Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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BOOK VI: THE RUSSIAN MONK
Chapter 1: The Elder Zosima and His Visitors
When Alyosha, with anxiety and pain in his heart, entered the elder’s cell, he stopped almost in amazement: instead of a dying sick man, perhaps already unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he suddenly saw him sitting in an armchair, his face, though worn out from weakness, cheerful and gay, surrounded by visitors and engaging with them in quiet and bright conversation. However, he had gotten up from bed not more than a quarter of an hour before Alyosha arrived; his visitors had gathered in his cell earlier and waited for him to wake, trusting in the firm assurance of Father Paissy that “the teacher will undoubtedly get up, in order to converse once more with those dear to his heart, as he himself said, and as he himself promised in the morning.” Father Paissy believed firmly in this promise, and in every word of the departing elder, so much so that if he had seen him already quite unconscious and even no longer breathing, but had his promise that he would arise once more and say farewell to him, he would perhaps not have believed even death itself and would have kept expecting the dying man to come to and fulfill what had been promised. And that morning, as he was falling asleep, the elder Zosima had said positively to him: “I shall not die before I have once more drunk deeply of conversation with you, beloved of my heart, before I have looked upon your dear faces and poured out my soul to you once more.” Those who gathered for this, probably the last of the elder’s talks, were his most faithful friends from long ago. There were four of them: the hieromonks Father Iosif and Father Paissy, the hieromonk Father Mikhail, superior of the hermitage, not yet a very old man, far from very learned, of humble origin, but firm in spirit, with inviolable and simple faith, of stern appearance, but pervaded by a deep tenderness of heart, though he obviously concealed his tenderness even to the point of some sort of shame. The fourth visitor was quite old, a simple little monk from the poorest peasantry, Brother Anfim, all but illiterate, quiet and taciturn, rarely speaking to anyone, the humblest of the humble, who had the look of a man who has been permanently frightened by something great and awesome that was more than his mind could sustain. The elder Zosima very much loved this, as it were, trembling man, and throughout his life treated him with unusual respect, though throughout his life he had perhaps said fewer words to him than to anyone else, despite the fact that he had once spent many years traveling with him all over holy Russia. That was now very long ago, about forty years before, when the elder Zosima first began his monastic effort in a poor, little-known monastery in Kostroma, and when, soon after that, he went to accompany Father Anfim on his journeys collecting donations for their poor Kostroma monastery. Host and visitors all settled in the elder’s second room, where his bed stood, a very small room, as was pointed out earlier, so that the four of them (not counting the novice Porfiry, who remained standing) had barely enough room to place themselves around the elder’s armchair on chairs brought from the first room. Dusk was falling; the room was lighted by oil-lamps and wax candles before the icons. When he saw Alyosha, who became embarrassed as he entered and stopped in the doorway, the elder joyfully smiled to him and held out his hand:
“Greetings, my quiet one, greetings, my dear, so you’ve come. I knew you would come.”
Alyosha went up to him, prostrated before him, and began to weep. Something was bursting from his heart, his soul was trembling, he wanted to sob.
“Come now, don’t weep over me yet,” smiled the elder, laying his right hand on his head, “you see, I am sitting and talking, perhaps I’ll live twenty years more, as that woman wished me yesterday, that kind, dear woman from Vyshegorye, with the girl Lizaveta in her arms. Remember, = Lord, both the mother and the girl Lizaveta!” He crossed himself. “Porfiry, did you take her offering where I told you?”
He was remembering the sixty kopecks donated by the cheerful worshipper the day before, to be given “to someone poorer than I am.” Such offerings are made as a penance, taken upon oneself voluntarily for one reason or another, and always from money gained by one’s own labor. That same evening the elder had sent Porfiry to one of our townspeople, a widow with several children, who had recently lost everything in a fire and afterwards went begging. Porfiry hastened to report that it had been done, and that he had given the money, as he was instructed, “from an unknown benefactress.”
“Stand up, my dear,” the elder continued to Alyosha, “let me look at you. Have you been with your people, did you see your brother?”
It seemed strange to Alyosha that he should ask so firmly and precisely about just one of his brothers—but which one? Perhaps it was for that same brother that he had sent him away both yesterday and today.
“I saw one of my brothers,” Alyosha replied. “I mean the one from yesterday, the older one, before whom I bowed to the ground.”
“I saw him only yesterday; today I simply couldn’t find him,” said Alyosha.
“Make haste and find him, go again tomorrow and make haste, leave everything and make haste. Perhaps you’ll still be able to prevent something terrible. I bowed yesterday to his great future suffering.”
He suddenly fell silent and seemed to lapse into thought. His words were strange. Father Iosif, a witness to the elder’s bow the day before, exchanged glances with Father Paissy. Alyosha could not help himself:
“Father and teacher,” he spoke in great excitement, “your words are too vague ... What is this suffering that awaits him?”
“Do not be curious. Yesterday I seemed to see something terrible ... as if his eyes yesterday expressed his whole fate. He had a certain look ... so that I was immediately horrified in my heart at what this man was preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen people with the same expression in their faces ... as if it portrayed the whole fate of the person, and that fate, alas, came about. I sent you to him, Alexei, because I thought your brotherly countenance would help him. But everything is from the Lord, and all our fates as well. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ Remember that. And you, Alexei, I have blessed in my thoughts many times in my life for your face, know that,” the elder said with a quiet smile. “Thus I think of you: you will go forth from these walls, but you will sojourn in the world like a monk. You will have many opponents, but your very enemies will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but through them you will be happy, and you will bless life and cause others to bless it—which is the most important thing. That is how you are. My fathers and teachers,” he turned to his visitors with a tender smile, “till this day I have never said even to him why the face of this youth is so dear to my soul. Only now do I say: his face has been, as it were, a reminder and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my days, when still a little child, I had an older brother who died in his youth, before my eyes, being only seventeen years old. And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if he had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path. That first appearance was still in my childhood, and now, on the decline of my path, a repetition of him, as it were, appeared before my eyes. It is a wonder, fathers and teachers, that while he does not resemble him very much in appearance, but only slightly, Alexei seemed to me to resemble him so much spiritually that many times I have actually taken him, as it were, for that youth, my brother, come to me mysteriously at the end of my way, for a certain remembrance and perception, so that I was even surprised at myself and this strange fancy of mine. Do you hear, Porfiry?” he turned to the novice who served him. “Many times I have seen you look distressed, as it were, that I should love Alexei more than you. Now you know why it was so, but I love you, too, know that, and I have grieved many times at your distress. And to you, my dear visitors, I wish to speak of this youth, my brother, for there has been no appearance in my life more precious than this one, more prophetic and moving. My heart feels tender, and at this moment I am contemplating my whole life as if I were living it all anew ...”
Here I must note that this last talk of the elder with those who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly preserved in writing. Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov wrote it down from memory some time after the elder’s death. But whether it was just that conversation, or he added to it in his notes from former conversations with his teacher as well, I cannot determine. Besides, in these notes the whole speech of the elder goes on continuously, as it were, as if he were recounting his life in the form of a narrative, addressing his friends, whereas undoubtedly, according to later reports, it in fact went somewhat differently, for the conversation that evening was general, and though the visitors rarely interrupted their host, still they did speak for themselves, intervening in the talk, perhaps even imparting and telling something of their own; besides, there could hardly have been such continuity in the narration, because the elder sometimes became breathless, lost his voice, and even lay down on his bed to rest, though he did not fall asleep, and the visitors did not leave their places. Once or twice the conversation was interrupted by readings from the Gospel, Father Paissy doing the reading. It is also remarkable, however, that not one of them supposed he would die that same night, the less so as on this last evening of his life, after a day of sound sleep, he suddenly seemed to have found new strength in himself, which sustained him through all this long conversation with his friends. It was as though a last loving effort sustained this incredible animation in him, but only for a short time, for his life ceased suddenly ... But of that later. At this point I want to make clear that I have preferred, rather than recounting all the details of the conversation, to limit myself to the elder’s story according to the manuscript of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. It will be shorter and not so tedious, though, of course, I repeat, Alyosha also took much from previous conversations and put it all together.
Chapter 2: From the Life of the Hieromonk and Elder Zosima,
Departed in God, Composed from His Own Words by Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
(a) Of the Elder Zosima’s Young Brother
Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a remote northern province, in the town of V–, of a noble father, but not of the high nobility, and not of very high rank. He died when I was only two years old, and I do not remember him at all. He left my mother a small wooden house and some capital, not a big sum, but enough to keep her and her children without want. And mother had only the two of us: myself, Zinovy, and my older brother, Markel. He was about eight years older than I, hot-tempered and irritable by nature, but kind, not given to mockery, and strangely silent, especially at home with me, mother, and the servants. He was a good student, but did not make friends with his schoolmates, though he did not quarrel with them either, at least not that our mother remembered. Half a year before his death, when he was already past seventeen, he took to visiting a certain solitary man of our town, a political exile it seems, exiled to our town from Moscow for freethinking. This exile was a great scholar and distinguished philosopher at the university. For some reason he came to love Markel and welcomed his visits. The young man spent whole evenings with him, and did so through the whole winter, until the exile was called back togovernment service in Petersburg, at his own request, for he had his protectors. The Great Lent came, [187]but Markel did not want to fast, swore and laughed at it: “It’s all nonsense, there isn’t any God,” so that he horrified mother and the servants, and me, too, his little brother, for though I was only nine years old, when I heard those words I was very much afraid. Our servants were all serfs, four of them, all bought in the name of a landowner we knew. I also remember how mother sold one of the four, the cook Anfimia, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and hired a free woman in her place. And so, in the sixth week of Lent, my brother suddenly grew worse—he had always been unhealthy, with bad lungs, of weak constitution and inclined to consumption; he was tall, but thin and sickly, yet of quite pleasing countenance. Perhaps he had caught a cold or something, in any case the doctor came and soon whispered to mother that his consumption was of the galloping sort, and that he would not live through spring. Mother started weeping, she started asking my brother cautiously (more so as not to alarm him) to observe Lent and take communion of the divine and holy mysteries, because he was then still on his feet. Hearing that, he became angry and swore at God’s Church, but still he grew thoughtful: he understood at once that he was dangerously ill, and that that was why his mother was urging him, while he was still strong enough, to go to church and receive communion. Though he knew himself that he had been sick for a long time, and already a year before had once said coolly at the table, to mother and me: “I’m not long for this world among you, I may not live another year,” and now it was as if he had foretold it. About three days went by, and then came Holy Week. [188]And on Tuesday morning my brother started keeping the fast and going to church. “I’m doing it only for your sake, mother, to give you joy and peace,” he said to her. Mother wept from joy, and also from grief: “His end must be near, if there is suddenly such a change in him.” But he did not go to church for long, he took to his bed, so that he had to confess and receive communion at home. The days grew bright, clear, fragrant—Easter was late that year. All night, I remember, he used to cough, slept badly, but in the morning he would always get dressed and try to sit in an armchair. So I remember him: he sits, quiet and meek, he smiles, he is sick but his countenance is glad, joyful. He was utterly changed in spirit—such a wondrous change had suddenly begun in him! Our old nanny would come into his room: “Dear, let me light the lamp in front of your icon.” And before, he would never let her, he even used to blow it out. “Light it, my dear, light it, what a monster I was to forbid you before! You pray to God as you light the icon lamp, and I pray, rejoicing at you. So we are praying to the same God.” These words seemed strange to us, and mother used to go to her room and weep, but when she went to him she wiped her eyes and put on a cheerful face. “Mother, don’t weep, my dear,” he would say, “I still have a long time to live, a long time to rejoice with you, and life, life is gladsome, joyful!” “Ah, my dear, what sort of gladness is there for you, if you burn with fever all night and cough as if your lungs were about to burst? “ “Mama,” he answered her, “do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be paradise the world over.” And everyone marveled at his words, he spoke so strangely and so decisively; everyone was moved and wept. Acquaintances came to visit us: “My beloved,” he would say, “my dear ones, how have I deserved your love, why do you love such a one as I, and how is it that I did not know it, that I did not appreciate it before?” When the servants came in, he told them time and again: “My beloved, my dear ones, why do you serve me, am I worthy of being served? If God were to have mercy on me and let me live, I would begin serving you, for we must all serve each other.” Mother listened and shook her head: “My dear, it’s your illness that makes you talk like that.” “Mama, my joy,” he said, “it is not possible for there to be no masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: “How can it be,” she said, “that you are the most guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have you managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?” “Dear mother, heart of my heart,” he said (he had then begun saying such unexpected, endearing words), “heart of my heart, my joyful one, you must know that verily each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me. And how could we have lived before, getting angry, and not knowing anything?” Thus he awoke every day with more and more tenderness, rejoicing and all atremble with love. The doctor would come—the old German Eisenschmidt used to come to us: “Well, what do you think, doctor, shall I live one more day in the world?” he would joke with him. “Not just one day, you will live many days,” the doctor would answer, “you will live months and years, too.” “But what are years, what are months!” he would exclaim. “Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other’s offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life.” “He’s not long for this world, your son,” the doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, “from sickness he is falling into madness.” The windows of his room looked onto the garden, and our garden was very shady, with old trees, the spring buds were already swelling on the branches, the early birds arrived, chattering, singing through his windows. And suddenly, looking at them and admiring them, he began to ask their forgiveness, too: “Birds of God, joyful birds, you, too, must forgive me, because I have also sinned before you.” None of us could understand it then, but he was weeping with joy: “Yes,” he said, “there was so much of God’s glory around me: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone lived in shame, I alone dishonored everything, and did not notice the beauty and glory of it at all.” “You take too many sins upon yourself,” mother used to weep. “Dear mother, my joy, I am weeping from gladness, not from grief; I want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not even know how to love them. Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?”
And there was much more that I cannot recall or set down. I remember once I came into his room alone, when no one was with him. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting and lit up the whole room with its slanting rays. He beckoned when he saw me, I went over to him, he took me by the shoulders with both hands, looked tenderly, lovingly into my face; he did not say anything, he simply looked at me like that for about a minute: “Well,” he said, “go now, play, live for me!” I walked out then and went to play. And later in life I remembered many times, with tears now, how he told me to live for him. He spoke many more such wondrous and beautiful words, though we could not understand them then. He died in the third week after Easter, conscious, and though he had already stopped speaking, he did not change to his very last hour: he looked joyfully, with gladness in his eyes, seeking us with his eyes, smiling to us, calling us. There was much talk even in town about his end. It all shook me then, but not deeply, though I cried very much when he was being buried. I was young, a child, but it all remained indelibly in my heart, the feeling was hidden there. It all had to rise up and respond in due time. And so it did.
(b) Of Holy Scripture in the Life of Father Zosima
We were left alone then, mother and I. Soon some good acquaintances advised her: look, you have only one boy left, and you are not poor, you have money, so why don’t you send your son to Petersburg, as others do, for staying here you may be depriving him of a distinguished future. And they put it into my mother’s head to take me to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, so that later I could enter the Imperial Guard. Mother hesitated a long time: how could she part with her last son? But nevertheless she made up her mind to it, though not without many tears, thinking it would contribute to my happiness. She took me to Petersburg and had me enrolled, and after that I never saw her again, for she died three years later, and during all those three years she grieved and trembled over us both. From my parental home I brought only precious memories, for no memories are more precious to a man than those of his earliest childhood in his parental home, and that is almost always so, as long as there is even a little bit of love and unity in the family. But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one’s soul knows how to seek out what is precious. With my memories of home I count also my memories of sacred history, which I, though only a child in my parental home, was very curious to know. I had a book of sacred history then, with beautiful pictures, entitled One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments,and I was learning to read with it. [189]It is still lying here on my shelf, I keep it as a precious reminder. But I remember how, even before I learned to read, a certain spiritual perception visited me for the first time, when I was just eight years old. Mother took me to church by myself (I do not remember where my brother was then), during Holy Week, to the Monday liturgy. It was a clear day, and, remembering it now, I seem to see again the incense rising from the censer and quietly ascending upwards, and from above, through a narrow window in the cupola, God’s rays pouring down upon us in the church, and the incense rising up to them in waves, as if dissolving into them. I looked with deep tenderness, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the first seed of the word of God in my soul. A young man walked out into the middle of the church with a big book, so big that it seemed to me he even had difficulty carrying it, and he placed it on the analogion, [190]opened it, and began to read, and suddenly, then, for the first time I understood something, for the first time in my life I understood what was read in God’s church. There was a man in the land of Ur, [191]rightful and pious, and he had so much wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children made merry, and he loved them very much and beseeched God for them: for it may be that they have sinned in their merrymaking. Now Satan goes up before God together with the sons of God, and says to the Lord that he has walked all over the earth and under the earth. “And have you seen my servant Job?” God asks him. And God boasted before Satan, pointing to his great and holy servant. And Satan smiled at God’s words: “Hand him over to me and you shall see that your servant will begin to murmur and will curse your name.” And God handed over his righteous man, whom he loved so, to Satan, and Satan smote his children and his cattle, and scattered his wealth, all suddenly, as if with divine lightning, and Job rent his garments and threw himself to the ground and cried out: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return into the earth: the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord henceforth and forevermore!” [192]Fathers and teachers, bear with these tears of mine—for it is as if my whole childhood were rising again before me, and I am breathing now as I breathed then with my eight-year-old little breast, and feel, as I did then, astonishment, confusion, and joy. And the camels, which then so took my fancy, and Satan, who spoke thus with God, and God, who gave his servant over to ruin, and his servant crying out: “Blessed be thy name, albeit thou chastise me”—and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: “Let my prayer arise ... ,” and again the incense from the priest’s censer, and the kneeling prayer! [193]Since then—even just yesterday I turned to it—I cannot read this most holy story without tears. And so much in it is great, mysterious, inconceivable! Later I heard the words of the scoffers and blasphemers, proud words: how could the Lord hand over the most beloved of his saints for Satan to play with him, to take away his children, to smite him with disease and sores so that he scraped the pus from his wounds with a potsherd, and all for what? Only so as to boast before Satan: “See what my saint can suffer for my sake!” But what is great here is this very mystery—that the passing earthly image and eternal truth here touched each other. In the face of earthly truth, the enacting of eternal truth is accomplished. Here the Creator, as in the first days of creation, crowning each day with praise: “That which I have created is good,” looks at Job and again praises his creation. And Job, praising God, does not only serve him, but will also serve his whole creation, from generation to generation and unto ages of ages, [194]for to this he was destined. Lord, what a book, what lessons! What a book is the Holy Scripture, what miracle, what power are given to man with it! Like a carven image of the world, and of man, and of human characters, and everything is named and set forth unto ages of ages. And so many mysteries resolved and revealed: God restores Job again, gives him wealth anew; once more many years pass, and he has new children, different ones, and he loves them—Oh, Lord, one thinks, “but how could he so love those new ones, when his former children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, was it possible for him to be fully happy, as he had been before, with the new ones, however dear they might be to him?” But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun’s rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life—and over all is God’s truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving! My life is coming to an end, I know and sense it, but I feel with every day that is left me how my earthly life is already touching a new, infinite, unknown, but swift-approaching life, anticipating which my soul trembles with rapture, my mind is radiant, and my heart weeps joyfully ... Friends and teachers, I have heard more than once, and it has become even louder in recent days, that our priests of God, the village priests most of all, are complaining tearfully and everywhere at their poor pay and their humiliation, and assert directly, even in print—I have read it myself—that they are now supposedly unable to expound the Scriptures for people because of their poor pay, and if Lutherans and heretics come now and begin to steal away their flock, let them steal it away, because, they say, we are so poorly paid. Lord! I say to myself, may God give them more of this pay that is so precious to them (for their complaint is just, too), but truly I tell you: half the blame is ours, if it is anyone’s. For even if he has no time, even if he says rightly that he is oppressed all the time by work and church services, [195]still it is not quite all the time, still he does have at least one hour out of the whole week when he can remember God. And the work is not year-round. If at first he were to gather just the children in his house, once a week, in the evening, the fathers would hear about it and begin to come. Oh, there’s no need to build a mansion for such a purpose, you can receive them simply in your cottage; do not fear, they will not dirty your cottage, you will have them only for an hour. Were he to open this book and begin reading without clever words and without pretension, without putting himself above them, but tenderly and meekly, rejoicing that you are reading to them, and that they are listening to you and understand you; loving these words yourself, and only stopping every once in a while to explain some word that a simple person would not understand—do not worry, they will understand everything, the Orthodox heart will understand everything! Read to them of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebecca, of how Jacob went to La-ban, and wrestled with the Lord in his dream, and said, “How dreadful is this place!” [196]—and you will strike the pious mind of the simple man. Read to them, and especially to the children, of how certain brothers sold their own brother into slavery, the dear youth Joseph,” a dreamer and a great prophet, and told their father that a wild beast had torn him, showing him his blood– . stained garments. Read how afterwards the brothers went to Egypt for bread, and Joseph, now a great courtier, unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, seized his brother Benjamin, and all the while loving them; “I love you, and loving you, I torment you.” For all his life he constantly remembered how they had sold him to the merchants, somewhere in the hot steppe, by a well, and how he, wringing his hands, had wept and begged his brothers not to sell him into slavery in a strange land, and now, seeing them after so many years, he again loved them beyond measure, but oppressed and tormented them even as he loved them. Finally, unable to bear the torment of his own heart, he goes away, throws himself on his bed, and weeps; then he wipes his face and comes back bright and shining, and announces to them: “Brothers, I am Joseph, your brother!” [197]Let him read further how the aged Jacob rejoiced when he learned that his dear boy was still alive, and went down into Egypt, even abandoning the land of his fathers, and died in a strange land, having uttered unto ages of ages in his testament the great word that dwelt mysteriously in his meek and timorous heart all his life, that from his descendants, from Judah, would come the great hope of the world, its reconciler and savior! [198]Fathers and teachers, forgive me and do not be angry that I am talking like a little child of what you have long known, which you could teach me a hundred times more artfully and graciously. I am only speaking from rapture, and forgive my tears, for I love this book! Let him, the priest of God, weep too, and he will see how the hearts of his listeners will be shaken in response to him. Only a little, a tiny seed is needed: let him cast it into the soul of a simple man, and it will not die, it will live in his soul all his life, hiding there amidst the darkness, amidst the stench of his sins, as a bright point, as a great reminder. And there is no need, no need of much explaining and teaching, he will understand everything simply. Do you think that a simple man will not understand? Try reading to him, further, the touching and moving story of beautiful Esther and the arrogant Vashti; or the wondrous tale of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale. Nor should you forget the parables of the Lord, chosen mainly from the Gospel of Luke (that is what I did), and then Saul’s speech from the Acts of the Apostles (that is a must, a must), [199] and finally also from the Lives of the Saints, at least the life of Alexei, the man of God, [200]and of the greatest of the great, the joyful sufferer, God-seer, and Christ-bearer, our mother Mary of Egypt [201]—and you will pierce his heart with these simple tales, and it will only take an hour a week, notwithstanding his poor pay, just one hour. And he will see that our people are merciful and grateful and will repay him a hundredfold; remembering the priest’s zeal and his tender words, they will volunteer to help with his work, and in his house, and will reward him with more respect than before—and thus his pay will be increased. It is such a simple matter that sometimes we are even afraid to say it for fear of being laughed at, and yet how right it is! Whoever does not believe in God will not believe in the people of God. But he who believes in the people of God will also see their holiness, even if he did not believe in it at all before. Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists, who have severed themselves from their own land. And what is the word of Christ without an example? The people will perish without the word of God, for their souls thirst for his word and for every beautiful perception. In my youth, way back, almost forty years ago, Father Anfim and I walked all over Russia collecting alms for our monastery, and once spent the night by a big, navigable river, on the bank, with some fishermen, and we were joined by a comely young man, who appeared to be about eighteen years old; he was hurrying to get to his workplace the next day, where he pulled a merchant’s barge with a rope. I saw with what a tender and clear gaze he looked before him. It was a bright, still, warm July night, the river was wide, a refreshing mist rose from it, once in a while a fish would splash softly, the birds fell silent, all was quiet, gracious, all praying to God. And only the two of us, myself and this young man, were still awake, and we got to talking about the beauty of this world of God’s, and about its great mystery. For each blade of grass, each little bug, ant, golden bee, knows its way amazingly; being without reason, they witness to the divine mystery, they ceaselessly enact it. And I could see that the good lad’s heart was burning. He told me how he loved the forest and the forest birds; he was a birdcatcher, he knew their every call, and could lure any bird; “I don’t know of anything better than the forest,” he said, “though all things are good.” “Truly,” I answered him, “all things are good and splendid, because all is truth. Look at the horse,” I said to him, “that great animal that stands so close to man, or the ox, that nourishes him and works for him, so downcast and pensive, look at their faces: what meekness, what affection for man, who often beats them mercilessly, what mildness, what trustfulness, and what beauty are in that face. It is even touching to know that there is no sin upon them, for everything is perfect, everything except man is sinless, and Christ is with them even before us.” “But can it be that they, too, have Christ?” the lad asked. “How could it be otherwise,” I said to him, “for the Word is for all, all creation and all creatures, every little leaf is striving towards the Word, sings glory to God, weeps to Christ, unbeknownst to itself, doing so through the mystery of its sinless life. There, in the forest,” I said to him, “the fearsome bear wanders, terrible and ferocious, and not at all guilty for that.” And I told him of how a bear had once come to a great saint, who was saving his soul in the forest, in a little cell, and the great saint felt tenderness for him, fearlessly went out to him and gave him a piece of bread, as if to say: “Go, and Christ be with you.” And the fierce beast went away obediently and meekly without doing any harm. [202]The lad was moved that the bear had gone away without doing any harm, and that Christ was with him, too. “Ah,” he said, “how good it is, how good and wonderful is all that is God’s!” He sat deep in thought, quietly and sweetly. I could see that he understood. And he fell into an easy, sinless sleep beside me. God bless youth! And I prayed for him before going to sleep myself. Lord, send peace and light to thy people!
