The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 4

with three small children, was in such distress that she wept all the time and several times a day would collapse in grief. Her sorrow was so great that it seemed as though she too would not live long. All the same, in the midst of all this, she met me kindly, though in such a state of affairs she could not send me to Jerusalem. But she asked me to stay with her for a fortnight or so until her father-in-law came to Odessa, as he had promised, to settle the affairs of the bereaved family. So I stayed. A week passed, a month, then another. But instead of coming, the merchant wrote to say that his own affairs would not allow him to come, and advising that she should pay off the assistants and that all should go to him at Irkutsk at once. So a great bustle and fuss began, and as I saw they were no longer interested in me, I thanked them for their hospitality and said good-bye. Once more I set off wandering about Russia. I thought and thought. Where was I to go now? In the end I decided that first of all I would go to Kiev, where I had not been for many years. So I set off. Of course I fretted at first because I had not been able to carry out my wish to go to Jerusalem, but I reflected that even this had not happened without the providence of God, and I quieted myself with the hope that God, the lover of men, would take the will for the deed, and would not let my wretched journey be without edification and spiritual value. And so it turned out, for I came across the sort of people who showed me many things that I did not know, and for my salvation brought light to my dark soul. If that necessity had not sent me on this journey, I should not have met those spiritual benefactors of mine. So by day I walked along with the prayer, and in the evening when I halted for the night I read my Philokalia, for the strengthening and stimulating of my soul in its struggle with the unseen enemies of salvation. On the road about forty-five miles from Odessa I met with an astonishing thing. There was a long train of wagons loaded with goods; there were about thirty of them, and I overtook them. The foremost driver, being the leader, was walking beside his horse, and the others were walking in a group some way from him. The road led past a pond which had a stream running through it, and in which the broken ice of the spring season was whirling about and piling up on the edges with a horrible noise. All 78: of a sudden the leading driver, a young man, stopped his horse, and the whole line of carts behind had to come to a standstill too.. The other drivers came running up to him and saw that he had begun to undress. They asked him why he was undressing. He answered that he very much wanted to bathe in the pond. Some of the astonished drivers began to laugh at him, others to scold him, calling him mad, and the eldest there, his own brother, tried to stop him, giving him a push to make him drive on. The other defended himself and had not the least wish to do as he was told. Several of the young drivers started getting water out of the pond in the buckets with which they watered the horses, and for a joke splashed it over the man who wanted to bathe, on his head, or from behind, saying, "There you are; we'll give you a bath." As soon as the water touched his body, he cried out, "Ah, that's good," and sat down on the ground. They went on throwing water over him. Thereupon he soon lay down, and then and there quietly died. They were all in a great fright, having no idea why it had happened. The older ones bustled about, saying that the authorities ought to be told, while the rest came to the conclusion that it was his fate to meet this kind of death. I stayed with them about an hour and then went on my way. About three and a half miles farther on I saw a village on the high road, and as I came into it I met an old priest walking along the street. I thought I would tell him about what I had just seen and find out what he thought about it. The priest took me into his house, and I told him the story and asked him to explain to me the cause of what had taken place. "I can tell you nothing about it, dear brother, except perhaps this, that there are many wonderful things in nature which our minds cannot understand. This, I think, is so ordered by God in order to show men the rule and providence of God in nature more clearly, through certain cases of unnatural and direct changes in its laws. It happens that I myself was once a witness of a similar case. Near our village there is a very deep and steep-sided ravine, not very wide, but some seventy feet or more in depth. It is quite frightening to look down to the gloomy bottom of it. A sort of footbridge has been built over it. A peasant in my parish, a family man and very respectable, suddenly, for no reason, was taken with an irresistible desire to throw himself from this little bridge into that deep ravine. He fought against the idea and 79 resisted the impulse for a whole week. In the end, he could hold himself back no longer. He got up early, rushed off, and jumped into the abyss. They soon heard his groans and with great difficulty pulled him out of the pit with his legs broken. When he was asked the reason for his fall, he answered that although he was now feeling a great deal of pain, yet he was calm in spirit, that he had carried out the irresistible desire which had worried him so for a whole week, and that he had been ready to risk his life to gratify his wish. "He was a whole year in hospital getting better. I used to go to see him and often saw the doctors who were round him. Like you, I wanted to hear from them the cause of the affair. With one voice the doctors answered that it was 'frenzy.' When I asked them for a scientific explanation of what that was, and what caused it to attack a man, I could get nothing more out of them, except that this was one of the secrets of nature which were not revealed to science. I for my part observed that if in such a mystery of nature a man were to turn to God in prayer, and also to tell good people about it, then this ungovernable 'frenzy' of theirs would not attain its purpose. "Truly there is much to be met with in human life of which we can have no clear understanding." While we were talking it was getting dark, and I stayed the night there. In the morning the mayor sent his secretary to ask the priest to bury the dead jnan in the cemetery, and to say that the doctors, after a postmortem, had found no signs whatever of madness, and gave a sudden stroke as the cause of death. "Look at that now," said the priest to me, "medical science can give no precise reason for his uncontrollable urge toward the water." And so I said good-bye to the priest and went on my way. After I had traveled for several days and was feeling rather done-up, I came to a good-sized commercial town called Byelaya Tserkov. As evening was already coming on, I started to look around for a lodging for the night. In the market I came across a man who looked as though he were a traveler too. He was making inquiries among the shops for the address of a certain person who lived in the place. When he saw me he came up to me and said, "You look as though you are a pilgrim too, so let's go together and find a man by the name of Evreinov who lives in this town. He is a good Christian and keeps a splendid inn, and he welcomes pilgrims. Look, I've got something written 80: down about him." I gladly agreed, and so we soon found his house. Although the host himself was not at home, his wife, a nice old woman, received us very kindly and gave us an out-of-the-way private little garret in the attic to rest in. We settled down and rested for a while. Then our host came and asked us to have supper with them. During supper we talked—who we were and where we came from—and somehow or other the talk came round to the question of why he was called Evreinov. "I'll tell you an odd thing about that," he said, and began his story. "You see, it was like this. My father was a Jew. He was born at Shklov, and he hated Christians. From his very earliest years he was preparing to be a rabbi and studied hard at all the Jewish chitchat which was meant to disprove Christianity. One day he happened to be going through a Christian cemetery. He saw a human skull, which must have been taken out of some grave that had been recently disturbed. It had both its jaws, and there were some horrible-looking teeth in them. In a fit of temper he began to jeer at this skull; he spat at it, abused it, and spurned it with his foot. Not content with that, he picked it up and stuck it on a post—as they stick up the bones of animals to drive off greedy birds. After amusing himself in this way, he went home. The following night he had scarcely fallen asleep when suddenly an unknown man appeared to him and violently upbraided him, saying, 'How dare you insult what is left of my poor bones? I am a Christian—but as for you, you are the enemy of Christ.' The vision was repeated several times every night, and he got neither sleep nor rest. Then the same sight started flashing before his eyes during the daytime also, and he would hear the echo of that reproachful voice. As time went on, the vision got more frequent, and in the end he began to feel depressed and frightened and to lose strength. He went to his rabbi, who read prayers and exorcisms over him. But the apparition not only did not cease; it got even more frequent and threatening. "This state of affairs became known, and, hearing about it, a business friend of his, a Christian, began to advise him to accept the Christian religion, and to urge upon him that apart from that there was no way of ridding himself of this disturbing apparition of his. But the Jew was loath to take this step. However, in reply he said, 'I would gladly do as you wish, if only I could be free from this tormenting and intolerable apparition.' The Christian was glad to hear this, and persuaded him to 81 send in to the local bishop a request for baptism and reception into the Christian church. The request was'written, and the Jew, not very eagerly, signed it. And lo and behold, the very minute that the request was signed, the apparition came to an end and never troubled him again. His joy was unbounded, and entirely at rest in mind, he felt such a burning faith in Jesus Christ that he went straight away to the bishop, told him the whole story, and expressed a heartfelt desire to be christened. He eagerly and quickly learned the dogmas of the Christian faith, and after his baptism he came to live in this town. Here he married my mother, a good Christian woman. He led a devout and very comfortable life and he was most generous to the poor. He taught me to be the same and before his death gave me his instructions about this, together with his blessing. There you are—that's why my name is Evreinov."16 I listened to this story with reverence and humility, and I thought to myself, "How good and kind our Lord Jesus Christ is, and how great is His love! In what different ways He draws sinners to Himself. With what wisdom He uses things of little importance to lead on to great things. Who could have expected that the mischievous pranks of a Jew with some dead bones would bring him to the true knowledge of Jesus Christ and be the means of leading him to a devout life?" After supper we thanked God and our host and retired to our garret. We did not want to go to bed yet, so we went on talking to each other. My companion told me that he was a merchant of Mogilev, and that he had spent two years in Bessarabia as a novice in one of the monasteries there, but only with a passport that expired at a fixed date. He was now on his way home to get the consent of the merchant community to his finally entering upon the monastic life. "The monasteries there satisfy me, their constitution and order, and the strict life of many devout startsi who live there." He assured me that putting the Bessarabian monasteries beside the Russian was like comparing heaven with earth. He urged me to do the same. While we were talking about these things they brought still a third lodger into our room. This was a noncommissioned officer, with the army for the time being, but now going home on leave. We saw that he was tired out with his journey. We said our prayers together and lay down to sleep. We were up early next morning and began to get ready for the road, and we only just wanted to go and thank our host, when 82 suddenly we heard the bells ringing for matins. The merchant and I began to consider what we would do. How could we start after hearing the bells and without going to church? It would be better to stay to matins, say our prayers in church, and then we should go off more happily. So we decided, and we called the officer. But he said, "What's the point of going to church while you are on a journey? What good is it to God if we have been? Let's get off home and then say our prayers. You two go if you want. I'm not going. By the time you have stood through matins I shall be three or four miles or so farther on my way, and I want to get home as quickly as possible." To this the merchant said, "Look here, brother, don't you run so far ahead with your schemes until you know what God's plans are!" So we went to church, and he took the road. We stayed through matins and the liturgy too. Then we went back to our garret to get our knapsacks ready for the start, when what do we see but our hostess bringing in the samovar. "Where are you off to?" she says. "You must have a cup of tea—yes, and have dinner with us too. We can't send you away hungry." So we stayed. We had not been sitting at the samovar for half an hour, when all of a sudden our noncommissioned officer comes running in, all out of breath. "I've come to you in both sorrow and joy." "What's all this?" we asked him. This is what he said: "When I left you and started off, I thought I would look in at the pub to get change for a note, and have a drink at the same time so as to get along better. So I did. I got my change, had my drink, and was off like a bird. When I had gone about two miles I had a mind to count the money the fellow at the pub had given me. I sat down by the roadside, took out my pocketbook, and went through it. All serene. Then suddenly it struck me that my passport was not there—only some papers and the money. I was as frightened as if I'd lost my head. I saw in a flash what had happened. Of course I had dropped it when I was settling up at the pub. I must run back. I ran and ran. Another awful idea seized me— suppose it's not there! That will mean trouble! I rushed up to the man behind the bar and asked him. 'I've not seen it,' he said. And was I downhearted! Well, I searched around and hunted everywhere, wherever I had stood and hung about. And what do you think? I was lucky enough to find my 83 passport. There it was, still folded up and lying on the floor among the straw and litter, all trampled in the dirt. Thank God! I was glad, I can tell you; it was as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders. Of course it was filthy and coated with mud, enough to get me a clout on the head; still, that doesn't matter. At any rate I can get home and back again with a whole skin. But I came to tell you about it. And what's more, in my fright I've rubbed my foot absolutely raw with running and I can't possibly walk. So I came to ask for some grease to bandage it up with." "There you are, brother," the merchant began, "that's because you wouldn't listen and come with us to church. You wanted to get a long way ahead of us, and, on the contrary, here you are back again, and lame into the bargain. I told you not to run so far ahead with your schemes; and now see how it has turned out. It was a small thing that you did not come to church, but besides that you used such language as, 'What good does it do God if we pray?' That, brother, was bad. Of course, God does not need our sinful prayers, but still, in His love for us He likes us to pray. And it is not only that holy prayer which the Holy Spirit Himself helps us to offer and arouses in us that is pleasing to Him, for He asks that of us when He says 'Abide in Me, and I in you'; but every intention, every impulse, even every thought which is directed to His glory and our own salvation is of value in His sight. For all these the boundless loving kindness of God gives bountiful rewards. The love of God gives grace a thousand fold more than human actions deserve. If you give Him the merest mite, He will pay you back with gold. If you but purpose to go to the Father, He will come out to meet you. You say but a word, short and unfeeling— 'Receive me, have mercy on me'—and He falls on your neck and kisses you. That is what the love of the heavenly Father is like toward us, unworthy as we are. And simply because of this love He rejoices in every gesture we make toward salvation, however small. It looks like this to you: What glory is there for God, what advantage for you, if you pray a little and then your thoughts wander again, or if you do some small good deed, such as reading a prayer, making five or ten acts of reverence, or giving a heartfelt sigh and calling upon the name of Jesus, or attending to some good thought, or setting yourself to some spiritual reading, or abstaining from some food, or bearing an affront in silence—all that seems to you not enough for your full salvation and a fruitless thing to do. No! None of these small acts is in vain; it will be taken into account by the 84: all-seeing eye of God and receive a hundredfold reward, not only in eternity, but in this life. St. John Chrysostom asserts this. 'No good of any sort,' he says, 'however trifling it may be, will be scorned by the righteous judge. If sins are searched out in such detail that we shall give an answer for words and desires and thoughts, then so much the more good deeds, however small they are, will be taken into account in all detail, and will be reckoned to our merit before our judge, who is full of love.' "I will tell you a case which I saw myself last year. In the Bessarabian monastery where I lived there was a starets, a monk of good life. One day a temptation beset him. He felt a great longing for some dried fish. And as it was impossible to get any in the monastery at that time, he was planning to go to the market and buy some. For a long while he struggled against the idea, and reasoned with himself that a monk ought to be content with the ordinary food provided for the brothers and by all means to avoid self-indulgence. Moreover, to walk about the market among crowds of people was also for a monk a source of temptation, and unseemly. In the end the lies of the enemy got the upper hand of his reasoning and he, yielding to his self-will, made up his mind and went for the fish. After he had left the building and was going along the street, he noticed that his rosary was not in his hand, and he began to think, 'How comes this, that I am going like a soldier without his sword? This is most unseemly. And layfolk who meet me will criticize me and fall into temptation, seeing a monk without his rosary!' He was going back to get it, but, feeling in his pocket, he found it there. He pulled it out, crossed himself, and with his rosary in his hand went calmly on. As he got near the market he saw a horse standing by a shop with a great cartload of enormous tubs. All at once this horse, taking fright at something or other, bolted with all its might and with thundering hoofs made straight for him, grazing his shoulder and throwing him to the ground, though not hurting him very much. Then, a couple of paces from him, that load toppled over and the cart was smashed to splinters. Getting up quickly, naturally he was frightened enough, but at the same time he marveled how God had saved his life, for if the load had fallen a split second earlier, then he would have been smashed to pieces like the cart. Thinking no further about it, he bought the fish, went back, ate it, said his prayers, and lay down to sleep. 85: "He slept lightly, and in his sleep a benign-looking starets whom he did not know appeared to him, and said, 'Listen, I am the protector of this dwelling, and I wish to teach you so that you will understand and remember the lesson now given you. Look now: The feeble effort you made against the feeling of pleasure, and your sloth in self-understanding and self-control, gave the enemy his chance to attack you. He had got ready for you that fatal bombshell which exploded before your eyes. But your guardian angel foresaw this and put into your mind the thought of offering a prayer and remembering your rosary. Since you listened to this suggestion, obeyed, and put it into action, it was just this that saved you from death. Do you see God's love for men, and His bountiful reward of even a slight turning toward Him?' Saying this, the visionary starets quickly left the cell. The monk bowed down at his feet, and in doing so woke up, to find himself, not on his bed, but kneeling prostrate at the threshold of the door. He told the story of this vision for the spiritual benefit of many people, myself among them. "Truly boundless is the love of God for us sinners. Is it not marvelous that so small an action—yes, just taking his rosary out of his pocket and carrying it in his hand and calling once upon the name of God—should give a man his life, and that in the scales of judgment upon men one short moment of callihg upon Jesus Christ should outweigh many hours of sloth? In truth, here is the repayment of the tiny mite with gold. Do you see, brother, how powerful prayer is and how mighty the name of Jesus when we call upon it? St. John Karpathisky in The Philokalia says that when in the prayer of Jesus we call upon the holy name and say, 'Have mercy on me, a sinner,' then to every such petition the voice of God answers in secret, 'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.' And he goes on to say that when we say the prayer there is at that moment nothing to distinguish us from the saints, confessors, and martyrs. For, as St. Chrysostom says, 'Prayer, although we are full of sin when we utter it, immediately cleanses us. God's loving-kindness to us is great, yet we sinners are listless, are not willing to give even one small hour to God in thanksgiving, and barter the time of prayer, which is more important than anything, for the bustle and cares of living, forgetting God and our duty. For that reason we often meet with misfortunes and calamities, yet even these the all-loving providence of God uses for our instruction and to turn our hearts to Him.'" 86: When the merchant came to the end of his talk to the officer, I said to him, "What comfort you have brought to my sinful soul too, your honor! I could bow down to your very feet." Hearing this, he began to speak to me. "Ah, it seems you are a lover of religious stories. Wait a moment and I'll read you another like the one I have just told him. I've got here a book I travel with called Agapia, or The Salvation of Sinners. There are a lot of wonderful things in it." He took the book out of his pocket and started reading a most beautiful story about one Agathonik, a devout man who from his childhood had been taught by pious parents to say every single day before the icon of the Mother of God the prayer which begins "Rejoice, God-bearing maiden." And this he always did. Later, when he had grown up and started life on his own, he got absorbed in the cares and fuss of life and said the prayer but rarely, and finally gave it up altogether. One day he gave a pilgrim a lodging for the night, who told him he was a hermit from the Thebaid and that he had seen a vision in which he was told to go to Agathonik and rebuke him for having given up the prayer to the Mother of God. Agathonik said the reason was that he had said the prayer for many years without seeing any result whatever. Then the hermit said to him, "Remember, blind and thankless one, how many times this prayer has helped you and saved you from disaster. Remember how in your youth you were wonderfully saved from drowning? Do you not recall that an epidemic of infectious disease carried off many of your friends to the grave, but you remained in health? Do you remember, when you were driving with a friend, you both fell out of the cart; he broke his leg, but you were unhurt? Do you not know that a young man of your acquaintance who used to be well and strong is now lying weak and ill, whereas you are in good health and feel no pain?" And he reminded Agathonik of many other things. In the end he said, "Know this, that all those troubles were warded off from you by the protection of the most holy Mother of God because of that short prayer, by which you lifted up your heart every day into union with God. Take care now, go on with it, and do not give up praising the queen of heaven lest she should forsake you." When he had finished reading, they called us to dinner, and afterward, feeling our strength renewed, we thanked our host and took the road. We parted, and each went his own way as seemed best to him. 87: After that I walked on for about five days, cheered by the memory of the stories I had heard from the good merchant in Byelaya Tserkov, and I began to get near to Kiev. All at once and for no reason at all I began to feel dull and heavy, and my thoughts got gloomy and dispirited. The prayer went with difficulty and a sort of indolence came over me. So, seeing a wood with a thick undergrowth of bushes by the side of the road, I went into it to rest a bit, looking for some out-of-the-way place where I could sit under a bush and read my Philokalia, and so arouse my feeble spirit and comfort my faintheartedness. I found a quiet place and began to read Kassian the Roman in the fourth part of The Philokalia— on the eight thoughts. When I had been reading happily for about half an hour, quite unexpectedly I noticed the figure of a man some hundred yards or so away from me and farther in the forest. He was kneeling quite motionless. I was glad to see this, for I gathered, of course, that he was praying, and I began to read again. I went on reading for an hour or more and then glanced up again. The man was still kneeling there and never stirred. All this moved me very much and I thought, "What devout servants of God there are!" As I was turning it over in my mind, the man suddenly fell to the ground and lay still. This startled me, and as I had not seen his face, for he had been kneeling with his back to me, I felt curious to go and see who he was. When I got to him I found him in a light sleep. He was a country lad, a young fellow of about twenty-five. He had an attractive face, good-looking, but pale. He was dressed in a peasant's caftan with a bast rope for a girdle. There was nothing else to note about him. He had no kotomka,17 not even a stick. The sound of my approach awoke him, and he got up. I asked him who he was, and he told me he was a state peasant of the Smolensk government and that he was on his way from Kiev. "And where are you going to now?" I asked. "I don't know myself where God will lead me," he answered. "Is it long since you left home?" "Yes, over four years." "And where have you been living all that time?"

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The way of the Pilgrim and The pilgrim continues his Way - Part 4

Desert Fathers

Desert Fathers (251 AD - 500)

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