How an Orthodox Christian was converted/reverted to the Orthodox faith (Sergei Nilus)

The following text is a story of an orthodox christian Sergei Nilus (1862-1929) who was born orthodox but later in his youth apostasized but by the intercession of St Sergius of Radonezh an incident on the horse and also the miraculous healing by St John of Kronstadt he returned to the faith. Sergei Nilus was the publisher of the Dialogue between Motovilov and St Seraphim of Sarov on the Acquistion of the Holy Spirit.

The first text is his autobiography and the second text is his full biography written by Vladimir Moss.

Autobiography

I.

I was born in 1862, into a family that, on my mother's side, counted among its ranks many progressive figures, in the spirit that generally characterized the sixties of what is now the last century. Born landowners of the gentry, and large ones at that, they, perhaps thanks to their connection to the land and the peasantry, avoided the extreme manifestations of the fads of the seventies, but they could not escape the general, so to speak, Platonic revolutionary spirit—so great was the fascination then with the ideas of a pervasive egalitarianism, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom... and, perhaps, freedom of action. It seems there wasn't a single noble house in either capital at that time that didn't reshape the state structure of the Russian Empire, following its own example, the strength of its understanding, and the latest book it had read, first from Sovremennik, then Otechestvennye Zapiski or Vestnik Evropy.

It was a time of great migration of nobles from their ancestral homes to various Bolshoye and Malye Konyushennaya estates, to Sivtsev Vrazhek, to St. Nicholas on the Peschi, and to other quiet corners of the capital, where noble colonists flocked, severing their centuries-old ties with the village. Old-time Muscovites must still remember these now-decrepit mansions, where the old village landowners moved to live out their days. Few of them remain in Moscow today.

One of these houses in Moscow was the house in which I began to remember myself and get used to conscious life.

Of course, the solid food of politically charged conversations did little to foster in me any religious, as they used to say, dreams, and I grew up completely alienated from the Church, connecting it in my childhood imagination only with my old nanny, whom I loved to the point of self-forgetfulness, and with the majestic ringing of the Moscow "forty forties," when, especially with the first frame put up, in the soft, cheerful spring air it flowed in a wide, powerful wave into the cramped city rooms refreshed after a long winter and beckoned to the open spaces of the village, fields, noisy streams among the green grass - in a word, to the world of God from the stone walls of modern urban lies and conventionality.

Why did I love the village so much, which my mother could not stand, going there—and, as she said, "with disgust"—for two summer months; why did I love so much my foolish old nurse, who did not even live with me for long, usually being left in the village for the winter to guard the master's storerooms and the village house? God knows; but I loved them both to tears; and my love for them was somehow special, purely Russian: for some reason I "pitied" them, precisely "pitied" them—no other expression can be found for the painful and at the same time tearfully sweet feeling I experienced for them.

When, after a ten-month separation spent in Moscow, I would return to my native village, my first movement, my first impulse would be to run to my nanny, embrace her, cry on her chest for all the bitterness and insults of separation from her and from the village dear to my heart, and then rush to some secluded corner of my native field and there cry hotly, bitterly and at the same time joyfully, falling down and kissing its fragrant, rich earth.

To Moscow, with its unknown to me at that time, but instinctively perceived sanctuary, the village, with its boundless expanse of black earth fields, in which the infinity of God Himself is so clearly felt, with its peasants, still little touched by “civilization” at that time, and the old nanny, so dearly beloved, I attribute that I did not lose in childhood the ability to give my soul to that mood that is inextricably linked with prayer.

Nevertheless, I knew no prayers; I only went to church by chance. I learned the Law of God from teachers indifferent, if not downright hostile, as an inevitability of the relentless high school curriculum, and throughout my entire high school years, I studied it poorly: after all, it wasn't even a "primary" subject. It's shameful, and even sinful, to recall the tricks and deceptions I resorted to in order to get around the religion teacher! True, I rarely succeeded, and I recall, especially in third grade, under a strict and experienced priest, I almost never got above "A" grades, with many "F"s. Thus, in my knowledge of God, I, an Orthodox youth by name, progressed all the way to university, where, of course, there was no time for such a "trifle" as Orthodoxy.

I never attended a lecture by the late professor, Father Sergievsky, at the university, and my exams were based entirely on a written syllabus. And his lectures didn't even exist in my time: the entire large first-year class made do with two dozen tattered, greasy copies of the "Course of Theology," rented out by university custodians for fifty kopecks each for the upkeep of examinees for generations.

II.

To what extent, to what abomination of spiritual desolation I reached, left to my own devices in the life of faith, can only be imagined by someone who lived in this spiritual stench and who, later, on the path of his fall, was held back by the invisible hand of the Benevolent Creator.

I remember, probably in sixth grade at school, while fulfilling the obligation (as most of us viewed it) of obligatory fasting during Holy Week, I showed up for confession to the "early priest" (Muscovites should know this term) half-drunk—so half-drunk that before confession, probably instinctively sensing I was doing something wrong, I planned to take a dip in the floodwaters of the Moscow River, where scattered ice floes from the spring floods were still floating. And what a confession it was! Truly long-suffering and most merciful is the Lord, who deigned to allow me to experience the sweetness of conversion many years later.

But beneath all the spiritual abomination that had accumulated over the years of freedom of religious education in home life, school life, and, finally, public life—the silent but loving lessons of Moscow, the village, and the nanny, the Christian, to a certain extent close to true Christianity, endless kindness of my mother, who incessantly did good to her neighbor with the modesty characteristic only of Christians—all this did not allow the spark in my soul to go out, though it barely flickered in the darkness of my soul, the spark of a dimly perceived love for God and His Orthodoxy.

I deliberately emphasize the word "Orthodoxy," because in rare moments of prayerful upliftment, it was to this alone that my soul yearned. Neither the majesty of Catholic worship, with the majestic power of its famous organs, the beauty of opera singers' voices, nor the theatricality of a cardinal's service, not to mention the pitiful allusions to worship in Protestant churches—nothing attracted my prayerful attention as much as the wondrous beauty of Orthodox worship.

And I was sometimes drawn to the poor village church in our black-soil backwater, with its simple, uncomplicated, farmer-priest, and its equally, if not even simpler, deacon-owner. It seemed to me, involuntarily, against the will of my mind, always prone to pride, that even in their "weaknesses," God's power was made perfect. But these dimly joyful moments were rare for me, more like moments of spiritual, penitential communion between a fallen son and the Eternal Father, until something wondrous happened…

III.

When I was still in the fourth grade at Moscow's 1st Progymnasium (now the 7th Gymnasium), before the start of final exams (there was no fifth grade at the time, and we were considered graduating, a fact of which we were quite proud), anxious about my success, I made a vow in the presence of a friend with whom I was particularly close at the time to go, as I put it, to the Trinity-Sergius, "to cross myself with both hands and feet." Naturally, I made success in the exams a condition for fulfilling this promise. The exams went almost brilliantly, then came others, and then still others, and finally I graduated from the gymnasium, and went through university, and not only did I never think about my vow, but I think I would have laughed in the face of anyone who reminded me of it.

Much time passed thus. How it passed, or rather, how it was spent, is terrifying to say! Of course, it's terrifying for a Christian. Life, in short, was joyful. Had it not been for the incident that cut a deep, lifelong furrow into my hardened soul and forced me to preserve the "human" within me, I would, of course, have perished irrevocably.

After completing my course at Moscow University, I was sent—voluntarily, it’s true, but sent nonetheless—as a candidate for judicial positions with the prosecutor of the Erivan District Court, to the town of Bash-Norashen in the Sharuro-Daralagez district.

The Erivan court sent me to this difficult to pronounce place to assist two local assistant justices of the peace to conduct investigations independently.

I was assigned 150 cases, mostly consisting of covers titled "Case of..." (robbery, theft, and murder, of course). All proceedings in these cases were limited to a list of documents sewn into the cover, and the documents were limited to a single inquiry number from the village elder. Anyone familiar with the criminal life of Transcaucasia will be well aware that, with rare exceptions, our entire criminal procedure, according to the statutes of Emperor Alexander II, is a complete mockery of local justice. For those unfamiliar with the local customs of our non-Russians, especially Armenians, I ask you to take my word for it. In so-called "investigative" cases, where witness testimony is subject to a fixed fee of one "abaza" (two hryvnias) and up, more than one Russian investigator either went mad or drank himself to death on cheap Armenian wine and their disgusting, unrefined grape vodka.

I was very young then, with energy to spare, and with all the excess of youthful strength, with civilizing ideas (holy simplicity), I rushed into battle for the honor and glory of the Russian humane, as I then imagined, court.

There were so few roads in the region where I had to operate, even in our “zemstvo” sense of travel passes, that I had to willy-nilly turn into a dashing cavalryman, and sometimes even just an infantryman.

Once, for some urgent search or seizure, I had to rush almost at a breakneck pace.

The road, or something like a road, ran along the rocky bank of the Arpachai, completely strewn with sharp stones of all shapes and sizes.

A convoy galloped behind me: an interpreter, two Cossacks, two or three native chapars (zemstvo guards, kunaks—friends of all bandits), and the village elder. Whether I was just trying to look younger, or whether I'd just "got it," I lashed out with my Karabakh's whip, whooped, and, crouching, raced off with such speed that I immediately left my team several dozen yards behind.

And then something unimaginable happened... I only remember, and even then vaguely, that I flew up somewhere, I remember either a horse's legs above my head, or something formless, but terrible; dust... again, as if I were flying somewhere into an abyss... When I came to my senses, looked around, I couldn't figure out anything.

I see my entire convoy dismount around me: the Armenian interpreter groans as if wounded; the horse I was riding stands beside me, its saddle mangled, but it stands rooted to the spot, uninhibited. The village elder, a Tatar, squats, slapping his knees with his palms and, with terrified, stupidly shaking his head in his shaggy papakha, wailing something, presumably pitiful, in time with the rhythm. Looking at him, I almost burst out laughing—his figure seemed so comical to me.

Only then did I realize that, at full gallop, I had somehow been thrown from the saddle and, of course, had crashed headlong into the road stones. I felt myself—nothing… No pain anywhere, only a slight ache in the palm of my right hand… I stood up, walked around—nothing either. Thank God, I escaped without even a scratch.

It turned out that, at full gallop, my horse had tripped and flipped head over heels like a hare. I did the same, flying head over heels under the horse. The Cossacks later told me that only a miracle could have saved me: "By law, both the master and the horse should have left only a wet mark." Be that as it may, after this whole conundrum, my right arm ached for two or three days, and that would have been all there was to it, if… I hadn't quickly remembered my unfulfilled vow.

IV.

Why I didn't remember the need to be more careful, why a long-forgotten childhood vow came to mind—I'll leave it to those who study the human soul from the perspective of modern science to guess. There will, of course, be those who would say: a concussion from a fall—and the man went from normal to abnormal; but there will also be those who are gifted and who will reflect on it.

Again the years passed, and again, as if to prove my "normality," unchanged by the fall, I still failed to fulfill my promise to the saint of God; but my heart was no longer at peace. More and more often, as if in fiery letters suddenly blazing in the darkness of my soul, the terrible word " perjurer" began to emerge.

I left the service a long time ago and settled down to run the village.

During one of the Holy Weeks, I, who had not fasted for seven years or more, not without a feeling of false shame before my "intellectuality", more, perhaps, out of indulgence for the "prejudices" of the lesser brethren - the peasants who had elected me as churchwarden of our village church, fasted, as they say, half-heartedly, took communion not without a certain, however, strange at the time for me, an incomprehensible secret trepidation, which for a long, long time I did not want to admit to myself, and after communion I felt as if renewed, somehow more cheerful: my soul experienced something long familiar, something dear; moreover - something so inexplicably sweet and at the same time solemn...

It seems to me like a falcon, languishing in long captivity, first lazily, reluctantly spreading its heavy wings. One hesitant flap, another, a third... and suddenly! the wondrous joy of half-forgotten, free flight, both deep and wide, into the azure heavens, on the endless waves of an ethereal sea!

Then I was granted only the first, hesitant flutter of my spiritual wings. But the secret, unknown power, once given to a wing, could no longer remain inert. Something was growing within my soul: a thirst for prayer began to visit me more frequently, vaguely recognized, sometimes even forcibly stifled by everyday concerns, my own mistrust of my own spiritual state, and even, in part, by a kind of dull malice, creeping from somewhere, as if from without, into my restless soul.

But the unfulfilled vow rose up before me ever more persistently, mournful and indignant.

V.

And I fulfilled it.

I will never forget the sacred awe, the spiritual thirst with which I rode from Moscow on the Yaroslavl Railway to the spiritual stronghold of the Throne and the Motherland. The entire long-suffering, humble history of the Russian land seemed, by an invisible hand, to unfold its yellowed, time-worn pages.

I reverently inclined my ear to their quiet yet prophetic rustling, and something new, unknown, and at the same time extraordinarily sweet was born, grew, and enveloped my soul with an extraordinary force of love. My soul was born anew. And what a blessed birth it was!

How many years have passed since then! But I still see and feel the powerful influence of that mysterious Orthodox Rus', which revealed itself to me in a moment of spiritual rebirth, revealed itself and imprinted its virginal image on my grateful memories for the rest of my life. Yes! The vision of the youth Bartholomew, which gave Russia St. Sergius, united princes, boyars, and smerds in the name of God in a dense forest around a humble church, under the authority of the Grand Duke, created and glorified, to the glory of God, the great Russian kingdom, which embraced half the world with its Moscow. Herein lies the entire "law and prophets" of the Russian land.

A monk, a young and humble one, led me around the Lavra's holy sites—the first one I met at the monastery gates, reverent, quiet, and humble. He also led me to the shrine where the incorrupt relics of St. Sergius rest. There were quite a few worshippers. The next hieromonk was celebrating a common prayer service for everyone.

I knelt and, for the first time in my life, gave myself over to the wondrous feeling of prayer without the subtlety of deceit. I asked the Venerable One to forgive my spiritual weakness, my unbelief, my apostasy. Involuntary, blessed tears welled up somewhere deep in my heart: I felt as if I had withdrawn somewhere from myself. And suddenly, raising my head and looking through the fog of welling tears toward the Venerable One's reliquary, I saw on the wall, behind the glass protecting his schema, beneath the schema, the face of an elder, his stern, angry gaze fixed menacingly upon me. Unbelieving my eyes, I averted them, continuing to pray even more fervently, but as if some invisible force compelled me to look again at the same spot—and again, this time more clearly and seemingly more sternly, the stern eyes of the schemamonk flashed upon me.

Horror gripped me, but I stood before that stern face, my eyes fixed on it and my prayers intensifying. This was no longer prayer as we usually understand it—there were no words, not even the concept of words—it was a kind of extraordinary, sustained surge from the very depths of the soul. Had it lasted any longer, the bonds between soul and body would have been severed. And I saw—I maintain that I did not hallucinate, but saw, truly saw—how the stern gaze gradually softened, how the face of the wondrous Elder grew more benevolent, how my shaken soul became increasingly lighter and more joyful, and how, beneath the schema, the wondrous image gradually clouded, vanished, and finally vanished…

I am far from claiming that with my sinful eyes I was deemed worthy at that time to see a holy relic, to see God's saint himself, although the very fact of the vision was too obvious to me to dismiss it as a hallucination. A phantom conjured by an exalted imagination could not have borne the fruits that my soul subsequently received—like the prodigal son, I then returned to the bosom of loving Mother Church. My spiritual rebirth was a direct consequence of what I experienced and saw at the shrine of St. Sergius.

When the service ended, everyone went to venerate the relics of the miracle worker. I went too, already calm and joyful, and somehow especially light. I had never experienced such lightness, not only of spirit but also of body, before. It was as if a heavy, long-standing burden that had weighed on my shoulders for so long had been lifted by a strong and powerful hand. With particular reverence, I kissed the holy relics, kissed the glass protecting the schema... My monk-guide was already standing beside me, inviting me to go to the sacristy—the Lavra's greatest landmark.

I visited the sacristy, drank water from the holy well, and saw the place guarded by the dark, centuries-old vaults beneath the church where, according to legend, the Heavenly Queen herself appeared to St. Sergius; but I walked through all these sacred places, dear to the Russian heart, as if in a fog, filled with the great mystery of what I had experienced.

I vaguely remember how, on my farewell exit from the Lavra at its holy gates, I bought a cypress triptych and a life of the Saint, and how I said goodbye to my dear guide… I gave him three or five rubles as a farewell. He didn't take it: "For pity's sake, why?" He didn't take it, no matter how much I insisted. A simple, sweet soul!

These few hours spent under the shelter of the holy monastery, this finally fulfilled promise of the days of green youth, this wondrous prayerful mood, sent down from above, through the prayer, I believe, of the Venerable One - all this brought about such a turning point in my spiritual life that this turning point in itself is nothing other than a miracle that has clearly happened to me.

I believed.

VI.

Yes, I believed, and, God knows, the feeling with which I returned from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra was filled with such unearthly warmth, such complete spiritual humility, such love for the comprehended God, such submission to His holy will, so I recognized Christ, my Redeemer, in those moments, that this wondrous mood could not be anything else - it was a deep, irrevocable faith, in which the Creator and the creature are invisibly united into one, in which the reverent gratitude of the creature raises it up to the Creator Himself.

It seemed as if my earthly soul had become a celestial being. The sweetness was indescribable! I thirsted for achievement. I myself was all impulse and achievement!

But the Lord judged otherwise. And, my God! How pitiful and how unworthy this other thing was! And how quickly it happened! How alien and downright hostile it was to the great feeling carried away from the Lavra!

Having risen to heaven, I was thrown straight into the underworld.

How did this happen? There can only be one answer: I was given into the hands of the evil one. The demon took possession of my soul by God's permission.

“But who can listen to such words?!”… When such speeches are uttered by the convinced lips of a monk-ascetic, who has personally experienced the action of the misanthropic force of the original enemy of the human race, even then, it seems, there is no sufficient malice and mockery of which the “intelligent” word of modern “Christians” would not be capable, and which would not be poured out on the head of the confessor.

Nevertheless, I am calmly and consciously prepared to bear the full weight of the supposed shame that weighs upon me, a former student of Moscow University, for the unwavering confession I pronounce here. To deny Satan is to reject the entire Word of God, to reject Christ the Savior Himself, who cast out demons and gave the power to cast them out to His faithful.

The enemy of relics, whose unknown power is dismissively denied, is truly omnipotent. But the enemy whose actual existence is "convincingly" denied—that enemy is truly omnipotent. All great men, true ascetics of God, whose honesty and sincerity are not questioned even by their opponents—all speak of him, all struggled with him, and all overcame him with the help of God's grace, as an enemy not only mental but also obvious to their enlightened vision.

Could it really be that these ordinary people, who attained spiritual heights inaccessible to ordinary mortals and undeniable by anyone, people who, using the Holy Gospel, accomplished the greatest work of establishing Christ's Church on earth, now professed by nearly every tongue on earth—could it really be that these Fathers of the Church, which has existed for nearly two thousand years, were hallucinators, madmen?! Their centuries-long work, unshakable to the end of the world, speaks for them.

Are these the deeds and theories of modern deniers, even those whom foolish humanity has recognized as geniuses?..

And with what terrible force this enemy attack resonated in my soul!

VII.

From the Lavra, I had to travel to St. Petersburg. I arrived there filled with the same wondrous mood. While all the financial transactions that had driven me to this city of all sorts of provincial torments were undergoing financial ordeals, I had more than enough leisure for leisurely strolling. Not a few days had passed, and I was already in the hands of the evil one.

In a city I barely knew, I found a barely familiar but intimate group of people, no less idle than I was at the time… And what happened then!… In my entire life, I had never witnessed or indulged in such a dark debauch. Dark because even at the height of these uncontrollable orgies, in the rare moments when I was alone with myself, I literally bathed in my own tears.

I saw the abyss opening beneath my feet, I saw the ominous darkness of its bottomless mouth, and for a second I did not lose consciousness that, obeying some terrible, ominous force, I was flying headlong in an unstoppable flight to a place from which there is no return.

Never in my entire life have I experienced such a horror of moral death, engulfing my soul. I had often enjoyed myself with my close friends in the past, and I was younger, and life had taught me less, but, I repeat, what I experienced here I had never experienced before, and, God willing, I will never experience again.

God was forgotten; moreover, I felt a sacrilegious desire to destroy every corner of my soul, even the most hidden, where His holy image might still be preserved, springing up within me against my will and growing with uncontrollable force. I was choked by an incomprehensible malice. But—strangely enough!—it was mingled with such unbearable bitterness, such anguish of heartfelt loss, that my poor heart seemed to be breaking into pieces. What superhuman suffering this was!

For a minute I wanted to throw myself under a train.

Fortunately, the temptation didn't last long. Less than a week later, I again received the gift of prayer, and with it, though far from the depth I'd experienced at the Lavra, the feeling of faith and the Christian joy of communion with the Lord returned to me. Much more had to be experienced, much more felt, more than one more worldly and spiritual struggle had to be endured to obtain what I desired.

Now, recalling with comparative calm what I had experienced, recalling the terrible temptation sent to my weak spiritual powers, I still cannot, without trembling and embarrassment, without a feeling of timidity, restore in my memory all the circumstances of that incredible, sudden transformation of the Lavra visionary into the possessed person that I became then literally in the blink of an eye.

The psychology of a madman—they'll say, and, by the way, they'll find irrefutable proof of this in the beliefs I profess. O spiritual world of man! Who can comprehend you except the believer in revelation? It's not for nothing that modern Hamlets and "friends of Horatio" fill and overflow the psychiatric hospitals, sprouting like mushrooms, with no hope of recovery. Neither they nor their sages can fathom the reasons why this is happening in the world. The disease of the age, our nervous age! Where does it come from? Could it really come from the happiness that our vaunted civilization offers, with which it treacherously lures a gullible humanity thirsting for illusory happiness?!

Chance, a certain confluence of circumstances, a mental reaction, nerves, the flabbiness of an unbridled nobleman, atavism, and many other equally inexplicable explanations will be cited by the sages of this age to explain the psychology of the present moment. But they won't even bother to explain it: what matters to them is not the truth, but the pseudoscientific point of view they have adopted. To renounce it would be to admit their own failure—and who among them would have the courage to do that? In the life of the aristocracy of thought, in which they have usurped the first place, they care nothing for humanity perishing in the delusions they have created—their primacy, their guiding influence over the frivolous crowd, would be preserved. They are able to explain a sudden illness of a healthy organism by a contagious principle, located outside the organism and penetrating it from the outside, but the microbe of spiritual infection - discovered long ago and known to spiritual doctors, the great prayer-warriors of the Church, the only spiritual healers of the restless human soul - is not given to be discovered again by modern false healers: their spiritual eyes are closed by apostasy and unbelief - and "seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not understand."

Be that as it may, the thunderstorm that had descended upon me, thundering overhead, vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. The sky of my spiritual life cleared, but the sun, which had shone so brightly, began to shine upon me again, but without its former brightness—as if through thin, transparent clouds that had lagged behind the passing storm cloud.

My state of mind was like that of someone after a serious, fatal illness: the illness had passed, leaving a weakness, oppressive and depressing. I was no longer the same person, but I hadn't become a new one either. The world and its pleasures had lost their meaning for me—I had somehow fallen behind people, but the void they left in my soul was unfilled.

I was occasionally visited by a prayerful mood: I began to love reading the Holy Scriptures more than before, and I meditated on them more often and more deeply, but I still couldn't say to myself with complete sincerity that my heart had found satisfaction. I also began going to church more often, but even there I didn't find what I desired.

In my old past, I clearly, it is true, saw evil and remembered with trepidation that I was involved in this evil, but with my present I was, perhaps, even more dissatisfied.

My entire inner life seemed to be divided. I felt as if I were being hypocritical to myself, as if I were trying to convince myself of some conviction I didn't actually possess, and, worse yet, as if I wanted to flaunt this conviction, which I didn't have, to others. I saw the lie in my old ways and abandoned that lie, but somehow, against my will, it continued to break through in both my actions and my thoughts. It was a strange time. I myself felt somehow strange: neither one of my own, nor a stranger.

Everything in me and by me was done semi-automatically, semi-consciously; I didn't even feel any impulses in one direction or another—either toward a conscious lie or toward an as-yet-undetermined good. There was neither ardor nor love—only a kind of lukewarmness. The old world was crumbling, and no new one was being built on its ruins; and I felt I couldn't create one myself. A post-pain weakness tormented me; my soul needed nourishment, which I had no power to give, and which was not coming from without.

VIII.

This state of mind lasted for about a year.

Again, the circumstances of the financial side of my economic life, against my will, pulled me to Petersburg: it was necessary to introduce myself to the Minister of Railways and ask for his patronage for a certain agricultural and at the same time commercial business that I had started, which, I dreamed, was supposed to open up new means for me to fight and protect my, and many others like me, modern village Shipka, which had previously been called the “noble nest”.

It was February, and February that year had been brutal, with frosts and snowstorms. It was the second or third week of Lent.

A few days before my departure, I felt a strange, never-before-experienced dryness in my throat. I remember complaining about it to a doctor friend of mine on the evening of my departure. He examined my throat and said there was nothing there, and I set off for St. Petersburg with a light heart.

I stayed in Moscow for one day until the evening, and since I had enough time left after one business meeting, I took advantage of it to go to the Tretyakov Gallery.

I was especially drawn there by Vasnetsov and two paintings by Kramskoy—"Christ in the Desert" and "Inconsolable Grief." I spent three hours in complete silence, contemplating the wondrous works of the Russian genius, and just before the gallery closed, as I was leaving to get dressed, I asked one of the guards something and… was embarrassed by the hoarse, raspy sound of my own voice.

The dry throat I'd felt back home thus signaled a cold and loss of voice. Since I'd never lost my voice before, I didn't pay much attention to my hoarseness. That evening, before the express train departed for St. Petersburg, I was with friends at a Moscow club, complaining of a hoarse throat, but after drinking hot tea, I felt better and forgot about it.

I sleep poorly on the train, but to get some rest, I always take a berth. There were a lot of people traveling on the express train to St. Petersburg that evening. All four seats in my compartment were taken up with someone's belongings.

The conductor explained that I was traveling with some priest and two other foreigners. I confess, I wasn't at all pleased with such a large group of companions in the cramped and always stuffy carriage stall.

After the second bell, the conductor entered the compartment, took the things of two foreign passengers from us somewhere, and after him the priest came and took his place.

I involuntarily bowed to the man who entered—such a delightful impression did his open, youthful, and kindly face make on me. Whether it was my bow, so unusual in our times for a clergyman to meet a layman, or a sudden mutual sympathy—my ​​companion and I quickly fell into a friendly conversation, as if we had known each other for a long time.

Father turned out to be a monk-treasurer of one of the monasteries in central Russia. He was traveling to St. Petersburg as a builder and abbot, or elder brother, of the monastery compound he had recently built in Lesnoye.

During the reign of Tsar Alexander III, his monastery was so poor that the Holy Synod even considered its abolition. But the late Tsar, having learned of the monastery's antiquity, which had seen the Mongol yoke, ordered that its sacred relics be preserved and that the monastery be supported with funds from the treasury.

Where only did this mighty Guardian and Hero, Ruler of the Russian land, not observe Orthodoxy and Russian antiquity!

To aid the monastery's meager resources, a posthumous gift of several dessiatines of land in Lesnoye was given by two St. Petersburg benefactors. A fervent faith in Divine Providence, which, through faith, gave Father Treasurer the energy, a church and a dependency were quickly built on this bequeathed land, without a penny from the monastery's funds.

"All this cost us about forty thousand," the treasurer told me, "and the only money we had was what the abbot gave us for the trip, and 25 rubles from Father John of Kronstadt , which I received with his blessing to begin construction. And we're not in debt for a single kopeck!"

Where does such strength come from in a remote monk, whose monastery was almost abolished due to poverty?

Where does this power come from that helps Father John’s 25 rubles do things worth tens of thousands?

Father John! What a great name for a Russian! But how much slander I've heard about this name!... Is this slander really just slander?.. How can I partake of this faith, which gives such strength, how can I overcome this spiritual weakness, fill this emptiness that weighs on my heart?.. What can a person give me that I cannot achieve myself? After all, one can only expect humanness from a person!.. What can Father John give me, even if I were to decide to go to him?.. And how can I reach him, when he is surrounded and pressed by thousands of souls, perhaps even more grieving than mine, seeking from him a word of consolation, moral support?..

IX.

I had a very bad time that night traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg. These and many other questions, each more disturbing and persistent than the last, rose and swarmed in my soul: just like a spark, once sown and not extinguished, something smoldered within it and burned ever stronger, brighter and brighter.

A few stations before Lyuban, our conversation, interrupted by sleep, resumed. Something was keeping my blessed companion awake, too.

My priest told me something of his past. For the last five years of Father Ambrose of Optina's life , he had been his cell attendant. A ceaseless stream of stories flowed about the life of this wondrous beacon of Russian Orthodoxy. From Father Ambrose, the conversation shifted back to Father John; and my thirst to see him grew ever more insatiable. Already just outside St. Petersburg, when my whole soul seemed to be lost in love for my interlocutor, I expressed my desire to visit Kronstadt, but also expressed my doubts about the possibility of seeing the great Kronstadt pastor.

"If your desire comes from the heart, if you have any faith, if you are not driven by mere idle curiosity, I guarantee you will see Father John as easily as you see your parish priest," my companion told me. "When I went for the first time to ask Father John's blessing for the construction of our metochion, I was unshakably confident that I would see him without hindrance and that I would receive from him everything that, with his blessing, was subsequently accomplished. And so it turned out. But a student from the Theological Academy came with me to see Father John, and he came out of curiosity and irreverence, but Father John went into my room, but not his, even though the academician and I were standing in adjoining rooms. Father John went around all the rooms, entering each one, but never entered that student's. Go, my dear, go, my dear! You will receive from Father everything that will benefit your soul. Our meeting is no coincidence: your saint, St. Sergius, himself directs you to him. Look, I have a ticket to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius in my pocket. The evening of our departure from Moscow, I was getting ready to go to the Lavra, I had already bought the ticket, but when I had to board the train, something suddenly struck me: don't go to the Lavra, go to St. Petersburg! So I stayed with the ticket, and here I am traveling with you, rejoicing at the wondrous things that are happening in our conversation. I see that your soul stands at a crossroads, and St. Sergius has miraculously arranged our meeting at this crossroads. I beg and implore you, my dear, go to Father John—not for me, a feeble monk, to serve your soul—Father John has the power, from God, to heal its wounds. Stop at his House of Industry and tell the priest's psalm-reader, who runs it, that Father Ambrose from Lyutikov Monastery sent you to him. He knows me and will probably be of use to you. Go, go, don't delay!

Here our train approached the platform of the St. Petersburg station, and we hugged and said goodbye, almost in tears.

Since then I have never met the treasurer's father again [1] .

May our meeting be blessed!

X.

The day of my arrival in St. Petersburg, a Friday, was also the minister's reception day. From noon until four o'clock, I had just enough time to find a hotel room, wash, tidy myself up, and be ready to go on business. To my great horror, the closer the reception hour got, the worse and worse my voice became.

The hoarseness, only partially noticeable when speaking with Father Ambrose, became downright indecent: my voice sank with each passing minute. A slight chill began to run treacherously down my spine, my head began to ache—a feeling of malaise grew steadily worse. By four o'clock, I was feeling so ill that with great difficulty, barely managing to pull myself together, I boarded a cab and went to the ministry. At five o'clock, the minister, making his rounds of petitioners, approached me, and I spoke to him in such an ominous half-whisper that I had to apologize before beginning my report.

I returned home quite ill, with a terrifying chill and fever that made my head feel like it was splitting in two. By the most ordinary human logic, I should have gone to bed in such a state and sent for a doctor, which I probably would have done, but some force greater than illness, greater than any logic, dragged me off that very evening to Kronstadt in the bitter cold.

I hadn't even had time to change, grab a few handkerchiefs, and stuff them into my pockets before I was rushing to the Baltic Station, wearing a light city coat, the fur collar the only reminder of the February frosts. I knew I was acting foolishly, perhaps even ruining myself, and yet, had anyone threatened me with death for my folly at that moment, I think I would have gone to my death.

In the Oranienbaum train car, sitting by the stove, which was almost red-hot, I shivered in my coat with the collar up, as if in the bitter cold, in a piercing wind; but the certainty, which had come from somewhere, that nothing bad would happen to me, that, despite the apparent madness of my journey, I would be healthy, did not leave me for a moment.

However, I was getting worse and worse.

Somehow, more by facial expression than words, I hired a one-horse carriage at the Oranienbaum station and, still wearing a light coat, set off on the twelve-verst journey, in eighteen-degree frost, across the icy coastline exposed to all winds, to Kronstadt, where the bright electric light of its lighthouse twinkled in the distance in the night. I ordered my transport to the House of Industry.

XI.

The streets of Kronstadt were deserted as my poor, ailing body swayed over their potholes; but the closer I got to St. Andrew's Cathedral, the more animated the city became, and right at the cathedral itself, I was met by a wave of thousands of people, silently and solemnly spreading through all the streets and alleys adjacent to the cathedral.

"They all come from confession, from the priest!" my driver said, removing his hat and devoutly crossing himself three times at the open doors of the church.

At the House of Industry, I had to climb up to the fourth floor to the apartment of the psalm-reader Father Ambrose had recommended to me. I climbed the stairs with difficulty and knocked on the door; it turned out to be the psalm-reader's wife herself who opened the door.

— What do you want?

— Can I have some numbers?

— All the rooms are occupied by the fasting people!

"What should I do? I'm far away, and sick, too; the city is unfamiliar to me, it's late—where will I go now?" I whispered barely audibly.

"Just wait, my husband will be here soon, talk to him. Please come in!"

A little while later the psalm-reader himself arrived. I could hardly explain to him why I had come.

"Oh, what a bad time you came to us: all our rooms are taken, and you yourself can barely stand on your feet, and our priest has also fallen ill - he has an abscess on his hand, his whole arm is swollen, he is shivering, he could hardly serve... How will you even talk to the priest, even if, against all hope, you were able to see him? I can barely hear or understand you, and the priest certainly won't understand - he is hard of hearing."

- Do whatever you want with me - I have nowhere to go from here in this state!

Luckily for me, the train I arrived on was supposed to carry some important civilian “general” who had booked a room for himself in advance, but for some reason he didn’t show up.

The kind psalm-reader took pity on me and gave me a room prepared for the “general” with a sign on the door: “For honored visitors,” ordered me to be served a samovar and tea, and, wishing me good health, left me alone.

I asked the woman who brought me the samovar to wake me up for matins no later than three o'clock in the morning, locked the door and began to pray.

Where did this prayerful mood descend upon me? Was it the helplessness of my painful loneliness in a strange city, in unfamiliar surroundings? Was it the fear of a dark future, filled with ominous omens? Or rather, God sent me these moments of prayer. It seemed as if all the long-hidden and suppressed power of repentance burst forth and poured out in the incoherent words of a fervent, downright searing prayer, in a torrent of unshed, pent-up, simmering tears of old, painful, unsettled grief. I repented, confessed, and it seemed to me that the Omnipresent Himself was present, invisibly yet tangibly, in the solitude of the dimly lit, spacious room.

I forgot everything in those moments: time, space, the illness that had broken me... I was completely ablaze with that love, that bitter and at the same time sweet repentance that no human spiritual powers can give by themselves and which can only be sent from above in a way that is invisible and incomprehensible to the unbeliever...

The illness, which had seemingly retreated from me during prayer, attacked me with particular fury when, around midnight, I lay down to rest until matins. It was as if an unknown, hostile force were tearing at my limbs and tossing me around the bed, scorching me with an unbearable heat, freezing my soul with a piercing chill. I felt myself becoming delirious, like someone gravely ill.

So I rushed about until the morning. In a half-daze, I heard someone knock on my door:

— Three o'clock! Almost everyone has gone to matins—get up!

XII.

I stood up, put on my coat, and went out. In the white, frosty gloom of the winter night, the wisps of a looming February snowstorm swirled in gusty billows; the wind whipped, swirled, and in sharp gusts, blew whole clouds of snow dust from the rooftops and from underfoot. The blizzard was in earnest. Sinking in the snowdrifts that had piled up overnight, I barely made it to the cathedral.

There were already a large crowd standing by the locked doors. I joined the crowd and stood there for a long time, while more and more people came, the mournful wave of people thirsting for Christ's consolation grew and grew. I stood there until half past four and… didn't make it to the opening of the cathedral.

Half-fainting, I hired a random cab to the House of Industry; I barely made it to my room—it was locked. No servants, no tenants—the entire building seemed deserted. Exhausted, I lay down on the stone stairs and lay there for quite a while, until a merciful soul passing by led me to an unlocked common room, where I fell into a deep, painful sleep on someone's unmade bed.

I woke up when it was already quite light. It was about nine o'clock. Soon, pilgrims from the cathedral began arriving. The brief nap had invigorated me so much that I made it to the psalm-reader's apartment without assistance. His sweet wife received me sympathetically, caressed me, gave me tea, and continued to commiserate with me about my ailments:

"And how could you, so ill, decide to travel, especially in such weather, to a strange city? And you won't even get a chance to talk to the priest. You're such a bitter person, really!"

At about ten o'clock the psalm-reader arrived and stunned me with the news that the priest was feeling so ill, his arm was hurting so much, that when I asked him if he would come to the House of Industry, he replied:

- When I arrive, then you'll see!

"It seems you'll either have to live here for a while," the psalm-reader said to me, "or come back another time? You have little hope of seeing the priest!"

And so, as if in concert, everything conspired against my ardent desire to see Father John. Even if I had seen him, what could I have gained from such a meeting? What I so needed, what I so passionately desired—a conversation with him, my words of repentance—I had lost. Consequently, I had also lost his words of instruction and consolation. At best, I could only see him, and even that, it seemed, was lost…

But strangely enough, there was no doubt in my soul. Tormented by illness, I did not fear its outcome; having apparently lost all hope of seeing Father John, I believed that I would receive from him everything my soul craved.

XIII.

Not even an hour had passed since the psalm-reader had arrived from the cathedral when one of the servants came running from below, out of breath:

- Father has arrived!

Where did I find the strength? The psalm-reader and I were on the ground floor in a flash. I don't remember how they got me into the room next to the one the priest entered. A poorly dressed girl timidly slipped through my door from the hallway.

— Would you allow me to wait for my father at your place?

- Please!

A door opened toward me from another neighboring room. Several curious heads peered anxiously and nervously into my room, peering at the door leading from my room to the one where I could already hear the priest's voice talking to someone.

A fleeting, unpleasant feeling stirred in my soul: they won't let me talk to the priest! It stirred and disappeared. The girl in my room was quietly crying. I was overcome with a tense anticipation that something great was about to happen to me, something that would make me a different person...

In the room where the priest was, movement was heard, chairs were being moved, voices became louder... They were saying goodbye...

Heads from another room whisper anxiously:

"The door, tell them to open the door—it's locked: Father won't come in under any circumstances if the door isn't open... But what are you standing there for? You'll see—he won't come in!"

“God’s will be done!” I thought and did not move.

I heard footsteps heading towards my door... Someone pulled the handle.

"Why isn't the door unlocked? Open it quickly!" came a commanding voice... and the priest entered my room with a quick, energetic gait. The psalm-reader followed him. Father John took me in with a single glance... and what a glance it was! Piercing, insightful, piercing like lightning through my entire past and the wounds of my present, seemingly penetrating even into my very future! I felt so naked, so ashamed of myself, of my nakedness...

The girl who came in to see me fell weeping at the priest's feet and said something to him with convulsive sobs. He answered her, then began the prayer service. The service ended; I approached the cross. The psalm-reader leaned toward Father John and said loudly:

“Well, father, a gentleman from the Oryol province (here he mentioned my last name) came to you for advice, but he fell ill and lost his voice.

— That name sounds familiar! How did you lose your voice? Did you catch a cold or something?

I couldn't utter a sound in response—my throat was completely constricted. Helpless, confused, I only glanced at the priest with despair. Father John gave me the cross to kiss, placed it on the lectern, and then, with two fingers of his right hand, ran three times across the collar of my shirt. The fever instantly left me, and my voice returned, fresher and clearer than usual. It's hard to describe in words what happened in my soul then!

For more than half an hour, kneeling, I fell at the feet of the desired comforter, told him about my sorrows, opened up to him my whole sinful soul and brought repentance for everything that lay like a heavy stone on my heart.

This was the first true repentance in my entire life. For the first time, I grasped with my whole being the significance of a spiritual father as a witness to this great Sacrament, a witness who, through the grace of God, crushes at its roots the evil of the pride of sin and the pride of human self-love. Revealing the wounds of the soul before the one All-Seeing and Invisible God is not so difficult for human pride: in secret confession to the Almighty, a proud consciousness does not degrade what human insignificance calls its "dignity." The difficulty of revealing oneself before God in the presence of a witness, and overcoming this difficulty, renouncing one's pride—this is the whole essence, the whole mysterious, healing power of confession, with the help of Divine grace. For the first time, I perceived with my whole soul the sweetness of this repentance; for the first time, with my whole heart, I felt that God, God Himself, through the lips of a pastor blessed by Him, had bestowed His forgiveness upon me when Father John said to me:

— God has much mercy — God will forgive.

What inexpressible joy it was, what sacred awe filled my soul at these loving, all-forgiving words! I didn't understand what had happened with my mind, but accepted it with my whole being, with all my mysterious spiritual renewal. That faith, which had so stubbornly eluded my soul, despite my visible conversion at the relics of St. Sergius, only after this heartfelt confession to Father John did it blaze within me.

I realized that I was both a believer and an Orthodox Christian.

XIV.

That same day, in a terrible snowstorm, despite the urgings of my patron, the psalm-reader, who was wary of letting me leave in such foul weather, I left Kronstadt. The weather was so bad that only one brave cab driver agreed to take me to Oranienbaum in a steam cab for triple the fare. We traveled the twelve miles for four hours, constantly losing our way and risking ending up in the open sea instead of Oranienbaum and being lost forever. Fortunately, we managed to catch up with several sleighs carrying pilgrims who had left ahead of us, and only through our combined efforts and thanks to our horses, accustomed to the road, did we reach the railroad, half-frozen.

Thus my ardent wish was fulfilled, thus the prediction of my companion, Father Ambrose, was confirmed: despite all the difficulties that seemed insurmountable, I gained access to Father John with great ease—no days of waiting, no expenditure beyond what the Kronstadt priest's secret ill-wishers had threatened me with. My entire journey lasted only a day and cost less than fifteen rubles. They didn't charge me anything for the room, as rooms "for distinguished guests," among whom I had found myself quite unexpectedly and out of place, are not subject to taxation. They charged me something like fifteen or twenty kopecks for the samovar and tea. Father John's psalm-reader, despite my vigorous protests, out of a sense of hospitality, took all the expenses for my meals personally, treating me to a simple but wonderful home-cooked dinner in the company of his hospitable family.

Is this Father John's inaccessibility?! Is this the self-interest of those around him?! The direct path to faith is the closest and most accessible path!

Was it by direct means and for what purposes did those who slandered his bright personality and the order surrounding him go to Father John?

The miracle Father John performed on me gave me the opportunity to confess my soul to him. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, I again felt just as ill. My voice had disappeared; taking my temperature, I saw that things were looking very bad: the thermometer showed 40.2°C. I sent for a doctor. He diagnosed some kind of spreading laryngitis or something similar, and delicately hinted at a possible pneumonia… at the seriousness of my illness, and at the need for persistent and prolonged treatment… I did not undergo treatment and, thank God, recovered very quickly, although my voice did not recover for another three months…

I didn't really need it at the time. The sudden grace of God, "the healing of the weak," granted me just the amount of health my soul needed and benefited from at that moment.

Since my trip to Kronstadt, I have felt myself wholeheartedly converted to Orthodoxy from that spiritual paganism which so deeply, almost from infancy, infects the so-called "intelligent" class of Russian society in our times. Only then did I understand that outside the Church, the grace of its hierarchy, and the sacraments established by Christ's command, there is no Orthodox Christianity, no salvation. Life, so ridiculous and pitiful, so aimless, like the toil of a squirrel in a wheel, acquired for me both meaning and profound significance.

Communion with the Church, as unceasing as possible, the wondrous Sacrament of Confession, received with faith and a converted soul, union with Christ in the awesome and at the same time so gracious Sacrament of Communion—all this has become such a necessity that without it, life itself seems unlivable. I am as far from the perfection attainable on earth as perhaps I ever was, but the path lies before me so open, so clear, the hope so certain, sometimes growing into an unshakable certainty, that where has my lukewarmness gone?

And the closer the all-purifying Holy Church of Christ becomes to me, the more often I fall at her sinless bosom, the brighter burns within me the inextinguishable flame of boundless faith in her promises, kindled by her. Christ the Lord and His Orthodox Church —this is the one truth that makes us free, this is the sole source of every earthly good, every true, inviolable happiness accessible on earth and above it—in the depths of endless centuries, in the heights of the infinite heavens. Whoever, by God's grace, comprehends this truth, whoever devotes themselves selflessly to her service, will find clarity in life and will feel bitterness for the unsettled modern man, who foolishly and unconsciously rejects the grace of God, without which he is dust and ashes!

Isn't the burden that lies like a weary oppression over the modern apostate world a terrible and menacing reality?!

What does the threat of the future, and the not so distant future, hide within itself?..

February 1900

Biography of Sergei Nilus by Vladimir Moss

 "I was born," writes Sergius Alexandrovich Nilus about himself, "in 1862 (25 August), in a family which on my mother's side counted in its midst not a few advanced people - advanced in the spirit for which the 60s of what is now already the last century was distinguished.

     "My parents were nobles and landowners - major ones, moreover. It was perhaps because of their links with the land and the peasants that they escaped any extreme manifestation of the enthusiasms of the 70s. However, they could not escape the general, so to speak platonic-revolutionary spirit of the times, so great then was the allure of the ideas of egalitarianism, freedom of thought, freedom of thought, freedom... yes, perhaps freedom of action, too, which overcame everyone. It seems that at that time there was not one home of the nobility in both the capitals where the state structure of the Russian empire was not reshaped in its own model, according to the measure of its understanding and according to the last book it had read, first from "Sovremennik, and then Otechestvennye Zapisi or Vestnik Evropy. Of course, the hard food of conversations of a political character did not much help to develop in me religious dreams, as they were then called, and I grew up in complete alienation from the Church, uniting it in my childish imagination only with my old nanny, whom I loved to distraction.

     "Nevertheless, I did not know any prayers and entered a church only by chance; I learned the law of God from teachers who were indifferent, if not outrightly hostile, to the word of God, as an intractable necessity of the school's programme.

     "That was the degree of my knowledge of God when I, as a youth who was Orthodox in name, went to university, where they already, of course, had no time for such trivialities as Orthodoxy.

     "Left to my devices in the life of faith, I reached such an abominable degree of spiritual desolation as only that person can imagine who has lived in this spiritual stench and who has then, while on the path of his own destruction, been detained by the unseen hand of the benevolent Creator.

     "But under all the spiritual abomination which accumulated in the course of the years of the freedom of religious education in family, school and, finally, public life - the silent, but loved-filled lessons of Moscow, of the country and of nanny; the boundless Christian kindness of my mother, who ceaselessly did good to her neighbour with the meekness that belongs only to Christians - all this did not allow the spark to go out in my soul, the spark of dimly recognized love for God and His Orthodoxy - although, it is true, it hardly twinkled in my soul's darkness.

     "Quite a lot of time passed. How it was passed, or rather, conducted, it is terrible to say! Terrible, of course, for a Christian. In a word, I lived a gay life!

     "I had left the service a long time ago and had settled down to keep house in the country. One Holy Week, not having fasted for seven years or more, I fasted, as they say, after a fashion and received Communion. This was not without a feeling of false shame before my 'intellectuality', perhaps more out of condescension to the 'prejudices' of my lesser brethren, the peasants, who had elected me as church warden of our village church. However, when I received Communion I had what was for me a strange, incomprehensible, secret feeling of trembling, which for a long, long time I did not want to admit to myself. And after Communion I felt as if renewed, somehow more full of the joy of life: my soul experienced something which I had known a long time ago, which felt familiar; moreover, it was something inexplicably sweet and at the same time triumphant...

     "Something came to fruition in my soul: I began to be visited more often by a thirst for prayer, a thirst which I was not clearly conscious of and which was sometimes even violently drowned out by everyday cares..."

     In accordance with the call of his heart, Sergius Alexandrovich went to the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra - the spiritual support of the throne and the homeland:

     "There were quite a lot of worshippers. The hieromonk on duty was serving a general moleben for everyone. I fell on my knees in front of the shrine containing the holy relics of St. Sergius and for the first time in my life surrendered to a wonderful feeling of prayer without cunning sophistries. I besought the saint to forgive my spiritual weakness, my lack of faith, my apostasy. Involuntary, grace-given tears welled up somewhere deep in my heart: I felt as if I had gone somewhere far away from myself, like the prodigal son, and had then returned into the bosom of the loving Mother-Church. These few hours spent under the roof of the holy monastery, this wonderful prayerful mood sent down from above through the prayers of the saint - all this accomplished such a turning-point in my spiritual life that in itself this turning-point was nothing other than a miracle quite openly accomplished over me. I came to believe. This was a deep, irrevocable faith in which Creator and creature are invisibly united into one, in which the reverent gratitude of the creature raises it to the very One Who has created it."

     But the enemy of the human race cannot leave even one soul in peace, still less one who is on the path of conversion. In this period of his life Sergius Alexandrovich experienced many trials, doubts, uncertainties, falls.

     "I was no longer the former man, but I had not yet become a new one. The world and its delights had lost their significance for me - I somehow became detached from people, but the emptiness left by them in my soul did not find its fulfilment. I was visited occasionally by a prayerful mood: I acquired a greater taste for reading the Holy Scriptures, and I rested my attention and meditations on them more often and more deeply than before. But I still could not tell myself with complete sincerity that my heart had found satisfaction for itself. I began to go to church more often, but neither in church did I find what I desired. This mental state continued for about a year."

     Sergius Alexandrovich heard about the great man of prayer John of Kronstadt and decided to meet him without fail. In February, 1900, when he had caught a cold and had lost his voice, Sergius Alexandrovich went to the House of the Love of Labour for an unforgettable meeting with God's righteous one. This is how he describes this visit:

     "I heard steps in the direction of my door... Someone pulled on the handle. 'Why is the door not open? Open it immediately!' sounded an authoritative voice, and with a quick, energetic stride batyushka entered my room. Behind him came the reader. Fr. John took me in in a glance... and what a glance that was! A piercing, penetrating glance like lightning which revealed all my past, and the wounds of my present, and pierced, as it seemed, even into my future! I felt so stripped that I began to be ashamed of myself and my nakedness... The reader bent towards Fr. John and said loudly: 'Batyushka, here is a gentleman from Orel province (at this point he pronounced my surname) who has come to seek your advice, but he has fallen ill and lost his voice.' 'A familiar name! How did you lose your voice? Did you catch a cold?'

     "In reply I could not utter even a sound - my throat was simply not up to it. Helpless and at a loss, I could only look at batyushka in despair. Fr. John gave me the cross to kiss, put it on the analogion, and then with two fingers of his right hand stroked my throat behind the collar of my shirt three times... My fever immediately left me, and my voice returned to me sounding fresher and purer than usual... It is hard to convey in words what took place in my soul then!

     "For more than half an hour, as I knelt at the feet of my longed-for comforter, I told him about my sorrows, opened to him the whole of my sinful soul and offered repentance for everything that lay like a heavy stone on my heart. That was the first true repentance in the whole of my life. For the first time with my whole being I understood the significance of the spiritual father as the witness of this great sacrament - a witness radically crushing, by the grace of God, the evil of the pride of sin and the pride of human self-love. For the first time I experienced with all my soul the sweetness of this repentance, for the first time I felt with all my heart that God, God Himself, was sending me His forgiveness through the lips of the pastor engraced by Him, when Fr. John said:

     "'God is very merciful - God will forgive.'

     "What ineffable joy I felt, with sacred trembling was my soul filled at these love-filled, all-forgiving words! That faith which so stubbornly had not been given to my soul, in spite of my evident conversion at the relics of St. Sergius, only flared up in me with a bright flame after this heart-felt confession of mine with Fr. John. I became conscious of myself as a believer and an Orthodox."

     Sergius Alexandrovich travelled much around Russia and its secret corners. He listened to and drank in every word that the simple people let fall - a word that may have seemed worthless, but which bore in itself the very essence of the Russian people and its hopes and joys, the spiritual strength of Orthodoxy. Often Sergius Alexandrovich - alone or with his wife, Helen Alexandrovna - stayed in Optina Hermitage. He lived for a long time in this last outpost of Russian monasticism. After these visits there poured out from under his pen the remarkable books entitled: Holiness under a Bushel, On the Banks of God's River, The Power of God and the Weakness of Man, The Optina Elder Theodosius. In these works Sergius Alexandrovich described with amazing simplicity and talent the piety of Optina, "the swansong of Russian monasticism", as Helen Kontzevich put it, not without some sorrow in her heart.

     In the book Holiness under a Bushel, Sergius Alexandrovich writes: "I offer to my pious readers materials consisting of vivid and lively examples of everyday life which clarify the true secret of the monastic mission and cast a bright light on the most secret corners of the monastic heart. They illuminate the inner cell life of the monk's soul, which in this material poured out his thoughts and feelings not for worldly honour and glory, not for the satisfaction of egotistical self-love, but spoke out of the abundance of his heart to himself and to his God." And at the end of the preface, sensing the approach of the terrible tragedy not only of Russia, but of the whole world, he speaks with pain about the untimely loss of the last lamp of Russian monasticism - Optina Hermitage and its inhabitants:

     What a lamp of reason has gone out.

     What a heart has ceased to beat.

     In his book, On the Bank of God's River, Sergius Alexandrovich writes: "After the publication of this book, I sent it as a gift to Bishop Theophanes of Poltava. In reply Vladyka wrote to me the following on November 24, 1915:

     "'Respected Sergius Alexandrovich! I thank you from the heart for taking thought for me by sending me your book, On the Bank of God's River. I read all your books with great interest and I completely share your views on recent events. The people of this age live by faith in progress and lull themselves with unrealizable dreams. Stubbornly and with a kind of cruelty they drive away from themselves the very thought of the end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist.

     "'Their eyes are spiritually blinded. Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not understand. But the meaning of contemporary events is not hidden from the truly believing children of God. More than that: to those upon whom the goodwill of God rests will be revealed both the coming of the Antichrist and the end of this world... Therefore great are the merits of those who remind the people of this age of the coming great events. May the Lord help you to talk about this in the hearing of this world 'in season and out of season, with all long-suffering and exhortation' (II Tim. 4.2)!

     "'Your sincere admirer and intercessor, Bishop Theophanes.'

     "'May the Lord help you to talk about this in the hearing of this world' - these words of the bishop were fulfilled exactly in the years of the revolution. Such is the significance of a bishop's blessing and especially of such a bishop as Vladyka Theophanes."

     It is precisely to Sergius Alexandrovich that we are indebted for the discovery and deciphering of the "Conversation of St. Seraphim with Nicholas Alexandrovich Motovilov on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit".

     After the publication of the "Conversation" Sergius Alexandrovich recalled:

     "If only someone could have seen the state in which I acquired Motovilov's papers, which preserved in their hidden depths this valuable witness to the God-pleasing life of the holy elder! Dust, pebbles and dove's feathers, bird's droppings... All the papers were old, written on in a rapid and indecipherable hand, so indecipherable that I was simply horrified: what could I make out there?! Sifting through this chaos, bumping up against all kinds of obstacles - the handwriting, especially, was a stone of stumbling for me, - I remember almost giving way to despair. But then, amidst all this pulp, no, no, a phrase deciphered with difficulty would shine like a spark in the darkness: 'Batyushka Fr. Seraphim told me'... What did he tell? What did these uninterpreted hieroglyphs hide in themselves? I was in despair.

     "I remember that towards the evening of a whole day spent in stubbornly fruitless work, I could bear it no longer and cried out: Batyushka Seraphim! Did you give me the possibility of receiving the manuscripts of your 'lay brother' from such a distant spot as Diveyevo, in order that they should be consigned uninterpreted to oblivion? My cry must have been from the heart. In the morning, having set about deciphering papers, I suddenly found this manuscript and immediately received the ability to make out Motovilov's handwriting. You can well imagine my joy, and how significant seemed to me the words of this manuscript: 'I think,' Fr. Seraphim replied to me, 'that the Lord will help you to keep this forever in your memory, for otherwise His kindness would not have inclined so suddenly to my humble petition and would not have deigned to hearken so quickly to poor Seraphim, the more so since it is not given only to you to understand this, but through you to the whole world...'

     "For seventy long years this treasure lay under a bushel in trunks, amidst various forgotten rubbish. But was it meant to be published, and if so when? Before the very glorification of the holy relics of the God-pleaser!"

     Prince Nicholas Davidovich Zhevakov writes in his memoirs: "Sergius Alexandrovich did not think up or 'compose' anything. He preferred to live near the famous Russian monasteries and use the monastery libraries. He extracted from the wealthy monastic archives valuable material and reworked it."

     Being a truly Orthodox Christian, Sergius Alexandrovich fervently loved his own people and deeply understood the heavy burden of that time, sincerely experiencing it in his heart:

     "In our time, which is distinguished by extraordinary discoveries and inventions - all the so-called 'miracles' of technology with which light-minded humanity amuses itself as with brilliant trinkets, playing a dangerous game that loses for it, in the expression of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, the Heavenly Kingdom, - it is especially timely and useful for every believing Orthodox to oppose to all these 'false miracles and signs' the true miracles and signs worked by the Holy Spirit through the mediation of the vessels of grace chosen by Him - the saints who are pleasing to God.

     "Faith in miracles, the search for the miraculous that transcends the greyness of everyday life, and is raised above the sphere of that which is known by our five imperfect senses, is innate to the whole human race regardless of the various degrees of its spiritual development. The semi-savage cannibal searches for the satisfaction of this faith of his in shamanism, the educated theosophist - in brahmanism or yoga. The intellectual who has lost his faith hurls himself at the miracles of spiritism and hypnosis... The human race since time immemorial 'seeks signs and miracles'. For over seven thousand years now the fallen nature of mankind has been striving to find that which it lost in the fall... but cannot find it. Only true faith finds that which has been lost, and only through it are true signs and miracles given to those who search, who have been able with the help of the grace of God to preserve their faith in purity and who have not mixed with the work of faith the proud inventions of the inconstant and limited mind of man. That is how it has been in all ages. Such is now the particular spiritual condition of the majority of mankind, when the terrible times foretold by the apostle have arrived for it. People's spiritual eyes have been closed by their lack of faith or, more precisely, their apostasy from the faith, so that 'seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear and understand'.

     "Man's chief good on earth - and almost his only one, one might add - is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, in God in Trinity glorified. Without this faith our earthly life is not life, but senseless vegetation."

     No one was taken by surprise by the revolution of 1917 in Russia. Some prepared it, others prepared themselves for it. The catastrophe was inevitable. Sergius Alexandrovich considered it his Christian duty to warn not only the Orthodox people, but also the whole world, about the terrible times that were coming, just as before him Dostoyevsky had given warnings in his novel The Devils.

     In 1903 there appeared the first edition of his remarkable book, The Great in the Small, in the preface of which Sergius Alexandrovich wrote:

     "The great intercessor for the Russian land, Fr. John of Kronstadt, to whom this book was dedicated during his lifetime, and to whom I now dedicate to him as to a living person, said to me on July 14, 1903 in the Nikolo-Babayevsky monastery: 'Write: I like everything that you write.' 'For whom should I write it?' I was about to object. 'Who now reads such writings?' 'God gives the blessing,' replied Fr. John, ' - and they will buy it and read it.'

     It is by this blessing of the great pastor of Kronstadt that I explain to myself the completely unexpected spread of my sketches collected in the book and called The Great in the Small.

     This book is deeply Orthodox. During his wanderings round the monasteries, Sergius Alexandrovich had many conversations with the elders and spiritual lamps of Holy Russia. This book was written with spiritual fervour during these wanderings. And it is not simply an Orthodox book, but even, one could say, a Church book. S.A. Nilus approached the question of the signs foretelling the appearance of the Antichrist in a churchly manner, on the basis of the writings of the Holy Fathers. The apostolic word: "The mystery of iniquity in action" have since early times irritated the minds of men and forced them to be watchful with regard to the activity of this mystery; and this is the duty and obligation of all Orthodox people. It was only out of love for his neighbours that Sergius Alexandrovich warned them about the danger threatening the salvation of their souls.

     "What is in store for Russia?" asked Sergius Alexandrovich.

     "The events of contemporary world and Russian life, and also my dealings with people who have devoted their whole life and all their activity to the service in spirit and in truth, in the likeness and truth of real Christianity, have revealed to me something new, great and terrible, 'the depths of Satan', which was still hidden from me in 1905, when the second edition of this book appeared. This revelation, which was drawn from observations of the current spiritual and political life of Christian peoples and the study of the secrets of the religious sects of the East, and in particular Masonry, have given me material of such enormous importance that I would consider myself a turncoat traitor of Christ my God if I did not share this material with the God-loving reader.

     "I draw the attention of my reader," writes Sergius Alexandrovich in the preface to the second edition of The Great in the Small, "to the sketch 'The Antichrist as an imminent political possibility', in which is found the solution of a great world mystery hidden until the times of its final realization. Now the mystery has been realized and the key to it found: the imminent triumph of all justified Christian hopes, the triumph of the whole Christian faith, is coming. But the imminent triumph of the faith has also brought closer the terrible antichristian time of persecutions against the faith, and it is not without the will of God that this sketch contains a forecast of that for which the Christian world must prepare itself so as to meet with the whole armour of its humility and patience the terrible ordeal of the temptation that is aiming to deceive even the elect. 'He who endures to the end will be saved.'"

     In the preface to the final, fifth edition of The Great Thing in the Small (an edition that was never brought to fruition), Sergius Alexandrovich writes:

     "My book about the coming Antichrist, which in its fourth edition was called It is Near, even at the Doors, was published in January, 1917, and already on March 2 of the same year there took place the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II from the all-Russian throne for himself and his son. The House of Romanov, as an autocratic dynasty, ceased to exist, and the provisional Russian government was not slow to declare that Russia was a republic. That which was foreseen as a possibility by my book became an already accomplished fact, the heritage of the past. He who restrains was taken from the midst of the Orthodox Russian community. One does not have to be a prophet to foretell his removal in the very near future from all the other monarchical states, too, not excluding 'victory-bearing' Germany and her allies. This cannot take place later than that universal peace congress which must bring to an end the still-continuing universal human catastrophe which is already coming to its final moment.

     "According to the word of the Apostle Paul and the tradition of the Holy Fathers, this removal of him who restrains represents the closest and most important sign of the coming of that time when the lawless one will be revealed - he whose coming, in accordance with the working of Satan, will be with all power and signs and false miracles, and every unrighteous deception of those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth for their salvation (II Thess. 2.7-10)."

     The most famous part of Nilus' literary output, and the part which especially drew upon him the wrath of the Bolsheviks and the opprobrium of Western historians, was the section entitled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These were the records of meetings in Paris of the leaders of International Masonry, in which the Masonic plan for the subjugation of the Christian nations and the establishment of Jewish dominion over the whole world was formulated in detail. First published in 1902 in a St. Petersburg periodical, they came out in 1905 in book form in Nilus' The Great in the Small and the Antichrist.

     Arguments have raged over the authenticity of the Protocols. What is undeniable is, first, that Nilus was genuinely convinced of their authenticity, and secondly, that, as the London Times pointed out, whether they were authentic records of a Masonic meeting or not, the Protocols were remarkably prescient in their description of the workings of "the mystery of iniquity" in the twentieth century.

     "In publishing this edition of my work," wrote Nilus, "I nourish no hope that I will see it in any further editions, for reasons which the reader will understand. I conclude it with the divine word of the chief of the apostles, the apostle of the Gentiles: 'But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For ye yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as the thief in the night. For when they shall say, peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness' (I Thess. 5.1-5)."

     After the revolution, when the prophetic significance of the Protocols became clear to many, the Bolsheviks tried by all means to have the remaining copies destroyed. However, we know that the Martyr-Empress had a copy; as she noted in her diary under April 7/20, 1918: "Nicholas read to us the protocols of the free masons." And copies were smuggled out to the West, where the first translation into German appeared in January, 1920. "Before long," writes Richard Pipes, "translations appeared in Swedish, English, French, Polish; other foreign-language versions followed. In the 1920s, the Protocols became an international best-seller."

     It was only 50 years after the "bloodless" revolution that the books of Nilus began to be published in America. As E. Kontzevich writes, the appearance of Nilus' books was a clear miracle, since in those times it was highly improbably that anything could be sent out of Russia.

     There is one small, little-known book entitled The Wheat and the Tares, which was written by S.A. Nilus and published in 1908 by the Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra, in the preface to which Sergius Alexandrovich wrote the following:

     "In the woes and sorrows which like a narrow, heavy ring have oppressed your wandering along the paths of life from all sides, and which have become so much more difficult in recent times, have you ever given a thought, O reader, to the final and only common end, for all those who live upon the earth, of their labours and efforts, all their sorrows and joys, disillusionments and hopes, love and hate, good and evil - everything, in a word, out of which the thorny crown of life is woven? Do you even fully know what this end is like? And if you know, do you remember it with that careful thought which its importance merits? I don't think so. So allow me, my reader and brother in Christ, to remind you, whoever you may be - a ruler of the peoples, or a poor homeless man - that there is no other end to your life than death, than preparation for death. O how great and terrible is that word, that reality! And how few people in the world think about it!

     "'Remember the hour of your death and you will not sin to eternity', calls our Mother the Church. 'You will not sin to eternity!' Do you hear what she says? We have forgotten about this hour, which none can escape: and yet what have we turned the whole world that surrounds into through our sins? We have forgotten about death.

     "Public and family quarrels, leading to bloodshed, in which sons raise their hands against their fathers and mothers, brothers against brothers, husbands against wives, wives against husbands; civil strife, in which public garbage and our youth that has been diverted and made senseless by antitheist teaching rises up in mindless blindness against the powers that be and against everyone that lives in accordance with the commandments of God, and not according to the elements of this world. Blood is shed in torrents, and the scythe of death mows down such an abundant harvest that the heart grows cold in horror. It seems that the times have come about which the faithful Christians were warned by the threatening word of Holy Scripture, that "blood will reach the horses' bridles" (Rev. 14.20), and "if those days should not be shortened for the sake of the elect, no flesh would be saved" (Matt. 24.22). And yet, people see all this, they see all the horrors of death, but few are those who think about death; as if only they, among those who are temporarily left among the living, have a guarantee of eternal life upon earth - a guarantee only they know about, and as if only those who are dead were predestined to death.

     "'I will judge you as I find you'... Savage is the death of sinners... It is terrible for the sinner to fall into the hands of the Living God in that desired world in which the faces of the saints and the righteous shine like the stars!... No stain of flesh and spirit will enter there.

     "In my quiet retreat it is as if I hear the enemy devil whispering into the ear of him who pays attention to my words: 'Don't listen to him! Go after the educated world - that's enough of fairytales about the Heavenly Kingdom. Give us the earthly kingdom that belongs to us by right!'"

     The essence of the personality of Sergius Alexandrovich consisted in a flaming love for God expressed in love for people and a completely unacquisitive life to the end of his days. By his love he transfigured even Bolsheviks, leading them to faith in God.

     Not only the second half of Nilus' life, but also his death were wonderful and truly miraculous: he died peacefully in Soviet Russia, in which those who read his books were threatened with death by shooting. Is that not a miracle?! And being completely poor, Sergius Alexandrovich miraculously received sustenance in the Bolsheviks' land, and himself shared his last clothes with others.

     Prince N.D. Zhevakov in his memoirs describes an interesting incident from the last years of the life of Sergius Alexandrovich:

     "S.A. Nilus was preserved by God and after the revolution continued to live in the houses of his friends, in a small two-storey house in the depths of a shady park. On the upper floor of the little house was a house church and the residence of Schema-Archimandrite N., the former superior of one of the neighbouring monasteries which had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks, while on the lower floor lived S.A. Nilus and his wife.

     "In those days anyone found in possession of the Protocols (in Near, even at the Doors) would be shot on the spot, while the book became better and better known, being translated into European and Asiatic languages, spreading throughout the world and arousing the satanic spite of the world conspirators. Meanwhile, S.A. Nilus continued to live in one of the wings of an estate seized by the Bolsheviks, where, to cap it all, daily Liturgies were celebrated by a reverend elder-archimandrite who had taken refuge there!

     "It goes without saying that none of the local soviets, composed of criminals, caused S.A. Nilus the slightest concern, for, it goes without saying, they did not suspect him of being the publisher of The Protocols of Zion. Some considered that he had died long ago, while even thought that he never existed.

     "But the enemy did not slumber. The fact that the 'masters' remained on the estate, even if they had been expelled from the main house, but continued to live in one of the wings, troubled the representatives of the local Soviet, and the evildoers decided at a meeting to kill all those living in the little house in the garden.

     "One dark night in November, 1921, at the appointed hour, a band of eight Red Army soldiers under the leadership of the local bandit, armed with guns and knives, penetrated into the park and slowly began to approach the house, stealthily creeping through the bushes and looking around on all sides. They had decided to kill the aged schema-archimandrite first. But the closer they came to the house, the clearer became the sounds of a night watchman's rattle. He was walking round the house and rattling with a wooden crank that had a little sphere attached to it. The evil-doers decided to wait until the night watchman went away. But they had no success that night, and decided to try again the next night, only with ten men this time.

     "It seemed as if everything favoured them. Instead of the wind and frosts of the previous night, the weather was wonderful, quiet and almost warm. The moon shone, and everything around was steeped in a deep sleep, but... the hateful old watchman was still fearlessly walking round the house and rattling his rattle, as if he were calling for help, as if he were mocking the criminals.

     "'What are you waiting for,' suddenly shouted the leader, losing patience, 'there are ten of us and he's alone, let's go!' And the evildoers, encouraged by their leader and certain of victory, headed with guns on their shoulders towards the old man, considering it no longer necessary to hide themselves from him. They were already within a few strides of him, and they could clearly see him. He was a frail, bent-over old man with a white beard. He was walking confidently round the house and displayed not the slightest fear or concern at their approach.

     "'Get him,' commanded the enraged ataman of the band of criminals. And, coming up to the old man, with all his might he struck him on the head with his axe. The blow flew through the air, the old man disappeared, and the evildoer fell as if dead onto the earth, losing consciousness. His comrades, mortally frightened, hurled themselves towards their ataman, who displayed no sign of life, and carried him home. Several days passed, but none of the inhabitants of the house even guessed at their miraculous delivery from the death that threatened each one of them. In fact, no one would probably have known about the attempt if the wife of the criminal had not come to the schema-archimandrite and told him about the crime. Drenched in tears, she besought him to help her husband, who was lying paralyzed.

     

     "'If it were not for the night watchman,' she said, 'the criminals would have killed you all. It was only thanks to him that you were saved from death and the souls of the evildoers from eternal damnation.' For a long time they tried to convince the woman that in those times there could be no question of any night watchmen. But she insisted and asked that her husband be brought there, then he himself would tell them everything.

     "'Bring him here, let him confess, receive Communion, kiss the icon of the God-pleaser St. Seraphim, and then the Lord will release him,' said the archimandrite.

     "That day the paralysed criminal was brought on a stretcher to the house-church. But before starting confession, the archimandrite went up to him with the icon of St. Seraphim and asked him to kiss it. The eyes of the criminal met those of the kindly elder and God-pleaser Seraphim, and... a hysterical shouted filled the little church.

     "'It's him, it's him!' shouted the unfortunate criminal, recognizing in the face of St. Seraphim the old watchman walking with his rattle round the garden-house and guarding it. Tears of contrition flowed from his eyes, and the love of God not only healed him instantly, but also completely transformed him. After the Liturgy, in which he was counted worthy to commune of the Holy Mysteries, he stayed for a long time in the church and told everyone present in detail about the miracle of St. Seraphim, after which a moleben of thanksgiving was served to the saint for the miraculous deliverance from death of those living in the house."

     Maria Vasilievna Orlova-Smirnova - later the nun Mariam, the daughter of the martyred priest Fr. Basil Smirnov - shared her impressions of the last days of Sergius Alexandrovich, who spent the last two years of his life in her house and died there: "Inwardly, he was a colossus of the spirit, who stood so firmly 'on the rock of faith' that neither persecutions, nor slander were able to shake his faith and love for God. Having chosen his path, he went along it without looking back.

     "Sergius Alexandrovich got up very early: at about four o'clock, and when he had finished his special morning rule, at about seven o'clock, Helen Alexandrovna got up and they read the morning prayers together."

     Fr. John of Kronstadt knew and loved the wife of Sergius Alexandrovich. When Fr. John, during a trip down the Volga, met the newly-crowned couple, he bowed to Helen Alexandrovna and said to her: "I thank you for marrying him." It seems that he was the only person who thanked her. The rest were so hostile to them, and mocked them and their marriage so much, that they could not stay in Petersburg.

     Prince N.D. Zhevakov recalls: "The marriage between Sergius Alexandrovich and Helen Alexandrovna was concluded in their old age, when they were both over 60, or thereabouts. Its foundation was not carnal, but was rather a strengthening of their friendship of many years, which had been established on the soil of their common profound religiosity."

     The words of Sergius Alexandrovich are both simple and deeply Orthodox: "Christ the Lord and His Orthodox Church - that is the one truth that makes us free, the one source of every earthly blessing, every true, unbreakable happiness that can be attained on earth and above the earth - in the depth of the endless ages, in the height of the fathomless heavens. For him who, by the mercy of God, attains this truth, who devotes himself unreservedly to its service, life becomes clear; and he sorrows for unsettled contemporary man, who mindlessly and unwittingly drives away from himself the grace of God, without which he is dust and ashes!"

     Sergius Alexandrovich spent some years as a wanderer, and was briefly imprisoned in 1924 and again in 1927. At one point he was banished from Chernigov and was forbidden to live in the six major cities of the Soviet Union. When Metropolitan Sergius' notorious declaration submitting the Church to the God-hating atheists was published, he opposed it. Thus on January 29 / February 11, 1928 he wrote to L.A. Orlov: "As long as there is a church of God that is not of 'the Church of the evildoers', go to it whenever you can; but if not, pray at home� They will say: 'But where will you receive communion? With whom? I reply: 'The Lord will show you, or an Angel will give you communion, for in 'the Church of the evildoers' there is not and cannot be the Body and Blood of the Lord. Here in Chernigov, out of all the churches only the church of the Trinity has remained faithful to Orthodoxy; but if it, too, will commemorate the [sergianist] Exarch Michael, and, consequently, will have communion in prayer with him, acting with the blessing of Sergius and his Synod, then we shall break communion with it."

     At the end of April, 1928 the Niluses arrived at the home of the Orlovs in Krutets, Alexandrovsky uyezd, Vladimir region. Sergius Alexandrovich died on January 1/14, 1929. On that day, he forced himself, with great difficulty, to go to the church in the village of Krutets, where he was counted worthy to receive the Holy Mysteries. On returning home, he fainted (from a heart attack), after which it was only with difficulty that he recovered consciousness. One hour before his death, he said that difficult times were coming for the Church and that now the doors had been opened for the coming of the Antichrist. Then, pointing at Fr. Basil Smirnov, he said:

     Ah, Father, Father, I am sorry for you."

     The last thing he did was bless the little daughter of Maria Vasilievna Orlova. Then, at five in the afternoon, at the very moment when the bells were beginning to ring for the all-night vigil commemorating St. Seraphim of Sarov, he fainted again, and quietly died.

     It is obvious that the holy God-pleaser St. Seraphim took care of his great venerator and prayed the Lord that the righteous man should have a peaceful end.

     Soviet power did not forgive Fr. Basil for giving shelter to the Niluses. The same year he was driven out of his house, and the following year he was arrested, his property confiscated and his family exiled. Fr. Basil was in exile for five years. In 1936 he returned. In 1937 he was again arrested, and on February 8, 1938 he died.

     Maria Vasilevna Orlova was born in 1906, the first of six children. She married Lev Alexandrovich Orlov. After the death of her father she remained in Moscow, where she became close to Tatyana Mikhailovna N, a spiritual daughter of Abbess Tamara, the famous "Josephite" and spiritual mother of Hieromartyr Bishop Arsenius (Zhadanovsky). In 1992 Maria Vasilievna joined the "Matthewite" branch of the Greek Old Calendarist Church. In 1995 she received the monastic tonsure with the name Mariam from Bishop Kyrikos of Mesogaia. She died on July 30 / August 12, 1997.

     "On the grave of Sergius Alexandrovich," concludes Maria Vasilievna, "my brother placed a cross which he himself had made. On the cross, under the name of the deceased, was written: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints', and on the other side: 'It is good to keep the secret of a king, but honourable to proclaim the works of God.'"

     At the end, or in the preface, of his books Sergius Alexandrovich always asked his readers for their prayers: "In conclusion, I again ask every Orthodox who has a liking for this book to remember the name of its sinful compiler, praying for the time being - for his health and salvation, and in time - for the repose of his soul in the heavenly dwellings of the One Tri-Personal God for the sake of the priceless merits of the One Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be honour and worship and glory to the ages."

     Helen Alexandrovna, nee Ozerova, was the scion of an aristocratic family. Her father, Alexander Petrovich Ozerov, had many posts at court. He was, it seems, an envoy to Greece, where Helen Alexandrovna was born. He was an envoy to the Russian embassy in Persia, and thereafter the ober-hofmeister of the Court of His Imperial Majesty. He had seven children. His eldest son, Alexander, perished in Bulgaria during the siege of Shipki. His eldest daughter, Olga, the Duchess Shakhovskaya by marriage, took monastic vows after the death of her husband and died as the abbess of the Dmitrievna women's monastery of the Moscow oblast', having taken the name of Sophia in mantia. One of the sons, David, was in charge of caring for the condition of the Winter Palace.

     Helen Alexandrovich was the maid of honour at the court of Empress Maria Feodorovna. After the death of Sergius Alexandrovich, she went to Chernigov to live with a little elderly woman, to take care of her. After her repose she lived with the Orlovs in the town of Gorodok in Kalinin province. In 1938 the Orlovs had to move to Moscow, while Helen Alexandrovich was invited by her former landlady in Chernigov to move to Kola in Murmansk district. There she died.

Sources: 

https://azbyka.ru/fiction/polnoe-sobranie-sochinenij-tom-1-velikoe-v-malom-sergej-nilus/2/

https://gnisios.narod.ru/sergiusnilus.html