My live friends, as if by agreement, write various kinds of accusatory posts against the Russian Orthodox Church. And against the background of all this, I remembered how I once interviewed one of our Orthodox priests.
It was around Christmas. This was the first issue of the newspaper that came out in the New Year and there was absolutely nothing to fill it with because of the stupid ten-day vacation for the whole country - people are celebrating, press services are on vacation, no fateful decisions are made ... So we decided to please by Christmas Orthodox comrades with revelations from the priest. There are three temples in our city. It was decided to "catch" one of the abbots for an interview. I, by hook or by crook, got the cell number of one of them and made an appointment on Sunday. “I’ll perform the baptism ceremony there, and then I’ll talk to you,” the priest puffed into the receiver.
How I got to this temple is a separate story. He began to "work" back in Soviet times, led a semi-underground existence, and therefore converted from an ordinary private house and is located in *** of the city, on a street with a beautiful name, designed to immortalize the poet Lermontov on the map of Komsomolsk.
In general, freezing in order, I still reached the church. As promised, there was a ceremony. In front of the priest, dressed in something solemnly golden (I don't understand the styles of church clothes), there were about six people, and he preached to them a sermon. In my opinion, only one woman in years listened attentively, the rest were frankly bored, and a girl of about five was completely mimicking the priest, jumping around her mother and spinning around. All this went on for quite a long time, so I was a little distracted, looking at the painting on the walls and domes. From a state of some hypnotization I was brought out by the words uttered in a hysterical female voice. The mother of that very nimble girl, almost holding the priest by the breasts, asked:
- Father, where is my cross?
The same one, complacently replied that there would be a cross, only we would complete the sacrament, but the young lady did not lag behind. As a result, having brought the ceremony to the end, the abbot was forced to enter into explanations with her and her determined mother, and I finally understood what was the matter.
Before being baptized, everyone who wanted to undergo the sacrament handed over to the priest the crosses prepared in advance, which he had to bring later to the church on a special tray. For the rest of the people, they were modest - silver, and for the hysterical young lady - “gold for 6 grams”, as she herself broadcast, plus a chain. As a result, all the crosses arrived safe and sound, and this one was lost somewhere. And now the lady and her mother demanded to find the loss, and even almost openly accused the priest of theft and threatened to call the police.
He was already gray. He apologized to me, called everyone who serves in the church and urgently ordered me to look for the ill-fated gold. Two ladies (one of whom, mind you, 10 minutes before that had been baptized by the same priest), meanwhile, were loudly discussing that no one can be trusted today, since they are already stealing in the church. My father grew paler and paler, but did not interfere with the conversation. Then one of the women ran into the temple:
- Found, father, found! Nikolka the janitor at the path in the snow noticed how the chain glittered.
With trembling hands, the priest accepted the cross and put it on the young lady, who was displeased with curling lips, who did not hesitate to let the poison in:
- Thank you, of course, but it's still strange that it was my dear cross that turned out to be in the snow, and not what a cheap one ...
And so, you know, it became disgusting and disgusting for me that I wanted to punch this girl. I myself cannot classify myself either as an adherent of Orthodoxy, or as a fan of any other religion, but such an attitude always makes me disgusting. My God, girl, you just, if I may say so, entered the faith, and the one whom you accuse of stealing brought you in ... Well, in general, I could hardly restrain myself. And the father just had some kind of humility on his face. He thanked God that he helped to find the missing, and he let the brawler go in peace, and then, sighing with relief, he already talked to me ...
(Here, in the stories, all - Vera, biography and personal life of Alexander Dyachenko,priest (priest) of God Almighty )
Tell about God, Faith and salvation in such a way that he may never even mention Him,
and everything becomes clear to readers, listeners and viewers, and there is joy in their souls ...
I once wanted to save the world, then my diocese, then my village ...
And now I remember the words of the Monk Seraphimushka:
"save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved"!
So simple, and so unattainable ...
Father Alexander Dyachenko(Born 1960) - in the photo below,
Russian man, married, simple, without a / p
And I answered the Lord my God that I would go to the Goal by means of suffering ...
Priest Alexander Dyachenko,
photo from the meeting-deanonymization of the network blogger
Contents of the collection of stories "Crying angel"... Read online!
- Wonders ( Miracles # 1: Healing Cancer Patients) (with the addition of the story "Sacrifice")
- Present (simulator for priests)
- New Year ( with the addition of stories: Funeral , Image and eternal music)
- My Universities (10 years on a piece of iron # 1)
- (with the addition of a story)
- Crying angel (with the addition of a story)
- Best Love Song (The German turned out to be married to a Russian - found Love and death)
- Kuzmich ( with the addition of a story)
- Shreds (full version, including the history of Tamara's meeting with I.V. Stalin )
- Dedication (God, ordination-1)
- Intersections (with the addition of a story)
- Wonders (Wonders # 2: The Smell of the Abyss and the Talking Cat)
- The flesh is one ( Wife priest - how to become a mother? With addition:)
Joke
Be like children (with the addition of a story)
In a circle of light (with the addition of a story)
Valya, Valentina, what's wrong with you now ...
Crown (Island Pavel-3)
love thy neighbour
Climbing
Time is running out (Bogolyubovsky Religious Procession + Grodno-4) (with additional story "I love Grodno" - Grodno-6)
Time has gone!
The all-conquering power of love
A meeting(with Sergei Fudel) ( with the addition of the story "Means Makropulos")
Every breath ... (with the addition of a story)
Heroes and deeds
Gehazi's curse (with the addition of a story)
Father Frost (with the addition of a micro-story)
Deja vu
Children's prayer (Ordination-3, with the addition of a story)
Good deeds
Soul Guardian (Father Victor, special forces-dad, story number 1)
For a life
Boomerang law ( with the addition of a story)
Hollywood star
Icon
And the eternal battle ... (with the addition of a story)
(10 years on a piece of iron # 2)
From the experience of railway theology
Mason (with the addition of a story)
Quasimodo
Princes ( with the addition of a story)
Lullaby (Gypsies-3)
Foundation stone(Grodno-1) ( with the addition of a story - Grodno-2)
Red poppies of Issyk-Kul
You can't see a face face to face ...
Small man
Metamorphosis
A world where dreams come to life
Mirages
Bear and Marishka
My first teacher (Island Pavel-1)
My friend Vitka
Men (with the addition of a story)
War like war (Father Victor, special forces-father, story no. 6)
Our dreams (with the addition of a story)
Don't bend over, little head ...
Scampish notes (Bulgaria)
New Year's story
Nostalgia
About two meetings with Father Alexander "in real life"
(Island Pavel-2)
(Father Victor, special forces-dad, story number 2)
Disconnect mobile phones
Fathers and Sons ( with the addition of the story "Grandfather")
Web
The first love
Letter to Zorica
Letter from childhood (with the addition of the story "The Jewish Question")
Present (about happiness as a gift)
Bow (Grodno-3) (with the addition of the story "Hercules' disease" - Grodno-5)
The position obliges (with the addition of a story - about Victor, no. 4 and 8)
Epistle to Philemon
(Wolf Messing)
Offer
Overcoming (with the addition of a story - about Viktor, special forces-dad, no. 3 and 7)
About Adam
Road checks (with the addition of a story)
Clearance ( Čiurlionis)
Radonitsa
The happiest day
Fairy tale
(10 years on piece of iron # 3)
Neighbors (Gypsies-1)
Old things (with the addition of a story)
Old nags (with the addition of stories and)
Passion-face (Gypsies-2)
Three meetings
Hard question
Wretched
Lesson (Ordination-2)
Feng Shui, or heart disease
Chechen syndrome (Father Victor, special forces-dad, story number 5)
What to do? (Old Believers)
These eyes are opposite (with the addition of stories and)
I did not participate in the war ...
My tongue ... my friend? ...
Even if you read stories and essays father Alexander Dyachenko on the Internet (online), it will be a good thing if you buy the corresponding offline editions (paper books) of Father Alexander and give it to all your friends who do not read anything on the Internet (sequentially, first to one, then to another). This is a good thing!
A little about simple stories Russian priest Alexander Dyachenko
Father Alexander is a simple Russian priest with the usual biography of a simple Russian man:
- was born, studied, served, married, worked (working on a "piece of iron" for 10 years), .. remained a man.
Father Alexander came to the Christian faith as an adult. He was very much hooked by Christ. And somehow little by little ( siga-siga - as the Greeks say, because they love such a solid approach), unnoticed, unexpectedly - turned out to be a Priest, a Servant of the Lord at His Throne.
So suddenly he suddenly became a "spontaneous" writer. I just saw so many things around the significant, providential and miraculous that I began to record the life observations of a simple Russian person in the style of "akyn". And being a wonderful storyteller and a real Russian person with a mysteriously deep, broad Russian soul, who also knew the Light of Christ in His Church, he began to reveal in his stories the Russian and Christian view of our beautiful life in this world, as a place of Love , labor, sorrows and victories, in order to benefit all people from their humble unworthiness.
Here is an abstract from the book "Crying angel" father Alexander Dyachenko about the same:
Fr Alexander's bright, modern and unusually deep stories fascinate readers from the very first lines. What is the author's secret? In truth. In the truth of life. He clearly sees what we have learned not to notice - what gives us inconvenience and troubles our conscience. But here, in the shadow of our attention, not only pain and suffering. It is here - and unspeakable joy, leading us to the Light.A bit of biography Priest Alexander Dyachenko
"The advantage of a simple worker is a free head!"
At a meeting with readers Father Alexander Dyachenko told a little about himself, about his path to faith.- The dream of becoming a military sailor did not come true - father Alexander graduated from the agricultural institute in Belarus. For almost 10 years on the railroad, he left as a train builder, has the highest qualification category. "The main advantage of a simple worker is a free head", - Father Alexander Dyachenko shared his experience. At that time, he was already a believer, and after the "railway stage" of his life he entered the St. Tikhon's Theological Institute in Moscow, after which he was ordained a priest. Today, Father Alexander Dyachenko has 11 years of priesthood behind him, a great experience of communicating with people, a lot of stories.
"The truth of life as it is"
Conversation with priest Alexander Dyachenko, blogger and writer
"Live Journal", LJ alex_the_priest, Father Alexander Dyachenko, who serves in one of the churches of the "distant" Moscow region, does not look like ordinary network blogs. Readers in Father's notes are attracted and conquered by something that certainly should not be looked for on the Internet - the truth of life as it is, and not as it is presented in the virtual space or political debates.
Father Alexander became a priest only at the age of 40, as a child he dreamed of being a military sailor, graduated from an agricultural institute in Belarus. For more than ten years he worked on the railway as a simple worker. Then he went to study at the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities, 11 years ago he was ordained.
Father Alexander's works - apt life sketches - are popular on the Internet and are also published in the weekly "My Family". In 2010, the publishers of "Nicaea" selected 24 essays from the priest's LJ and released the collection "Weeping Angel". A second book is also being prepared - this time the writer himself will choose the stories that will be included in it. Father Alexander told about his work and plans for the future to the portal "Pravoslavie.ru"
- Judging by your stories in LiveJournal, your path to the priesthood was long and difficult. What was the path to writing? Why did you decide to publish everything on the Internet right away?
By chance. I must confess that I am not a "technical" person at all. But my children somehow decided that I was too behind the times, and showed me that there is a "Live Journal" on the Internet, where you can write down some notes.
Still, nothing is accidental in life. I recently turned 50 and it has been 10 years since I became a priest. And I had a need to summarize, to comprehend somehow my life. Everyone has such a turning point in life, someone - at 40 years old, for me - at 50, when it's time to decide what you are. And so all this gradually poured into writing: some memories came, at first I wrote small notes, and then whole stories began to come out. And when the same youth taught me to take the text in LJ "under the cut", then I could not limit my thought ...
I recently calculated that over the past two years I have written about 130 stories, that is, it turns out that all this time I wrote even more often than once a week. This surprised me - I myself did not expect this from myself; something, apparently, moved me, and if I, despite the usual lack of time for a priest, still managed to write something, then it was necessary ... Now I plan to take a break before Easter - and then we'll see. I honestly never know if I'll write the next story or not. If I don’t have a need, a need to tell a story, I’ll abandon it all at once.
- All your stories are written in the first person. Are they autobiographical?
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: The events that are described are all real. But as for the form of presentation, it was somehow closer to me to write in the first person, I can’t do it differently, I guess. After all, I am not a writer, but a village priest.
Some plots are really biographical, but since this did not all happen specifically to me, I write under a pseudonym, but on behalf of the priest. For me, each plot is very important, even if it did not happen to me personally - we also learn from our parishioners, and all our lives ...
And at the end of the stories, I always specifically write a conclusion (the moral of the composition), such as to put everything in its place. It is still important to show: look, you cannot go to the red light, but you can go to the green one. My stories are primarily a sermon ...
- Why did you choose such a direct form of entertaining everyday stories for preaching?
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: So that the one who reads the Internet or opens a book, still read it to the end. So that some simple situation, which he is used to not noticing in ordinary life, would be agitated, awakened a little. And maybe the next time, having faced similar events himself, he will look in the direction of the temple ...
Many readers later confessed to me that they began to perceive the priests and the Church differently. After all, a priest is often like a monument to people. It is impossible to address him, it is scary to approach him. And if they see in my story a living preacher who also feels, worries, who tells them about the secret, then maybe it will be easier later to come to the realization of the need for a confessor in their life ...
I do not see in front of me any specific group of people from the flock ... But I have a lot of hope for the young, so that they also understand.
Young people perceive the world differently than people of my generation. They have different habits, different language. Of course, we will not copy their behavior or expressions in the temple sermon. But at the sermon in the world, I believe, you can speak a little in their language!
- Have you seen the fruits of your missionary message?
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: I had no idea, to be honest, that there would be so many readers. But now there are modern means of communication, they write me comments on the blog, more often no-talk, and I also receive letters to the newspaper "My family", where my stories are published. It would seem that the newspaper, as they say, is "for housewives", it is read by ordinary people busy with everyday life, children, household problems - and from them I was especially happy to receive feedback that the stories made me think about what the Church is and what she.
- However, on the Internet, no matter what you write about, you can get comments that are not too blissful ...
Fr. Alexander: Still, the response is important to me. Otherwise, I would not be interested in writing ...
- And from your regular parishioners in the church, have you ever heard gratitude for your writing?
Fr. Alexander: They, I hope, do not know that I am also writing stories - in fact, in many ways, the everyday stories heard from them make me write something down again!
- And if you run out of interesting stories from life experience, run out?
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: Some quite ordinary situations are very penetrating - and then I write them down. I do not write, my main task is priestly. While this is in line with my activity as a priest, I am writing. I don’t know if I’ll write another story tomorrow.
It's like having an honest conversation with your interlocutor. It is often at the parish that the community gathers after the Liturgy, and at the meal each one in turn tells something, shares problems, or impressions, or joy - such a sermon after the sermon is obtained.
- Do you confess to the reader yourself? Does writing strengthen you spiritually?
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: Yes, it turns out that you open yourself up. If you write while closing, no one will believe you. Each story carries the presence of a person on whose behalf the story is told. If it's funny, then the author himself laughs, if it's sad, then he cries.
For me, my notes are an analysis of myself, an opportunity to summarize and say to myself: here you are right, but here you were wrong. Somewhere it is an opportunity to ask for forgiveness from those whom you have offended, but in reality it is no longer possible to ask for forgiveness. Maybe the reader will see how bitter it is later, and will not repeat some of the mistakes that we make every day, or at least think about it. Let him not immediately, let him remember in years - and go to church. Although in life it happens in different ways, because how many people all gather, but they never come to church. And my stories are also addressed to them.
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: Holy Bible... If we don't read it daily, we end up as Christians right away. If we live with our own mind and do not eat the Holy Scriptures like bread, then all our other books lose their meaning!
If it is difficult to read, let him not be too lazy to come to the church-talks about the Holy Scriptures, which, I hope, every parish conducts ... Seraphim Sarovsky read every day Gospel, although he knew by heart, what should we say?
That's all that we, priests, write - all this should push such a person to start reading the Holy Scriptures. This is the main task of all near-church fiction and journalism.
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: Well, firstly, we collect our parish library at the church, in which everyone who turns can get something they need, and something modern, which is not only useful, but interesting to read. So for advice, including about literature, do not hesitate to turn to a priest.
In general, there is no need to be afraid to have a confessor: it is imperative to choose a specific person, even if he is often busy and sometimes will "brush off" you, but it is better if you go to the same priest, and gradually a personal one will be established. contact with him.
Priest Alexander Dyachenko: It is difficult to choose one thing. In general, with age, I began to read less fiction, and you begin to appreciate the reading of spiritual books. But recently, for example, I again opened Remark "Love your neighbor"- and saw that it was the same Gospel, only stated in everyday life ...
With priest Alexander Dyachenko
talked Antonina Maga- February 23, 2011 - pravoslavie.ru/guest/44912.htm
The first book, a collection of stories, by the priest Alexander Dyachenko "Crying angel" published in the publishing house "Nika", Moscow, 2011, 256s., m / o, pocket format.
Father Alexandra Dyachenko has a hospitable LJ blog- alex-the-priest.livejournal.com on the Internet.
. "HELP ME HOLY MAN!"
Priests serving in churches, especially rectors, are called "angels" in our country. This is a normal phenomenon, especially since there are grounds for this in the Holy Scriptures. And our church was lucky: we have not one “angel” in my face, which is supposed to be in the state, but as many as two. And we consider our elder Nina as the second angel.
Remember this funny film about the adventures of Shurik and the bully Fedya? As at the end of the film Fedya will work hard for all the proposals, comes out in front and shouts: "Me!" This is about our Nina. It is necessary to be on duty in the temple - "I!" To sit at the patient's bedside after the operation - "Me!" To help organize the funeral of a lonely old man and many other side situations - this is a constant and unchanging - "I!"
The person is already under sixty, and she does not recognize days off, she does not need a salary. Somehow two cutters came to us from the Volga, they cut down our church house. Such healthy men, sedate, okayat. I hear scared shouts: "Father! Look where Nina has climbed."
But once she had no thoughts about God. She has always been an activist, a member of the trade union committee, a soloist of an amateur choir. And so on until the Lord once visited with a grave illness. When a person hears about such a terrible diagnosis, he perceives it as a sentence. Nina said that the surgeon, marking the operating field, said: “It’s a pity to cut such a breast, but there’s no other way.” She recalls the days of postoperative therapy - it was very hard. Once she lifted her head from the pillow, and all the hair on it remained. Lies all in tears, no hope. At this very moment, the head of the department comes to their ward and says: "Girls, believe my experience, if you want to live, go to church. Pray, ask God. You need to fight for life."
Of all those who were then lying with Nina in the ward, she was the only one who heard the doctor's words and went to church. Someone has become non-traditional methods of treatment, someone went to psychics and sorcerers ...
“Then I came to our cathedral,” Nina says, “but I don't know anyone, not a single saint. I look at the frescoes. Who is praying to? How? Not a single prayer comes to mind. Now I will not confuse John the Baptist with anyone. And then I saw that he was already painfully emaciated, his legs were very thin. And I say to him: “Holy man, you have such thin legs, you are probably a real saint, Pray for me, I want to live. Only now I began to understand what life is and how I still need it. I looked back at what I had lived through, but there is nothing to remember. I will live differently now. I promise you. Help me holy man "This prayer is ingenuous, but such one that can only be prayed in the most difficult moments of her life, captured her. The woman completely dissolved in her. iron plates barefoot, not feeling cold.
Suddenly he hears:
- Vladyka, bless me to ask her to leave?
Only then, having regained consciousness, I looked around with eyes full of tears. She did not even notice how the service began and has been going on for quite a long time, that Vladyka is practically next to her, and the priests are surrounding her. The saint answered:
- Don't touch her, you see a man is praying, and that's why we come here.
Almost on the very first day after returning home from the hospital, Nina came to our church. then he was still completely different Only recently they cut down the birch trees from the roof and covered the broken floors with wooden patches She went to the Crucifixion, knelt in front of Him and said: "Lord, I will not leave here, just leave me life. I promise You that I will to serve You until the end "And literally three months later, Nina, still a completely sick person, was chosen as a headman.
It is difficult to restore a temple, especially if it is in a village. It is difficult to go to offices and constantly ask for help. And when you yourself continue to undergo chemotherapy, it is triple difficult. Nina says that she came to a construction department, asks a familiar master:
- Gene, help. Father is serving, and fragments of brick almost fall into the bowl from the ceiling. Plaster us at least an altar so that we can serve. We will collect money from services and gradually pay off.
- The master refused her, although he was a good friend.
- Nina, my customers are serious, they pay a lot of money, I won't spray people on trifles for a penny.
Seven months passed. She went to the region to see her doctor. He was walking down the corridor - a man was looking, his face seemed familiar, only very exhausted by the disease. Gena came up to him!
- My dear, what are you doing here?
We hugged and cried together.
- Nina, I still remember you, how you came to me. And I, a fool, refused. Eh, it would be possible to turn back time, believe me, I would have done everything in the church myself, I would not have entrusted it to anyone.
It is only for these words that we remember him, for this repentance at the end of his life. Remember, as in John Chrysostom on Easter: "God kisses the intentions"
Sometimes the disease comes suddenly, and it is not at all necessary that it is sent as a punishment. No, it can also be an offer to stop in the flow of vanity and think about the eternal. The disease makes a person realize that he is mortal and may not have much time left. That in the last months or years of life you need to try to catch up with the most important thing for which you came into this world. And then someone gains faith, and hurries to church, and someone, alas, rushes to all the hard.
Amazing stories sometimes happen to people who are sent to work for us. Once a team of masons worked for us. Among them was one elderly worker, his name was Victor. When they were already finishing the laying, he unexpectedly refused the money. The master told me about this: so they say so. the person refuses from the earned. I talked to him then, do not hesitate, they say, take it, any work must be paid. And he: I will not take a point.
Six months later, Victor had a heart attack, and he died suddenly. Our headman, knowing the deceased well, could not remember anything from life that could be put in the bowl of good deeds on the scales of supreme justice. And so the Lord brought the man shortly before his death to work in the temple and prompted him to act - to sacrifice salary for Christ. What I find in that and I judge. Victor obliged us to pray for him, here is such a "cunning"
We employed two tilers, real professionals, a man and a woman, both middle-aged. And now, three months later, the floors were finished. a woman comes up to me in the temple. eyes are full of tears. I looked - this is Galina, the same tiler. She was given a terrible diagnosis and she came to us, although she still did not know how we can help her. If this had happened earlier, she would not have looked for support in the church, but she was given a whole month to work in the church, to communicate with believers and with a priest. Her pain, like their own, was accepted by dozens of people, supported, reassured
... The man first came to confession. He began to pray and receive communion. Having stood on the verge between life and death, Galina understood that she could leave in the coming months, but she ceased to be afraid of death, because she had found faith. And faith brought her out of despair, helped to start fighting for her life.
I remember how she was brought to our church after another chemotherapy. She herself could not walk, someone was always leading her. Each time she received communion and, literally, before our eyes, life again poured into her. We prayed for her for almost a year, each of us, and every day. On Easter week we saw her joyful and full of energy: “I think I’ll go to work, stop getting sick” You cannot imagine what an Easter gift it was for all of us!
I know of many cases when a person was healed from the most terrible diseases through one single medicine - through faith, which inspires hope.
Sometimes, inviting me to a terminally ill, my family warns: “Father, he is dying, just, for God's sake, don’t tell him anything. We don’t want to hurt him.” Whenever I hear these words, everything inside me starts to protest. Why invite me then? How can a person not be warned that he has the last months or even weeks of his life left? What right do we have to be silent? After all, he must sum up and make a decision. And if a person still does not know God, then we need to help him decide whether with Christ or alone he will go into eternity. Otherwise, his suffering loses its meaning and life itself turns into nonsense.
Nina told me the other day. Every year she goes to the region to see her doctor, to the one who once prompted her the way to the temple. Nina had already missed the appointed day of the appointment, but still did not go. Spun.
-I'm coming, - he says - later, almost a month, I go into the office. The doctor saw me, jumped off the chair, ran up to me, hugged me and cried with joy. And he slaps me on the back with his palm, not as much as a child: “Why haven't you been here for so long? I've already changed my mind. "
.
Priest Alexander Dyachenko.
.
............................................
Question: Did you meet Fr. Tavrion when he was serving here?
The first time I came to him was in 73. Then I lived in Chelyabinsk, where there was one temple in a million-strong city. It was crowded, and we were bothering to get permission to build a new temple or give it a museum. They even asked this question in Moscow, but never received a positive answer. These were the 70s, when, on the contrary, the temples were closed, it was a hard time. And we suddenly decided to ask for another church ... When we arrived here, to Fr. Tavrion, and came to his reception, I began to tell how we were in all these instances that were against us, and he sat and smiled. Apparently, he was so pleased that there were people who still raise their heads. As our late Archbishop of Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Kliment used to say: "One thing is good that you didn't put your head down and don't wait for the ax to drop." And Father Tavrion was glad for us that we were acting. Then he told me: "Do nothing yourself, the Lord will show you the way." Well, I went home, went to work, and then I think: “How long will I work? I will come to work. " And she left for Tobolsk. And here, in Jelgava, my sister was and wrote to Father Tavrion that I left work for the church. To which he wrote me a note: "And we will find it." I received this letter from the elder and came here. Father received me, but did not take me to his house right away. Then he gave me obedience - to give answers to letters, translations, telegrams. Therefore, I was his clerk.
Question: What do you remember from those early times?
Father read thoughts like the leaves of a book. Such an example: he accepts, and I sit in another room and hear that, apparently, a woman is complaining that a woman is cheating on her son. Father Tavrion says: "Oh, these women, oh, these women ...". And I sit and think: "Well, it happens, and men cheat." And he answers me: "Yes, it happens." (general laughter)... Father, forgive me, but it was the same, I didn’t know that the time would come, I would talk about your holiness, father, you’re a holy man. Or such a small example: he loved those who worked around him with something, but to console them. One year there were a lot of watermelons. They brought a big car of watermelons and in the evening everyone comes home from work, they say who did what, and I sit there, writing. He gave everyone a piece of watermelon, but I didn't. Well, I'm sitting, offended, then. Then I reassure myself that you have never eaten a watermelon, or what? After a while, he brings a piece, says: "No, don't cry" (general laughter)... He was still with humor.
Question: Yes, they are saints, with humor.
So he read our minds like the leaves of a book.
Question: Mother, don't you remember the Muscovites who came?
A lot of people came, you can't remember all of them, I sat and wrote that they would order. I remember those who worked here, but they have already departed to the Lord ...
Question: Young people came from Moscow?
From Moscow? Yes, a lot came, a lot. Once I say to my father: “Father, we have an academy, a seminary, and regency courses (laughs). We had a composition - both illiterate, and secondary education, and higher education. I say, “our parish, father, this is the entire Soviet Union. Whole country". I think there are parcels from everywhere, only from Central Asia, probably not. I didn't have time to think - came from Ashgabat (laughs)... From all over the country, from Kamchatka even, from everywhere they received parcels. And then I wrote to them that we received it in good working order and we pray.
Question: And how did the priest serve the liturgy?
He served the liturgy very lively. So we, sisters, were singing, but there weren't many of us - two or three, and from this side all the pilgrims sang in two choirs. Well, sometimes, people will gather who can sing - we will sing nothing, and another time nothing will work out.
Question: Pilgrims ...
Yes, pilgrims (laughs)... I had to lead, as it were, but I myself do not understand anything. I didn't learn much. Father served very highly, his voice is high and they said to me: "You, sing how he makes an exclamation." He's high - I'm high too. Well, now, the service will work out, that is, our singing - I run ahead of the priest, open the door for him and think: “The priest will now praise”. He comes in and says: "Hmm, admired ...". And that's all. And when the singing does not go well, I think now the priest will come and say: "Well, how they sang." He walks in and says: "Beauty"! Why beauty? Because it didn't go well, and we prayed "Lord, help us!" And when it was going well, we did not pray, but admired ourselves (laughs)... So I will open the doors and tremble when it turns out badly, and he: "Beauty, beauty." I dont know what to say (laughs).
Question: When did you have time? Liturgy every day and evening service ...
Father got up at four in the morning, sometimes he told me to knock on his window, wake him up when he didn't get up himself. He came, immediately performed a proskomedia, and then they came to confession, and I wrote down the names, and they approached the priest for a prayer of permission. He prayed at the litany only for those who were signed up for communion. And so he did not read ...
Question: That is, they wrote down for the sacrament?
They wrote the names of those who go to communion, and he prayed at the liturgy at the liturgy. He used to say: "The priest reads, reads, reads prayers, and the worshipers stand from foot to foot, shifting from foot to foot." And then he said, do not come early, spare your legs, the priest will come early, and the service will begin at six.
Question: How long did the service last?
By eight, they managed to leave for work in Jelgava. Quickly. This is how Batiushka conducted the service, we sang more, all the people. “Come, let us bow down” - everything, “Holy God, Holy Mighty…” - everything. And during the liturgy, and, in general, "The Grace of the World" was sung. And then one day they came out, I already spoke when I remembered, and something sang so well in my soul. And he came out and said: "Olympics is an ulcer of the chorus." I opened my mouth (laughs). I'm going home, I think, what did the father say? But it turns out that when the priest died, persecution began against us, who honored the priest. And first of all to the Olympics ... He foresaw everything, Father, foresaw my life. When I arrived for the first time, I went into a wooden church here, and there is such beauty compared to our little church, where you used to stand and you couldn't raise the banner of the cross. And here flowers, candles are burning, there are carpets and paths on the floor. I admire how he loves God. He went out and said: "How can you not love Him?" And he gave an example from his hard life. Did you think, father, that now I will speak here ...
Question: Many went to him for healing?
He healed, of course, a lot. He had such an order - after the service, no one came up to him under the blessing. He took in the lodge. People have already had breakfast and are at the reception. And I was very happy, he told me to knock when it was time for an appointment. As I knock, he will come out and speak so kindly that I cannot say so: "We will accept." He spoke with such affection that I loved listening to it. I looked - there were people standing there, and my soul felt so light, warm and joyful that I was ready to hug everyone.
And people came up one by one, and he was already talking there calmly, they could ask everything. But this was already a time when in other monasteries priests were not accepted anywhere - in the 70s ... Here (shows) there was a bathhouse, pilgrims came, they could wash in the bathhouse. They were fed three times a day - after the liturgy, lunch and in the evening after the evening service. When he came here to the wilderness, there was only a temple, and in the temple there was an iron stove in the middle and that's it. And he raised everything here himself. And then it was still difficult to get materials, in order to build some documents and so on and so forth. And the priest succeeded in all this with his prayers, and he himself worked here a lot, he went with taxi drivers, bought these beds, bed linen - everything that is now. He worked a lot to restore this desert, and here I say to Father Yevgeny (Rumyantsev): "Father, I will again express my insult, it was a hundred years of the desert and at least a word was said that this desert was revived by Father Tavrion." Yes, if it were not for Father Tavrion, this would not have happened! He did it all.
Question: God knows ...
He knows, yes, He knows all this, but I am still a sinner ... Dear Father, how much you have done, how much you have suffered. He himself told me when I came to him for the last time for a blessing. He lies, I got down on my knees, and he says: "Do you know the prophecy about the desert?" I say "No". - "There will be a manger, there will be sheep, and there will be nothing to eat." Well, now a lot has been built and there are many sisters, but there is no word of God. And then I didn’t understand how there’s nothing to eat ... Now people don’t go either, but then they traveled from all over the country, he was very sorry that people went so far away. From the Far East, everywhere. Popular rumor is like a sea wave - one will go and tell the other, and everyone went, because they could solve all the issues, and even such a technique. Then he said, some will go to one monastery, there, to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and then they will come here. He said they would spend all the money there, and then ...
Question:... here for prayer.
Yes (laughs). And here they will come and here paradise.
Question: Mother Olympias, why do you think it is so difficult for people to come to church now?
Even during the time of terrible persecution, the elder said , that the time will come, they will open temples, gilded domes, there will be free religion, everything so that when the Lord comes to judge, there will be no excuse that there was no way to walk. I remember working and teaching part-time, they reproached me so much that I communicate with the younger generation, and this is incompatible ... And I only answered that it was love. Only by this was it defended.
And now there are churches, and where are the people? There are no people. We have two churches in Jelgava, and there is no service every day. But all the same, thank God that the churches are open, and there is where to come ... I was recently in Petrograd in Victory Park, and there was once a brick factory, where all those who died during the blockade were burned. And now a church for All Saints was built there, I was in this church, I prayed and it seemed to me that my dead were praying with me. There is a service every day in the morning and in the evening, but there are still no people.
Question: Father Tavrion knew how to inspire people for worship.
After all, he encouraged so many people to actively participate ... When a person would come, he never read anything, and Father gives the Six Psalms, says: "Go read." And he does not understand anything from the sight, he is at a loss, as he reads there ... The sisters, of course, were angry with the priest that he gave it like that, and then this man writes a letter, he has already arrived home and almost a psalm reader. Like this. Or one woman came with a boy and said that he stutters a little. And father gave him the Six Psalms to read. He read, stuttered, quit, I even cried for him, I felt sorry. After a while I come to the church - I serve as a deacon, such a voice! This is how the priest glorified people ... In general, he tried to get the people to participate in the service, and he really did participate in it.
Question: Did he have any favorite chant?
Favorite chants were during the liturgy, they always sang before communion (hums) " If I always crucify You ... ”,“ Having seen the Resurrection of Christ ”,“ Open the doors of mercy to us, ”and at this time the priest opened the Royal Doors and went out with the Chalice. And in the evening, instead of kathisma, they sang in chant akathists or the Mother of God, or the Savior, or St. Nicholas. He was very fond of the akathist "Glory to God for everything", he read it himself ... He said: "Why are you going? We don't have any such architectural buildings or anything else there, but are you going? " And the people are going, they are participating and are leaving the church joyful that they are singing themselves, and now they will ride and ride as long as they can.
Question: Many of them traveled from year to year.
Somehow I close the door, and one old woman leaves and says, "I probably won't have to come again," and I consoled her, I say, come again. A year has passed ... (laughs)... comes and says: "Here I am!" (laughs)... And one psalmist wrote a letter to Father from Kazakhstan, where she was in the settlement of Fedorovka, that she was already being taken to church on sledges in winter, because she herself could not walk and all that. Well, okay, I read this letter and that's it. And in the summer she comes. This cannot walk!
Father, apparently, gave me, as I understand now, many letters to read, he knew, of course, that I would tell ... (laughs) ... Once I read a letter, it’s scary there, so a woman writes that she is suffering from cancer. Father says to me: "You put something for her in the parcel". I collect it, give it to the woman, she is lucky, and I think to myself: "What kind of transmission is there, the man is waiting for death, but the father collected this and that for her." And she was healed. Father died, but she lives.
Everyone who was with us came to their home, and then sent parcels of food here. Money could not be transferred, so they will hide it in the parcel. And there were translations. Even if you have received the translation, you need to rewrite the names and pray for them. Even my whole body got sick of writing these names. We got up, I said, at four o'clock, then went to the service, stood there, read the synodiks, and sometimes I felt so bad that I thought I would at least live up to communion. And if I take communion, I forget about everything. I’ll come to the house, the priest will go to rest, and I need to light the lamps there, get ready for the reception, and I will forget that it was bad. And, of course, Father's grace gave strength, he was so mobile that I could not keep up with him ...
Question: Did he walk fast?
Quickly, everything was in motion, somehow she hung up white towels in the kitchen - one thing, another. He went out and said: "Hmm, there is nothing to wipe your hands with," he brought some kind of rag - he hung it up (laughs)... He was very neat, he loved everything beautiful, especially robes ... But the year he died, there were heavy rains. He was sick, and they all poured, poured ... And when he died - everything stopped, and during the funeral the sun shone so ...
Question: Did he die under the Transfiguration? It turns out that he served on Trinity for the last time and then never left his cell?
Well, yes, Father Yevgeny (Rumyantsev) was already serving at that time, he received communion, came. Even to his sister, the priest told how to dress him, otherwise he says: "I will die, there will be none of the clergy who know how to dress me." And she thought: "Well, how is it, so many people go to him, he is respected and there will be no one" ... But really one about. Eugene was. In the morning we came to the service, I remember, at fifteen to seven he died, came to the service, and Fr. Eugene announces to us that now Fr. Tavrion walked away.
Question: Was he with him when the priest left?
No, there was no one. Even this young man who has now written a book, Father Vladimir Wilgert, he was even in the wilderness at that time, but he was not told. That is how they put him in isolation lately. We were not allowed anyone. Then there were already persecutions, he was staged by those who previously surrounded him.
Question: A now you have a connection with those who are to Fr. Did you come to Tavrion from Jelgava?
Yes, when the 13th August is Remembrance Day, they will come from Tallinn. They came last year and promised to come this year.
Hermitage near Jelgava, on the way to the grave of Fr. Tavriona, July 2010.
Why does a neighbor, or a partner, or a colleague have more money, and the house is a full cup and the children are clever? And at home, wherever you look, there is a wedge everywhere. The most amazing thing is that everyone complains: those who, according to others, live happily ever after, and those who, according to their own understanding, are bypassed and ignored. It cannot be such that everyone and everything was bypassed by the mercies of God, and the seal of constant need and temptation lay on all of us.
Two recent events that happened to me have clarified something.
My computer broke down. In the evening he worked, and in the morning, when he decided to pick up the e-mail that had come, he “grunted” a couple of times to himself, but did not want to turn on. I took him to repair, sadly arguing, what to do? At the "exit", the church, multi-page "Svetilen", Easter greetings must be completed, and there are also a lot of urgent matters that, begun and completed, lay in the memory of the machine, which at such an unnecessary moment let me down.
- Well, - I thought, - Temptations continue.
In the end, I persuaded her to go to an elder confessor, more experienced than I am a sinner, although I was not sure that the trip would take place or that it would bring anything.
Before me was a different person. Calmness, prudence, some kind of completeness in thoughts and, most importantly, a clear, not running and not changing look.
- Father, I came to thank you, thank God, everything is fine with us, and I have calmed down.
- What did something to you, Father N., that you are transformed now both in appearance and in words?
- Yes, I told the monk everything, talked for an hour, he listened in silence. Then he put his hands on my head and read prayers.
- Is that all?
- No, he blessed me with a box sealed and sealed with a ribbon and told me to go home. He also asked me, upon arrival, to whitewash and paint the windowsills in the hut, buy a shirt for my sons and husband, and a dress for my daughter, and then we had to sit down at the table with lunch, read Our Father and open this box.
- Well, and then? I was already beginning to get overwhelmed by curiosity.
- I was pounding for two days, by Saturday, just finished, well, we sat down at the table. The husband opened the box, and there are five red, decorated, wooden Easter eggs. I looked at them, and then at my husband and children, and they are all so happy, so clean, and fair and ... burst into tears. And the house is also good, cozy and everything is white. And everything is dear, dear.
- Repaired? Probably something serious? Will you have to wait? - from the doorway he began to question the masters, as if preparing himself in advance in the inevitability of a long wait and unforeseen waste.
- They did, Father Alexander, they did, - they reassured me, and, seeing my joyful face, they added:
- Father Alexander, here we are, and such a smart shirt on you, but beautiful, but clean.
- Well, - I thought, - I planted a stain again or got into the paint somewhere.
— ?!
- Yes, you, father, and clean and ironed, and in the computer, under the casing of dust, there was so much dirt that it became unbearable for him to work. At least sometimes you need to clean it with a vacuum cleaner. You yourself, I suppose, wash every day ...
“Turn your pupils inward,” the wise elders advise, and add, “the cause of your troubles is in your heart.”
Kopik and Brynza
Father Stefan
Father Stefan is young. He's also celibate. There is such a rank in the Orthodox priesthood. He refused to tie the knot, and to become a monk either he didn’t have enough strength, or left it for "later", but be that as it may, the time spent by the white priesthood to take care of the family with Father Stephen was reserved.
That is why His Eminence issued a decree, where three parishes in the north of the diocese were assigned under the leadership of Priest Stephen. Simultaneously. With the wording: "rector of temples."
The northern part of the metropolitan's patrimony corresponds to the concept of "north", as it is poorly populated, poor and ruined in recent years. All careless clergy are exiled here from rich, industrial, southern cities to correct and admonish all careless clergy.
Father Stefan was not negligent. He was energetic. I managed to do everything. To serve, as it should be and when it should be, it is required to perform with an acceptable rank, to teach Sunday school and to read books.
The long priestly braid and fluttering tails of Father Stephen's robe are constantly present everywhere in the parish, so swift are his movements, quick speech and energetic actions. He flies up the steps, raises exclamations loudly and loudly, he can sing prayers and requiems himself, because the kliros is not always able to perform the irmos and troparia by singing a Cossack marching song, that is, with a voice that corresponds to the essence of the young priest.
After two or three months of his ministry, the rectors of the churches, where Priest Stephen was numbered by decree, went to the diocese with a request to restore peace and quiet to their parish, completely lost, in the presence of an energetic and restless cleric.
Having received the rector's appointment, Father Stefan put all his simple possessions in two aluminum boxes, which he simply called “cargo 200,” and went to the regional department of agriculture. In 10 minutes, he proved to the responsible official in charge of the area of the future ministry that, although he does not wear a cross around his neck and keeps a “obscene” calendar in his office, he must still provide him with transport to travel to his destination. The official immediately found the car and helped load it himself, but after the applicant had safely left, he could not understand for a long time why he did it. Also, the fact of finding a torn colorful wall monthly with "Miss Ukraine 2004" in the trash can also defied definition.
Three churches, the care of which were now entrusted to the young abbot, were located a couple of tens of kilometers from each other. One of them, the central one, is in the former building of the regional veterinary clinic, which was closed as unnecessary due to the absence of patients. The second, in a typical 19th-century church, built of red bricks from the tsarist years of production and therefore preserved, since it is impossible to break the masonry of great-grandfathers even with explosives. This temple was beautiful, solid, prayerful and historic, but there was no roof on it, and acacia bushes grew on the remaining ceilings above the altar. The third parish of Father Stephen appeared before him in an extremely picturesque form. On the bank of a large pond ("headquarters", in local), completely filled with quacking and cackling birds inhabiting a private, recently built poultry farm, 150 reinforced concrete blocks were neatly folded, and a wooden cross was driven into the ground. On the cross, "Borisoglebskaya Church" is inscribed in white paint.
Having surveyed the property, Father Stefan settled in a two-room apartment, or rather, in the former reception room of a veterinary hospital, converted into housing, and pounded empty gas cylinders suspended in obedience to bells for half an hour. A lot of people came, although half of them were just out of curiosity: to look at the new priest and stop the long ringing that disrupts the quiet, measured course of life in the district town, which stands for “urban-type settlement”.
Father Stephen introduced himself in a clear voice and told in great detail what an Orthodox parish means in the life of every resident of an urban-type settlement. Having confessed to the intra-temple poverty and external church wretchedness of this center of spirituality, the priest took upon himself the obligation to quickly bring everything into a dignified, noble and aesthetically integral form. The parishioners were already expecting a demand for a donation and prepared each from 25 kopecks to a hryvnia, which in the end would have amounted to the price of one lunch in a local cafe, but the new spiritual pastor did not say these words and did not ask for anything. He finished his sermon-appeal with a very clear statement: “Tomorrow I, the headman and the psalm-reader, will begin to tour all the houses of the village. In a row house by house, street by street. We baptize those who are not baptized, we serve prayers, we consecrate dwellings, farmsteads, vegetable gardens and thinness. We will not let anyone through. We will collect the payment for this service, which is necessary for everyone, in an honest way, that is, in a Christian way, as it is written in the Holy Bible: “Those who receive the priesthood…. they have a commandment to take tithes from the people, that is, from their brothers, according to the law. Your dear district police officer, a representative of the regional authority and a fireman will walk with me, so that everything is done correctly according to the secular law and decently according to the church rules.
The people did not understand, involuntarily shrank and this attention was the beginning of respect, as well as irritation. They blamed it on youth, pretentiousness and inexperience of a young and quick priest, but they turned out to be wrong.
On the same day, Father Stefan visited the head of the village administration and clearly proved to the latter that one should know one's voter by sight and take care of everyone's problems on the eve of the upcoming regular elections. The union of power and the church, will give the current head a huge increase in the electorate, and the presence of him personally or his closest deputy on the universal mission of consecration and churching will throw his competitors, local opposition and ill-wishers to the dustbin of the political history of an urban-type settlement. I must say that a local head could not have come up with such a thing, so Father Stefan received concrete, joyful and obligatory assurances of all-round support for a good undertaking.
It was easier with the police and firemen. The rector of the churches, sympathizing with the not very good statistics of offenses, crimes and fire safety, reminded the heads of these divisions that prevention should be at the forefront of their activities. There is hardly a better time and way to determine the fire resistance and the potential danger of disturbing public peace than the events starting tomorrow. Moreover, in addition to the priest, the local head will also be with them. The militia generally perked up, anticipating the abundance of moonshine stills and concrete evidence of a local craze, that is, the spreading of state property and other personal, but alien, property to their homes.
In the evening, Father Stefan reached the poultry farm. The director was there. It could not be otherwise, because the factory was his personal, and the ethnic origin of Gusarsky Boris Solomonovich did not raise doubts, which imposed on his pedantry, efficiency and enterprise special features not inherent in representatives of local national origin. Director Gusarsky put his Jewry so clearly and definitely that it did not cause any special associations, and almost a hundred hen-women working in the factory wore it in their arms for constant and regularly paid work.
Having entered the office, Father Stefan, although he was young, realized that here he came to someone who can do everything if he needs it and is profitable.
To prove that the workers of the director Gusarsky will be more productive and, most importantly, more honest in their difficult work, if the church is standing next to him, he could easily with just one exclamation:
- Boris Solomonovich, you know very well how crystal clear and hardworking Orthodox Jews are, but in me you see a conservative Orthodox.
When, after describing all the advantages of Orthodox workers over the atheists, Father Stephen told the dumbfounded director that assistance in the construction of the church would cut off part of his exorbitant taxes, the issue was resolved. Finally.
***
Six months later, Father Stefan was sitting in the reception room of the diocesan secretary with a petition. He demanded that two priests be allocated for his parish. After all, he cannot serve the liturgy in three churches at the same time….
Cleaner
- You would, father, come clean the yard.
‑ ?
- Gurkotit, something at night, knocks. The rooster is neither light nor dawn, and someone is groping in the cellar.
Got it.
They ask to consecrate the estate.
Try to explain something about superstition and fear of unbelief?
Will not work. At best, they will listen skeptically, nod their heads, either as a sign of agreement, or in the sense: say, say, speak, but go ahead and do your priestly business.
This usually happens in the village. In the city it is a little different, here they are already talking about the poltergeist, they will remember familiar book magicians, and the latest forecasts of home-grown astrologers will be cited as an example. One thing unites, that the city, that the village - absolute confidence in the existence of someone who deliberately wants evil and trouble. Moreover, this is not the "enemy of the human race" about which both in Scripture and the Fathers. No, not him. Why go so far? The source is usually nearby. With an amplitude from a neighbor to a mother-in-law or to a mother-in-law with a father-in-law.
However, all this reasoning. The statement that the Old Testament is biblical and is extremely relevant today.
I collected my necessary suitcase and went to “clean the yard”.
Met by the owner. A dry little man, about seventy years old, neatly dressed on the occasion of my arrival, and constantly muttering something for himself or for me (?). To my "What are you talking about!" and "Wow!" no reaction. Continuous reasoning that the enemies do not allow to live in peace, over the year before last, he sowed wheat in the garden so much that he sowed it around the edges, tied it in such a knot that the potatoes did not give birth.
- Did the Little Humpbacked Horse go for a walk or what? I asked my grandfather.
He continued to mumble something without answering.
- You speak to him louder, he hears badly - deciphered my bewilderment, the hostess who came out. I had to repeat it loudly.
My grandfather looked at me in bewilderment and replied:
- What kind of horse, we don’t keep them from birth. Tutochki, through the estate, the grandmother lives, and she does this indecency.
I am amazed at my rural parishioners. Usually, by their old age, they themselves remain on the farm. The children are leaving. The worries are not diminishing, since they are children who, with their whole family, who have grown up, clearly come to the collection of cherries, then potatoes and other vegetables. This is not to say that they would not help plant, weed and fight with a beetle, but early in the morning in the gardens I usually only watch grandmothers and grandfathers in kerchiefs and caps ....
Silushka is already the one that my old people used to have now, and the number of acres in the field and on the estate, like the cackling and bellowing brotherhood, is by no means diminishing. It is clear that you will not be able to cope with everything, but they do not want to make adjustments to their years and health, and what they previously worked out quickly and clearly does not have time to do now. One thing goes wrong, then another. We must look for a reason. The guilty ones, we always find on the side. Initially, this was the way it was, starting with Adam.
The owner and hostess lived in a large house, and the first, or rather, its lower floor, which was built for the basement, with small windows at the top, gradually became their main "home", and the upper rooms were striking in their cleanliness and symmetry of the furniture, objects, pillows and dishes in the sideboard. We didn't live here. They kept it for the guests. In my opinion, the last time they came here at Christmas or at Easter, last.
In front of the red corner, on the table, I laid out my "holiness", this is what we call everything that is in the right suitcase. On the street, he lit a censer (the stench from the current Sofra coals emanates such a stench when kindling that one involuntarily remembers the "fiery hyena") and began to serve a prayer service on the sly.
The hostess stood right behind me, with a lighted candle and regularly repeated all the familiar words of the prayers being recited, and when necessary, and "Lord, have mercy," in a low voice, deduced.
Grandfather settled down a little further. He did not light a candle, saying that there were lamps in front of the icons, and there was no point in wasting candles in vain, since "husband and wife are one with ...", one is enough. It was useless to argue, I already understood this, and I hoped that, having said nothing, I would make my grandfather stop his muttering.
I shouldn't have hoped. The grandfather continued to grumble, not paying attention to what his grandmother had repeated several times:
-Yes, you old!
There was no time to listen, but nevertheless it was clear that there was a kind of reportage-commentary on all my words and actions, the main part of which was the lament that everything is not so now and the priests are also almost not real and there was nothing to hang me in the iconostasis.
And indeed, among the multitude of different-sized icons in the red corner, with flowers and candles inserted under the glass, there was my photograph, with which, however, there were two more priests who were honored with the same honor. One is an acquaintance, and the other, as I guessed, was my predecessor from the old church, desecrated and destroyed in Khrushchev's hard times.
When I pasted the laid images of crosses on the walls, before anointing them with blessed oil, my grandfather muttered in frustration that he “ruined the trellises” (the tapestries are the local wallpaper), but most of all my sprinkling of the home with holy water excited me.
- This one, who will now wash the sideboard and wardrobe?
On the street, while sprinkling the house, buildings and the estate, grandfather cheered up and, proudly looking at the neighbors peering from behind the fence, several times loudly, so that everyone could hear, announced that now, after the cleaning, no one was afraid of him.
In the epilogue, the grandfather stated:
- You, father, over thinness then read a prayer and eat them with a willow vine.
- So I'll sprinkle water !?
- We also need a vine. Why am I keeping her here? From time immemorial, priests have sprinkled thinness with holiness and whipped with a festive vine.
Found a prayer for the consecration of the flock. We prayed. The saint sprinkled water on a cow, and a calf, with a rooster, geese and chickens. True, he did not whip with a vine. The hostess shouted at the grandfather:
- You, old, make up your mind, as much as disgraceful for you.
My grandfather, to my surprise, fell silent, and when I went to the gate, as he began to sing, in such a ringing voice:
"Thank you, the unworthy servant, Thy Lord, for Thy great deeds that were upon us ..."
There are tears in my eyes. And granny, and me.
So I'm still a cleaner now.
And thank God!
"Why are you looking at the bitches in your brother's eye, but you don't feel the beam in your eye?" ()
What kind of logs are these that do not interfere with seeing, but do not allow to live? Why does a neighbor, or a partner, or a colleague have more money, and the house is a full cup and the children are clever? And at home, wherever you look, there is a wedge everywhere. The most amazing thing is that everyone complains: those who, according to others, live happily ever after, and those who, according to their own understanding, are bypassed and ignored. It cannot be such that everyone and everything was bypassed by the mercies of God, and the seal of constant need and temptation lay on all of us.
Two recent events that happened to me have clarified something.
My computer broke down. In the evening he worked, and in the morning, when he decided to pick up the e-mail that had come, he “chuckled” a couple of times to himself, but did not want to turn on. I took him to repair, sadly arguing, what to do? At the "exit", the church, multi-page "Svetilen", Easter greetings must be completed, and there are also a lot of urgent matters that, begun and completed, lay in the memory of the machine, which at such an unnecessary moment let me down.
On the same day it was necessary to go to the parish, they asked to baptize the child.
In the church, besides young parents, receivers and children, there was another woman, our recent parishioner.
- Well, - I thought, - Temptations continue.
The fact is that this lady brought a lot of bitterness and trouble with her. Anger at the world, at everyone and everything, was, as it seemed to me, pathological in her. Her confession or just a conversation sounded like an indictment. Everyone got it, but most of all, of course, the unlucky husband and disobedient children. When I tried to say that one should look for the reason in oneself, then in response I received biting accusations of my bias and lack of sympathy.
In the end, I persuaded her to go to an elder confessor, more experienced than I am a sinner, although I was not sure that the trip would take place or that it would bring something.
After the christening, our conversation took place.
Before me was a different person. Calmness, prudence, some kind of completeness in thoughts and, most importantly, a clear, not running and not changing look.
- Father, I came to thank you, thank God, everything is fine with us, and I have calmed down.
- What did something to you, Father N., that you are transformed now both in appearance and in words?
- Yes, I told the monk everything, talked for an hour, he listened in silence. Then he put his hands on my head and read prayers.
- Is that all?
- No, he blessed me with a box sealed and sealed with a ribbon and told me to go home. He also asked me, upon arrival, to whitewash and paint the windowsills in the hut, buy a shirt for my sons and husband, and a dress for my daughter, and then we had to sit down at the table with lunch, read Our Father and open this box.
- Well, and then? I was already beginning to get overwhelmed by curiosity.
- I was pounding for two days, by Saturday, just finished, well, we sat down at the table. The husband opened the box, and there are five red, decorated, wooden Easter eggs. I looked at them, and then at my husband and children, and they are all so happy, but clean, and fair and ... burst into tears. And the house is also good, cozy and everything is white. And everything is dear, dear.
There was another person in front of me. And the appearance is the same and the voice is the same, but the person is different.
I rejoiced at the monastic prayer, the elder's intelligence and perspicacity, and went home. On the way, I went to the computer.
- Repaired? Probably something serious? Will you have to wait? - from the doorway he began to question the masters, as if preparing himself in advance in the inevitability of a long wait and unforeseen waste.
“We did it, Father Alexander, we did it,” they reassured me, and seeing my joyful face, they added:
- Father Alexander, here we are, and such a smart shirt on you, but beautiful, but clean.
- Well, - I thought, - I planted a stain again or got into the paint somewhere.
Looked around. No, it doesn't seem to have been torn or stained. He looked questioningly at the smiling computer specialists.
‑ ?!
- Why, you, father, and clean and ironed, but in the computer, under the dust cover there was so much dirt that it became unbearable for him to work. At least sometimes you need to clean it with a vacuum cleaner. You yourself, I suppose, wash every day ...
Then I felt ashamed. A little later, it's understandable. Not around you there is dirt and evil spirits, but in you, inside it is nesting. This is what the Lord was talking about.
A sinful temptation will penetrate into our soul, occupy the heart, take root there and begin to instill in us spiritual laziness, and send justifying words into the language, and life went awry. Evil runs into evil, but it feeds on anger. And the way out is simple, although not easy. Cleaning must be done, both inside and around you. To the pure, the clean will attach itself, and the dirty, always will find dirt, like that famous pig ...
“Turn your pupils inward,” the wise elders advise, and add, “the cause of your troubles is in your heart.”
"They divided my vestments among themselves ..."
The border met with fog. Fortunately, if it was only a weather fog. Probably, more often it is necessary to travel abroad, in order to meet innovations with peace of mind. Then the spiritual state will not be damaged. Although it is understandable that everything is due to our sins, and it is necessary to look for the cause of what has happened and is happening in oneself, it is not easy to remain indifferent when looking at you four times as a potential criminal. The passport was opened four times, and a policeman, then a border guard, then a customs officer and someone else with shoulder straps peered at my photograph, checking it against the original sitting in front of them. The priestly guise in the passport and in reality still did not convince everyone. On the way back, when the Russian side at two o'clock in the morning took everyone out of the bus and forced them to make a promenade in front of the border booth, an order came to me personally: "Take off your hat!" Probably to make sure that, in addition to a beard, mustache, glasses and similarity, I also have an almost bald head, shiny on a passport photo. Confirmed. The passport was returned. Glassy indifferent eyes were transferred to the next applicant for the legality of crossing the borders of arch-independent states, where, in essence, all are relatives. And not according to Adam and Eve, not according to the ancestors, but according to close blood relationship. Indeed, for many of us Millerovo, Rostov, Shakhty and Belgorod cannot be “abroad”. And not because there live absolutely no different from us, the same sinners, but because the spiritual component is one. Faith is one, history is common. We love the same thing, and the bad for me is just as bad for him. And our hearts ache for the same reasons, we smile with the same joys, as we grieve in the same way. Why are we looking for the criminal in each other? Why is a shaggy dog with long ears sniffing my diplomat looking for dynamite and drugs? - What is wrapped in cellophane? - the question is already a Ukrainian customs officer. - Crosses. - Gold? - No, aluminum, wearable and plastic - for the deceased. Give you one? - Do not. I still want to live, - already in confusion or indignation (God knows), the man in the form answers. A dialogue that shouldn't have been. Actions that should not be performed and brought by our enemy. The enemy, whom our unity, ours, is bitter than hellish suffering. Remember how many sayings, parables, and instructive stories do we know about the power of unity and the weakness of separation? How often, during our short life on earth, have we been confirmed in the truthfulness and effectiveness of these teachings? How often did we overcome our troubles, worries and needs in peace, together? The Gospel warned and warns now: every kingdom divided in itself will be empty; and any city or house, divided in itself, will not stand (). What is unclear here? The Apostle Matthew is echoed by the Apostle Mark: and if the house is divided within itself, that house cannot stand (). Knowing this, we allow separation. Realizing the danger, we further and further separate the hut of our acquisitions from the single village, and the unwillingness to see the sorrows and joys of our neighbors is becoming the determining priority of our modern life. … They divided My garments among themselves, and they cast lots for My garment. Thus spoke the Lord before His sufferings. Do we not make him suffer even now, trying to divide the indivisible? - Son, oh, you are a father, probably? - the old woman asks me on the bus. - Yes. - Father, you fill out this piece of paper for me, - and gives an old, not yet changed passport with the abbreviation of the Union that has sunk into oblivion and a thin strip of computer customs declaration. - Mother, may they not let you into blessed Ukraine with this passport! - You write, son-father, fill in that they are infidels? And they didn’t let me in. They do not have permission to let the mother go to her son, it is not spelled out in the law. How many tears did it cost my grandmother. She cried out loud: "Sons, yes my children live there!" God! Must your cup be divided? What law should be used to measure the suffering of an ordinary person, in the name of the bureaucrat's good, in the name of the joy of the enemy of this world? Unanswered questions? I do not think. There is an answer, and there are ways to solve them. There is no need to look for "initiators" and "destroyers". This is neither Kuchma nor Yeltsin, nor Gorbachev or Reagan. The beginning of this demonic division is found in ourselves. And this principle is concluded, first of all, in the fact that, taught to think "collectively", we gave each of us our unique essences and talents for the good of the devil created "collective farm", where no one is responsible for anything. This is the result. This is deserved by everyone, including me. Therefore, I, filling out the customs declaration for moving the horned constructed border, write in the column “Purpose of the trip”: “To my parents. They are old. Are sick. I missed you. " Forgive me, Lord!
Icon
The icon was brought in the evening. In the morning they called, then they came to the church with stories about the antiquity of the icon, its beauty and high cost.
One of the peddlers, sniffling, gasping, breathing in my ear the already established eternal fumes, explained:
- On a tree, dad, under gold, God is painted and his house is nearby, in the forest ...
- In paradise, what is God?
- What kind of paradise, in the forest ?! How much will it cost?
- But how do I know, maybe it is stolen or not real.
- Yes, my old woman left me. She died. Here are those cross! - the seller tried to depict the sign of the cross on himself with his left hand. - So how much will it cost? Seventeenth century, father, it was passed down to us by inheritance.
- So the seventeenth?
- Exactly. The Mitrofanov priest told me that she was 350 years old.
I know a priest from Mitrofanovka. He hardly understands the ancient icons, but he will be able to distinguish the old icon from the modern ones, in the years of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, written on the dots.
- Okay, bring it. Let's see.
And not two hours had passed. They knocked.
In a striped "bazaar" bag, wrapped in a shabby gray towel, there was a large analogue icon.
Unfolding.
And ... I could not restrain myself.
- Wow, Seraphim! " - and exhaled.
Connected at the back, two-part, with the ark (deepened middle part), with the observance of all iconographic forms and fine gilding, the icon of the Monk Elder Seraphim of Sarov was beautiful and special.
There is a property, a "peculiarity" of some icons, which they urge with their beauty not to admire, but to pray. So they say - a prayed icon. This was one of them. Moreover, it became absolutely clear that the icon is a temple. Along the butt-end of its lateral faces, there are holes from the mountings for installation in the iconostasis kivot.
- So where does the icon come from? - attentively looking at the trio who came, I asked again. - Did your grandmother leave, or was she taken away from the temple?
- What are you, dad, offending, my icon - answered the most "intelligent" peddler. - Exactly, the old woman left. Inheritance. We are leaving for Russia with us, we don’t want to take it, let him stay in our homeland.
I did not even expect such pathos, although it really is, if they leave, then with such an icon at the customs, problems will surely arise.
- So you take the icon? - persistently and questioningly demanded the "owner", - Look, how beautiful. Seventeenth century.
- Seventeenth for sure, - I objected, only this is not a century, but a year. Precisely 1917 or so.
- What are you doing! Decided to bring down the price? - the owner almost screamed, - but you know how much they are hurting for her in Lugansk? Not the seventeenth, look, there was a special. She stayed with my grandmother from her great-grandmother, and that also from antiquity ...
It seemed that there would be no end to the outrageous interjections with the omission of anticipatory beginnings to all known expressions, and my attempts to explain that the icon could not be in the 17th century, since the monk actually lived in the 19th, and was canonized only a hundred years ago, were not even accepted by ear ...
- So you take the icon? - cut off, indignant priest's injustice partner, another seller.
- This is a temple icon and dear, I need to consult.
- Dear, and I'm about the same - immediately assented to the "owner" - Three hundred years old icon.
Explain once again that I no longer became the icon of the venerable elder about a hundred years old.
- How many you want?
- Thousand dollars - the seller gave out in an undertone and hiccuped, approvingly.
- No, brothers, we don’t have that kind of money, and it costs half as much.
Here I spoke with knowledge of the matter, since not so long ago I had been looking for an icon of this kind for the temple and I knew the price of rarities.
The dispute could drag on indefinitely, therefore, in order not to arrange useless and unnecessary trades, I began to wrap the icon in a towel, showing with all my appearance that I refused to take it.
- Go to the area, to the antique store and sell there.
The peddlers looked at each other.
- Will you give the money now?
- I'll give half - I said. - The rest - in a week, when we pick up at the parish, and I will check the icon, suddenly stolen.
The sellers did not react to the "stolen" item, but began to demand full payment.
Of course, I would have found the money, especially since we were going to buy an icon for the church, but something prevented me from taking just like that and taking away the venerable elder. It took time. Think and pray.
The bent old man Seraphim, leaning on a stick, looked sadly from the forest edge, and in his gaze sadness was combined with anxiety.
“So, brothers,” I finally decided, “I’ll give half of the money right away, and the second after the Ascension, that is, in five days. Satisfied - I take it, no - take it to the antique.
The peddlers crumpled and agreed.
I couldn't really sleep that night. Several times I approached the table where the icon stood. The old man from his far away anxiously peered into today's day and, as it seemed to me, was waiting for something.
His expectation and my anxiety were not in vain. The sun had not yet had time to rise, when the persistent and reusable, "emergency" doorbell rang.
- On the threshold stood a burly lady, behind her, as it was lost and absolutely "did not look" one of yesterday's sellers.
- Give the icon, now! How dare you take her for such a pittance ?! And the priest is also called!
I, silently, without listening to further lamentations and accusations of my dishonesty, greed and avarice, brought out the icon.
- Take it.
The lady was a little taken aback by my humility and tacit consent and, giving me the money (already in the state currency) only said:
“I’ll buy an apartment for this icon, and I’ll stay for the car.” Seventeenth century! And he - (I omit the sounded expression - the definition) - wanted to prick us for such a pittance.
He closed the door, looked guiltily at the alarmed household members, and went to the church to read the Akathist to the Monk Seraphim of Sarov.
***
Somewhere in a week I was going to go home to Russia and went to the market to change money, hryvnia for rubles. At a local currency dealer, in a booth, I saw an icon standing in the corner, covered with a mat.
- Dad, you don't need an icon? - asked the currency dealer. I bought it for the occasion. An old man, a saint of some sort, in my opinion, she was two hundred years old.
He threw the mat aside ... Seraphim looked at me just as sadly.
“She’s not two hundred, maybe a hundred years old,” I objected.
- O! So, I was not mistaken, the money changer was delighted. - They demanded 300 bucks from me for it, but I didn't give them more than a hundred. So what do you get for a hundred and fifty?
- No, I won't. You take her to an antique dealer, there will be more sense and less sin, that we earn money on holiness.
- I'm taking it - my interlocutor immediately agreed. And it became clear to me that he would definitely take me.
***
Reverend Elder Seraphim, pray to God for us sinners!
Myrrhbearer
"Stone in the soul" - familiar expression? Probably everyone had to hear and experience. Spiritual pain, it is the most painful of all pains, but the suffering is especially heavy when there seems to be no way out, when a gap is not visible, when it is as if the whole world has taken up arms against ...
It is from here that there is - "The trouble alone does not go."
Oddly enough, but courageous, strong and dexterous representatives of the strong sex give up in this situation more often. They can act, punch their fists, solve super-complicated logical problems, but they often fail to oppose something realistically feasible to a spiritual catastrophe and a mental test.
And here a woman appears.
Remember the gospel path of the myrrh-bearing women to the Lord's sepulcher? They go, taking the fragrant ointment necessary for burial, but do not care at all how they will penetrate into the tomb to Christ. After all, it is littered with stone. They go and think: Who will roll us the stone from the door of the coffin ()?
After all, they cannot even move this stone, let alone “roll it off,” but they go and know that the necessary work, the work of the Lord, cannot fail to be accomplished.
A man won't do that easily. At least he would have called his friends, he would have made some kind of lever, he would have taken a crowbar and, most likely, he would be late ...
Because there is only hope for oneself and hope for oneself. The female soul is different.
This is not the "maybe" Russian. No, not him. This is different. Belief that the good cannot fail to be accomplished. Therefore, the myrrh-bearing wives go to the walled up tomb of the Lord, and after them all our grandmothers, sisters and mothers ...
Baba Frosya
Everybody called Efrosinya Ivanovna "Baba Frosya". Even her son, the restless parish initiator of all innovations, and a participant in every parish event, in his incomplete sixty called his own mother just like that.
Baba Frosya buried her husband even under developed socialism and, showing me his photograph, proudly commented that she had a handsome man with eyebrows like Brezhnev's. Brezhnev's eyebrows were inherited by her three sons, for one of whom I have already said "restless Peter", and two others now live abroad, and one side by side in Russia, and the other in Chile.
Once Baba Frosya, approaching the cross, completely unexpectedly and categorically said:
- Come on, father-father, let's go to my house, I'll show you the old cards. It will be useful to you ...
To refuse women Frose is only to my own detriment, therefore, putting aside everything that had been planned, I trudged after serving my grandmother to the other end of the village, philosophically thinking that this was definitely “useful” to me, but I had to go to the calling voice.
Baba Frosya lived in an old "through" hut, that is, in the center of the hut there is an entrance to a corridor with two doors. One door, to the right, into the upper room, behind which, the hall covered with curtains; the other, to the left, into a barn with hay, then chickens with geese, and then a pig and a cow, fenced off from each other. Everything under one roof.
Brushing away non-existent dust from a chair, which is definitely two times older than me, my grandmother sat me down at a table covered with a plush tablecloth in the center of which was a vase with artificial roses. The whole atmosphere in the hall is a kind of déjà vu from the times of my childhood, and it was not difficult for me to predict even the album in which there will be photographs. That is exactly what he was, rectangular with thick sheets with frames and the Moscow Kremlin on the cover. Photos, yellowed with time and cropped to fit a vignette, went sequentially, year after year, interrupted by Soviet greeting cards.
At the end of the album, in a bag of photographic paper, lay what I thought, for which Baba Frosya brought me home. There were pictures of the old, destroyed in the godless Khrushchev seven-year plan, the temple, the heir of which is our current parish.
The wooden one-domed church, closed for the first time in 1940, then opened under the Germans in 1942 and finally dismantled in the late sixties looked somehow sad, unkempt and lonely in the gray photo.
- It was already closed then - explained Baba Frosya. - It was my man who was filming before the grain was taken out of it and sorted out into logs.
Other photos show parishioners. Serious, almost identical faces, most of them old age, are looking intently from their "far away" and only one of them is they, together with a priest, dressed in a cassock and a wide-brimmed hat.
- Bab Fros, where was the priest sent then when the temple was closed?
- So he lived here for almost a year, baptized at home and went to funeral service to the dead, and then he was summoned to the District Council, and the next day a car came up, loaded his little things and took him away, the old woman said. - They say he went home, he was from near Kiev. Poor.
- Why "poor"?
- So he was not here to live - answered Baba Frosya. - For the last two years, almost all earnings have been taken away to various funds, and taxes. He ate from home. Then his heart, his heart, died when they dragged him around the courts.
- By the courts?
- Eh, you know little, father-father, - continued the women Frosya. - Then a denunciation was written on him that he urged people in the church not to buy bonds.
- What bonds?
- The loans were like that, the state took the money, promised to return it later.
I remember bonds. The parents had such a large pack. Red, blue, green. All sorts of socialist construction sites were painted on them.
- And what, father, was you really against?
- What are you! - Baba Frosya was indignant. - He was simply told that he had to distribute these bonds for several thousand bonds through the church, but he did not fulfill it. Who will take it when they did not give money for workdays on the collective farm.
While I was looking at the other pictures, Baba Frosya, propping her gray head on her fist, slowly explained who and what was at them, and all the time she was looking at me attentively. I didn’t leave the feeling that the main thing she hadn’t said yet, and these photos and her stories were just a prelude to another event.
And so it happened.
Bab Frosya sighed, tied a handkerchief, somehow more confidently oiled herself on the chair and asked:
- And tell me, father-father, will the churches still be closed?
- What are you doing, Bab Frosy? These are not the times ...
- Who knows, except for God, no one knows anything, and even Martha over there keeps telling that soon the persecution will begin again.
- Bab Frosy, - I interrupted the old woman, - Martha has the end of the world every day. And the passports are not the same and the roosters are not singing like that, and the wheat curls into a ball ...
- Yes, this is so, I myself told her that it is not necessary to bury yourself every day.
Baba Frosya, as if resolutely got up from her chair, went to a large old chest of drawers standing between the TV in the corner and the sideboard. She opened the bottom drawer and took out a large rectangular parcel wrapped in green velvet. I put it on the table and unfolded it ...
Before me was a large, on a tree, an icon of the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Our temple icon ...
- Is that from there, from the old temple? - I began to guess.
- She, father-father, she.
- Bab Frosy, why didn't you say anything to anyone before? - I involuntarily burst out.
- How do you say? Suddenly they will close it again, because they have already closed it twice, and each time I took it out of the church, ”the grandmother nodded at the icon. Why steal again? So I have no more strength than those.
- How to steal?
- And so father. When the church was closed for the first time and the club was made there, the district commissioner decided to take this icon. I don’t know where, but don’t hand over to the state. They didn't put a number on it. And he stayed overnight with us.
- Well?
- At night I hid that icon, and put a hornet's nest in his boot in a rag. He didn’t want to look for the icon because of the pain. Although he swore at the whole village ...
- And the second time, Bab Fros?
- The second was hard. The peasant and I, when the church was already sealed, at night we climbed into the church window, like tati, and took the icon. The window was high - the old woman continued the story - I caught on the jamb and fell to the ground, my arm and broke.
- And didn't you?
- How will they know? - slyly smiled women Frosya. - When the police came to us, my husband had already taken me to the district, to the hospital, the fracture was big, the bones looked out…. And the kids said that I broke my arm two days ago. Here it is, the police, and decided that with a broken arm, I would not climb into the church. Though they thought at me.
... I had nothing to say. I just looked at Baba Frosya and the icon she saved. Today, in the center of the church, this icon is in its place, where it should be, and the grandmother is already in the cemetery.
Her body is in the churchyard, and her soul is in the parish. Found at the icon.
Always there. I know that for sure.
"My eyes would not look at you ..."
Actually, it was with this exclamation that everything started. Yes, and it could not but start, because I, upset by the next clumsy work of hired shabashniki, who a week after the concluded "contract", when everything was promised with high quality and on time, but it turned out to be "tyap blooper" and according to the principle of "day with a cool night with squatting down ”, dispersed the construction team and sat in sad thoughtfulness on the steps of the church porch. Nearby, Kharitonich was spinning, muttering under his nose of discontent and other definitions in the wake of the exiled "builders" and thus, as it seemed to him, expressing to me moral, spiritual and, in general, parish support. Grumble is not grumble, but the golnik must be reported urgently and a roof must be put on it, since leaving coal under the sky means tempting a dozen of the villagers thirsting for a drink. Orphaned home fuel in the size of one bucket, although we find ourselves in Donbass, at the present time, draws out just half a liter of locally produced drink. “Go to the dodoma, father,” Kharitonych said, deciding something for himself. - In the morning it is more convenient to think and decide. I believe my grandfather, because in practice his worldly acumen and ability to find where he did not lay down and bring from there where nothing is by default have been tested. Even in the first parish years, when the church was being built, he was able to agree and drive a huge crane in order to erect the dome on the church. I went all over the chain of command, begging for this lifting mechanism, with a long non-standard boom, but everywhere I came across either sympathetic "no", or an indifferent look in which it was frankly read: "You are not enough here yet." Having learned that there is such a non-standard crane in a neighboring city, I often visited the chief of this mechanism, who, on my third visit, announced that he could only give me an excavator with a bulldozer. To my surprise: "Why?" Having learned who the "militant atheists" were and realizing that the threat was sincere and quite real, I was finally upset and went to the parish in a broken spirit. Kharitonich, also saddened and upset by the "godless Herods," a day later drove the necessary crane from the construction of the nearest mine, where I was afraid to go. I drove it, and in a couple of hours I erected the dome on the church. So my hope that the old people of my parish would come up with something, and the coal would lie where it should be, did not leave me. Although, of course, looking at the winter, it was necessary to build this smaller shed and do it on our own, but they have already begun, and the parish economy needs such a structure that coal, firewood, and the tools needed under the roof were in place ... the next day around, a third of the laid out shed, was cleanliness and order: the forests were leveled, the bricks were stacked side by side, the sand was brought to the mortar trough. Apparently the watchman and the old men tried their best. I prayed for the workers of this temple, and I myself am thinking about where to get the masons. I didn’t think much. A day later, the brickwork grew in four rows, and the bricks lie neatly like this, under the embroidery. Old men cannot afford this creativity, and sextons are not yet old enough to put it this way. I walked around, was surprised, especially since, as before, everything was tidied up, almost under a broom, neatly folded, and so it should be, even now stir the solution and continue to lay the walls. Strange ... I went to the headman. He says: - I myself am surprised, father. Apparently you pray earnestly, so the angels help. I greatly doubted that my prayers could transform at least a part of the angelic world into masons, especially since the headman slyly screwed up his eyes, but I could not find an explanation. Okay, I think, I'll find out anyway, the main thing is that these old men, invisible upon completion of the walls, would not deprive me of my pension. Such masonry is expensive at times today. I stayed at the parish until evening, hoping to see who these "angels" are in the flesh ... I didn’t wait. He left. In the morning, there was no chapel to my surprise. The walls were driven out to the window lintels, and the lintels themselves, moreover, concrete, which we did not have in our parish, lay in their place, leveled and fortified. Around the construction site, the headman and Kharitonich were spinning around planning and discussing what kind of roof to build and how to attach it to the walls so that the wind would not blow away. Having blessed the frankly grinning old people, I began to ask with genuine passion: "Who?" and "How much?" - So, father, we also say that quickly and well, and who God knows. - Angels, father, angels ... - the headman did not calm down. - You, our dear shepherd, go and serve, so that they would put us a roof with God's help. I had nothing to say. Moreover, I was frankly dismissed, as if they had heard the last words of the bishop, said at the meeting that the priest should think more about the service, and that he should rule it with dignity, and that the parish ascetics were determined to be engaged in construction projects and the master's concerns. This could not go on any longer, and without telling anyone, I stayed overnight in my parish cell. It was already by the fall, the nights had become longer, and the new moon had just fallen on those days. In general, as it got dark, I sat on the porch of my parish house and stared into the darkness, as there was no light, as luck would have it. I looked and thought: if they did the laying at night, then how? Lights in the church yard - two lanterns. One at the porch, the other at the priest's house. Confused by them! You can only walk to the shed along the path and you can see it, but there can be no conversation about the brickwork. Something is wrong here. This whole situation reminded me of Yershov's "The Little Humpbacked Horse", and since there only on the third night Ivan caught the horses, I also decided that I would not wait for anyone today and could be in the silence of the country, but under the croaking of frogs and in the fragrance of the cleanliness of the surrounding area, Yes, smelling, thick as jelly air, sleep off all these vain days. When I read the evening prayer to the guardian angel, I remembered the elder's kind smirk and, in peace of mind, in anticipation of a sweet dream, lay down under a homemade patchwork quilt, frankly glad that he stayed. Through the surging dream, it seemed that somewhere a motorcycle rattled. I didn't pay attention. I fell asleep. I don't remember how much I slept, but I woke up from muffled conversation and a flicker of light. Moreover, this light, with clear rays from different directions, emanated and moved, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. I flicked the switch - there was no electricity in the cell, and the refrigerator in the corridor did not hum. You can't really see anything from the cell window. Construction, and the light flickered there, a little to the side, just around the corner. He put on a cassock and went out onto the porch. Three bright points shone above the walls of the square under construction, beams resting against the brickwork. Hands flashed under the rays, but torsos, heads and legs did not exist. There was none and that's it! - Angels! The headman is right. I thought, but did not believe it, but the fright came, especially since the upper light somehow sank sharply down and at a height of about two meters headed in my direction, after a moment, snatching my figure out of the darkness. The figure must have looked rather strange. With a disheveled beard, a cassock not really buttoned on a naked body and with a frightened face ... - Oh, father! - said the angel, surprised. “What” and “who” it said, I did not understand, because from a two-meter height a sheaf of a bright beam hit me, under which nothing could be seen, or rather, there was darkness. The other two beams instantly turned in my direction and then I remembered humanoids, aliens, and other "aliens", about whom they talked a lot and everywhere in those days, but I had not yet written a book about their essence "Abbot N". And about whom could you tell me to think, if three luminous rays were looking at me, without signs of the existence of arms and legs? I probably forgot to cross myself, but nevertheless I opened my mouth to say something there, but I couldn't say ... The familiar voice of Khariton's son-in-law brought me out of the numbness and instant awareness of what was the matter. - Eh, it didn’t work, that would be “secretly forming”! I do not know this voice, if it reads the Apostle every Sunday! Here three beams nodded and laughed, snatching out their grimy, coal-blackened faces. These were our villagers-miners. The guys are large, tall, in miners 'helmets with horse races (they still call the miners' lamps). Naturally, this light is no less, or even more than two meters from the ground, and under the helmets there are black miners, with the same black hands, and all around is darkness ... So the light is walking above the ground, if you look a little from the side. The miners, realizing my fright, turning into quiet horror, and then in surprise, settled around and said: - Yes, here, fuck, the old people asked us to report the masonry in the evenings, but we did not have time. So we decided, after the third shift, to finish, to surprise you. We went to the mountain, but did not go to the bathhouse, after we finish, we will wash off. Work is here for a couple of hours ... I looked at them and tears in my eyes. Mine is not just “work”. It's hard there. Very hard. And the guys do not live in the city, where there are fewer other concerns. Here and the farm grumbles and hums, and plant and clean the garden, and they are here for the sake of "surprise" at night, after the third shift, but stir the solution and carry bricks. No, my dears, only angels can do that. Even if they are black with coal dust, and sometimes they insert a not very angelic word into their speech, but angels. You look into their souls, and then you will judge ... And for scaring me to death: "My eyes would not look at you ..."
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