The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 2

The weather was fine and dry and I had no wish to spend the night in a village. So when I came upon two fenced-in haystacks as I went through the forest that evening, I lay down beneath them for a night's lodging. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was walking along and reading a chapter of St. Anthony the Great from The Philokalia. Suddenly my starets overtook me and said, "Don't read that, read this," and pointed to these words in the thirty- fifth chapter of St. John Karpathisky: "A teacher submits at times to ignominy and endures pain for the sake of his spiritual children." And again he made me note in the forty-first chapter, "Those who give themselves most earnestly to prayer, it is they who become the prey of terrible and violent temptations." Then he said, "Take courage and do not be downcast. Remember the Apostle's words, 'Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.' You see that you have now had experience of the truth that no temptation is beyond man's strength to resist, and that with the temptation God makes also a way of escape. Reliance upon this divine help has strengthened holy men of prayer and led them on to greater zeal and ardor. They not only devoted their own lives to ceaseless prayer, but also out of the love of their hearts revealed it and taught it to others as opportunity occurred. St. Gregory of Thessalonika speaks of this as follows: 'Not only should we ourselves in accordance with God's will pray unceasingly in the name of Jesus Christ, but we are bound to reveal it and teach it to others, to everyone in general, religious and secular, learned and simple, men, women, and children, and to inspire them all with zeal for prayer without ceasing.' In the same way the venerable Callistus Telicudes says, 'One ought not to keep thoughts about God (i.e., interior prayer) and what is learned by contemplation, and the means of raising the soul on high, simply in one's own mind, but one should make notes of it, put it into writing for general use and with a loving motive.' And the Scriptures say in this connection, 'Brother is helped by brother like a strong and lofty city' (Prov. 18:19). Only in this case it is above all things necessary to avoid self-praise and to take care that the seed of divine teaching is not sown to the wind." I woke up feeling great joy in my heart and strength in my soul, and I went on my way. A long while after this something else happened, which also I will tell you about if you like. One day—it was the 24th of March to be exact—I felt a very urgent wish to 38: make my communion the next day—that is, on the feast of the annunciation of our Lady. I asked whether the church was far away and was told it was about twenty miles. So I walked for the rest of that day and all the next night in order to get there in time for matins. The weather was as bad as it could be—it snowed and rained, there was a strong wind, and it was very cold. On my way I had to cross a small stream, and just as I got to the middle the ice gave way under my feet and I was plunged into the water up to my waist. Drenched like this, I came to matins and stood through it, and also through the liturgy which followed, and at which by God's grace I made my communion. In order to spend the day quietly and without spoiling my spiritual happiness, I begged the verger to allow me to stay in his little room until the next morning. I was more happy than I can tell all that day, and my heart was full of joy. I lay on the plank bed in that unheated room as though I were resting on Abraham's bosom. The prayer was very active. The love of Jesus Christ and of the Mother of God seemed to surge into my heart in waves of sweetness and steep my soul in consolation and triumph. At nightfall I was seized with violent rheumatic pains in my legs, and that brought to my mind that they were soaking wet. I took no notice of it and set my heart the more to my prayer, so that I no longer felt the pain. In the morning when I wanted to get up I found that I could not move my legs. They were quite paralyzed and as feeble as bits of string. The verger dragged me down off the bed by main force. And so there I sat for two days without moving. On the third day the verger set about turning me out of his room, "for," said he, "supposing you die here, what a fuss there will be!" With the greatest of difficulty I somehow or other crawled along on my arms and dragged myself to the steps of the church, and lay there. And there I stayed like that for a couple of days. The people who went by passed me without taking the slightest notice either of me or of my pleadings. In the end a peasant came up to me and sat down and talked. And after a while he asked, "What will you give me if I cure you? I had just exactly the same thing once, so I know a medicine for it." "I have nothing to give you," I answered. "But what have you got in your bag?" "Only dried bread and some books." "Well, what about working for me just for one summer, if I cure you?" 39 "I can't do any work; as you see, I have only the use of one arm, the other is almost entirely withered." "Then what can you do?" "Nothing, beyond the fact that I can read and write." "Ah! write! Well, teach my little boy to write. He can read a little, and I want him to be able to write too. But it costs such a lot—they want twenty rubles to teach him." I agreed to this, and with the verger's help he carried me away and put me in an old empty bathhouse in his backyard. Then he set about curing me. And this was his method: He picked up from the floors, the yards, the cesspools, the best part of a bushel of various sorts of putrid bones, bones of cattle, of birds—all sorts. He washed them, broke them up small with a stone, and put them into a great earthen pot. This he covered with a lid which had a small hole in it and placed upside down on an empty jar sunk in the ground. He smeared the upper pot with a thick coating of clay, and making a pile of wood round it, he set fire to this and kept it burning for more than twenty-four hours, saying as he fed the fire, "Now we'll get some tar from the bones." Next day, when he took the lower jar out of the ground, there had dripped into it through the hole in the lid of the other jar about a pint of thick, reddish, oily liquid, with a strong smell, like living raw meat. As for the bones left in the jar, from being black and putrid they had become white and clean and transparent like mother-of-pearl. I rubbed my legs with this liquid five times a day. And lo and behold, twenty-four hours later I found I could move my toes; another day and I could bend my legs and straighten them again. On the fifth day I stood on my feet, and with the help of a stick walked about the yard. In a word, in a week's time my legs had become fully as strong as they were before. I thanked God and mused upon the mysterious power which He has given His creatures. Dry, putrid bones, almost brought to dust, yet keeping such vital force, color, smell, power of acting on living bodies, and as it were giving life to bodies that are half dead! It is a pledge of the future resurrection of the body. How I would like to point this out to that forester with whom I lived, in view of his doubts about the general resurrection! Having in this way got better from my illness, I began to teach the boy. Instead of the usual copybook work, he wrote out the prayer of Jesus. I made him copy it, 40: showing him how to set out the words nicely. I found teaching the lad restful, for during the daytime he worked for the steward of an estate nearby and could only come to me while the steward slept, that is, from daybreak till the liturgy. He was a bright boy and soon began to write fairly well. His employer saw him writing and asked him who had taught him. "A one-armed pilgrim who lives in our old bathhouse," said the boy. The steward, who was a Pole, was interested, and came to have a look at me. He found me reading The Philokalia and started a talk by asking what I was reading. I showed him the book. "Ah," said he, "that's The Philokalia. I've seen the book before at our priest's6 when I lived at Vilna. They tell me, however, that it contains odd sorts of schemes and tricks for prayer written down by the Greek monks. It's like those fanatics in India and Bokhara who sit down and blow themselves out trying to get a sort of tickling in their hearts, and in their stupidity take this bodily feeling for prayer, and look upon it as the gift of God. All that is necessary to fulfill one's duty to God is to pray simply, to stand and say the Our Father as Christ taught us. That puts you right for the whole day; but not to go on over and over again to the same tune. That, if I may say so, is enough to drive you mad. Besides, it's bad for your heart." "Don't think in that way about this holy book, sir," I answered. "It was not written by simple Greek monks, but by great and very holy men of olden times, men whom your church honors also, such as Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Mark the spiritual athlete, John Chrysostom, and others. It was from them that the monks of India and Bokhara took over the 'heart method' of interior prayer, only they quite spoiled and garbled it in doing so, as my starets explained to me. In The Philokalia all the teaching about the practice of prayer in the heart is taken from the Word of God, from the Holy Bible, in which the same Jesus Christ who bade us say the Our Father taught also ceaseless prayer in the heart. For He said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind,' 'Watch and pray,' Abide in Me and I in you.' And the holy Fathers, calling to witness the holy King David's words in the Psalms, 'O taste and see how gracious the Lord is,' explain the passage thus: the Christian man ought to use every possible means of seeking and finding, delight in prayer and ceaselessly to look for consolation in it, and not be content with simply saying 'Our Father' once a day. Let me read to you how these saints blame those 41 who do not strive to reach the gladness of the prayer of the heart. They write that such do wrong for three reasons: firstly, because they show themselves against the Scriptures inspired by God, and secondly, because they do not set before themselves a higher and more perfect state of soul to be reached. They are content with outward virtues only, and cannot hunger and thirst for the truth, and therefore miss the blessedness and joy in the Lord. Thirdly, because by letting their mind dwell upon themselves and their own outward virtues they often slip into temptation and pride, and so fall away." "It is sublime, what you are reading," said the steward, "but it's hardly for us ordinary layfolk, I think!" "Well, I will read you something simpler, about how people of goodwill, even if living in the world, may learn how to pray without ceasing." I found the sermon on George the youth, by Simeon the new theologian, and read it to him from The Philokalia. This pleased him, and he said, "Give me that book to read at my leisure, and I will have a good look into it some time." "I will let you have it for twenty-four hours with pleasure," I answered, "but not for longer, because I read it every day, and I just can't live without it." "Well then, at least copy out for me what you have just read. I will pay you for your trouble." "I don't want payment," said I. "I will write that out for you for love's sake and in the hope that God will give you a longing for prayer." I at once and with pleasure made a copy of the sermon I had read. He read it to his wife, and both of them were pleased with it. And so it came about that at times they would send for me, and I would go, taking The Philokalia with me, and read to them while they sat drinking tea and listening. Once they asked me to stay to dinner. The steward's wife, who was a kindly old lady, was sitting with us at table eating some fried fish when by some mischance she got a bone lodged in her throat. Nothing we could do gave her any relief, and nothing would move the bone. Her throat gave her so much pain that a couple of hours later she had to go and lie down. The doctor (who lived twenty miles away) was sent for, and as by this time it was evening, I went home, feeling very sorry for her. 42 That night, while I was sleeping lightly, I heard my starets's voice. I saw no figure, but I heard him say to me, "The man you are living with cured you, why then do you not help the steward's wife? God has bidden us feel for our neighbor." "I would help her gladly," I answered, "but how? I know no means whatever." "Well, this is what you must do: From her very earliest years she has had a dislike of oil. She not only will not taste it, but cannot bear even the smell of it without being sick. So make her drink a spoonful of oil. It will make her vomit, the bone will come away, the oil will soothe the sore the bone has made in her throat, and she will be well again." "And how am I to give it her, if she dislikes it so? She will refuse to drink it." "Get the steward to hold her head, and pour it suddenly into her mouth, even if you have to use force." I woke up, and went straight off and told the steward all this in detail. "What good can your oil do now?" said he. "She is hoarse and delirious, and her neck is all swollen." "Well, at any rate, let us try; even if it doesn't help, oil is at least harmless as a medicine." He poured some into a wineglass, and somehow or other we got her to swallow it. She was violently sick at once, and soon vomited up the bone and some blood. She began to feel easier and fell into a deep sleep. In the morning I went to ask after her and found her sitting quietly taking her tea. Both she and her husband were full of wonder at the way she had been cured, and even greater than that was their surprise that her dislike of oil had been told me in a dream, for apart from themselves, not a soul knew of the fact. Just then the doctor also drove up, and the steward told him what had happened to his wife, and I in my turn told him how the peasant had cured my legs. The doctor listened to it all and then said, "Neither the one case nor the other is greatly to be wondered at—it is the same natural force which operated in both cases. Still, I shall make a note of it." And he took out a pencil and wrote in his notebook. After this the report quickly spread through the whole neighborhood that I was a prophet and a doctor and wizard. There began a ceaseless stream of visitors from all 43 parts to bring their affairs and their troubles to my notice. They brought me presents and began to treat me with respect and to look after my comfort. I bore this for a week, and then, fearing I should fall into vainglory and harmful distractions, I left the place in secret by night. Thus once more I set out on my lonely way, feeling as light as if a great weight had been taken off my shoulders. The prayer comforted me more and more, so that at times my heart bubbled over with boundless love for Jesus Christ, and from my delight in this, streams of consolation seemed to flow through my whole being. The remembrance of Jesus Christ was so stamped upon my mind that as I dwelt upon the Gospel story I seemed to see its events before my very eyes. I was moved even to tears of joy, and sometimes felt such gladness in my heart that I am at a loss even how to tell of it. It happened at times that for three days together I came upon no human dwelling, and in the uplifting of my spirit I felt as though I were alone on the earth, one wretched sinner before the merciful and man-loving God. This sense of being alone was a comfort to me, and it made me feel my delight in prayer much more than when I was mixing with a crowd of people. At length I reached Irkutsk. When I had prayed before the relics of St. Innocent, I began to wonder where I should go now. I did not want to stay there for a long while, it was a town in which many people lived. I was walking thoughtfully along the street when I came upon a certain merchant belonging to the place. He stopped me, saying, "Are you a pilgrim? Why not come home with me?" We went off together and he took me into his richly furnished house and asked me about myself. I told him all about my travels, and then he said, "You ought to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem— there are shrines there the like of which are not to be found anywhere else!" "I should be only too glad to do so," I answered, "but I haven't the money. I can get along on dry land till I come to the sea, but I have no means of paying for a sea voyage, and it takes a good deal of money." "How would you like me to find the money for you? I have already sent one of our townsfolk there, an old man, last year," said the merchant. I fell at his feet, and he went on to say, "Listen, I will give you a letter to my son at Odessa. He lives there and has business connections with Constantinople. He will be 44: pleased to give you a passage on one of the vessels to Constantinople, and to tell his agents there to book a passage to Jerusalem for you on another boat, and pay for it. That is not so very expensive." I was overcome with joy when I heard this and thanked my benefactor for his kindness. Even more did I thank God for showing me such fatherly love, and for His care for me, a wretched sinner, who did no good either to himself or to anyone else, and ate the bread of others in idleness. I stayed three days with this kindly merchant. As he had promised, he wrote me a letter to his son, so here I am now on my way to Odessa planning to go on till I reach Jerusalem. But I do not know whether the Lord will allow me to venerate His life-giving tomb. JUST BEFORE leaving Irkutsk, I went to see my spiritual father, with whom I had so often talked, and I said to him, "Here I am actually off to Jerusalem. I have come to say good-bye, and to thank you for your love for me in Christ, unworthy pilgrim as I am." "May God bless your journey," he replied. "But how is it that you have never told me about yourself, who you are, nor where you come from? I have heard a great deal about your travels, and I should be interested to know something about your birth and your life before you became a pilgrim." "Why, very gladly," I answered. "I will tell you all about that also. It's not a very lengthy matter. "I was born in a village in the government of Orel. After the death of our parents, there were just the two of us left, my brother and I. He was ten years old and I was two. We were adopted by our grandfather, a worthy old man and comfortably off. He kept an inn which stood on the main road, and thanks to his sheer goodness of heart a lot of travelers put up there. My brother, who was a madcap child, spent most of his time running about in the village, but for my part I liked better to stay near my grandfather. On Sundays and festivals we used to go to church together, and at home my grandfather often used to read the Bible, this very Bible here, which now belongs to me. When my brother grew up he took to drink. Once when I was seven years old and we were both of us lying down on the stove, he pushed me so hard that I fell off and hurt my left arm, so that I have never been able to use it since; it is 45: all withered up. My grandfather saw that I should never be fit to work on the land and taught me to read. As we had no spelling book, he did so from this Bible. He pointed out the A's, and made me form words and learn to know the letters when I saw them. I scarcely know how myself, but somehow, by saying things after him over and over again, I learned to read in the course of time. And later on, when my grandfather's sight grew weak, he often made me read the Bible aloud to him, and he corrected me as he listened. There was a certain clerk who often came to our inn. He wrote a good hand and I liked watching him write. I copied his writing, and he began to teach me. He gave me paper and ink, he made me quill pens, and so I learned to write also. Grandfather was very pleased and charged me thus, 'God has granted you the gift of learning; it will make a man of you. Give thanks to God, and pray very often.' "We used to attend all the services at church and we often had prayers at home. It was always my part to read the fifty-first psalm, and while I did so grandfather and grandmother made their prostrations or knelt. When I was seventeen I lost my grandmother. Then grandfather said to me, 'This house of ours no longer has a mistress, and that is not well. Your brother is a worthless fellow. I am going to look for a wife for you; you must get married.' I was against the idea, saying that I was a cripple, but my grandfather would not give way. He found a worthy and sensible young girl about twenty years of age, and I married her. A year later my grandfather fell very ill. Knowing that his death was near, he called for me and bade me farewell, saying, 'I leave you my house and all I have. Obey your conscience, deceive no one, and above all pray to God; everything comes from Him. Trust in Him only. Go to church regularly, read your Bible, and remember me and your grandmother in your prayers. Here is my money, that also I give you; there is a thousand rubles. Take care of it. Do not waste it, but do not be miserly either; give some of it to the poor and to God's church.' After this he died, and I buried him. "My brother grew envious because the property had been left wholly to me. His anger against me grew, and the enemy prompted him in this to such an extent that he even laid plans to kill me. In the end this is what he did one night while we were asleep and no guests were in the house. He broke into the room where the money was kept, stole the money from a chest, and then set fire to the room. The fire had got a hold upon the whole building before we knew of it, and we only just escaped by 46: jumping out of a window in our nightclothes. The Bible was lying under our pillow, so we snatched it up and took it with us. As we watched our house burning we said to one another, 'Thank God, the Bible is saved, that at least is some consolation in our grief.' So everything we had was burnt, and my brother went off without a trace. Later on we heard that when he was in his cups he boasted of the fact that he had taken the money and burnt the house. "We were left naked and ruined, absolutely beggars. We borrowed some money as best we could, built a little hut, and took up the life of landless peasants. My wife was clever with her hands. She knitted, spun, and sewed. People gave her jobs, and day and night she worked and kept me. Owing to the uselessness of my arm I could not even make bark shoes. She would do her knitting and spinning, and I would sit beside her and read the Bible. She would listen and sometimes begin to cry. When I asked, 'What are you crying about? At least we are alive, thank God!' she would answer, 'It touches me so, that beautiful writing in the Bible.' "Remembering what my grandfather had bidden us, we often fasted, every morning we said the Acathist of Our Lady, and at night we each made a thousand prostrations to avoid falling into temptation. Thus we lived quietly enough for two years. But this is what is so surprising—although we had no understanding of interior prayer offered in the heart and indeed had never heard of it, but prayed with the tongue only, and made our prostrations without thought like buffoons turning somersaults, yet in spite of all this the wish for prayer was there, and the long prayers we said without understanding did not seem tiring; indeed we liked them. Clearly it is true, as a certain teacher once told me, that a secret prayer lies hidden within the human heart. The man himself does not know it, yet working mysteriously within his soul, it urges him to prayer according to each man's knowledge and power. "After two years of this sort of life that we were leading, my wife was taken suddenly ill with a high fever. She was given her communion and on the ninth day of her illness she died. I was now left entirely alone in the world. There was no sort of work that I could do; still I had to live, and it went against my conscience to beg. Besides that, I felt such grief at the loss of my wife that I did not know what to do with myself. When I happened to go into our little hut and caught sight of her clothes or perhaps a scarf, I burst into tears and even fell down senseless. So feeling I could no 47: longer bear my grief living at home, I sold the hut for twenty rubles, and such clothes as there were of my own and my wife's I gave away to the poor. Because of my crippled arm I was given a passport which set me free once for all from public duties, and taking my beloved Bible I set straight off, without caring or thinking where I was going. "But after a while I began to think where I would go and said to myself, 'First of all I will go to Kiev. I will venerate the shrines of those who were pleasing to God, and ask for their help in my trouble.' As soon as I had made up my mind to this I began to feel better, and, a good deal comforted, I made my way to Kiev. Since that time, for the last thirteen years that is, I have gone on wandering from place to place. I have made the rounds of many churches and monasteries, but nowadays I am taking more and more to wandering over the steppes and fields. I do not know whether God will vouchsafe to let me go to Jerusalem. If it be His will, when the time comes my sinful

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The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 2

Desert Fathers

Desert Fathers (251 AD - 500)

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