Part 2
The weather was fine and dry and I had no wish to spend the night in a village. So
when I came upon two fenced-in haystacks as I went through the forest that evening,
I lay down beneath them for a night's lodging. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was
walking along and reading a chapter of St. Anthony the Great from The Philokalia.
Suddenly my starets overtook me and said, "Don't read that, read this," and pointed
to these words in the thirty- fifth chapter of St. John Karpathisky: "A teacher submits
at times to ignominy and endures pain for the sake of his spiritual children." And
again he made me note in the forty-first chapter, "Those who give themselves most
earnestly to prayer, it is they who become the prey of terrible and violent
temptations." Then he said, "Take courage and do not be downcast. Remember the
Apostle's words, 'Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.' You see that
you have now had experience of the truth that no temptation is beyond man's
strength to resist, and that with the temptation God makes also a way of escape.
Reliance upon this divine help has strengthened holy men of prayer and led them on
to greater zeal and ardor. They not only devoted their own lives to ceaseless prayer,
but also out of the love of their hearts revealed it and taught it to others as
opportunity occurred. St. Gregory of Thessalonika speaks of this as follows: 'Not only
should we ourselves in accordance with God's will pray unceasingly in the name of
Jesus Christ, but we are bound to reveal it and teach it to others, to everyone in
general, religious and secular, learned and simple, men, women, and children, and to
inspire them all with zeal for prayer without ceasing.' In the same way the venerable
Callistus Telicudes says, 'One ought not to keep thoughts about God (i.e., interior
prayer) and what is learned by contemplation, and the means of raising the soul on
high, simply in one's own mind, but one should make notes of it, put it into writing for
general use and with a loving motive.' And the Scriptures say in this connection,
'Brother is helped by brother like a strong and lofty city' (Prov. 18:19). Only in this
case it is above all things necessary to avoid self-praise and to take care that the
seed of divine teaching is not sown to the wind."
I woke up feeling great joy in my heart and strength in my soul, and I went on my
way.
A long while after this something else happened, which also I will tell you about if
you like. One day—it was the 24th of March to be exact—I felt a very urgent wish to
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make my communion the next day—that is, on the feast of the annunciation of our
Lady. I asked whether the church was far away and was told it was about twenty
miles. So I walked for the rest of that day and all the next night in order to get there in
time for matins. The weather was as bad as it could be—it snowed and rained, there
was a strong wind, and it was very cold. On my way I had to cross a small stream,
and just as I got to the middle the ice gave way under my feet and I was plunged into
the water up to my waist. Drenched like this, I came to matins and stood through it,
and also through the liturgy which followed, and at which by God's grace I made my
communion. In order to spend the day quietly and without spoiling my spiritual
happiness, I begged the verger to allow me to stay in his little room until the next
morning. I was more happy than I can tell all that day, and my heart was full of joy. I
lay on the plank bed in that unheated room as though I were resting on Abraham's
bosom. The prayer was very active. The love of Jesus Christ and of the Mother of
God seemed to surge into my heart in waves of sweetness and steep my soul in
consolation and triumph. At nightfall I was seized with violent rheumatic pains in my
legs, and that brought to my mind that they were soaking wet. I took no notice of it
and set my heart the more to my prayer, so that I no longer felt the pain. In the
morning when I wanted to get up I found that I could not move my legs. They were
quite paralyzed and as feeble as bits of string. The verger dragged me down off the
bed by main force. And so there I sat for two days without moving. On the third day
the verger set about turning me out of his room, "for," said he, "supposing you die
here, what a fuss there will be!" With the greatest of difficulty I somehow or other
crawled along on my arms and dragged myself to the steps of the church, and lay
there. And there I stayed like that for a couple of days. The people who went by
passed me without taking the slightest notice either of me or of my pleadings. In the
end a peasant came up to me and sat down and talked. And after a while he asked,
"What will you give me if I cure you? I had just exactly the same thing once, so I
know a medicine for it."
"I have nothing to give you," I answered.
"But what have you got in your bag?"
"Only dried bread and some books."
"Well, what about working for me just for one summer, if I cure you?"
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"I can't do any work; as you see, I have only the use of one arm, the other is
almost entirely withered."
"Then what can you do?"
"Nothing, beyond the fact that I can read and write."
"Ah! write! Well, teach my little boy to write. He can read a little, and I want him to be
able to write too. But it costs such a lot—they want twenty rubles to teach him."
I agreed to this, and with the verger's help he carried me away and put me in an
old empty bathhouse in his backyard.
Then he set about curing me. And this was his method: He picked up from the floors,
the yards, the cesspools, the best part of a bushel of various sorts of putrid bones,
bones of cattle, of birds—all sorts. He washed them, broke them up small with a
stone, and put them into a great earthen pot. This he covered with a lid which had a
small hole in it and placed upside down on an empty jar sunk in the ground. He
smeared the upper pot with a thick coating of clay, and making a pile of wood round
it, he set fire to this and kept it burning for more than twenty-four hours, saying as he
fed the fire, "Now we'll get some tar from the bones." Next day, when he took the
lower jar out of the ground, there had dripped into it through the hole in the lid of the
other jar about a pint of thick, reddish, oily liquid, with a strong smell, like living raw
meat. As for the bones left in the jar, from being black and putrid they had become
white and clean and transparent like mother-of-pearl. I rubbed my legs with this liquid
five times a day. And lo and behold, twenty-four hours later I found I could move my
toes; another day and I could bend my legs and straighten them again. On the fifth
day I stood on my feet, and with the help of a stick walked about the yard. In a word,
in a week's time my legs had become fully as strong as they were before. I thanked
God and mused upon the mysterious power which He has given His creatures. Dry,
putrid bones, almost brought to dust, yet keeping such vital force, color, smell, power
of acting on living bodies, and as it were giving life to bodies that are half dead! It is a
pledge of the future resurrection of the body. How I would like to point this out to that
forester with whom I lived, in view of his doubts about the general resurrection!
Having in this way got better from my illness, I began to teach the boy. Instead of
the usual copybook work, he wrote out the prayer of Jesus. I made him copy it,
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showing him how to set out the words nicely. I found teaching the lad restful, for
during the daytime he worked for the steward of an estate nearby and could only
come to me while the steward slept, that is, from daybreak till the liturgy.
He was a bright boy and soon began to write fairly well. His employer saw him
writing and asked him who had taught him.
"A one-armed pilgrim who lives in our old bathhouse," said the boy.
The steward, who was a Pole, was interested, and came to have a look at me. He
found me reading The Philokalia and started a talk by asking what I was reading. I
showed him the book. "Ah," said he, "that's The Philokalia. I've seen the book before
at our priest's6 when I lived at Vilna. They tell me, however, that it contains odd sorts
of schemes and tricks for prayer written down by the Greek monks. It's like those
fanatics in India and Bokhara who sit down and blow themselves out trying to get a
sort of tickling in their hearts, and in their stupidity take this bodily feeling for prayer,
and look upon it as the gift of God. All that is necessary to fulfill one's duty to God is
to pray simply, to stand and say the Our Father as Christ taught us. That puts you
right for the whole day; but not to go on over and over again to the same tune. That,
if I may say so, is enough to drive you mad. Besides, it's bad for your heart."
"Don't think in that way about this holy book, sir," I answered. "It was not written
by simple Greek monks, but by great and very holy men of olden times, men whom
your church honors also, such as Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Mark the
spiritual athlete, John Chrysostom, and others. It was from them that the monks of
India and Bokhara took over the 'heart method' of interior prayer, only they quite
spoiled and garbled it in doing so, as my starets explained to me. In The Philokalia all
the teaching about the practice of prayer in the heart is taken from the Word of God,
from the Holy Bible, in which the same Jesus Christ who bade us say the Our Father
taught also ceaseless prayer in the heart. For He said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy mind,' 'Watch and pray,' Abide in Me and I in
you.' And the holy Fathers, calling to witness the holy King David's words in the
Psalms, 'O taste and see how gracious the Lord is,' explain the passage thus: the
Christian man ought to use every possible means of seeking and finding, delight in
prayer and ceaselessly to look for consolation in it, and not be content with simply
saying 'Our Father' once a day. Let me read to you how these saints blame those
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who do not strive to reach the gladness of the prayer of the heart. They write that
such do wrong for three reasons: firstly, because they show themselves against the
Scriptures inspired by God, and secondly, because they do not set before
themselves a higher and more perfect state of soul to be reached. They are content
with outward virtues only, and cannot hunger and thirst for the truth, and therefore
miss the blessedness and joy in the Lord. Thirdly, because by letting their mind dwell
upon themselves and their own outward virtues they often slip into temptation and
pride, and so fall away."
"It is sublime, what you are reading," said the steward, "but it's hardly for us
ordinary layfolk, I think!"
"Well, I will read you something simpler, about how people of goodwill, even if
living in the world, may learn how to pray without ceasing."
I found the sermon on George the youth, by Simeon the new theologian, and read
it to him from The Philokalia.
This pleased him, and he said, "Give me that book to read at my leisure, and I will
have a good look into it some time."
"I will let you have it for twenty-four hours with pleasure," I answered, "but not for
longer, because I read it every day, and I just can't live without it."
"Well then, at least copy out for me what you have just read. I will pay you for your
trouble."
"I don't want payment," said I. "I will write that out for you for love's sake and in
the hope that God will give you a longing for prayer."
I at once and with pleasure made a copy of the sermon I had read. He read it to
his wife, and both of them were pleased with it. And so it came about that at times
they would send for me, and I would go, taking The Philokalia with me, and read to
them while they sat drinking tea and listening. Once they asked me to stay to dinner.
The steward's wife, who was a kindly old lady, was sitting with us at table eating
some fried fish when by some mischance she got a bone lodged in her throat.
Nothing we could do gave her any relief, and nothing would move the bone. Her
throat gave her so much pain that a couple of hours later she had to go and lie down.
The doctor (who lived twenty miles away) was sent for, and as by this time it was
evening, I went home, feeling very sorry for her.
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That night, while I was sleeping lightly, I heard my starets's voice. I saw no figure, but
I heard him say to me, "The man you are living with cured you, why then do you not
help the steward's wife? God has bidden us feel for our neighbor."
"I would help her gladly," I answered, "but how? I know no means whatever."
"Well, this is what you must do: From her very earliest years she has had a dislike
of oil. She not only will not taste it, but cannot bear even the smell of it without being
sick. So make her drink a spoonful of oil. It will make her vomit, the bone will come
away, the oil will soothe the sore the bone has made in her throat, and she will be
well again."
"And how am I to give it her, if she dislikes it so? She will refuse to drink it."
"Get the steward to hold her head, and pour it suddenly into her mouth, even if
you have to use force."
I woke up, and went straight off and told the steward all this in detail. "What good
can your oil do now?" said he. "She is hoarse and delirious, and her neck is all
swollen."
"Well, at any rate, let us try; even if it doesn't help, oil is at least harmless as a
medicine."
He poured some into a wineglass, and somehow or other we got her to swallow it.
She was violently sick at once, and soon vomited up the bone and some blood. She
began to feel easier and fell into a deep sleep. In the morning I went to ask after her
and found her sitting quietly taking her tea. Both she and her husband were full of
wonder at the way she had been cured, and even greater than that was their surprise
that her dislike of oil had been told me in a dream, for apart from themselves, not a
soul knew of the fact. Just then the doctor also drove up, and the steward told him
what had happened to his wife, and I in my turn told him how the peasant had cured
my legs. The doctor listened to it all and then said, "Neither the one case nor the
other is greatly to be wondered at—it is the same natural force which operated in
both cases. Still, I shall make a note of it." And he took out a pencil and wrote in his
notebook.
After this the report quickly spread through the whole neighborhood that I was a
prophet and a doctor and wizard. There began a ceaseless stream of visitors from all
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parts to bring their affairs and their troubles to my notice. They brought me presents
and began to treat me with respect and to look after my comfort. I bore this for a
week, and then, fearing I should fall into vainglory and harmful distractions, I left the
place in secret by night.
Thus once more I set out on my lonely way, feeling as light as if a great weight
had been taken off my shoulders. The prayer comforted me more and more, so that
at times my heart bubbled over with boundless love for Jesus Christ, and from my
delight in this, streams of consolation seemed to flow through my whole being. The
remembrance of Jesus Christ was so stamped upon my mind that as I dwelt upon the
Gospel story I seemed to see its events before my very eyes. I was moved even to
tears of joy, and sometimes felt such gladness in my heart that I am at a loss even
how to tell of it.
It happened at times that for three days together I came upon no human dwelling,
and in the uplifting of my spirit I felt as though I were alone on the earth, one
wretched sinner before the merciful and man-loving God. This sense of being alone
was a comfort to me, and it made me feel my delight in prayer much more than when
I was mixing with a crowd of people.
At length I reached Irkutsk. When I had prayed before the relics of St. Innocent, I
began to wonder where I should go now. I did not want to stay there for a long while,
it was a town in which many people lived. I was walking thoughtfully along the street
when I came upon a certain merchant belonging to the place. He stopped me,
saying, "Are you a pilgrim? Why not come home with me?" We went off together and
he took me into his richly furnished house and asked me about myself. I told him all
about my travels, and then he said, "You ought to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem—
there are shrines there the like of which are not to be found anywhere else!"
"I should be only too glad to do so," I answered, "but I haven't the money. I can
get along on dry land till I come to the sea, but I have no means of paying for a sea
voyage, and it takes a good deal of money."
"How would you like me to find the money for you? I have already sent one of our
townsfolk there, an old man, last year," said the merchant.
I fell at his feet, and he went on to say, "Listen, I will give you a letter to my son at
Odessa. He lives there and has business connections with Constantinople. He will be
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pleased to give you a passage on one of the vessels to Constantinople, and to tell his
agents there to book a passage to Jerusalem for you on another boat, and pay for it.
That is not so very expensive."
I was overcome with joy when I heard this and thanked my benefactor for his
kindness. Even more did I thank God for showing me such fatherly love, and for His
care for me, a wretched sinner, who did no good either to himself or to anyone else,
and ate the bread of others in idleness. I stayed three days with this kindly merchant.
As he had promised, he wrote me a letter to his son, so here I am now on my way to
Odessa planning to go on till I reach Jerusalem. But I do not know whether the Lord
will allow me to venerate His life-giving tomb.
JUST BEFORE leaving Irkutsk, I went to see my spiritual father, with whom I had so
often talked, and I said to him, "Here I am actually off to Jerusalem. I have come to
say good-bye, and to thank you for your love for me in Christ, unworthy pilgrim as I
am."
"May God bless your journey," he replied. "But how is it that you have never told
me about yourself, who you are, nor where you come from? I have heard a great deal
about your travels, and I should be interested to know something about your birth
and your life before you became a pilgrim."
"Why, very gladly," I answered. "I will tell you all about that also. It's not a very
lengthy matter.
"I was born in a village in the government of Orel. After the death of our parents,
there were just the two of us left, my brother and I. He was ten years old and I was
two. We were adopted by our grandfather, a worthy old man and comfortably off. He
kept an inn which stood on the main road, and thanks to his sheer goodness of heart
a lot of travelers put up there. My brother, who was a madcap child, spent most of his
time running about in the village, but for my part I liked better to stay near my
grandfather. On Sundays and festivals we used to go to church together, and at
home my grandfather often used to read the Bible, this very Bible here, which now
belongs to me. When my brother grew up he took to drink. Once when I was seven
years old and we were both of us lying down on the stove, he pushed me so hard
that I fell off and hurt my left arm, so that I have never been able to use it since; it is
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all withered up. My grandfather saw that I should never be fit to work on the land and
taught me to read. As we had no spelling book, he did so from this Bible. He pointed
out the A's, and made me form words and learn to know the letters when I saw them.
I scarcely know how myself, but somehow, by saying things after him over and over
again, I learned to read in the course of time. And later on, when my grandfather's
sight grew weak, he often made me read the Bible aloud to him, and he corrected me
as he listened. There was a certain clerk who often came to our inn. He wrote a good
hand and I liked watching him write. I copied his writing, and he began to teach me.
He gave me paper and ink, he made me quill pens, and so I learned to write also.
Grandfather was very pleased and charged me thus, 'God has granted you the gift of
learning; it will make a man of you. Give thanks to God, and pray very often.'
"We used to attend all the services at church and we often had prayers at home.
It was always my part to read the fifty-first psalm, and while I did so grandfather and
grandmother made their prostrations or knelt. When I was seventeen I lost my
grandmother. Then grandfather said to me, 'This house of ours no longer has a
mistress, and that is not well. Your brother is a worthless fellow. I am going to look for
a wife for you; you must get married.' I was against the idea, saying that I was a
cripple, but my grandfather would not give way. He found a worthy and sensible
young girl about twenty years of age, and I married her. A year later my grandfather
fell very ill. Knowing that his death was near, he called for me and bade me farewell,
saying, 'I leave you my house and all I have. Obey your conscience, deceive no one,
and above all pray to God; everything comes from Him. Trust in Him only. Go to
church regularly, read your Bible, and remember me and your grandmother in your
prayers. Here is my money, that also I give you; there is a thousand rubles. Take
care of it. Do not waste it, but do not be miserly either; give some of it to the poor and
to God's church.' After this he died, and I buried him.
"My brother grew envious because the property had been left wholly to me. His
anger against me grew, and the enemy prompted him in this to such an extent that
he even laid plans to kill me. In the end this is what he did one night while we were
asleep and no guests were in the house. He broke into the room where the money
was kept, stole the money from a chest, and then set fire to the room. The fire had
got a hold upon the whole building before we knew of it, and we only just escaped by
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jumping out of a window in our nightclothes. The Bible was lying under our pillow, so
we snatched it up and took it with us. As we watched our house burning we said to
one another, 'Thank God, the Bible is saved, that at least is some consolation in our
grief.' So everything we had was burnt, and my brother went off without a trace. Later
on we heard that when he was in his cups he boasted of the fact that he had taken
the money and burnt the house.
"We were left naked and ruined, absolutely beggars. We borrowed some money
as best we could, built a little hut, and took up the life of landless peasants. My wife
was clever with her hands. She knitted, spun, and sewed. People gave her jobs, and
day and night she worked and kept me. Owing to the uselessness of my arm I could
not even make bark shoes. She would do her knitting and spinning, and I would sit
beside her and read the Bible. She would listen and sometimes begin to cry. When I
asked, 'What are you crying about? At least we are alive, thank God!' she would
answer, 'It touches me so, that beautiful writing in the Bible.'
"Remembering what my grandfather had bidden us, we often fasted, every
morning we said the Acathist of Our Lady, and at night we each made a thousand
prostrations to avoid falling into temptation. Thus we lived quietly enough for two
years. But this is what is so surprising—although we had no understanding of interior
prayer offered in the heart and indeed had never heard of it, but prayed with the
tongue only, and made our prostrations without thought like buffoons turning
somersaults, yet in spite of all this the wish for prayer was there, and the long prayers
we said without understanding did not seem tiring; indeed we liked them. Clearly it is
true, as a certain teacher once told me, that a secret prayer lies hidden within the
human heart. The man himself does not know it, yet working mysteriously within his
soul, it urges him to prayer according to each man's knowledge and power.
"After two years of this sort of life that we were leading, my wife was taken
suddenly ill with a high fever. She was given her communion and on the ninth day of
her illness she died. I was now left entirely alone in the world. There was no sort of
work that I could do; still I had to live, and it went against my conscience to beg.
Besides that, I felt such grief at the loss of my wife that I did not know what to do with
myself. When I happened to go into our little hut and caught sight of her clothes or
perhaps a scarf, I burst into tears and even fell down senseless. So feeling I could no
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longer bear my grief living at home, I sold the hut for twenty rubles, and such clothes
as there were of my own and my wife's I gave away to the poor. Because of my
crippled arm I was given a passport which set me free once for all from public duties,
and taking my beloved Bible I set straight off, without caring or thinking where I was
going.
"But after a while I began to think where I would go and said to myself, 'First of all
I will go to Kiev. I will venerate the shrines of those who were pleasing to God, and
ask for their help in my trouble.' As soon as I had made up my mind to this I began to
feel better, and, a good deal comforted, I made my way to Kiev. Since that time, for
the last thirteen years that is, I have gone on wandering from place to place. I have
made the rounds of many churches and monasteries, but nowadays I am taking more
and more to wandering over the steppes and fields. I do not know whether God will
vouchsafe to let me go to Jerusalem. If it be His will, when the time comes my sinful
bones may be laid to rest there."
"And how old are you?"
"Thirty-three."
"Well, dear brother, you have reached the age of our Lord Jesus Christ!"
"But it is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God."
"The russian proverb is true, which says that 'man proposes but God disposes,'" said
I, as I came back again to my spiritual father. "I thought that by now I should certainly
be on my way to Jerusalem. But see how differently things have fallen out.
Something quite unlooked for has happened and kept me in the same place here for
another three days. And I could not help coming to tell you about it and to ask your
advice in making up my mind about the matter.
"It happened like this. I had said good-bye to everybody, and with God's help
started on my way. I had gotten as far as the outskirts of the town when I saw a man I
knew standing at the door of the very last house. He was at one time a pilgrim like
me, but I had not seen him for about three years. We greeted one another and he
asked me where I was going.
" 'God willing,' I answered, 'I want to go to Jerusalem.'
" 'Thank God! There is a nice fellow-traveler for you,' he said.
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" 'God be with you, and with him too,' said I, 'but surely you know that it is never
my way to travel with other people. I always wander about alone.'
" 'Yes, but listen. I feel sure that this one is just your sort; you will suit each other
down to the ground. Now, look here, the father of the master of this house, where I
have been taken on as a servant, is going under a vow to Jerusalem, and you will
easily get used to each other. He belongs to this town, he's a good old man, and
what's more he is quite deaf. So much so that however much you shout, he can't
hear a word. If you want to ask him anything you have to write it on a bit of paper,
and then he answers. So you see he won't bore you on the road; he won't speak to
you; even at home here he grows more and more silent. On the other hand you will
be a great help to him on the way. His son is giving him a horse and cart, which he
will take as far as Odessa and then sell there. The old man wants to go on foot, but
the horse is going as well because he has a bit of luggage, and some things he is
taking to the Lord's tomb. And you can put your knapsack in with them too, of course.
Now just think, how can we possibly send an old deaf man off with a horse, all by
himself on such a long journey? They have searched and searched for somebody to
take him, but they all want to be paid such a lot; besides, there's a risk in sending him
with someone we don't know, for he has money and belongings with him. Say "Yes,"
brother, it will really be all right; make up your mind now for the glory of God and the
love of your neighbor. I will vouch for you to his people, and they will be too pleased
for words; they are kindly folk and very fond of me. I've been working for them for two
years now.'
"All this talk had taken place at the door, and he now took me into the house. The
head of the household was there, and I saw clearly that they were quite a worthy and
decent family. So I agreed to the plan. So now we have arranged to start with God's
blessing, after hearing the liturgy two days after Christmas. What unexpected things
we meet with on life's journey! Yet all the while, God and His Holy Providence guide
our actions and overrule our plans, as it is written, 'It is God which worketh in you
both to will and to do.'"
On hearing all this, my spiritual father said, "I rejoice with all my heart, dear
brother, that God has so ordered it that I should see you again, so unexpectedly and
so soon. And since you now have time, I want, in all love, to keep you a little longer,
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and you shall tell me more about the instructive experiences you have met with in the
course of your long pilgrimages. I have already listened with great pleasure and
interest to what you told me before."
"I am quite ready and happy to do that," I answered, and I began as follows:
"A great many things have happened to me, some good and some bad. It would
take a long while to tell of them all, and much I have already forgotten. For I have
tried especially to remember only such matters as guided and urged my idle soul to
prayer. All the rest I rarely remember; or rather I have tried to forget the past, as St.
Paul bids us when he says, 'Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching
forward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the
high calling.' My late starets of blessed memory also used to say that the forces
which are against prayer in the heart attack us from two sides, from the left hand and
from the right. That is to say, if the enemy cannot turn us from prayer by means of
vain thoughts and sinful ideas, then he brings back into our minds good things we
have been taught, and fills us with beautiful ideas, so that one way or another he may
lure us away from prayer, which is a thing he cannot bear. It is called 'a theft from the
right- hand side,' and in it the soul, putting aside its converse with God, turns to the
satisfaction of converse with self or with created things. He taught me, therefore, not
to admit during times of prayer even the most lofty of spiritual thoughts. And if I saw
that in the course of the day, time had been spent more in improving thought and talk
than in the actual hidden prayer of the heart, then I was to think of it as a loss of the
sense of proportion, or a sign of spiritual greed. This is above all true, he said, in the
case of beginners, for whom it is most needful that time given to prayer should be
very much more than that taken up by other sides of the devout life.
"Still one cannot forget everything. A matter may have printed itself so deeply in
one's mind that although it has not been actually thought of for a long time, yet it is
remembered very clearly. A case in point is the few days' stay that God deemed me
worthy to enjoy with a certain devout family in the following manner.
"During my wanderings in the Tobolsk government, I happened to pass through a
certain country town. My supply of dried bread had run very low, so I went to one of
the houses to ask for some more. The householder said, 'Thank God, you have come
just at the right moment— my wife has only just taken the bread out of the oven, so
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there is a hot loaf for you. Remember me in your prayers.' I thanked him and was
putting the bread away in my knapsack when his wife, who was looking on, said,
'What a wretched state your knapsack is in, it is all worn out. I'll give you another
instead.' And she gave me a good strong one. I thanked them very heartily and went
on. On leaving the town I went into a little shop to ask for a bit of salt, and the
shopkeeper gave me a small bag quite full. I rejoiced in spirit and thanked God for
leading me, unworthy as I was, to such kindly folk. 'Now,' thought I, 'without having to
worry about food I shall be filled and content for a whole week. Bless the Lord, O my
soul!'
"Three miles or so from this town, the road I was following passed through a poor
village, where I saw a little wooden church nicely decked out and painted on the
outside. As I was going by it I felt a wish to honor God's house, and going into the
porch I prayed for a while. On the grass at the side of the church there were playing
two little children of five or six years of age. I took them to be the parish priest's
children, for they were very nicely dressed. I finished my prayers and went on my
way, but I had not gone a dozen paces from the church when I heard a shout behind
me. 'Dear little beggar! Dear little beggar! Stop!' The two little ones I had seen, a boy
and a girl, were calling and running after me. I stopped, and they ran up to me and
took me by the hand. 'Come along to mommy, she likes beggars.'
" 'I'm not a beggar,' I told them, 'I'm just a passerby.'
"'Why have you got a bag, then?'
" 'That is for the bread I eat on the way.'
" 'All the same you must come. Mommy will give you some money for your
journey.'
"'But where is your mommy?' I asked.
" 'Down there behind the church, behind that little wood.'
"They took me into a beautiful garden in the middle of which stood a large country
house. We went inside, and how clean and smart it all was! The lady of the house
came hurrying to us. 'Welcome, welcome! God has sent you to us; and how did you
come? Sit down, sit down, dear.' With her own hands she took off my knapsack and
put it on a table, and made me sit in a very comfortably padded chair. 'Wouldn't you
like something to eat? Or a cup of tea? Isn't there anything you need?'
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" 'I most humbly thank you,' I answered, 'but I have a whole bagful of food. It is
true that I do take tea, but as a peasant I am not very used to it. I value your heartfelt
and kindly welcome even more than the treat you offer me. I shall pray that God may
bless you for showing such love for strangers in the spirit of the Gospels.'
"While I was speaking, a strong feeling came over me, urging me to withdraw
within myself again. The prayer was surging up in my heart, and I needed peace and
silence to give free play to this quickening flame of prayer, as well as to hide from
others the outward signs which went with it, such as tears and sighs and unusual
movements of the face and lips. I therefore got up, saying, 'Please excuse me, but I
must leave now; may the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with your dear little
children.'
" 'Oh, no! God forbid that you should go away. I won't allow it. My husband, who is
a magistrate, will be coming back from town this evening, and how delighted he will
be to see you! He reverences every pilgrim as a messenger of God. If you go away
he will be really grieved not to have seen you. Besides that, tomorrow is Sunday, and
you will pray with us at the liturgy, and at the dinner table take your share with us in
what God has sent. On holy days we always have up to thirty guests, and all of them
our poor brothers in Jesus Christ. Come now, why have you told me nothing about
yourself, where you come from and where you are going? Talk to me—I like listening
to the spiritual conversation of devout people. Children, children! Take the pilgrim's
knapsack into the oratory, he will spend the night there.'
"I was astonished as I listened to what she said, and I asked myself whether I was
talking with a human being or with a ghost of some sort.
"So I stayed and waited for her husband. I gave her a short account of my travels,
and said I was on my way to Irkutsk. " 'Why, then, you will have to go through
Tobolsk,' said the lady, 'and my own mother is a nun in a convent there; she is a
skhimnitsa1 now. We will give you a letter, and she will be glad to see you. A great
many people go to consult her on spiritual matters. And you will be able to take her a
book by St. John of the ladder, which we have just ordered from Moscow at her
request. How nicely it all fits in!'
"Soon it was dinnertime, and we sat down to table. Four other ladies came in and
began the meal with us. When the first course was ended one of them rose, bowed to
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the icon,8 and then to us. Then she went and fetched the second course and sat
down again. Then another of the ladies in the same way went and brought the third
course. When I saw this, I said to my hostess, 'May I venture to ask whether these
ladies are relations of yours?'
" 'Yes, they are indeed sisters to me; this is my cook, and this the coachman's
wife, that one has charge of the keys, and the other is my maid. They are all married;
I have no unmarried girls at all in my whole household.'
"The more I saw and heard of all this, the more surprised I was, and I thanked
God for letting me see these devout people. I felt the prayer stirring strongly in my
heart, so, wishing to be alone as soon as I could and not hinder the prayer, I said to
the lady as soon as we rose from the table, 'No doubt you will rest for a while after
dinner, and I am so used to walking that I will go for a stroll in the garden.'
" 'No, I don't rest,' she replied. 'I will come into the garden with you, and you shall
talk to me about something instructive. If you go alone, the children will give you no
peace, directly they see you, they will not leave you for a minute, they are so fond of
beggars, and brothers in Christ, and pilgrims.'
"There was nothing for me to do but to go with her. In order to avoid doing the talking
myself, when we got into the garden I bowed down to the ground before her and
said, 'Do tell me, please, have you lived this devout life long, and how did you come
to take it up?'
" 'I will tell you the whole story if you like,' was the answer. 'You see, my mother
was a great-granddaughter of St. Joasaph, whose relics rest at Byelgorod. We had a
large town house, one wing of which was rented to a man who was a gentleman but
not well off. After a while he died; his wife was left pregnant and herself died in giving
birth to a child. The infant was left an orphan and in poverty, and out of pity my
mother adopted him. A year later I was born. We grew up together and did lessons
together with the same tutors and governesses, and were as used to each other as a
real brother and sister. Some while later my father died, and my mother gave up
living in town and came with us to live on this estate of hers here. When we grew up,
she gave me in marriage to her adopted son, settled this estate on us, and herself
took the veil in a convent, where she had a cell built for her. She gave us a mother's
blessing, and as her last will and testament she urged us to live as good Christians,
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to say our prayers fervently, and above all try to fulfill the greatest of God's
commandments, that is, the love of one's neighbor, to feed and help our poor
brothers in Christ in simplicity and humility, to bring up our children in the fear of the
Lord, and to treat our serfs as our brothers. And that is how we have been living here
by ourselves for the last ten years now, trying as best we could to carry out mother's
last wishes. We have a guesthouse for beggars, and at the present moment there are
living in it more than ten crippled and sick people. If you care to, we will go and see
them tomorrow.'
"When she had ended her story, I asked her where the book by St. John of the ladder
was, which she wished to send to her mother. 'Come indoors,' she said, 'and I will
find it for you.'
"We had just sat down and begun to read it when her husband came in and,
seeing me, gave me a warm welcome. We kissed each other as two brothers in
Christ, and then he took me off to his own room, saying, 'Come, dear brother, let us
go into my study, and you shall bless my cell. I expect she (pointing to his wife) has
been boring you. No sooner does she catch sight of a pilgrim of either sex, or of
some sick person, than she is so delighted that she will not leave them day or night.
She has been like that for years and years.' We went into the study. What a lot of
books there were, and beautiful icons, and the life-giving cross with the figure life-
sized, and the Gospels lying near it! I said a prayer. 'You are in God's own paradise
here,' I said. 'Here is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His most holy mother, and
the blessed saints! And there,' I went on, pointing to the books, 'are the divine, living,
and everlasting words of their teaching. I expect you very often enjoy heavenly
converse with them.'
" 'Yes, I admit I am a great lover of reading,' he answered.
" 'What sort of books are they you have here?' I asked.
" 'I have a large number of religious books,' was the answer. 'Here you see are
the Lives of the Saints for the whole year, and the works of St. John Chrysostom, and
Basil the Great, and many other theologians and philosophers. I have a lot of
volumes of sermons, too, by celebrated modern preachers. My library is worth about
five hundred pounds.'
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" 'Haven't you anything on prayer?'
Yes, I am very fond of reading about prayer. Here is the very latest work on the
subject, the work of a Petersburg priest.' He took down a book on the Lord's Prayer
and we began to read it with great enjoyment. A short while after the lady came in,
bringing tea, followed by the children, who dragged in a large silver basket full of
biscuits and cakes such as I had never tasted before in my life. My host took the
book from me and handed it to his wife, saying, 'Now we will get her to read; she
reads beautifully, and we will keep our strength up with the tea.' So she began
reading, and we listened. And as I listened I felt the action of the prayer in my heart.
The longer the reading went on the more the prayer grew and made me glad.
Suddenly I saw something flash quickly before my eyes, in the air as it were, like the
figure of my departed starets. I started, and so as to hide the fact I said, 'Excuse me,
I must have dropped asleep for a moment.' Then I felt as though the soul of my
starets made its way into my own, or gave light to it. I felt a sort of light in my mind,
and a number of ideas about prayer came to me. I was just crossing myself and
setting my will to put these ideas aside when the lady came to the end of the book
and her husband asked me whether I had liked it, so that talking began again. 'Very
much,' I answered, 'the "Our Father" is the loftiest and most precious of all the written
prayers we Christians have, for the Lord Jesus Christ himself gave it to us. And the
explanation of it which has just been read is very good, too, only it all deals for the
most part with the active side of the Christian life, and in my reading of the holy
Fathers I have come across a more speculative and mystical explanation of the
prayer.'
" 'In which of the Fathers did you read this?'
" 'Well, in Maxim the confessor, for example, and in Peter the Damascene, in The
Philokalia.'
" 'Do you remember it? Tell us about it, please.'
" 'Certainly. The first words of the prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven" are
explained in your book as a call to brotherly love for one's neighbor, since we are all
children of the one Father, and that is very true. But in the holy Fathers the
explanation goes further and is more deeply spiritual. They say that when we use
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these words we should lift up our mind to heaven, to the heavenly Father, and
remember every moment that we are in the presence of God.
" 'The words "hallowed be thy name" are explained in your book by the care we
ought to have not to utter the Name of God except with reverence, nor to use it in a
false oath, in a word that the Holy Name of God be spoken holily and not taken in
vain. But the mystical writers see here a plain call to inward prayer of the heart; that
is, that the most Holy Name of God may be stamped inwardly upon the heart and be
hallowed by self-acting prayer and hallow all our feelings and all the powers of the
soul. The words "Thy kingdom come" they explain thus—may inward peace and quiet
and spiritual joy come to our hearts. In your book again, the words "Give us this day
our daily bread" are understood as asking for what we need for our bodily life, not for
more than that, but for what is needed for ourselves and for the help of our neighbor.
On the other hand, Maxim the confessor understands by "daily bread" the feeding of
the soul with heavenly bread, that is, the Word of God, and the union of the soul with
God, by dwelling upon Him in thought and the unceasing inward prayer of the heart.'
" 'Ah, but the attainment of interior prayer is a very big business and almost
impossible for layfolk,' exclaimed my host. 'We are lucky if we manage to say our
ordinary prayers without slothfulness.'
" 'Don't look at it in that way,' said I. 'If it were out of the question and quite too
hard to do, God would not have bidden us all do it. His strength is made perfect in
weakness. The holy Fathers, who speak from their own experience, offer us the
means, and make the way to win the prayer of the heart easier. Of course, for
hermits they give special and higher methods, but for those who live in the world their
writings show ways which truly lead to interior prayer.'
"I have never come across anything of that sort in my reading,' he said.
" 'If you would care to hear it, may I read you a little from The Philokalia?' I asked,
taking up my copy. I found Peter the Damascene's article, part three, page 48, and
read as follows:' "One must learn to call upon the name of God, more even than
breathing—at all times, in all places, in every kind of occupation. The Apostle says,
'Pray without ceasing.' That is, he teaches men to have the remembrance of God in
all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something, you must call
to mind the Creator of all things; if you see the light, remember the Giver of it; if you
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see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise
the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes, recall Whose gift they are and thank
Him Who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause of your
remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and
therein your soul will always rejoice." There, you see, this way of ceaseless prayer is
simple and easy and within the reach of everybody so long as he has some amount
of human feeling.'
"They were extraordinarily pleased with this. My host took me in his arms and
thanked me again and again. Then he looked at my Philokalia, saying, 'I must
certainly buy myself a copy of this. I will get it at once from Petersburg; but for the
moment and in memory of this occasion I will copy out the passage you have just
read—you read it out to me.' And then and there he wrote it out beautifully. Then he
exclaimed, 'Why, goodness me! Of course I have an icon of the Damascene!' (It was
probably of St. John Damascene.) He picked up a frame, put what he had written
behind the glass, and hung it beneath the icon. 'There,' said he, 'the living word of the
saint underneath his picture will often remind me to put his wholesome advice into
practice.'
"After this we went to supper. As before, the whole household, men and women,
sat down to table with us. How reverently silent and calm the meal was! And at the
end of it we all, the children as well, spent a long while in prayer. I was asked to read
the 'Acathist to Jesus the heart's delight.' Afterward the servants went away to bed,
and we three were left alone in the room. Then the lady brought me a white shirt and
a pair of stockings. I bowed down at her feet and said, 'The stockings, little mother, I
will not take. I have never worn them in my life, we are always so used to onoochi.'9
She hurried off and brought back her old caftan of thin yellow material, and cut it up
into two onoochi, while her husband, saying, 'And look, the poor fellow's footwear is
almost worn out,' brought me his new bashmaki,10 large ones which he wore over his
top boots. Then he told me to go into the next room, which was empty, and change
my shirt. I did so, and when I came back to them again they sat me down on a chair
to put my new footwear on, he wrapping my feet and legs in the onoochi and she
putting on the bashmaki. At first I would not let them, but they bade me sit down,
saying 'Sit down and be quiet; Christ washed His disciples' feet.' There was nothing
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to do but obey, and I began to weep, and so did they. After this the lady went to bed
with the children, and her husband and I went to a summerhouse in the garden.
"For a long while we did not go to sleep, but lay talking. He began in this way, 'Now in
God's name and on your conscience tell me the real truth. Who are you? You must
be of good birth, and are only assuming a disguise of simplicity. You read and write
well, you speak correctly, and are able to discuss things, and these things do not go
with a peasant upbringing.'
" 'I spoke the real truth with a sincere heart both to you and to your wife when I
told you about my birth, and I never had a thought of lying or of deceiving you. Why
should I? As for the things I say, they are not my own, but what I have heard from my
departed starets, who was full of divine wisdom, or what I have gathered from a
careful reading of the holy Fathers. But my ignorance has gained more light from
interior prayer than from anything else, and that I have not reached by myself —it has
been granted me by the mercy of God and the teaching of my starets. And that can
be done by anyone. It costs nothing but the effort to sink down in silence into the
depths of one's heart and call more and more upon the radiant name of Jesus.
Everyone who does that feels at once the inward light, everything becomes
understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of
the kingdom of God. And what depth and light there is in the mystery of a man
coming to know that he has this power to plumb the depths of his own being, to see
himself from within, to find delight in self- knowledge, to take pity on himself and shed
tears of gladness over his fall and his spoiled will! To show good sense in dealing
with things and to talk with people is no hard matter and lies within anyone's power,
for the mind and the heart were there before learning and human wisdom. If the mind
is there, you can set it to work either upon science or upon experience, but if the
mind is lacking then no teaching, however wise, and no training will be any good. The
trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to
ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with
our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles. We think, "I would very gladly take
an interest in spiritual things, and in prayer, but I have no time, the fuss and cares of
life give no chance for such a thing." Yet which is really important and necessary,
salvation and the eternal life of the soul, or the fleeting life of the body on which we