spend so much labor? It is that that I spoke of, and that leads to either sense or
stupidity in people.'
" 'Forgive me, dear brother, I asked not just out of mere curiosity, but from
friendliness and Christian sympathy, and even more because about two years ago I
came across a case which gave rise to the question I put to you. It was like this:
There came to our house a certain beggar with a discharged soldier's passport. He
was old and feeble, and so poor that he was almost naked and barefoot. He spoke
little, and in such a simple way that you would take him for a peasant of the steppes.
We took him into the guesthouse, but some five days later he fell seriously ill, and so
we moved him to this very summerhouse, where we kept him quiet, and my wife and
I looked after him and nursed him. But after a while it was plain that he was nearing
his end. We prepared him for it and sent for our priest for his confession, communion,
and anointing. The day before he died, he got up and asked me for a sheet of paper
and a pen and begged me to shut the door and to let no one in while he wrote his
will, which he desired me to send after his death to his son at an address in
Petersburg. I was astounded when I saw him write, for not only did he write a
beautiful and absolutely cultured hand, but the composition also was excellent,
thoroughly- correct, and showing great delicacy of touch. In fact, I'll read you that will
of his tomorrow. I have a copy of it. All this set me wondering, and aroused my
curiosity enough to ask him about his origin and his life.
" After making me solemnly vow not to reveal it to anyone until after his death, he
told me, for the glory
of God, the story of his life. "I was Prince X ---- ," he
began. "I was very wealthy and led a most luxurious and dissipated life. After the
death of my wife, my son and I lived together, he being happily settled in military
service; he was a captain in the guards. One day when I was getting ready to go to a
ball at an important person's house, I was very angry with my valet. Unable to control
my temper, I struck him a severe blow on the head and ordered him to be sent away
to his village. This happened in the evening, and next morning the valet died from the
effects of the blow. This did not affect me very seriously. I regretted my rashness but
soon forgot the whole thing. Six weeks later, though, I began seeing the dead valet,
in my dreams to begin with—every night he disturbed me and reproached me,
59
incessantly repeating, 'Conscienceless man! You are my murderer!' As time went on,
I began seeing him when I was awake also, wide awake. His appearances grew
more and more frequent with the lapse of time, till the agitation he caused me
became almost constant. And in the end he did not appear alone, but I saw at the
same time other dead men whom I had treated very badly, and women whom I had
seduced. They all reproached me ceaselessly and gave me no peace, to such an
extent that I could neither sleep nor eat nor do anything else. My strength grew utterly
exhausted, and my skin stuck to my bones. All the efforts of skilled physicians were
of no avail at all. I went abroad for a cure, but after trying it for six months, I was not
benefited in the slightest degree, and those torturing apparitions grew steadily worse
and worse. I was brought home again more dead than alive. I went through the
horrors and tortures of hell in fullest measure. I had proof then that hell exists, and I
knew what it meant! While I was in this wretched condition I recognized my own
wrongdoing. I repented and made my confession. I gave all my serfs their freedom
and took a vow to afflict myself for the rest of my days with as toilsome a life as
possible and to disguise myself as a beggar. I wanted, because of all my sins, to
become the humblest servant of people of the very lowest station in life. No sooner
had I resolutely come to this decision than those disturbing visions of mine ceased. I
felt such comfort and happiness from having made my peace with God that I cannot
adequately describe it. But just as I had been through hell before, so now I
experienced paradise, and learned what that meant also, and how the kingdom of
God is revealed in our hearts. I soon got perfectly well again and carried out my
intention, leaving my native land secretly, furnished with a discharged soldier's
passport. And now for the last fifteen years I have been wandering about the whole
of Siberia. Sometimes I hire myself out to the peasants for such work as I can do.
Sometimes I find sustenance by begging in the name of Christ. Ah, what blessedness
and what happiness and what peace of mind I enjoy in the midst of all these
privations! It can be felt to the full only by one who by the mercy of the Great
Intercessor has been brought out of hell into paradise."
" 'When he came to the end of his story he handed me the will to forward to his
son, and on the following day he died. And I have a copy of that will in a wallet lying
on my Bible. If you would like to read it I will get it for you now. . . . Here you are.'
60:
"I unfolded it and read thus:
In the name of God the glorious Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
My dearest son,
It is fifteen years now since you saw your father. But though you have had no
news of him, he has from time to time found means to hear of you, and cherished a
father's love for you. That love impels him to send you these few lines from his
deathbed. May they be a lifelong lesson to you!
You know how I suffered for my careless and thoughtless life; but you do not
know how I have been blessed in my unknown pilgrimage and filled with joy in the
fruits of repentance.
I die at peace in the house of one who has been good to me, and to you also; for
kindnesses showered upon the father must touch the feeling heart of a grateful son.
Render to him my gratitude in any way you can.
In bestowing on you my paternal blessing, I adjure you to remember God and to
guard your conscience. Be prudent, kindly, and considerate; treat your inferiors as
benevolently and amiably as you can; do not despise beggars and pilgrims,
remembering that only in beggary and pilgrimage did your dying father find rest and
peace for his tormented soul. I invoke God's blessing upon you, and calmly close my
eyes in the hope of life eternal, through the mercy of the Great Intercessor for men,
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your father, X ------------------------------------------------
"Thus my host and I lay and chatted together, and my turn I put a question to him. 'I
suppose you are not without worries and bothers, with this guesthouse of yours? Of
course there are quite a lot of our pilgrim brotherhood who take to the life because
they have nothing to do, or from sheer laziness, and sometimes they do a little
thieving on the road; I have seen it myself.'
" There have not been many cases of that sort,' was the answer. 'We have for the
most part always come across genuine pilgrims. And if we do get the other sort, we
welcome them all the more kindly and try the harder to get them to stay with us.
Through living with our good beggars and brothers in Christ they often become
reformed characters and leave the guesthouse humble and kindly folk. Why, there
was a case of that sort not so long ago. He was a man belonging to the lower middle
61
class of our town here, and he went so thoroughly to the bad that it came to the point
of everybody driving him away from their doors with a stick and refusing to give him
even a crust of bread. He was a drunken, quarrelsome bully, and what is more he
stole. That was the sort of person he was when one day he came to us, very hungry,
and asked for some bread and wine, for the latter of which he was extraordinarily
eager. We gave him a friendly reception and said, "Stay with us and we will give you
as much wine as you like, but only on this condition, that when you have been
drinking, you go straight away and lie down and go to sleep. If you get in the slightest
degree unruly or troublesome, not only shall we turn you out and never take you back
again, but I shall report the matter to the police and have you sent off to a penal
settlement as a suspected vagabond." He agreed to this and stopped with us. For a
week or more he certainly did drink a great deal, to his heart's content. But because
of his promise and because of his attachment to the wine, which he was afraid of
being deprived of, he always lay down to sleep afterward, or took himself off to the
kitchen garden and lay down there quietly enough. When he was sober again the
brothers of the guesthouse talked persuasively to him and gave him good advice
about learning to control himself, if only little by little to begin with. So he gradually
began to drink less, and in the end, some three months later, he became quite a
temperate person. He has taken a situation somewhere now, and no longer leads a
futile life of dependence on other people's charity. The day before yesterday he came
here to thank me.'
"What wisdom! I thought, made perfect by the guidance of love! and aloud I said,
'Blessed be God, who has so shown His grace in the household under your care.'
After this talk we slept for an hour or an hour and a half till we heard the bells for
matins. We got ready and went over to the church. On going in we at once saw the
lady of the house, who had been there some time already with her children. We were
all present at matins, and the Divine Liturgy went straight on afterward. The head of
the house with his little boy and I took our places within the altar,11 while his wife and
the little girl stood near the altar window, where they could see the elevation of the
holy gifts. How earnestly they prayed as they knelt and shed tears of joy! And I wept
to the full myself as I looked at the light on their faces. After the service was over, the
gentlefolk, the priest, the servants, and the beggars all went off together to the dining
62
room. There were some forty or so beggars, and cripples and sick folk and children.
They all sat down at one and the same table, and how peaceful and silent it all was! I
plucked up my courage and said quietly to my host, 'They read the lives of the saints
during meals in monasteries. You might do the same. You've got the whole series of
books.' " 'Let us adopt the plan here, Mary,' said he, turning to his wife, 'it will be most
edifying. I will begin, and read at the first dinnertime, then you at the next, then the
batyushka,12 and after that the rest of the brothers who know how to read, in turn.'
"The priest began to talk and eat at the same time. 'I like listening, but as for
reading—well, with all respect I should like to be let off. You have no idea what a
whirl I live in when I get home, worries and jobs of all sorts, first one thing has to be
done and then another, what with a host of children and animals into the bargain—
my whole day is filled up with things to do. There's no time for reading or study. I've
long ago forgotten even what I learned at the seminary.' I shuddered as I heard this,
but our hostess, who was sitting near me, took my hand and said, 'Batyushka talks
like that because he is so humble, he always makes little of himself, but he is really a
man of most kindly and saintly life. He has been a widower for the last twenty years
and is bringing up a whole family of grandchildren. For all that he holds services very
frequently.' At these words there came into my mind the following saying of Nicetas
Stethatus in The Philokalia: 'The nature of things is judged by the inward disposition
of the soul,' that is, a man gets his ideas about his neighbors from what he himself is.
And he goes on to say, 'He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of
the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the
sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to
shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust.'
"We fell silent again. Opposite me sat one of the beggars from the guesthouse
who was quite blind. The master of the house was looking after him. He cut up his
fish for him, gave him his spoon, and poured out his soup.
"I watched carefully and saw that this beggar always had his mouth open and that
his tongue was moving all the time, as though it were trembling. Surely, thought I, he
must be one of those who pray. And I went on watching. Right at the end of dinner an
old woman was taken ill. It was a sharp attack, and she began to groan. Our host and
his wife took her into their bedroom and laid her on their bed, where the lady stayed
63
to look after her. Her husband meanwhile ordered his carriage and went off at a
gallop to the town for a doctor. The priest went to fetch the Reserved Sacrament, and
we all went our ways.
"I felt as it were hungry for prayer, an urgent need to pour out my soul in prayer,
and I had not been in quiet nor alone for forty-eight hours. I felt as though there were
in my heart a sort of flood struggling to burst out and flow through all my limbs. To
hold it back caused me severe, even if comforting, pain in the heart, a pain that
needed to be calmed and satisfied in the silence of prayer. And now I saw why those
who really practice interior self-acting prayer have fled from the company of men and
hidden themselves in unknown places. I saw further why the venerable Isikhi called
even the most spiritual and helpful talk mere idle chatter if there were too much of it,
just as Ephrem the Syrian says, 'Good speech is silver, but silence is pure gold.'
"As I thought all this over, I made my way to the guesthouse, where everyone was
resting after dinner. I went up into the attic, where I quietly rested and prayed.
"When the beggars were about again, I found the blind man and took him off to
the kitchen garden, where we sat down alone and began to talk. 'Tell me, please,'
said I, 'do you for the sake of your soul say the prayer of Jesus?'
" 'I have said it without stopping for a long while.'
" 'But what sort of feeling do you get from it?'
" 'Only this, that day or night I cannot live without the prayer.'
" 'How did God show it you? Tell me about it, tell me everything, dear brother.'
" 'Well, it was like this. I belong to this district and used to earn my living by doing
tailoring jobs. I traveled about different provinces going from village to village, and
made clothes for the peasants. I happened to stay a fairly long time in one village in
the house of a peasant for whose family I was making clothing. One day, a holy day it
was, I saw three books lying near the icons, and I asked who it was in the household
that could read. "No one," they answered; "those books were left us by an uncle; he
knew how to read and write." I picked up one of the books, opened it at random, and
read, as I remember to this very hour, the following words: "Ceaseless prayer is to
call upon the name of God always, whether a man is conversing, or sitting down, or
walking, or making something, or eating, whatever he may be doing, in all places and
at all times, he ought to call upon God's name." Reading that started me thinking how
64:
simple that would be for me. I began to say the prayer in a whisper while I was
sewing, and I liked it. People living in the same house with me noticed it and began
to make fun of me. "Are you a wizard or what?" they asked, "going on whispering all
the time?" or "What are you muttering charms about?" So to hide what I was doing, 1
gave up moving my lips and went on saying the prayer with my tongue only. In the
end I got so used to the prayer that my tongue went on saying it by itself day and
night, and I liked it. I went about like that for a long while, and then all of a sudden I
became quite blind. Almost everyone in our family gets "dark water"13 in the eyes.
So, because I was so poor, our people got me into the almshouse at Tobolsk, which
is the capital of our province. I am on my way there now, only the gentry have kept
me here because they want to give me a cart as far as Tobolsk.'
" 'What was the name of the book you read? Wasn't it called The Philokalia?'
" 'Honestly, I don't know. I didn't even look at the title page.'
- Bible
- Read the Bible
- Bible Versions
- Verse of the Day
- Reading Plans
- Verses by Topic
- Books of the Bible
- Bible Images
- Study
- Commentaries
- Concordances
- Dictionaries
- Encyclopedias
- Sermons
- Bible Atlas & Maps
- BP Wiki
- Devotionals
- Today's Devotionals
- Light of the World
- All Devotionals
- Inspirational Quotes
- More
- Picture Quotes
- Videos
- Inspirational
- Bible Study
- What The Bible Says
- Bible Q&As
- Daily Bread
- Bible by Genre
- Bible Stories
- Random Bible Verse
- Community
- Store