don't care. At any rate have supper with us.'

"They sat down to table, he and the cook, a young woman who also had been
drinking rather freely, and asked me to sit down with them. They quarreled all through
supper, hurling reproaches at each other, and in the end came to blows. The man
went off into the passage and to his bed in a lumber room, while the cook began to
tidy up and wash up the cups and spoons, all the while going on with the abuse of
her master. I took a seat, thinking it would be some time before she quieted down. So
I asked her where I could sleep, for I was very tired from my journey. 'I will make you
up a bed,' she answered. And she placed another bench against the one under the
front window, spread a felt blanket over them, and gave me a pillow. I lay down and
shut my eyes as though asleep. For a long while yet the cook bustled about, but at
last she tidied up, put out the fire, and was coming over toward me. Suddenly the
whole window, which was in a corner at the front of the house—frame, glass, and
splinters of wood—flew into shivers, which came showering down with a frightful
crash. The whole house shook, and from outside the window came a sickening
groan, and shouts and the noise of struggling. The woman sprang back in terror into
the middle of the room and fell in a heap on the floor. I jumped up with my wits all
astray, thinking the earth had opened under my feet. And the next thing I saw was
two drivers carrying a man into the house so covered with blood that you could not
even see his face. And this added still more to my horror. He was a king's messenger
who had galloped here to change horses. His driver had not taken the turn into the
gateway properly, the carriage pole stove in the window, and as there was a ditch in
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front of the house, the carriage overturned and the king's messenger was thrown out,
cutting his head badly on a sharp post.

"He asked for some water and wine to bathe his wound. Then he drank a glass,
and cried, 'Horses!'

"I went up to him and said, 'Surely, sir, you won't travel any further with a wound
like that?'

" 'A king's messenger has no time to be ill,' he answered, and galloped off.

"The drivers dragged the senseless woman into a corner near the stove and
covered her with a rug, saying, 'She was badly scared. She'll come round all right.'
The master of the house had another glass and went back to bed, and I was left
alone. Very soon the woman got up again and began walking across the room from
corner to corner in a witless sort of way, and in the end she went out of the house. I
felt as though the shock had taken all the strength out of me, and after saying my
prayers I dropped asleep for a while before dawn.

"In the morning I took leave of the old man and set off again, and as I walked I
sent up my prayer with faith and trust and thanks to the Father of all blessing and
consolation Who had saved me when I was in such great danger.

"Some six years after this happened I was passing a convent and went into the
church to-pray. The kindly abbess welcomed me in her room after the liturgy, and
had tea served. Suddenly some unexpected guests came to see her, and she went
to them, leaving me with some of the nuns who waited on her in her cell. One of
them, who was pouring out tea, and was clearly a humble soul, made me curious
enough to ask whether she had been in the convent long.

" 'Five years,' she answered. 'I was out of my mind when they brought me here,
and it was here that God had mercy on me. The mother abbess kept me to wait on
her in her cell and led me to take the veil.'

" 'How came you to go out of your mind?' I asked.

" 'It was fright,' said she. 'I used to work at a post- house, and late one night some
horses stove in a window. I was so terrified that it drove me out of my mind. For a
whole year my relations took me from one shrine to another, but it was only here that
I got cured.' When I heard this I rejoiced in spirit and praised God, Who so wisely
orders all things for the best.
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"I had a great many other experiences," I said, speaking to my spiritual father,
"but I should want three whole days and nights to tell you everything as it happened.
Still there is one other thing I will tell you about.

"One clear summer's day I noticed a cemetery near the road, and what they call a
pogost, that is, a church with some houses for those who minister in it. The bells
were ringing for the liturgy, and I made my way toward it. People who lived round
about were going the same way, and some of them, before they got as far as the
church, were sitting on the grass. Seeing me hurrying along, they said to me, 'Don't
hurry, you'll have plenty of time for standing about when the service begins. Services
take a long while here: our priest is in bad health and goes very slowly.'

"The service did, in fact, last a very long while. The priest was a young man, but
very thin and pale. He celebrated very slowly indeed, but with great devotion, and at
the end of the liturgy he preached with much feeling a beautiful and simple sermon
on how to grow in love for God. The priest asked me into his house and to stay to
dinner.

"During the meal I said, 'How reverently and slowly you celebrate, Father!'

"'Yes,' he answered, 'but my parishioners do not like it, and they grumble. Still,
there's nothing to be done about it. I like to meditate on each prayer and rejoice in it
before I say it aloud. Without that interior appreciation and feeling every word uttered
is useless both to myself and to others. Everything centers in the interior life, and in
attentive prayer! Yet how few concern themselves with the interior life,' he went on. 'It
is because they feel no desire to cherish the spiritual inward light.'

" 'And how is one to reach that?' I asked. 'It would seem to be very difficult.'

" 'Not at all,' was the reply. 'To attain spiritual enlightenment and become a man of
recollected interior life, you should take some one text or other of holy Scripture and
for as long a period as possible concentrate on that alone all your power of attention
and meditation; then the light of understanding will be revealed to you. You must
proceed in the same way about prayer. If you want it to be pure, right, and enjoyable,
you must choose some short prayer, consisting of few but forcible words, and repeat
it frequently and for a long while. Then you will find delight in prayer.'
72

"This teaching of the priest pleased me very much. How practical and simple it
was, and yet at the same time how deep and how wise. I gave thanks to God, in my
thoughts, for showing me such a true pastor of his church.

"When the meal was over, he said to me, 'You have a sleep after dinner while I
read the Bible and prepare my sermon for tomorrow.' So I went into the kitchen.
There was no one there except a very old woman sitting crouched in a corner
coughing. I sat down under a small window, took The Philokalia out of my knapsack,
and began to read quietly to myself. After a while I heard the old woman who was
sitting in the corner ceaselessly whispering the prayer of Jesus. It gave me great joy
to hear the Lord's most holy name spoken so often, and I said to her, 'What a good
thing it is, mother, that you are always saying the prayer. It is a most Christian and
most wholesome action.'

" 'Yes,' she replied. 'The "Lord have mercy" is the only thing I have to lean on in
my old age.'

" 'Have you made a habit of this prayer for long?'

" 'Since I was quite young, yes, and I couldn't live without it, for the Jesus prayer
saved me from ruin and death.'

" 'How? Please tell me about it, for the glory of God and in praise of the blessed
power of the prayer of Jesus.'

"I put The Philokalia away in my knapsack and took a seat nearer to her, and she
began her story.

" 'I used to be a young and pretty girl. My parents gave me in marriage, and the
very day before the wedding, my bridegroom came to see us. Suddenly, before he
had taken a dozen steps, he dropped down and died, without a single gasp. This
frightened me so that I utterly refused to marry at all. I made up my mind to live
unmarried, to go on a pilgrimage to the shrines and pray at them. However, I was
afraid to travel all by myself, young as I was; I feared evil people might molest me.
But an old woman- pilgrim whom I knew taught me wherever my road took me
always to say the Jesus prayer without stopping, and told me for certain that if I did,
no misfortune of any sort could happen to me on my way. I proved the truth of this,
for I walked even to far-off shrines and never came to any harm. My parents gave me
73

the money for my journeys. As I grew old I lost my health, and now the priest here out
of the kindness of his heart gives me board and lodging.'

"I was overjoyed to hear this, and knew not how to thank God for this day, in
which I had been taught so much by examples of spiritual life. Then, asking the kindly
and devout priest for his blessing, I set off again on my way, rejoicing.
"Then again, not so long ago, as I was making my way here through the Kazan
government, I had a chance of learning how the power of prayer in the name of
Jesus Christ is shown clearly and strongly even in those who use it without a will to
do so, and how saying the prayer often and for a long time is a sure and rapid way of
gaining its blessed fruits. It happened that I was to pass the night at a Tartar village.
On reaching it I saw a Russian carriage and coachman outside the window of one of
the huts. The horses were being fed nearby. I was glad to see all this and made up
my mind to ask for a night's lodging at the same place, thinking that I should at least
spend the night with Christians.14 When I came up to them I asked the coachman
where he was going, and he answered that his master was going from Kazan to the
Crimea. While I was talking with the coachman, his master pulled open the carriage
curtains from inside, looked out, and saw me. Then he said, '1 shall stay the night
here, too, but I have not gone into the hut, Tartar houses are so uncomfortable. I
have decided to spend the night in the carriage.' Then he got out, and as it was a fine
evening, we strolled about for a while and talked. He asked me a lot of questions and
talked about himself also, and this is what he told me:

" 'Until I was sixty-five I was a captain in the navy, but as I grew old I became the
victim of gout—an incurable disease. So I retired from the service and lived, almost
constantly ill, on a farm of my wife's in the Crimea. She was an impulsive woman of a
volatile disposition, and a great cardplayer. She found it boring living with a sick man
and left me, going off to our daughter in Kazan, who happened to be married to a civil
servant there. My wife laid hands on all she could, and even took the servants with
her, leaving me with nobody but an eight-year-old boy, my godson. So I lived alone
for about three years. The boy who served me was a sharp little fellow, and capable
of doing all the household work. He did my room, heated the stove, cooked the gruel,
and got the samovar15 ready. But at the same time he was extraordinarily
mischievous and full of spirits. He was incessantly rushing about and banging and
74:

shouting and playing, and up to all sorts of tricks, so that he disturbed me
exceedingly. And I, being ill and bored, liked to read spiritual books all the time. I had
one splendid book by Gregory Palamas, on the prayer of Jesus. I read it almost
continuously, and I used to say the prayer to some extent. But the boy hindered me,
and no threats and no punishment restrained him from indulging in his pranks. At last
I hit upon the following method. I made him sit on a bench in my room with me, and
bade him say the prayer of Jesus without stopping. At first this was extraordinarily
distasteful to him, and he tried all sorts of ways to avoid it and often fell silent. In
order to /make him do my bidding, I kept a cane beside me. When he said the prayer
I quietly read my book, or listened to jlow he was saying it. But let him stop for a
moment, and I showed him the cane; then he got frightened and took to the prayer
again. I found this very peaceful, and quiet reigned in the house. After a while I
noticed that now there was no need of the cane; the boy began to do my bidding
quite willingly and eagerly. Further, I observed a complete change in his mischievous
character: he became quiet and taciturn and performed his household tasks better
than before. I was glad of this and began to allow him more freedom. And what was
the result? Well, in the end he got so accustomed to the prayer that he was saying it
almost the whole time, whatever he was doing, and without any compulsion from me
at all. When I asked him about it, he answered that he felt an insuperable desire to
be saying the prayer always.

"' "And what are your feelings while doing so?" I asked him.

.... Nothing," said he, "only I feel that it's nice to be saying it."

.... How do you mean—nice?"

... I don't know how to put it exactly."

.... Makes you feel cheerful, do you mean?"

... Yes, cheerful."

" 'He was twelve years old when the Crimean War broke out, and I went to stay
with my daughter at Kazan, taking him with me. Here he lived in the kitchen with the
other servants, and this bored him very much. He would come to me with complaints
that the others, playing and joking among themselves, bothered him also, and
laughed at him and so prevented him saying his prayer. In the end, after about three
75:

months, he came to me and said, "I am going home. I'm unbearably sick of this place
and all this noise."

.... How can you go alone for such a distance and in winter, too?" said I. "Wait,

and when I go I'll take you with me." Next day my boy had vanished.

" 'We sent everywhere to look for him, but nowhere could he be found. In the end
I got a letter from the Crimea, from the people who were on our farm, saying that the
boy had been found dead in my empty house on 4 April, which was Easter Monday.
He was lying peacefully on the floor of my room with his hands folded on his breast,
and in that same thin frockcoat that he always went about my house in, and which he
was wearing when he went away. And so they buried him in my garden.

" 'When I heard this news I was absolutely amazed. How had the child reached
the farm so quickly? He started on 26 February and he was found on 4 April. Even
with God's help you want horses to cover two thousand miles in a month! Why, it is
nearly seventy miles a day! And in thin clothes, without a passport, and without a
farthing in his pocket into the bargain! Even supposing that someone may have given
him a lift on the way, still that in itself would be a mark of God's special providence
and care for him. That boy of mine, mark you, enjoyed the fruits of prayer,' concluded
this gentleman, 'and here am I, an old man, still not as far on as he.'

"Later on I said to him, 'It is a splendid book, sir, the one by Gregory Palamas,
which you said you liked reading. I know it. But it treats rather of the oral prayer of
Jesus. You should read a book called The Philokalia. There you will find a full and
complete study of how to reach the spiritual prayer of Jesus in the mind and heart
also, and taste the sweet fruit of it.' At the same time I showed him my Philokalia. I
saw that he was pleased to have this advice of mine, and he promised that he would
get a copy for himself. And in my own mind I dwelt upon the wonderful ways in which
the power of God is shown in this prayer. What wisdom and teaching there was in the
story I had just heard! The cane taught the prayer to the boy, and what is more, as a
means of consolation it became a help to him. Are not our own sorrows and trials
which we meet with on the road of prayer in the same way the rod in God's hand?
Why then are we so frightened and troubled when our heavenly Father in the fullness
of His boundless love lets us see them, and when these rods teach us to be more
earnest in learning to pray, and lead us on to consolation which is beyond words?"
76:

When I came to the end of the things I had to tell, I said to my spiritual father,
"Forgive me, in God's name. I have already chattered far too much. And the holy
Fathers call even spiritual talk mere babble if it lasts too long. It is time I went to find
my fellow-traveler to Jerusalem. Pray for me, a miserable sinner, that of His great
mercy God may bless my journey."

"With all my heart I wish it, dear brother in the Lord," he replied. "May all the all-
loving grace of God shed its light on your path, and go with you, as the angel
Raphael went with Tobias!"

The starets. A year had gone by since I last saw the pilgrim, when at length a gentle
knock on the door and a pleading voice announced the arrival of that devout brother
to the hearty welcome which awaited him.

"Come in, dear brother; let us thank God together for blessing your journey and
bringing you back."

The Pilgrim. Praise and thanks be to the Father on high for His bounty in all
things, which He orders as seems good to Him, and always for the good of us
pilgrims and strangers in a strange land. Here am I, a sinner, who left you last year,
again by the mercy of God thought worthy to see and hear your joyful welcome. And
of course you are waiting to hear from me a full account of the holy city of God,
Jerusalem, for which my soul was longing and toward which my purpose was firmly
set. But what we wish is not always carried out, and so it was in my case. And no
wonder, for why should I, a wretched sinner, be thought fit to tread that holy ground
on which the divine footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ were printed?

You remember, Father, that I left here last year with a deaf old man as a
companion, and that I had a letter from a merchant of Irkutsk to his son at Odessa
asking him to send me to Jerusalem. Well, we got to Odessa all right in no very long
time. My companion at once booked passage on a ship for Constantinople and set
off. I for my part set about finding the merchant's son, by the address on the letter. I
soon found his house, but there, to my surprise and sorrow, I learned that my
benefactor was no longer alive. He had been dead and buried three weeks before,
after a short illness. This made me very much cast down. But still, I trusted in the
power of God. The whole household was in mourning, and the widow, who was left





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