Narrative IV (1 of 2)

“But it is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord God.”

“The Russian proverb is true, which says that ‘man proposes but God disposes,’” said I, as I came back again to my spiritual father. “I thought that by now I should certainly be on my way to Jerusalem. But see how differently things have fallen out. Something quite unlooked for has happened and kept me in the same place here for another three days. And I could not help coming to tell you about it and to ask your advice in making up my mind about the matter.”

It happened like this. I had said good-bye to everybody, and with God’s help started on my way. I had got as far as the outskirts of the town when I saw a man I knew standing at the door of the very last house. He was at one time a pilgrim like me, but I had not seen him for about three years. We greeted one another and he asked me where I was going.

“God willing,” I answered, “I want to go to Jerusalem.”

“Thank God! There is a nice fellow-traveller for you,” he said.

"God be with you, and with him too," said I, "but surely you know that it is never my way to travel with other people. I always wander about alone."

"Yes, but listen. I feel sure that this one is just your sort; you will suit each other down to the ground. Now, look here, the father of the master of this house, where I have been taken on as a servant, is going under a vow to Jerusalem, and you will easily get used to each other. He belongs to this town, he's a good old man, and what's more he is quite deaf. So much so that however much you shout, he can't hear a word. If you want to ask him anything you have to write it on a bit of paper, and then he answers. So you see he won't bore you on the road; he won't speak to you; even at home here he grows more and more silent. On the other hand you will be a great help to him on the way. His son is giving him a horse and cart, which he will take as far as Odessa and then sell there. The old man wants to go on foot, but the horse is going as well because he has a bit of luggage, and some things he is taking to the Lord's Tomb. And you can put your knapsack in with them too, of course. Now just think, how can we possibly send an old deaf man off with a horse, all by himself on such a long journey? They have searched and searched for somebody to take him, but they all want to be paid such a lot; besides, there's a risk in sending him with someone we don't know, for he has money and belongings with him. Say 'Yes,' brother, it will really be all right; make up your mind now for the glory of God and the love of your neighbour. I will vouch for you to his people, and they will be too pleased for words; they are kindly folk and very fond of me, I've been working for them for two years now." All this talk had taken place at the door, and he now took me into the house. The head of the household was there, and I saw clearly that they were quite a worthy and decent family. So I agreed to the plan. So now we have arranged to start with God's blessing, after hearing the Liturgy two days after Christmas. What unexpected things we meet with on life's journey! Yet all the while, God and His Holy Providence guide our actions and over-rule our plans, as it is written, It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.

On hearing all this my spiritual father said, "I rejoice with all my heart, dear brother, that God has so ordered it that I should see you again, so unexpectedly and so soon. And since you now have time, I want, in all love, to keep you a little longer, and you shall tell me more about the instructive experiences you have met with in the course of your long pilgrimages. I have already listened with great pleasure and interest to what you told me before."

"I am quite ready and happy to do that," I answered, and I began as follows:

A great many things have happened to me, some good and some bad. It would take a long while to tell of them all, and much I have already forgotten. For I have tried especially to remember only such matters as guided and urged my idle soul to prayer. All the rest I rarely remember; or rather I have tried to forget the past, as St. Paul bids us when he says, "Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the high calling." My late starets of blessed memory also used to say that the forces which are against prayer in the heart attack us from two sides, from the left hand and from the right. That is to say, if the enemy cannot turn us from prayer by means of vain thoughts and sinful ideas, then he brings back into our minds good things we have been taught, and fills us with beautiful ideas, so that one way or another he may lure us away from prayer, which is a thing he cannot bear. It is called "a theft from the right hand side," and in it the soul, putting aside its converse with God, turns to the satisfaction of converse with self or with created things. He taught me, therefore, not to admit during times of prayer even the most lofty of spiritual thoughts. And if I saw that in the course of the day time had been spent more in improving thought and talk than in the actual hidden prayer of the heart, then I was to think of it as a loss of the sense of proportion, or a sign of spiritual greed. This is above all true, he said, in the case of beginners, for whom it is most needful that time given to prayer should be very much more than that taken up by other sides of the devout life.

Still one cannot forget everything. A matter may have printed itself so deeply in one's mind, that although it has not been actually thought of for a long time, yet it is remembered very clearly. A case in point is the few days' stay that God deemed me worthy to enjoy with a certain devout family in the following manner.

During my wanderings in the Tobolsk Government I happened to pass through a certain country town. My supply of dried bread had run very low, so I went to one of the houses to ask for some more. The householder said, "Thank God, you have come just at the right moment; my wife has only just taken the bread out of the oven, so there is a hot loaf for you. Remember me in your prayers." I thanked him and was putting the bread away in my knapsack, when his wife, who was looking on, said, "What a wretched state your knapsack is in, it is all worn out. I'll give you another instead." And she gave me a good strong one. I thanked them very heartily and went on. On leaving the town I went into a little shop to ask for a bit of salt, and the shopkeeper gave me a small bag quite full. I rejoiced in spirit and thanked God for leading me, unworthy as I was, to such kindly folk. "Now," thought I, "without having to worry about food I shall be filled and content for a whole week. Bless the Lord, O my soul!"

Three miles or so from this town the road I was following passed through a poor village, where I saw a little wooden church nicely decked out and painted on the outside. As I was going by it I felt a wish to honour God's house, and going into the porch I prayed for a while. On the grass at the side of the church there were playing two little children of five or six years of age. I took them to be the parish priest's children, for they were very nicely dressed. I finished my prayers and went on my way, but I had not gone a dozen paces from the church when I heard a shout behind me. "Dear little beggar! Dear little beggar! Stop!" The two little ones I had seen, a boy and a girl, were calling and running after me. I stopped and they ran up to me and took me by the hand. "Come along to mummy, she likes beggars."

"I'm not a beggar," I told them, "I'm just a passer-by."

"Why have you got a bag, then?"

"That is for the bread I eat on the way."

"All the same you must come. Mummy will give you some money for your journey."

"But where is your mummy?" I asked.

"Down there behind the church, behind that little wood."

They took me into a beautiful garden in the middle of which stood a large country house. We went inside, and how clean and smart it all was! The lady of the house comes hurrying to us. "Welcome, welcome! God has sent you to us; and how did you come? Sit down, sit down, dear." With her own hands she took off my knapsack and put it on a table, and made me sit in a very comfortably padded chair. "Wouldn't you like something to eat? Or a cup of tea? Isn't there anything you need?"

"I most humbly thank you," I answered, "but I have a whole bagful of food. It is true that I do take tea, but as a peasant I am not very used to it. I value your heartfelt and kindly welcome even more than the treat you offer me. I shall pray that God may bless you for showing such love for strangers in the spirit of the Gospels."

While I was speaking, a strong feeling came over me, urging me to withdraw within myself again. The Prayer was surging up in my heart, and I needed peace and silence to give free play to this quickening flame of prayer, as well as to hide from others the outward signs which went with it, such as tears and sighs and unusual movements of the face and lips. I therefore got up, saying, "Please excuse me, but I must leave now; may the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with your dear little children."

"Oh, no! God forbid that you should go away."

“I won’t allow it. My husband, who is a magistrate, will be coming back from town this evening, and how delighted he will be to see you! He reverences every pilgrim as a messenger of God. If you go away he will be really grieved not to have seen you. Beside that, to-morrow is Sunday, and you will pray with us at the Liturgy, and at the dinner-table take your share with us in what God has sent. On holy days we always have up to thirty guests, and all of them our poor brothers in Jesus Christ. Come now, why have you told me nothing about yourself, where you come from and where you are going? Talk to me, I like listening to the spiritual conversation of devout people. Children, children! Take the pilgrim’s knapsack into the oratory, he will spend the night there.”

I was astonished as I listened to what she said, and I asked myself whether I was talking with a human being or with a ghost of some sort.

So I stayed, and waited for her husband. I gave her a short account of my travels, and said I was on my way to Irkutsk.

“Why, then, you will have to go through Tobolsk,” said the lady, “and my own mother is a nun in a convent there, she is a skhimnitsa now. We will give you a letter and she will be glad to see you. A great many people go to consult her on spiritual matters. And you will be able to take her a book by St. John of the Ladder which we have just ordered from Moscow at her request. How nicely it all fits in!”

Soon it was dinner-time, and we sat down to table. Four other ladies came in and began the meal with us. When the first course was ended one of them rose, bowed to the Ikon,* and then to us. Then she went and fetched the second course and sat down again. Then another of the ladies in the same way went and brought the third course. When I saw this, I said to my hostess, “May I venture to ask whether these ladies are relations of yours?”

“Yes, they are indeed sisters to me; this is my cook, and this the coachman’s wife, that one has charge of the keys and the other is my maid. They are all married, I have no unmarried girls at all in my whole household.”

The more I saw and heard of all this, the more surprised I was, and I thanked God for letting me see these devout people. I felt the prayer stirring strongly in my heart, so wishing to be alone as soon as I could and not hinder the prayer, I said to the lady as soon as we rose from the table, “No doubt you will rest for a while after dinner, and I am so used to walking that I will go for a stroll in the garden.”

“No, I don’t rest,” she replied. “I will come into the garden with you, and you shall talk to me about something instructive. If you go alone, the children will give you no peace, directly they see "you, they will not leave you for a minute, they are so fond of beggars, and brothers in Christ, and pilgrims."

There was nothing for me to do but to go with her. In order to avoid doing the talking myself, when we got into the garden I bowed down to the ground before her and said, "Do tell me, please, have you lived this devout life long, and how did you come to take it up?"

"I will tell you the whole story if you like," was the answer. "You see my mother was a great-grand-daughter of St. Joasaph, whose relics rest at Byelgorod. We had a large town house, one wing of which was rented to a man who was a gentleman but not well off. After a while he died; his wife was left pregnant and herself died in giving birth to a child. The infant was left an orphan and in poverty, and out of pity my mother adopted him. A year later I was born. We grew up together and did lessons together with the same tutors and governesses, and were as used to each other as a real brother and sister. Some while later my father died, and my mother gave up living in town and came with us to live on this estate of hers here. When we grew up, she gave me in marriage to her adopted son, settled this estate on us, and herself took the veil in a convent, where she had a cell built for her. She gave us a mother's blessing, and as her last will and testament she urged us to live as good Christians, to say our prayers fervently, and above all try to fulfil the greatest of God's commandments, that is, the love of one's neighbour, to feed and help our poor brothers in Christ in simplicity and humility, to bring up our children in the fear of the Lord, and to treat our serfs as our brothers. And that is how we have been living here by ourselves for the last ten years now, trying as best we could to carry out mother's last wishes. We have a guesthouse for beggars, and at the present moment there are living in it more than ten crippled and sick people. If you care to, we will go and see them to-morrow."

When she had ended her story, I asked her where the book by St. John of the Ladder was, which she wished to send to her mother. "Come indoors," she said, "and I will find it for you."

We had just sat down and begun to read it when her husband came in, and seeing me, gave me a warm welcome. We kissed each other as two brothers in Christ, and then he took me off to his own room, saying, "Come, dear brother, let us go into my study, and you shall bless my cell. I expect she (pointing to his wife) has been boring you. No sooner does she catch sight of a pilgrim of either sex, or of some sick person, than she is so delighted that she will not leave them day or night. She has been like that for years and years." We went into the study. What a lot of books there were, and beautiful icons, and the life-giving Cross with the Figure life-sized, and the Gospels lying near it! I...said a prayer, and then, "You are in God's own Paradise here," I said. "Here is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His most holy Mother, and the blessed Saints! And there," I went on, pointing to the books, "are the divine, living and everlasting words of their teaching. I expect you very often enjoy heavenly converse with them."

"Yes, I admit I am a great lover of reading," he answered.

"What sort of books are they you have here?" I asked.

"I have a large number of religious books," was the answer. "Here you see are the Lives of the Saints for the whole year, and the works of St. John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great, and many other theologians and philosophers. I have a lot of volumes of sermons, too, by celebrated modern preachers. My library is worth about five hundred pounds."

"Haven't you anything on prayer?"

"Yes, I am very fond of reading about prayer. Here is the very latest work on the subject, the work of a Petersburg priest." He took down a book on the Lord's Prayer and we began to read it with great enjoyment. A short while after the lady came in, bringing tea, followed by the children, who dragged in a large silver basket full of biscuits and cakes such as I had never tasted before in my life. My host took the book from me and handed it to his wife, saying, "Now we will get her to read; she reads "beautifully, and we will keep our strength up with the tea." So she began reading, and we listened. And as I listened I felt the action of the Prayer in my heart. The longer the reading went on the more the Prayer grew and made me glad. Suddenly I saw something flash quickly before my eyes, in the air as it were, like the figure of my departed starets. I started, and so as to hide the fact I said, "Excuse me, I must have dropped asleep for a moment." Then I felt as though the soul of my starets made its way into my own, or gave light to it. I felt a sort of light in my mind, and a number of ideas about prayer came to me. I was just crossing myself and setting my will to put these ideas aside when the lady came to the end of the book and her husband asked me whether I had liked it, so that talking began again. "Very much," I answered, "the 'Our Father' is the loftiest and most precious of all the written prayers we Christians have, for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave it to us. And the explanation of it which has just been read is very good, too, only it deals for the most part with the active side of the Christian life, and in my reading of the holy Fathers I have come across a more speculative and mystical explanation of the prayer."

"In which of the Fathers did you read this?"

"Well, in Maxim the Confessor, for example, and in Peter the Damascene, in the Philokalia."

"Do you remember it? Tell us about it, please."

"Certainly. The first words of the prayer, 'Our Father which art in Heaven' are explained in your book as a call to brotherly love for one's neighbour, since we are all children of the one Father, and that is very true. But in the holy Fathers the explanation goes further and is more deeply spiritual. They say that when we use these words we should lift up our mind to heaven, to the Heavenly Father, and remember every moment that we are in the presence of God.

"The words 'Hallowed be Thy Name' are explained in your book by the care we ought to have not to utter the Name of God except with reverence, nor to use it in a false oath, in a word that the Holy Name of God be spoken holily and not taken in vain. But the mystical writers see here a plain call to inward prayer of the heart; that is, that the most Holy Name of God may be stamped inwardly upon the heart and be hallowed by self-acting prayer and hallow all our feelings and all the powers of the soul. The words 'Thy Kingdom come' they explain thus—may inward peace and quiet and spiritual joy come to our hearts. In your book again, the words 'Give us this day our daily bread' are understood as asking for what we need for our bodily life, not for more than that, but for what is needed for ourselves and for the help of our neighbour. On the other hand, Maxim the Confessor understands by 'daily bread' the feeding of the soul with heavenly bread, i.e., the Word of God, and the union of the soul with God, by dwelling upon Him in thought and the unceasing inward prayer of the heart."

"Ah, but the attainment of interior prayer is a very big business and almost impossible for lay folk," exclaimed my host; "we are lucky if we manage to say our ordinary prayers without slothfulness."

"Don't look at it in that way," said I. "If it were out of the question and quite too hard to do, God would not have bidden us all do it. His strength is made perfect in weakness. The holy Fathers, who speak from their own experience, offer us the means, and make the way to win the prayer of the heart easier. Of course, for hermits they give special and higher methods, but for those who live in the world their writings show ways which truly lead to interior prayer."

"I have never come across anything of that sort in my reading," he said.

"If you would care to hear it, may I read you a little from The Philokalia?" I asked, taking up my copy. I found Peter the Damascene's article, part 3, page 48, and read as follows: "One must learn to call upon the Name of God, more even than breathing—at all times, in all places, in every kind of occupation. The Apostle says, 'Pray without ceasing.' That is, he teaches men to have the remembrance of God in all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something you"...must call to mind the Creator of all things, if you see the light, remember the Giver of it, if you see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes recall Whose gift they are and thank Him Who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause for remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and therein your soul will always rejoice.' There, you see, this way of ceaseless prayer is simple and easy and within the reach of everybody so long as he has some amount of human feeling.'

They were extraordinarily pleased with this. My host took me in his arms and thanked me again and again. Then he looked at my Philokalia, saying, 'I must certainly buy myself a copy of this. I will get it at once from Petersburg; but for the moment and in memory of this occasion I will copy out the passage you have just read—you read it out to me.' And then and there he wrote it out beautifully. Then he exclaimed, 'Why, goodness me! Of course I have an ikon of the Damascene!' (It was probably of St. John Damascene.) He picked up a frame, put what he had written behind the glass and hung it beneath the ikon. 'There,' said he, 'the living word of the Saint underneath his picture will often remind me to put his wholesome advice into practice.'

After this we went to supper. As before, the whole household, men and women, sat down to table with us. How reverently silent and calm the meal was! And at the end of it we all, the children as well, spent a long while in prayer. I was asked to read the 'Akathist to Jesus the Heart's Delight.' Afterwards the servants went away to bed, and we three were left alone in the room. Then the lady brought me a white shirt and a pair of stockings. I bowed down at her feet, and said, 'The stockings, little mother, I will not take. I have never worn them in my life; we are always so used to omochi.' She hurried off and brought back her old kaftan of thin yellow material, and cut it up into two omochi, while her husband, saying, 'And look, the poor fellow's footwear is almost worn out,' brought me his new bashmaki, large ones which he wore over his top boots. Then he told me to go into the next room, which was empty, and change my shirt. I did so, and when I came back to them again they sat me down on a chair to put my new footwear on, he wrapping my feet and legs in the omochi and she putting on the bashmaki. At first I would not let them, but they bade me sit down, saying, 'Sit down and be quiet, Christ washed His disciples' feet.' There was nothing to do but obey, and I began to weep, and so did they. After this the lady went to bed with the children, and her husband and I went to a summerhouse in the garden.

For a long while we did not go to sleep, but lay talking. He began in this way, "Now in God's name and on your conscience tell me the real truth. Who are you? You must be of good birth, and are only assuming a disguise of simplicity. You read and write well, you speak correctly, and are able to discuss things, and these things do not go with a peasant upbringing."

"I spoke the real truth with a sincere heart both to you and to your wife when I told you about my birth, and I never had a thought of lying or of deceiving you. Why should I? As for the things I say, they are not my own, but what I have heard from my departed starets, who was full of divine wisdom; or what I have gathered from a careful reading of the holy Fathers. But my ignorance has gained more light from interior prayer than from anything else, and that I have not reached by myself, it has been granted me by the mercy of God and the teaching of my starets. And that can be done by anyone. It costs nothing but the effort to sink down in silence into the depths of one's heart and call more and more upon the radiant Name of Jesus. Everyone who does that feels at once the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. And what depth and light there is in the mystery of a man coming to know that he has this power to plumb the depths of his own being, to see himself from within, to find delight in self-knowledge, to take pity on himself and shed tears of gladness over his fall and his spoiled will! To show good sense in dealing with things and to talk with people is no hard matter, and lies within anyone's power, for the mind and the heart were there before learning and human wisdom. If the mind is there, you can set it to work either upon science or upon experience, but if the mind is lacking then no teaching, however wise, and no training will be any good. The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles. We think, 'I would very gladly take an interest in spiritual things, and in prayer, but I have no time, the fuss and cares of life give no chance for such a thing.' Yet which is really important and necessary, salvation and the eternal life of the soul, or the fleeting life of the body on which we spend so much labour? 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 to-morrow. 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, 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 recognised my own wrong-doing. 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.”