Catacomb Saints Varnavas of Vasilsursk and those with him

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Catacomb Saints Varnavas of Vasilsursk and those with him

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HIEROCONFESSOR BARNABAS, BISHOP OF VASILSURSK and those with him

Bishop Barnabas, in the world Nicholas Nicanorovich Belyaev, was born on May 12, 1887 old style (according to another source, May 5, 1881) in the parish of the Holy Protection in the village of Ramensky, Bronnitsky uyezd, Moscow region, from simple and pious parents - the factory worker Nicanor Belyaev and Claudia Smirnova, the daughter of the deacon of the country church of Dorka. In spite of the ardent desire of both parents, they had no children. For 18 years they prayed to God and St. Nicholas to give them a child - a boy. The mother went frequently to a chapel near Sukharevaya tower in Moscow and prayed with tears in front of the icon of St. Nicholas. She vowed that if the Lord heard her she would lead him to be spiritual person, devoted to the Church and not to the world, and that she would name him after St. Nicholas. During one of the mother's serious illnesses, a council of doctors declared that she would never have children. A little more than a year later, in the week after the spring feast of St. Nicholas, and after 17 years of barrenness, a boy was born and called Nicholas. Only the priest proposed that he be named, not after the hierarch Nicholas, but after Blessed Nicholas, the fool-for-Christ and wonderworker. Nicholas was the only child of his parents, and they reared him in faith and piety.

As he wrote in his biography: "the atmosphere created by the prayerful disposition of my mother had a good, sweet, grace-filled influence on my soul." She died on the feast of the Annunciation, 1903 or 1904. The young Nicholas acquired strong religious feelings from his mother. Once he went to venerate an icon of the Mother of God which was 12 versts away. After the all-night vigil, he decided not to stay the night, although it was about to rain, but to go home, thinking: "I must suffer something for the sake of my love for the Mother of God. Knights freeze in front of the windows of their beauties in spite of the bad weather. All the more should I do this for the 'Bride Unwedded'!" On the way back it poured, and he was soaked to the skin. In the morning he went to the Liturgy. But suddenly an inner voice said to him: "Go home now, otherwise it will be bad for you." After some hesitation he went home.

Hardly had he arrived when he felt so weak that he could move neither hands nor legs. He had a terrible rheumatism of the joints. But although he was suffering greatly, he did not allow the doctor to be called, but relied rather on prayer to the Mother of God. His prayer was immediately answered. His pain went, he got up and went down to his relatives, completely healthy. Once when he was between ten and twelve years old, his mother and his aunt went in fulfilment of a promise to the relics of St. Sergius in Sergiev Posad, taking Nicholas and his cousin with them. When they came up to the shrine, a monk standing at the feet of the saint turned to Nicholas. Taking some coins that were lying on the broad shelf of the coffin as if from the hand of the saint himself, he gave them to Nicholas and told him to buy two books with them - one for himself, and the other for his cousin; for himself - the famous Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven by St. Innocent, metropolitan of Moscow, and for his cousin - the well-known speech of Professor Klyuchevsky on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the day of the repose of St. Sergius. The monk's action seemed strange and significant. The way in which he specially turned to him and insisted on his buying the book, his mother's acquiescence and the blessing as if from the saint itself - all this struck Nicholas. He bought the book and forgot about it.

"Not because I was disobedient," he recalled later, "but simply because the time had not yet come for God's will to be fulfilled and for my soul to respond to the voice of God Who was calling me. Later the monk's action seemed to me to be prophetic." While he was preparing for a competitive examination, he was rummaging among his books and came upon the above-mentioned brochure by Metropolitan Innocent, which had lain there for almost 10 years. He began to read it, and everything he read there was completely contrary to the path in life he was intending to take. He was intending to build material houses, but there it was written that "people were not created to live only here, on the earth, like animals which disappear after their death, but exclusively in order to live with God and in God, and to live not 100 or 1000 years, but eternally."

The words of the ascetic hierarch promised that "if a person who seeks with all his heart to go along the path to the Kingdom of Heaven, for every piece of work, and every sorrow, and every victory over himself and every restraint of himself, for every deed and even every good intention and desire, he will be rewarded seventy times seven in this life; while it is impossible to speak about or imagine what awaits him there. And so, brethren, follow Him, hurry and do not delay; go while the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven are not yet closed for you." The grace of God did its work, and immediately after the examination, in the summer of 1909, he made his way first to Sarov and then to Optina desert. In Optina he met the great elder Barsanuphius. Two Nicholas Belyaevs came to the elder at about this time. The one, the future elder and hieromartyr Nicon had already been taken on as the elder's secretary. To the other's request the elder thought a little and then said: "Well, where shall we take you? You can't do the general obediences, your health is too weak, while the post of secretary is already taken." And he blessed him to study. On parting Elder Barsanuphius blessed Nicholas with an icon of the Nativity of Christ, on the back of which he wrote: "A blessing for a new spiritual life. The commemoration of St. Abraham of Smolensk. Read his life.

August 21st, 1909." St. Abraham was born in response to the prayer of pious parents, upon whose death he received the tonsure and assumed the exploit of foolishness for Christ. On becoming a priest and an experienced spiritual father, St. Abraham acquired many spiritual children in the city. Two main thoughts were imprinted in his heart: the memory of the Terrible Judgement and of the toll-houses. Many came to him from the city, repented and changed their lives. Then the devil raised a persecution against Abraham. They accused him of being a heretic and a fornicator. A council was convened, and the saint was condemned. Abraham had two devoted disciples. All these events were later repeated in the life of Bishop Barnabas. In 1910, Nicholas left high school with a gold medal. That summer he met Elder Alexis (Sobolev) of the Zosima Hermitage and became his spiritual son. Having already some idea of eldership, he began immediately to write down the elder's replies, knowing that they were to be carried out. "All the replies that I have given you so far," said the elder to him later, "are in force and true, and if you do not carry them out, then you are guilty and not I. You must ask forgiveness and repent... As regards your soul - I take everything onto myself..."

The young novice was interested in everything. What prostrations should he do on entering the church? Should he clean his teeth or eat sweet things? What language was he to study - French or German? Should he reply to the blasphemous works of the atheists which he had to read in the Academy, or not? Should he read foreign authors? Should he ask his friends for books? Could he add some prostrations to the number Fr. Barsanuphius had prescribed? Should he look in the eyes of the person he was talking with, or not? How was he to struggle with his flesh? What should he do if someone comes into the church and greets him? Could he go for walks? Could he read secular literature? Was he allowed to abuse heretics? How was he to read the Holy Scriptures? etc. The elder replied to all these questions. On April 25 and 26 Nicholas petitioned the rector of the Moscow Academy, Bishop Theodore (Pozeyevsky), the future hieromartyr, that he ask Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) for permission to receive the monastic tonsure. Permission was granted, and on June 11/24, 1911 (November 7, according to another source), in Zosima Hermitage, Nicholas was tonsured by Bishop Theodore with the name Barnabas in honour of the Apostle Barnabas and Elder Barnabas (+1905) of Gethsemane skete. He was also ordained to the diaconate.

Before his tonsure Elder Alexis gave him the following advice: "Let your motto and prayer for the whole of your life be these words: Receive me, O Lord, into Thy paternal embrace and do not release me whatever happens to me throughout my life. May I always be Thine." Two or three years after this tonsure, Bishop Theodore was visited by the famous Elder Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel. Vladyka called all those whom he had tonsured, about 15 to 20 people, into his room. When they were all sitting at the table and Vladyka began to recommend several of those who were newly tonsured, the elder at the name of Barnabas said, without talking to anyone in particular: "When they tonsured him and I heard about it, I thought: a new Fr. Barnabas has been born." And his eyes became bright and smiling. This was the beginning of Fr. Barnabas' acquaintance with the great elder Fr. Gabriel (Zyryanov). "Batyushka would talk," Vladyka Barnabas remembered later, "and I listened attentively, not lowering my eyes from him. It's hard to believe that it really was all like that. Batyushka was sitting all white, like the moon, peaceful, joyful, while through the window it was a quiet evening and a strong, sickly sweet smell of jasmine came up from the garden...

"It was good to sit with the elder Fr. Gabriel those quiet warm summer evenings... I was going through a particularly difficult period in my life: the transition from the noetic Egypt through "the Red Sea deep"... And to meet such a Moses on the way was exceptionally sweet and, as I see now, absolutely necessary." In 1911 Fr. Barnabas entered the Moscow Theological Academy. While he was studying in the Academy, Fr. Barnabas got to know the very strict life of the monasteries and sketes which were around the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra, which made a great impression on him. In 1913 Fr. Barnabas was ordained to the priesthood, and during the last year of his course, he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and returned in the summer of 1914 because of the beginning of the world war. In 1915 he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy and was sent as a teacher to the Nizhegorod theological seminary, where he taught homiletics from September 11, 1915 to the summer of 1918. At one point he was the abbot of the Staro-Golutvinsky monastery in the Moscow diocese. In 1919 he became the secretary of Archbishop Eudocimus (Meshcherksy) of Nizhni-Novgorod.

On February 15, 1920 (according to another source, February 3/16. and according to a third source, February 16/29, the Sunday of Orthodoxy) he was consecrated bishop of Vasilsursk (according to another source, Pechersk), a vicariate of the diocese of Nizhni-Novgorod, by Archbishop Eudocimus and Bishop Michael of Arzamas in the church of the Ascension, Nizhni-Novgorod. He had been blessed to accept this consecration by three holy elders: Schema-Archimandrite Barsanuphius of Optina, Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel of Spaso-Eleazar Monastery and Elder Alexis of the Zosima hermitage. At the beginning of August, 1920, Bishop Barnabas was transferred to the Pechersk monastery, becoming Bishop of Pechersk, the senior vicariate of the diocese of Nizhni-Novgorod. From October 20 to March, 1921 he was in retreat in the Smolensk Zossima Desert, Vladimir province.

In March he returned to Nizhni-Novgorod. He often served and took confessions.

When he confessed people, he asked the penitent in detail about all the details and circumstances of his sins, even the most secret. And he did this until he was convinced that everything had been said and that no hidden, dark corners remained where the devil could weave his nest and again start to lay his snares, drawing the soul down towards destruction. Vladyka would give a sermon at almost every one of his services, calling on the people to repent and make a correct, sincere confession: "This is the second day on which you have heard the canon of St. Andrew of Crete, in which sins are called by their own names, as they are in life, without any kind of concealment. You know from yourselves that it is hardest of all to repent of sexual sins, saying everything in detail, as it was in reality. The whole difficulty lies in the fact that few people call things by their names in confession. It is necessary to say everything to the smallest details, describing its whole essence. There are plenty of good examples for us in the Bible, where sins are named directly by their own names, where the falls into sin are described in every detail..." For this he was besieged by demons.

Sometimes they would take him by the throat, physically preventing him from serving. Sometimes he came from the church to his cell exhausted and tormented.

They visited him also at home, sometimes even in broad daylight in their own form. Once they took hold of his right hand so that he could not cross himself or move his hand, and felt a very strong pain. He called on the name of God: at first it did not help, and the bishop was puzzled. Perhaps he had sinned in some way and so had angered God, but he could not remember. Then he turned for help to the Mother of God and immediately received it. After his return from Zosima Hermitage, Bishop Barnabas was appointed to the consistory to deal with divorce matters. At this time he was close to the blessed Eldress Maria Ivanovna of Diveyevo, who, already in 1919, some three years before the event, had prophesied that he would take upon himself the feat of foolishness for Christ's sake and be put in a psychiatric hospital for three days and then live with private citizens. Once Vladyka sent a message to Maria Ivanovna asking her whether he could write books. "Let him write," she replied. It was the baking summer of 1922, when the renovationist schism, supported by the Bolsheviks, threatened to destroy the ship of the Russian Church. On June 20, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), Archbishop Seraphim (Alexandrov) and Archbishop Eudocimus (Meshcheryakov) signed a declaration uniting themselves to the renovationists. On July 19, 1922 there was a meeting of the clergy of Nizhni-Novgorod in the Diveyevo podvorye, at which it was resolved to recognize the renovationist church administration. The resolution was signed by Archbishop Eudocimus and Seraphim, and by Bishops Michael, Barnabas and Macarius. Or rather, that was what they said in the newspapers, but in reality it was not quite like that - Bishop Barnabas did not sign all the points of the declaration. That is why the patriarch did not demand his repentance or a petition that his episcopate be returned to him, as he demanded of Metropolitan Sergius and several others. "Now he must be patient," said Blessed Maria Ivanovna. "He must hold onto the old, nothing new, everything in the old style.

He must spit on the ukazes, let him not go anywhere, there is nowhere for him to go. He mustn't listen, they won't drive him anywhere. That would be the same as taking off one's cross and becoming a Jew, wouldn't it?… He must be a bishop and reject sin. The people need him, he cannot be an ordinary person." It became impossible for Bishop Barnabas to rule his diocese while the ruling hierarch, Eudocimus, was a renovationist. (Already for a long time Maria Ivanovna had called him a red candle, a red hierarch.) So he left Nizhni-Novgorod in order to offer his repentance to Archbishop Theodore at the Danilov monastery. But Archbishop Theodore refused to accept him. So he went to Zosima Hermitage, where Elder Alexis laid his epitrachelion on him and gave him a penance. On the evening of September 29, 1922 all his problems received a fitting resolution.

"The elders," wrote Vladyka, "easily and freely blessed me to take on the feat of foolishness for Christ's sake as the only way out of my present situation, which threatened grave dangers for the whole of my spiritual life." Fr. Alexis said: "Well, we [that is, he and Fr. Metrophanes] are locking you up [that is, away from people, although not completely, not as a recluse]." When Vladyka asked whether he could serve at home, Fr. Alexis said: "God gives His blessing, that is a good work." At the clinic he obtained a certificate that on October 16 he had been seen by Doctor Lebedev because of "hysterical neurasthenia".

This was in order that it should not seem as if he had suddenly gone out of his mind, but that his illness had been developing gradually, in accordance with the psychiatric textbooks. And so, on October 19, 1922, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Later, on October 22, the feast of the Kazan icon, he was released at the petition of believers and settled in the private house of his spiritual children Raphael Andreyevich Karelin and Elizabeth Germanovna Karelina. Raphael Alexandrovich was a former satanist with great power in the demonic world, who had been saved from destruction by Vladyka Barnabas, for which Vladyka had to pay by suffering many attacks from the dark powers. After Karelin's conversion, the demons appeared to the bishop and personally confirmed the great authority he had among them. It was in this house that, with the blessing of Elder Alexis, he began writing "The Foundations of the Art of Holiness". He wrote it in such a way that anyone, and especially young people, could understand and profit from it.

During this period of his life he had no communications with anyone. Here he was visited by Fr. Metrophanes, who had been sent by Elder Alexis; and after a long conversation Fr. Metrophanes emerged to say that by the command of Vladyka his spiritual children were to refer for the time being for spiritual nourishment to Fr. Peter Topolev. Vladyka Barnabas was several times arrested by the authorities and put in prison. But he was soon freed because they could not prove that he was healthy. They told his novice Valentina to take him way. Once Vladyka was sitting and writing. There was a knock on the front door. Realizing that this was the GPU, he got up, put the pages he had written into a book and placed it on the shelf. The chekist came in and, without a moment's hesitation, as if he were a real magician, stretched out his hand and took precisely that book from the shelf. In 1928 he went with his spiritual son Hieromonk Cyprian and some other spiritual children of his to Kzyl-Ordu, where he tried to found a secret monastery.

Vladyka Barnabas rejected the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, stopped commemorating him, and, according to one (dubious) source, participated in the “Nomadic Council” of the Catacomb Church through Monk Cornelius. He agreed with the Canons but refused to sign them. Later, however, he affixed his signature. At this point we may say some words about the hieromonks close to Bishop Barnabas:- Hieromonk Cyprian, in the world Constantine Alexeyevich Nyelidov, was born in 1902 in Nizhni-Novgorod in the family of an oculist. His mother was from a family of Georgian princes; she left her husband, and his father married again. Constantine was brought up by his grandfather and grandmother on his stepmother's side, and studied at the Nizhegorod nobleman's institute. He was a subdeacon, first with Bishop Barnabas, and then with Metropolitan Sergius. In 1924 (or 1925) he was tonsured into the mantia by Metropolitan Sergius. From 1928 he was together with Bishop Barnabas in Kzyl-Orde, and was ordained to the priesthood. From 1931 to 1933 he was living in Moscow and serving in the chancellery of the Synod. Fr. Cyprian was arrested in March, 1933 in Moscow, and accused of “creating a secret monastery”.

He was sentenced to three years in the camps in the Altai, where he joined Bishop Barnabas. In the camps he was given work on the soil, but was then made a storeman. For his honesty he was slandered and sent on a punishment battalion to inveterate criminals, who constantly abused him. Fr. Cyprian died of tuberculosis in the camp hospital on June 16, 1934, “in the flower of his strength”, as Bishop Barnabas had prophesied. Hieromonk Ruvim, in the world Boris Pavlovich Tsygankov, was also close to Bishop Barnabas. He was born in the 1890s in the city of Vasilkov, Kiev province, and became an officer in the Russian army. He lived in Kiev, where he attended a student Christian circle.

Then he moved to Nizhni-Novgorod, where he was tonsured by Metropolitan Sergius.

He moved together with Bishop Barnabas to Kzyl-Ordu. Here he was the victim of slander and calumny, and Metropolitan Nicander of Tashkent transferred him a hot, putrid place - Turskul, where he was arrested and shot. Hieromonk Rufinus, in the world Arcadius Petrovich Demidov, was born in 1902 in the village of Bykovka, Vorotynsky uyezd, Nizhegorod province. His father, the nobleman Paul Demidov, was a zemsky nachalnik until the revolution of 1917. In 1926 Arcadius Petrovich was tonsured as a monk, and in 1929 he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Neophytus (Korobov). Almost immediately after his ordination he was arrested and sentenced to three years in the camps. There he became seriously ill, and had to crawl from the camp to the train after his release. He served in the church of the village of Bolshaya Rechka, Shakhunsky region. In the summer of 1937 he and Bishop Neophytus and the priests of the Vetluga and Shakhunsky regions were arrested and, as it seems, were shot in the autumn of 1937. Circumstances forced Bishop Barnabas to leave Kzyl-Ordu. Before leaving, he fell ill with typhoid, but refused all medical help and recovered with the help of God. It was in Kzyl-Ordu that Vladyka had a vision of the sign of the Cross in the heavens. They left Kzyl-Ordu on the feast of the Vladimir icon, August 26 / September 8, 1931. On arriving in Moscow Vladyka settled secretly in Ostankino, in the house of the brother of Valentina Dolganova, Vitaly, who was the chief architect of Moscow in charge of the planting of trees and shrubs. However, in March, 1933, Fr. Cyprian was arrested, and then they came to arrest Vladyka Barnabas and his women novices. Vladyka was at that time lying ill, so they left him. When he had recovered a little, he himself went to the Lubyanka prison. He said that his novices had been arrested and he had remained, so he had come to find out what it was all about. The authorities told him to sit down and wait.

Then they arrested him. The authorities tried to elicit a confession from his novices Valentina and Faina that he was healthy, offering them freedom in exchange. But they stood firm and gave no false confessions. They were sentenced to three years' exile, and Vladyka and Fr. Cyprian - to three years in the camps. Vladyka was convicted of “creating a secret monastery”. He served the beginning of his imprisonment in the Biysk camps in the Altai. On the road to the camp, the Lord revealed to him everything that was to happen to him in the first year and even the detailed structure of the camp. And on the eve of every transfer the Lord would reveal to him what was in store for him. Once he prophesied to Tatyana Shurakova, later the nun Magdalene, that she would be freed on St. Elijah's day, after completing only two-and-a-half years of her ten-year sentence. To the astonishment of all, she was freed on that day. On another occasion, he called the camp hospital's doctor, Maria Kuzminichna, by her secret monastic name of Michaela, although this was known to nobody. And when she was freed, he prophesied to her that they would meet again in Kiev, which came to pass. The camp was occupied with the building of the Chuisk highway, which stretched 626 kilometres from the city of Biisk to the border with Manchuria. The bishop refused to work and received punishment rations. He was put in the worst barracks, amidst the most inveterate villains. So as not to hear their foul language, the bishop left the barracks and walked the whole day in his long, yellow satin shirt along the outer wall. He spoke with nobody, and if he said anything it was incomprehensible. So the camp doctors certified him insane and he was sent to the prison psychiatric hospital in the town of Tomsk, where he was visited by his cell-attendant Vera Vasilyevna Lobzanskaya. Then, in the savage winter of 1936 he was transferred to the Mariinsky camps. In March he was freed. On leaving the camp he changed his patronymic from Nicanorovich to Nicolayevich, and his date of birth to 1883, and lived secretly in a tiny room in Tomsk with Vera Vasilyevna. There they stayed in hunger and cold, supporting themselves mainly from a kitchen garden, until the beginning of the war in 1941.

He was known as "Uncle Kolya". In the Biysk camps Vladyka got to know Zinaida, the daughter of Fr. Sabbas Petrunevich. Fr. Sabbas had been a teacher of the Law of God until the revolution of 1917. He maintained friendly relations with Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), and accompanied him on his way into emigration. However, when Vladyka invited him to come with him, he refused. At the beginning of the 1920s he became the rector of the church of St. Olga in Kiev and the centre around which all the faithful Orthodox Christians of the city gathered, becoming for them what Bishop Theoodore (Pozdeyevsky) was for the Christians of Moscow. When the Kiev Caves Lavra was occupied by the renovationists, he invited the brotherhood to go to his church. For this he was arrested and spent ten years in the Aleysky camps in the Altai. Before the end of his sentence he was given another ten years, and then another ten years. Zinaida was a doctor who had been imprisoned for helping a bishop who later betrayed her. She became Vladyka's spiritual daughter, and after leaving prison he kept up correspondence with the people close to him through her. Vladyka's major works were completed by the time of his arrest in 1933 and were kept in the earth until 1948, when it was revealed to him that there would be an emigration out of Russia and it would be possible to fulfil the blessing of the elders and publish his works. For this reason in the autumn of 1948 he moved to Kiev and his works were transferred there from Nizhni-Novgorod. Some of them had become corrupted through their long stay in the earth, and he had to put in a great deal more work to restore his works to something like their former state.

During the last years of his life in Kiev Vladyka worked on his earlier work "The Foundations of the Art of Holiness" and on other works. These included lives of Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel of Seven Lakes monastery, St. Seraphim of Sarov, several ascetics of the nineteenth century, St. Synklitiki and St. Gregory of Agrigentum, a book on Orthodox asceticism entitled "The Blue Ship", 16 notebooks and other books. Vladyka was intolerant towards every kind of spiritual deception. Once a nun brought him a book on Catholic spirituality and the stigmata, which she greatly admired. Vladyka said: "I will not touch this book, and you must not only not read it, but if you give it to others, you will answer for it at the Terrible Judgement." Once a secret nun whom he had known in the Altai came to him. She exhibited certain signs of spiritual deception - feelings of great exaltation during services, seeing the faces of some people for whom she was praying as brighter than others, hearing sweet music, etc. She told the bishop that at the command of an elder she prayed one thousand Jesus prayers at a time, and asked whether she should add some more. But he told her to pray only ten - but in such a way that her concentration was not interrupted while she prayed. She thought this was trivial, but soon came back confessing with contrition that she had been quite unable to pray ten Jesus prayers without distraction. Then the bishop explained that God gives spiritual gifts not for mechanical effort as such, but for humility - and humility comes only as a result of pure prayer, while pure prayer is received only through humility.

While he was living in Kiev, he was offered the possibility of becoming a bishop in the Moscow Patriarchate. But he refused, preferring to continue his struggles, remaining in reclusion and obscurity, known to the world as "Uncle Kolya" and to his spiritual children as their spiritual instructor and educator.

Contrary to the assertions of some writers, he did not bless his children to take communion in the official church, which he called an "office". Thus his cell-attendant, Nun Seraphima (Vera Vasilyevna Lovzanskaya) writes: "Vladyka constantly, all the time sorrowed over the state of the [official] Church and the loss by its hierarchy and clergy of the spirit of repentance. He did not serve in contemporary churches, and recognized neither Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) nor Patriarch Alexis (Simansky), considering that the contemporary hierarchy substituted its own ideas in the place of the teaching of Christ. He considered that 'now is a time of great sorrow for the Church', and did not even allow a lampada to be lit in front of an icon, considered it to be a spiritual consolation which should not exist at times of great sorrow." Vladyka commemorated "every persecuted Orthodox episcopate" at the Liturgy.

Among the sayings of Vladyka are the following: "The communists fight against religion. Stalin himself has declared this for all to hear. For decades they have preached this by pen and sword, and the fact that several churches have now been repaired for the carrying out of Divine services by hirelings who have broken their vows is simply a political trick and a temporary 'campaign'." "One must force and constrict oneself at all times. One must not love the conditions of salvation, even if they are paradise for prayer and piety." "One must always consider oneself guilty, even if a clear lie has been made against you. One must know that this has happened because of some sin which was perhaps committed several years ago. Always reproach yourself, humble yourself in such a way as to say to all that they say against you: 'Forgive me.' This is the quickest path to receiving grace, while others are very long. On this path one does not need direction, while direction is necessary on other paths." "It is impossible to live on earth without a cross. God sends sufferings for some sin you have committed."

"I demand nothing from you," Vladyka said to his spiritual children, "neither non-eating, nor sleeping on bare boards, nor long prayers. Only reproach yourselves for everything, at all times, in every place. This is my advice to you and my most sincere desire." For the sake of the publication of his works in the West, he got to know a series of people who were far from the Church and Orthodoxy, about whom it was revealed to him that they would in time leave for the West. Afterwards, in 1972, this happened, but already after the death of Vladyka. He said: "I must live by faith, write by faith, hide by faith, and preserve what is written by faith, preparing for the publication of my works by faith..." Towards the end of 1961 he began to feel weaker. Forty days before his repose, on March 12/25, 1963, he blessed the sewing for him of some hierarchical vestments. Then, on April 17, he summoned his spiritual daughters and said: "It's time to go home, home, I hear a voice... I don't want to. I'm held back by my affairs. There is much I have to complete... There will be no better time to do it... It is terrible to die, one must prepare oneself for it..." In the forty days before his death he often repeated to his cell-attendant: "I ask you only one thing: do not place your hope on men, hope only in God." On April 4/17 he summoned his spiritual children for a parting discourse. From April 15/28, Vladyka could no longer lie down, but only sat in a chair. A doctor examined him and said that he had an infarction or sclerosis. On April 17/30, he stopped eating and drinking. On May 3, Vladyka continued sitting in his chair with closed eyes. From May 4, he no longer spoke. Vladyka continued sitting in this chair with his head bent until his death. Just before his death, on April 23 / May 6, two tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he quietly reposed.

After his repose, his face lost its shadow of sadness and looked younger and lighter. At the request of Zina Petrunevich, Fr. Alexis Glagolev vested him in his hierarchical vestments and celebrated his funeral service. He was buried in the Baykov cemetery by the western wall of the church of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God.

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