And so what? Lesha Mayonnaise went, of course, without even sending a note to his spiritual father. Well, he thought, if I can really go to the services and take communion there, what more can he want?
But Sunday approached, and Lesha’s companion said to him—look what nice fishing gear I got yesterday, want to go try it out in the morning? So Lesha thought—I’ll go to church in the morning, and then we’ll go fishing.
But in the morning his companion said:
“Where do you think you’re going, that church is nowhere near, it’s two hour’s walk along the shore, and look at the time, your service has already started, you should have woken up earlier, now you’ll only drag yourself there by the time it’s all over. That’s OK, let’s go to church next time, and now we can go on the sailboat and perceive the Creator’s beauty through His creation.”
So that’s what they did. They hoisted the sail—there was such a nice breeze blowing, the sun was sparkling, the wondrous forests swam by them all around—what a delight! Suddenly, the sky darkened, the forest trembled, the waves rose up, the wind blew and began to tear at the sail. The two companions lowered it. While they were busy with it, a furious water spout flew at them out of nowhere, seized the sailboat, and with frightening strength, lifted it thirty meters into the air and slammed it onto the lake.
Lesha’s friend immediately perished, but the water spout didn’t want to let Lesha go. On the contrary, it grabbed him across the body, wound him in the rope from the sailboat, and, tearing him away from the boat, it carried him over the water, and dragged him along the ground, collecting branches and bushes, and carried him on and on until it finally threw him down right next to a large wooden cross not far from the church.
And on that cross hung a board with an inscription saying that it had been erected there by Peter the Great in memory of his miraculous preservation from a storm on Pleshcheevo Lake, on which he had been tranquilly floating on his little boat. Peter had been preserved, but Lesha lay all broken, beaten up, distorted, and with ruptured organs, wrapped in the sail like a shroud at the foot of the cross.
They treated him for half a year—sewed him up, placed him in braces, taught him to eat, speak, and walk again, and finally he sent a note to his spiritual father. The latter came to Lesha in Botkin Hospital, and Lesha told him how that water spout had dragged him by force to the church and thrown him onto the cross. For he, lying in his hospital bed for six months, thought of nothing else that entire time. He understood that he was considered among the most stupid in the Lord’s estimation, and for this reason, the Lord could only bring him to his senses in the simplest and crudest—and most straightforward—manner.
“Tonsure me! I want to be a monk on my deathbed.”
But the hieromonk said:
“Lesha, my friend! What deathbed? God saved you to live, not to die. And if you love the extreme so much, then your place is truly in a monastery—everything there is so steep, there are such ups and down, falls, flights, ravines, water spouts, landslides, avalanches, twilit visions of girls in red shorts, bluebells on cliffs, and children’s feet frozen into glaciers! The enemy of the human race arranges such situations there for the monks, that sailboats, Communism Peak, and hang gliding will seem like trifles!”
So, laughing, his spiritual father embraced Lesha, gave him holy communion, blessed him, and gave him a prayer rope. Two months, later he was already living in the monastery and giving praise to God.
An Experiment
This is a story that occurred to a doctor of biology, now Hieromonk Iakov, a Georgian.
He was born in Tbilisi and attended university in Moscow. He defended his thesis there as well. He was baptized in his childhood, like any Georgian, and he celebrated Pascha joyfully and splendidly, though he didn’t go to church, and he treated God reverently, but from a distance. He was a natural scientist by profession, a biologist. He was surrounded by the cult of knowledge, logic, and experimentation.
But as he said to his friend, also a natural scientist, when their conversation turned to God:
“You and I are made from the same dough—what do we trust? Experience. If someone conducted an experiment that would draw the conclusion that the Creator and Provider existed, I wouldn’t just believe—I would become a monk.”
His friend began to ridicule him, saying that all such evidence pointing to the existence of God was appropriate only for the slightest and most limited human mind, so what was the use of belittling God with such evidence?
Our Georgian replied:
“Nevertheless, I believe in the essential laws of nature, and until I see a miracle involving the supernatural, I won’t believe. Period.”
No less than two years passed. Our hero was flying to an international conference in Tbilisi. It was winter, and getting dark early, and suddenly the lights went out on the plane. Everyone sat in total darkness—they could only hear the plane straining and creaking away. Next to our hero sat some jokester telling jokes.
This was one of his jokes: “There was once a ship full of all kinds of people—members of the government, rich people, artists, football players, engineers—two of every kind. Suddenly a storm hit, and the ship sank. And so they all stood before the Almighty and cried out to Him all together: ‘How did this happen, there were so many of us, and everyone drowned without distinction!’ ‘What do you mean, without distinction? Do you know how much time it took Me to gather you all onto that one ship?’”
Suddenly something wheezed and a terrible crack resounded, as if the plane was breaking into pieces; everyone screamed, and this was the last thing our sceptic remembered: his insides felt like they were being torn apart …
He regained consciousness in his plane seat in deep snow. There were mountains all around him. The Caucasus peaks loomed in the distance. His first question was: where was the plane? What a strange dream! His whole body ached. He tried to get up but couldn’t. Then he realized with difficulty that his seat belt was holding him down. He unbuckled it and tried to get up, when he suddenly saw: he was sitting in this seat on the edge of a cliff—thirty-two square feet in area—and there was really nowhere for him to go.
In the inside pocket of his jacket he discovered his lecture, which he was supposed to have reviewed on the plane before the lights went out. He took out a lighter and began to light the pages in the hopes that some passing plane would notice the flames and save him, but the paper burned up instantly, and his hands were so stiff with cold that he didn’t even feel the burns. It was good that it had been cold on the plane, and that he had taken a throw blanket out of his suitcase, one given to him by his Georgian grandmother, and had wrapped himself up in it. He now sat wrapped in it. She had given it to him just for this purpose: “Darling, it’s always cold on those high flights, you just wrap yourself up in this throw blanket, doze off a little—how pleasant it will be for you!”
So he burned it all; he burned his lecture page by page without even thinking twice; what to do next? Then it hit him: his plane had crashed! It had fallen from a height of thousands of meters! It had fallen and crashed into smithereens—without leaving a trace. Everyone had died, and he was alive. There he was, sitting in a chair on a mountain precipice, wrapped in his grandmother’s throw blanket, and clicking away with his lighter.
Then he thought: but that doesn’t happen! That can’t have happened according to the laws of nature. And if that can’t have happened, then he must also have been dashed to pieces along with everyone else, and now he was sitting like this after death, alone, in a strange and unusual place, in this vast snowy desert, where no human foot had stepped since the time of the world’s creation! Could he be in hell? Yes, even that thought occurred to him.
And then he understood: either of those scenarios, i.e., any possible scenario, would be contrary to the laws of nature, in contradiction to all biological science. And if he had fallen to his death and was still alive, if the plane had crashed and he had survived, then this could only mea
n that God existed; and if he had survived, then it was for something, not just randomly. And if it was for something, then someone would definitely find him soon, before he froze to death. And if they would find him, then he would immediately become a monk and would serve God exclusively as he had promised.
He cried out from his ledge: “Lord, save me one more time! I know that You exist! Save me, so that I may serve You!”
So he sat and screamed, and finally burned his last piece of paper; then he took off his throw blanket and was ready to burn that—he even tried to, but then understood that it wouldn’t burn, it would just slowly smolder. Suddenly, a helicopter appeared from behind the cliff, and he began to wave his blanket with all his strength. He waved and yelled: “Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!” until he was noticed. This is exactly how it happened.
And then he went to a distant monastery and became Hieromonk Iakov. Every day, he offers a solemn prayer for those who died that day on the plane—especially the jokester who had told his last joke. In spite of its cynicism in that tragic situation, in calm times that joke can very well be read as a parable.
Quid Pro Quo
The path to monasticism for the now Archimandrite Gideon was completely different.
He was from a family of Party members; he himself followed the path of the Young Communists, and quite successfully began to climb the political establishment ladder, climbing ever higher. By age thirty, he was already an important authority, an instructor in a large regional center. He had everything under his belt—an attractive exterior, athletic victories, social connections. His ideological purity and Party reputation were so immaculate that he had already managed to travel throughout all of Europe, even the capitalist parts, on Young Communist business, and was accepted to the Moscow Higher Party School with distinction.
When he was scheduled to depart from his regional center to study in Moscow, he had a strange vision in the early hours of the morning. It seemed like he was lying in his own bed, and the Mother of God Herself came to him and said:
“Your path lies in monasticism. Tomorrow you must go not to Moscow, but to the local bishop to ask him to baptize you and tonsure you a monk.”
So the Mother of God said to him while he was in a light sleep and then She disappeared.
He sat up in his bed until morning, marveling at these hitherto unheard of words. Why must he immediately enter monasticism? He could just as well look into the Church little by little, and ask the priest to baptize him at home. He could do it in secret! He had heard of this happening among members of the Regional Committee. He could be a secret Christian. He would say something about Communism, crossing his fingers behind his back in the meanwhile, so he would really be saying the complete opposite! Hallelujah!
On the other hand—this was no light matter. The Mother of God Herself told this to him!
He jumped out of bed, pulled on his shirt and slacks, and rushed off to the local bishop in his quarters.
He knocked and knocked on the gate, and finally, a sleepy novice came out, saw him, and stared, recognizing him for the authority figure that he was.
The other kept knocking:
“Let me in to see the bishop!” he yelled, all worked up and red in the face.
But the sleepy novice decided that he had come there without warning at an untimely hour and was demanding to see the bishop with the intent of arresting him; not only did he not open the door, but he leaned against it from the inside, shouting:
“Vladyka, run! Someone’s come to arrest you!”
The bishop came down and ordered him to open the door. He and the authority figure went off in private, and finally the bishop said to him:
“I won’t baptize you myself, as you are a noticeable figure in town and won’t be able to escape scandal. But I have a quiet parish where monks serve—it’s practically a little monastery, a skete. We’ll take you there, baptize you, and then you can decide for yourself what to do.”
So it happened. He spent the entire day in refuge with the bishop, hiding in his cell. Then, under cover of night, the bishop took him to the skete and handed him over to two hieromonks. They baptized him, and he remained there.
But on that same day that he spent hiding at the bishop’s, he was missed: where had our responsible worker gone? He had both disappeared from the town and not arrived in Moscow. They were exhausted searching for him. Then a dark rumor spread that the monks had kidnapped him and were holding him in a bishop’s cellar. The police even came to the bishop’s house to look for him!
But he was already reading “Holy God” in full force, tugging at his prayer rope, making prostrations in his black cassock among the trees. There he was tonsured with the name Gideon. Only then did he decide to come to terms with the law and appear before the authorities. By means of mutual trade-offs they agreed that the Party members would leave him alone if he promised to bury everything that he knew about the life of the political establishment. For he knew much that was not proper for a person outside the “system” to know. So they reached an agreement: quid pro quo.
I saw him when I came to that little monastery, while he was being sheltered there first and then tonsured. Late in the evening my husband and I went outside to breathe the fresh air, when suddenly two figures in cassocks went jogging past us. Novices, we thought, rushing on monastery affairs—one athletic, and the other not very, because he was very plump. We walked on a little, and saw them running back already. One ran lightly and nimbly, while the other ran with great difficulty and shortness of breath. We stopped under a pine tree and saw them running by again—the one like a young deer and the other like a seal: shlep-shlep, ready to drop.
“What is this wonder?” we thought and went to the monastery guesthouse to sleep. In the morning we asked a hieromonk acquaintance of ours:
“Who is it that runs around the monastery here at night?”
“Ah,” he nodded knowingly, “since you saw him yourself, I will tell you. That is our new brother Gideon, who has taken to helping our father superior, because he is terribly overweight. He feeds him greens and makes him run along the monastery walls while everyone is asleep.”
And truly, I recently saw this father superior. He was unrecognizable. Thin, fit, standing upright. Fr Gideon had labored to his credit.
Temptation
Once we were sitting at home with some monks drinking tea and talking about this and that. Our conversation turned to temptations.
“I still think that a car will always be a temptation for a man,” said one of them.
“That’s true,” I followed. “I know a story of a guy who left his family to avoid parting with his car.”
“No! Tell us!”
“I had a friend who liked someone else’s husband very much. They worked together, and started having an affair, which the man simply considered a fling. He planned to end it before his wife found out about it, but then he got into an accident—he was fine, but his car was totaled. He was terribly upset—anyone who’s gotten used to sitting behind the wheel for many years can understand a man who must suddenly get around on public transportation. And at that difficult time, his lady friend bought him a new car and gave it to her beloved for his own general use: here you go, dear, enjoy it! But how could he use it if he was planning to cut ties with his mistress? So he chose to continue their relationship.
“Suddenly his wife discovered everything. ‘What’s this?’ she yelled. ‘How could you? You must choose—her or me!’ ‘Of course you,’ he thought, ‘a wife is a wife!’ But as soon as he realized that he would have to return the car and switch to riding the trolley, everything inside him froze. His wife found out that he hadn’t broken things off with his lover, and filed for divorce.”
“I know a similar story. But this one involves monks,” said one of the brothers. “For a monk, a car is a temptation cubed. It is somewhat more than just a possession. Quite a cautionary tale—shall I tell it?”
Everyone nodded:
> “Go on, go on, get on with it!”
“Well, this was how it happened. In the eighties, the monks at Holy Trinity Lavra formed a connection with someone in the local highway patrol at the time. A high-ranking police chief had come to the faith and offered to help the monks with something that was in his power: to teach them to drive and get their licenses. Many did get their licenses at that time, including our friend Antonii. He got his license, but had no car and no prospect of getting one. Where could he get one? The monks lived in the Lavra, everything was provided and issued for them, and money was only given to them for medical treatment. But when a person has a license, they naturally want to be able to drive. As they say, your pleasure becomes your temptation. And that temptation comes back to hurt you. So this story is about just that.
“At the Lavra, Hieromonk Antonii had a friend from seminary days, Fr Nikifor. They had shared a desk and were spiritual and monastic brothers. They were tonsured on the same day, one with the name Antonii, the other with the name Nikifor. One was ordained a priest in September, the other in October. One got his driver’s license in March, the other in April. But Fr Antonii was to remain in the Lavra, while Fr Nikifor was assigned to a village parish in the Vladimir Diocese.
“So what? Is distance a true impediment in monastic friendship? Their strong connection continued: they sometimes met at their father confessor’s, Elder Sisoi, or they visited each other, or they visited holy places together.
“Fr Nikifor had another spiritual friend, or rather sister—Vassa Frolovna—also a spiritual child of the father confessor Elder Sisoi. At the same time, she was not in the truest sense a friend, as Fr Nikifor was very young, and this Vassa Frolovna was a grandmother already: she had a daughter and a granddaughter, so yes, she was an old woman—if not old, then certainly getting on in years. A nice, old matron. She lived with her daughter and granddaughter in Moscow in their own apartment that they had obtained some time ago through the prayers of Elder Sisoi.
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