LA VIE DE SAINT JEAN DE CRONSTADT
Saint Jean de Kronstadt naquit le 19 octobre 1829, dans le village de
Soura, situé dans la province d'Arkhangelsk, dans le lointain nord de la
Russie, d'un sacristain pauvre, Élie SERGUIEV et de sa femme Théodora. L'enfant
était extrêmement chétif et maladif aussi ses parents s'empresserent-ils de le
faire baptiser, lui donnant le nom de Jean, en l'honneur de Saint Jean de
Rylsk, dont on fêtait la mémoire ce jour-là.
Quelques temps après, l'état de santé de l'enfant s'améliora
sensiblement et évolua ainsi à un rythme très rapide. Les pieux parents ne
manquèrent pas d'attribuer cette heureuse issue à la grâce du sacrement du
baptême, et c'est avec un zèle particulier qu'ils entreprirent d'orienter vers
Dieu la pensée et tous les sens de leur fils, lui donnant l'habitude d'une
prière continuelle et fervente à l'église comme à la maison.
Son père l'emmenait dès son plus jeune âge aux offices divins, lui
inculquant pour ceux-ci un amour profond.
Vivant dans des conditions de gêne matérielle extrême, le jeune Jean fit
très tôt la connaissance d'un décor exempt de joie que constituent la pauvreté,
la misère, les pleurs, la souffrance. Cela détermina en lui une concentration
particulière et une grande réflexion, mais aussi cela fit apparaître en lui une
profonde compassion et un amour plein de miséricorde pour les pauvres.
N'éprouvant aucune attirance pour les jeux de son âge, il se trouvait porté par
son amour constant de Dieu, à aimer la nature, ce qui développa en lui
l'attendrissement et l'admiration devant le Créateur de toutes choses.
À six ans son père se mit à lui enseigner la lecture et l'écriture. Mais
le garçon eut beaucoup de difficultés à assimiler les rudiments de cette
science. Il s'en trouva très affecté et dans son désir d'être secouru, il
s'adressa à Dieu en des prières particulièrement enflammées.
Bientôt son père, ayant ramassé ses dernières ressources, l'envoya à
l'école paroissiale à Arkhangelsk, et là, le jeune Jean sentit encore davantage
sa solitude et son impuissance, et de plus en plus, il ne trouva sa consolation
que dans la prière. Il priait souvent et de manière enflammée, demandant avec
ardeur que Dieu lui vienne en aide.
La façon dont cette aide lui vint, fut racontée plus tard par le père
Jean lui-même : «Je me souviens, disait-il, comme si c'était à peine arrivé;
tout le monde était couché. Moi seul, je ne pouvais trouver le sommeil. Comme à
l'habitude, je n'avais rien compris à ce qui avait été fait dans la journée, je
lisais toujours aussi mal, et ne parvenais pas à retenir ni à me souvenir de ce
qui avait été dit. J'étais envahi par une tristesse immense; je tombais à
genoux et je me mis à prier ardemment. Je ne me souviens plus du temps que je
passais dans cet état, quand je ressentis tout à coup comme un ébranlement de
tout mon être. Il me semblait qu'un voile se détachait de mes yeux, mon esprit
s'ouvrait dans ma tête, et je me suis représenté exactement le professeur de ce
jour, son cours; je me rappelais même ce dont il avait parlé. Je ressentis un
immense soulagement, une grande joie. Je n'ai jamais dormi aussi paisiblement
que cette nuit-là. Le jour s'était à peine levé que je sautais en bas du lit.
Je saisis mes livres et, oh quelle joie ! Je lisais maintenant bien plus
facilement, je comprenais tout, et non seulement je comprenais ce que je venais
de lire, mais je me sentais capable de le raconter tout de suite.
Maintenant j'éprouvais en classe un sentiment tout différent; je
comprenais tout, tout me restait en mémoire. Et lorsque le professeur me donna
un problème d'arithmétique, je parvins à le résoudre; et je reçus des
félicitations.»
Depuis lors, les succès en classe du jeune Jean augmentèrent chaque
année davantage. Il termina l'école parmi les premiers, il sortit premier du
séminaire d'Arkhangelsk et il fut admis comme boursier complet à l'académie de
théologie de Saint Petersbourg.
Son père qu'il aimait tendrement décéda alors qu'il était encore au
séminaire. Afin d'assurer à sa vieille mère les moyens d'existence, Jean voulut
quitter immédiatement le séminaire et prendre une place de diacre ou de
lecteur. Mais sa mère l'arrêta dans cette entreprise et, au contraire, insista
pour qu'il entre à l'académie.
Aussitôt entré à l'académie, il y prit un travail de secrétariat, dont
le maigre revenu était intégralement envoyé à sa vieille mère.
À l'époque où Jean Serguiev étudiait à l'académie, la vie des étudiants
était remplie d'aspirations très élevées. Presque chaque étudiant caressait le
rêve de quelque activité spéciale au service de l'Église et de la foi
orthodoxe. Pour beaucoup d'entre eux, l'action missionnaire était
particulièrement attrayante. C'est vers ce genre d'activités que s'orientait
initialement l'étudiant Jean Serguiev. Il se préparait à prendre le monachisme
dès la fin des cours et partir vers les pays lointains, le Japon ou la Chine,
afin d'y répandre la lumière de l'Orthodoxie.
Jean aimait se livrer aux réflexions qu'appelait un tel service dans
l'avenir au cours des promenades solitaires dans les allées du parc académique.
Mais Dieu lui préparait un tout autre champ d'activités. Un jour, peu de temps
avant la fin des cours, au retour d'une de ces promenades, Jean s'endormit.
Dans son rêve, il se vit prêtre, célébrant dans la cathédrale Saint André de
Kronstadt, qu'en réalité il n'avait encore jamais vue. Ce rêve devint bientôt
une réalité, dans toute son exactitude.
En 1855, lorsque Jean eut achevé les cours de l'académie, il reçut la
proposition de prendre pour femme la fille de l'archiprêtre de la cathédrale de
Kronstadt, Élisabeth Nevitsky et d'occuper la fonction de prêtre de ladite
cathédrale. Jean accepta avec joie, considérant avoir reçu dans son rêve
l'expression de la volonté de Dieu,
Le mariage du père Jean, exigé par les usages de notre Église pour les
prêtres qui effectuent leur service dans le monde, était une formalité pure. En
effet il a vécu avec sa femme comme frère et soeur. Le jour de leur mariage, il
lui dit : «Lise, des familles heureuses, il y en a suffisamment. Mettons nous,
toi et moi, au service de Dieu.» Et il garda jusqu'à la fin de sa vie une
parfaite virginité.
Dès son premier contact avec ses ouailles, il prit conscience du travail
qui l'attendait. Il y avait là un champ d'activités pastorales au moins aussi
grand que dans les lointaines contrées païennes. L'athéisme, l'hétérodoxie, les
sectes, sans parler de l'indifférence religieuse y étaient florissants.
Kronstadt était un lieu d'exil administratif pour toutes sortes de malfaiteurs
de la capitale. Il y avait en plus, une grande quantité d'ouvriers manoeuvres
occupés principalement dans le port. Dans leur grande majorité ils vivaient
dans le misérables masures, mendiant et buvant. Les citadins souffraient de
toutes sortes de maux de la part de ce monde moralement tombé bien bas. Il
n'était pas sans danger de circuler la nuit tombée, le risque étant grand
d'être attaqué par les voleurs.
Ce sont ces gens apparemment perdus, honnis de tous, qui attirèrent
l'attention du nouveau pasteur. C'est dans ce milieu qu'il commença son action
pleine d'amour et d'abnégation. Tous les jours, il se mit à visiter les
misérables habitations, à parler, à consoler, à prodiguer ses soins aux malades
et à leur fournir une assistance matérielle, donnant tout ce qu'il possédait,
rentrant chez lui souvent déshabillé, fréquemment sans chaussures.
Voici l'histoire très émouvante que raconte un artisan, ayant retrouvé
son équilibre d'homme grâce à l'intervention du père Jean :
«J'avais alors 22 ans. Maintenant je suis vieux, mais je me souviens
très bien du jour, où je vis pour la première fois le père Jean. J'avais une
famille, deux enfants. Je travaillais et je buvais. Ma famille souffrait de la
faim. Ma femme se livrait en cachette à la mendicité. Nous vivions dans un
taudis. Rentrant un jour chez moi pas trop ivre, je vis un jeune prêtre assis,
tenant sur ses genoux mon petit garçon, et lui racontant quelque chose avec
tendresse. L'enfant écoutait avec attention et sérieux. Il m'a semblé que le
prêtre ressemblait au Christ, tel qu'il est représenté sur l'image "la
bénédiction des enfants". Il me vint l'idée de l'injurier : oui, il y en a
qui se baladent ... quand le regard du père se posa sur moi avec tendresse et
sérieux. J'ai eu honte. Je baissais les yeux. et lui, il ne cessait de me
regarder, pénétrant avec son regard jusqu'au fond de mon âme. Puis il se mit à
parler. Je ne puis rapporter tout ce qu'il a dit. Il disait avec simplicité que
j'avais dans mon réduit le paradis, car là, où il y a des enfants, il fait
toujours chaud et bon, et il disait aussi qu'il ne fallait pas échanger ce
paradis contre la fumée des cabarets. Il ne m'accusait point, au contraire, il
me disculpait entièrement. Quand il fut parti, je restais longtemps en silence.
Je ne pleurais pas, mais je sentais que mon âme se trouvait au bord des larmes.
Ma femme me regardait. Et voilà, depuis ce temps je suis devenu un homme.»
Une activité pastorale aussi inhabituelle de la part du jeune pasteur
appela des blâmes et des reproches en provenance de toutes parts. Nombreux
étaient ceux, qui au début ne reconnaissaient pas la sincérité de l'attitude du
père Jean, se moquaient de lui, le calomniaient de vive voix ou dans la presse,
le traitant de faible d'esprit. Pendant une certaine période les autorités
diocésaines interdirent de lui verser son traitement en mains propres, car il
le distribuait intégralement aux pauvres, elles le convoquaient plus d'une fois
pour avoir des explications. Mais le jeune pasteur, agissant en tout par la
Volonté et la grâce de Dieu, ne changeait rien à sa façon de faire, supportant
toutes les moqueries, toutes les calomnies et tous les sévices. Peu à peut au
fil des années, ceux qui s'étaient moqués de lui, ceux qui l'avaient injurié,
calomnié, persécuté, se rendirent à l'évidence qu'ils avaient devant eux un
véritable pasteur, un vrai disciple du Christ, offrant sa vie pour ses brebis.
Le père Jean rendait fréquemment visite à une famille de marchands les
S. dans l'île de Vassiliev. Dans le même immeuble habitaient trois jeunes
étudiants qui s'adonnaient souvent à des plaisanteries sur la popularité du
père Jean qu'ils ne comprenaient pas. Aussi eurent-ils un jour l'idée de
tourner en dérision la force de guérison émanant des prières du pasteur de
Cronstadt et ils recoururent à l'artifice suivant.
K. Le plus hardi des jeunes gens s'en alla chez les S. avec l'intention
de prier instamment le père Jean de venir voir leur camarade mourant. S. devait
prendre le rôle du malade à toute extrémité et M. le rôle du frère pleurant au
chevet du mourant. Le père Jean entendit la requête, fixa K. du regard et lui
dit: "Je ne refuse jamais de prier et je viendrai chez vous, mais sachez
bien que vous plaisantez avec Dieu." K. devient très confus, il persista
toutefois dans sa demande, en affirmant que leur camarade était bien à
l'article de la mort.
"Bien, j'y serai dans un instant" ...
Dix minutes s'étaient à peine écoulées que retentit la sonnette à la
porte de l'appartement des jeunes gens. S. se glissa dans le lit et se mit à
gémir doucement, M. se laissa tomber à genoux au chevet du faux malade, quant à
K. il se précipita pour ouvrir la porte. "Où est votre malade? demanda le
pasteur d'une voix brève, en mettant l'accent sur "votre". "S'il
vous plaît, père, s'il vous plaît, s'afféra K. en conduisant l'hôte vers la
pièce attenante.
Le malade continuait à gémir, et M. de sangloter ...
Le père Jan s'arrêta au milieu de la pièce et chercha du regard une
icône. Il n'y en avait pas. Alors il s'agenouilla au milieu de la chambre et,
après avoir fait le signe de la croix, il se mit à prier. "Seigneur donne
leur selon leur foi. Amen!"
Le père Jean se leva rapidement et, sans prendre congé, se dirigea vers
la sortie. K. et M. se précipitèrent pour l'accompagner jusqu'à l'escalier.
C'est avec un grand éclat de rire qu'ils revinrent dans la chambre du
"malade". "Vania, Vania, lève-toi, le père Jean est parti!"
Hélàs! le pauvre ne jouait plus. Il était couché et complètement
paralysé: la langue, les mains, les pieds – ; tout était sans vie, seul un
léger mouvement des yeux indiquait que le jeune homme était vivant et voulait
dire quelque chose.
Les plaisantins étaient figés d'effroi. Ils ne pouvait comprendre ce qui
se passait et lorsqu'ils retrouvèrent leurs esprits, ils se regardèrent et se
mirent à pleurer à chaudes larmes devant le cadavre vivant. "Vania, Vania,
nous avons voulu plaisanter avec Dieu, pardon, pardonne-nous."
Ils envoyèrent aussitôt chercher des médecins. Trois médecins
expérimentés passèrent toute la nuit au chevet du malade et conclurent à une
paralysie, dont la guérison prendrait des années, si toutefois guérison il y
avait. "C'est une très grande émotion qui a dû terrasser votre ami, tout
son système nerveux est atteint," dirent les médecins. Les jeunes gens
pleuraient sans arrêt, ils ne pouvaient se rendre à dévoiler la vérité aux
médecins.
Prenant le premier train du matin, les deux plaisantins s'en allèrent à
Cronstadt. Le père Jean ne put les recevoir que le soir, mais lorsqu'on lui
annonça les deux jeunes gens, il leur fit dire qu'il ne pouvait rien pour eux.
M. et K. veillèrent toute la nuit devant la maisonnette grise et le matin,
lorsqu'apparut le père Jean, ils se jetèrent à ses pieds et le supplièrent de
les pardonner. Le bon pasteur releva les jeunes gens et leur dit d'aller à
l'église. Après la liturgie il les conduisit devant l'icône de saint Nicolas le
thaumaturge où il leur donna une leçon pendant près de deux heures. Le
vénérable pasteur commença par indiquer l'incorrection de leur geste, en leur
faisant comprendre qu'ils n'avaient pas le droit de plaisanter leurs aînés,
puis il passa à l'exposé de l'enseignement évangélique.
"Maintenant, prions," dit le père Jean, lorsque la leçon prit
fin. La prière des jeunes gens n'avait sans doute jamais été aussi intense
qu'en ce moment." Allez en Dieu, et glorifiez-Le".
Les jeunes gens avaient la sensation qu'une montage était tombée de
leurs épaules. Ils éprouvaient maintenant une joie incompréhensible, leur âme
jubilait, et toutes choses autour d'eux leur semblaient être inondées d'une
lumière radieuse.
Lorsque les amis arrivèrent le soir à la maison, c'est S. qui leur
ouvrit la porte. "Vania, c'est bien toi ? tu es guéri?" -
"Presque guéri, répondit S., la tête est encore lourde et je sens une
lassitude générale ..."
Ils purent établir que c'est au moment même où à Cronstadt le père Jean
priait avec les deux jeunes gens devant l'icône de saint Nicolas le thaumaturge
que S. réussit à faire ses premiers mouvements et que peu à peu il retrouva la
faculté de mouvoir ses membres figés. Le premier membre à retrouver la vie fut
la main droite, et son premier geste fut le signe de la croix.
Nous devons aimer tout homme, aussi bien dans son péché que dans sa
honte» disait le père Jean, «il ne faut pas confondre l'homme, cette image de
Dieu, avec le mal qui est en lui.» C'est animé de cette profonde conviction
qu'il allait au devant des gens, triomphant du mal et portant la renaissance
grâce à son amour véritable plein de miséricorde.
Bientôt apparu chez le père Jean le don merveilleux d'intercession qui
l'a rendu célèbre dans toute la Russie et, aussi bien au-delà des frontières
russes. Il serait impossible de citer tous les miracles qui ont eu lieu grâce à
l'intercession du père Jean. Notre intelligentsia ayant perdu la foi s'efforçait
dans sa presse de garder le silence sur ces nombreuses manifestations de la
grâce divine. Néanmoins un grand nombre de miracles a été consigné et beaucoup
d'entre eux conservés pieusement en mémoire, trouvant de nos jours leur place
dans la presse. Les miracles dus à l'intercession du père Jean qui ont eu lieu
dans l'émigration russe avant sa canonisation en 1964 se sont accrus depuis
considérablement. Sans doute n'y sont pas étrangères les merveilleuses prières
et les offices, composés à cette occasion pour vénérer le saint père Jean.
Le premier miracle fut décrit par le père Jean lui-même à l'attention de
ses confrères prêtres. Cette relation montre la grande humilité qui habitait
l'âme du père Jean.
«Quelqu'un à Kronstadt était tombé malade, écrivait le père Jean. On me
demanda de le secourir par mes prières. J'avais déjà acquis cette habitude de
ne refuser à personne quoi que ce soit. Je me mis donc à prier, remettant le
sort du malade entre les mains de Dieu, demandant au Seigneur d'accomplir sur
ce malade sa sainte Volonté. Quand, à l'improviste, arrive chez moi une vieille
femme que je connaissais depuis longtemps. Elle avait une grande foi, et vivait
dans la crainte de Dieu une vie très chrétienne. Elle vint me voir, et me
demanda avec insistance que je ne prie pas autrement que pour la guérison du
malade. Je me souviens alors d'avoir été passablement effrayé par cette idée :
"comment puis-je avoir, moi, une telle audace, pensais-je ?" la
vieille femme croyait cependant fermement en ma prière et demeurait sur ses
positions. Alors j'ai confessé à Dieu ma nullité et mon état de péché, et ayant
admis ce qui m'arrivait comme la Volonté de Dieu, je me mis à prier pour la
guérison du malade. Et le Seigneur lui envoya sa grâce, le malade guérit. Quant
à moi, je ne cessais de remercier Dieu pour cette grâce. Plus tard, une
guérison eut à nouveau lieu à la suite de mes prières. Alors je vis clairement
dans ces deux cas la Volonté divine, une nouvelle obéissance envers Dieu, prier
pour tous ceux qui me le demanderont.»
Le père Jean guérissait par sa prière non seulement des orthodoxes, mais
aussi des hétérodoxes, des musulmans, des juifs. Ce grand don d'intercession,
qui lui avait été donné pour ses efforts dans la prière, le jeûne, et son amour
plein d'abnégation envers Dieu et les hommes, ce don le père Jean l'avait mis
au service de tout hommes, image de Dieu, qui le Lui demandait.
Dans la seconde période de sa vie, le mouvement dans cette communion
avec les hommes changea de sens; ce n'est plus le père Jean qui allait
au-devant des gens, c'est le monde qui affluait vers lui. Des flots de
personnes venaient à lui de tous les endroits de la Russie. Ils arrivaient par
milliers chaque jour à Kronstadt dans l'espoir de voir le père Jean et de
recevoir conseils et assistance. Bien plus grande encore était la quantité de
lettres et de télégrammes qu'il recevait : la poste de Kronstadt ouvrit pour
cette correspondance un service spécial. Il arrivait par cette voie des sommes
considérables d'argent pour ses oeuvres. On ne peut apprécier son importance
qu'approximativement, car le père Jean distribuait l'argent souvent dès qu'il
le recevait. Avec cet argent le père Jean nourrissait quotidiennement un
milliers de pauvres, avec cet argent il fit construire «la maison du labeur»
comportant une école, une église, des ateliers et un asile. Il fonda dans son
village natal un monastère féminin et construisit une grande église en dur. Il
construisit à Saint Petersbourg un monastère féminin sur la Carpovka, où il fut
enterré à sa mort.
Au grand regret des habitants de Kronstadt, le père Jean dut abandonner
dans la seconde moitié de sa vie, dans la période où sa gloire s'était étendue
à toute la Russie, les cours d'instruction religieuse qu'il professait à
l'école de la ville de Kronstadt et au lycée classique, où il avait enseigné
plus de 25 ans. Il était un pédagogue remarquable. Il ne recourait jamais aux
moyens habituels d'enseignement qui avaient souvent cours alors dans nos
établissements d'enseignement, à la sévérité excessive ou à l'humiliation
morale des incapables. Pour le père Jean les notes ne servaient pas de moyen
d'encouragement, ni les punitions de moyen d'intimidation. Ses succès, il les
obtenait grâce à son attitude chaleureuse et sincère, d'abord envers son travail
d'enseignement, puis vis-à-vis de ses élèves. Aussi ne connaissait-il pas
«d'incapables». Dans sa classe, tout le monde sans exception écoutait avidement
ses paroles. Son cours était attendu, il était plutôt un plaisir, un repos pour
les élèves, qu'un travail ou une lourde obligation. C'était une conversation
vivante, des propos entraînants, des narrations intéressantes captivant
l'attention. Ces conversations du pasteur père avec les enfants restèrent dans
la mémoire des jeunes élèves pour toute leur vie. Le père Jean justifiait sa
manière d'enseigner par devant le corps pédagogique, au commencement de l'année
scolaire pour la nécessité de fournir au pays avant tout des hommes et des
chrétiens, faisant reculer la question des sciences au second plan. Souvent le
père Jean après avoir pris la défense d'un élève condamné à l'exclusion,
entreprenait son redressement. Les années passaient et l'enfant qui,
initialement n'offrait aucun espoir, devenait un membre utile de la société. Le
père Jean attribuait une importance particulière à la lecture des écritures
saintes et de la vie des saints. Il apportait souvent à ses cours des vies de
saints séparées qu'il distribuait aux élèves pour qu'ils les lisent chez eux.
La vie du père Jean est un véritable exploit. Il se levait tous les
jours à trois heures et se préparait à la célébration de la liturgie. À quatre
heures il s'en allait à la cathédrale écouter les matines. Il y avait là déjà
une foule de pèlerins qui espéraient recevoir au moins la bénédiction. Il y avait
également une grande quantité de pauvres, auxquels le père Jean distribuait des
pièces d'argent. Au cours des matines, le père Jean se chargeait toujours de la
lecture du canon, à laquelle il attribuait une grande importance. Puis, avant
la liturgie, prenait place la confession qui, au début, était individuelle,
mais qui devint vite générale, par nécessité, vu l'immense quantité de gens qui
désiraient se confesser. Cette confession commune produisit une impression
bouleversante, Beaucoup de personnes confessaient sans honte leurs péchés de
vive voix. La cathédrale Saint André, pouvant contenir jusqu'à 5000 personnes,
était toujours pleine de monde. Aussi la communion durait-elle très longtemps,
la liturgie ne s'achevait pas avant midi. Le service du père Jean était un élan
constant et ardent de prières adressées à Dieu. Les lectures du père Jean
n'étaient pas de simples lectures. C'était une conversation pleine de joie avec
le Seigneur et ses saints. Il lisait avec force et netteté et sa voix pénétrait
jusqu'au fond des âmes. Pendant la liturgie son regard plein de lumière allait
au devant de la lumière divine, les larmes coulaient de ses yeux. On voyait que
le père Jean vivait tout l'histoire de notre rédemption, qu'il ressentait
profondément tout l'amour de Dieu pour nous et toutes ses souffrances.
Tous ceux qui, méfiants ou simplement curieux, se trouvaient là en ce
moment sentaient fondre leur glaciale incrédulité et naître en eux une foi
ardente. Les communiants étaient si nombreux qu'il fallait prévoir plusieurs
grands calices. Plusieurs prêtres donnaient la communion qui durait souvent
plus de deux heures.
Pendant le service, les lettres et les télégrammes étaient portés au
père Jean directement dans l'autel; il les lisait de suite et priait pour ceux
qui le lui demandaient. Après l'office, le père Jean sortait de la cathédrale,
suivi d'un millier de fidèles, et s'en allait à Saint-Petersbourg visiter de
nombreux malades. Il rentrait rarement avant minuit.
Le père Jean avait le don de prêcher. Il parlait avec simplicité et
souvent sans aucune préparation. Il ne recherchait pas les beaux mots et les
expression originales mais ses prêches se distinguaient par une force
inhabituelle, par une pensée profonde, et en même temps par une science
théologique exceptionnelles tout en étant parfaitement intelligibles même aux
gens les plus simples.
Malgré une occupation extraordinaire, le père Jean avait trouvé le temps
de tenir une espèce de journal intime, qui étaient consignées quotidiennement
les pensées qui résultaient de sa prière ou de sa méditation. C'est tout à la
fois une conversation avec Dieu et des recommandations adressées aux hommes,
réunies dans son livre «MA VIE EN CHRIST», véritable trésor spirituel qui est
digne d'occuper une place parmi les oeuvres des grands pères de l'Église. Dans
l'édition de 1893' «MA VIE EN CHRIST» figure en trois tomes, avec plus de 1000
pages.
La personnalité du père Jean s'y réfléchit comme dans un miroir. On peut
y suivre en détail le cheminement qu'à suivi le père jean dans son auto
perfectionnement spirituel, la manière dont il a étudié les Saintes Écritures.
Ces dernières, il les avait assimilées non seulement par son esprit mais
également par son coeur. Aussi tout son journal est-il marqué par le triomphe
et l'inspiration propres aux Écritures saintes.
Les prêches du père Jean ont été également consignés, et ils
représentent l'équivalent de trois tomes, totalisant quelques 1800 pages. Ils
constituent un matériel inépuisable de direction spirituelle. Chaque parole
vient du coeur, elle est pleine de foi et de feu; les pensées sont d'une
profondeur et d'une sagesse étonnantes, l'ensemble est admirablement simple et
claire . Il n'y a pas de mots superflus, pas de «belles phrases».
«Ma vie en Christ» a attiré vite l'attention du monde entier, elle a été
traduite en plusieurs langues étrangères; les prêtres anglicans l'ont retenue
comme leur livre de chevet.
La pensée fondamentale de toutes les oeuvres du père Jean est :
nécessité d'une foi vraie, ardente et d'une vie selon la foi, dans la lutte
constante contre ses passions et sa concupiscence, la fidélité à la foi et à
l'Église orthodoxe, seule salvatrice. À l'égard de la Russie, de son peuple et
de son destin, le père Jean avait une attitude qui lui attira la plus vive et
le plus impitoyable opposition de la part des éléments anarchistes et
révolutionnaires, ainsi que la majeure partie de l'intelligentsia, de la
société éclairée. C'est une des raisons profondes de l'opposition sourde et
hypocrite
qui se manifeste encore de nos jours vis à vis du père Jean et qui s'est
ravivée à l'occasion de sa canonisation, cette dernière étant présentée comme
une erreur en matière de juridique ecclésiale.
Le père Jean flétrissait tout esprit de rébellion, il appelait le peuple
à prendre enseignement sur l'exemple donné par les ancêtres en matière de foi,
de sagesse et de courage. «Le Seigneur nous a confié un immense talent
salvateur, celui de la foi orthodoxe. Qui vous a enseigné l'insoumission, la
rébellion absurde, inconnues autrefois en Russie. Cessez d'extravaguer. Cessez
de boire l'amer calice plein de poison, poison pour vous et pour la Russie.» Et
il prophétisait sévèrement : «L'empire russe est ébranlé, il chancelle, il est
proche de sa chute.» Si les choses en Russie vont aller de cette façon, et si
les anarchistes insensés ne sont pas soumis au châtiment juste de la loi, et si
la Russie ne se libère pas de son abondante ivraie, elle deviendra un désert,
comme d'anciennes villes et d'anciens empires, effacés de la terre par la
Justice divine pour leur athéisme et leurs iniquités.» «Pauvre patrie. Quand
retrouveras-tu la prospérité ? Seulement quand tu t'attacheras de tout ton
coeur à Dieu, à l'Église, à l'amour pour ton tzar et ta patrie et à la pureté
de tes moeurs.»
Les dernières années de sa vie, le père Jean eut une épreuve
supplémentaire, celle de la maladie. Il supporta tout avec douceur et sa
patience habituelle, ne se plaignant de rien.
L'obéissance spirituelle que le père Jean vouait à sa mère est
particulièrement touchante, et aussi, révélatrice des fondements de son
humilité. Un jour, pendant le carême, le père Jean tombait malade et les
médecins lui ordonnèrent de rompre le jeune, sous peine de voir arriver le
pire. Le père Jean acquiesça, mais voulu d'abord demander la bénédiction à sa
mère. Sur ses indications une lettre fut envoyée immédiatement à sa mère. Deux
semaines s'écoulent. Le malade est de plus en plus mal. Enfin la réponse arrive
: «J'envoie ma bénédiction, mais il ne peut être question de rompre le jeûne.»
le père Jean reçut la réponse avec un grand soulagement.
À la fin de sa vie, luttant contre la maladie, il refusa également de
rompre le jeûne, ainsi que le lui demandaient les médecins. Voici ses paroles :
«Je remercie le Seigneur pour les souffrances qu'Il m'envoie, afin que mon âme
se purifie de ses péchés. Vivifiante est la sainte communion.» Aussi
continua-t-il à communier chaque jour.
Le 10 décembre 1908, rassemblant ses dernières forces, le père Jean
célébra pour la dernière fois la sainte liturgie dans la cathédrale de Saint
André de Kronstadt. À 7h 40, le matin du 20 décembre 1908, il rejoignait le
Seigneur, ayant auparavant annoncé le jour de sa mort.
Père Benjamin Joukoff
SOURCE : http://orthodoxievco.net/ecrits/peres/kron/vie.htm
Saint Jean de Cronstadt
prêtre orthodoxe
russe (✝ 1908)
Son père était
sacristain dans un petit village des environs d'Archangelsk dans l'extrême nord
de la Russie. Jean aimait les longues liturgies. Il poursuivit ses études à
l'Académie théologique de Saint-Petersbourg et, malgré bien des peines, il
servait Dieu joyeusement: "La tristesse, dira-t-il plus tard, est une
apostasie et la mort du cœur."
Attaché à la cathédrale de Cronstadt, il évangélisa ce port de guerre où se mêlaient l'injustice sociale, la misère et la dégradation morale. Pendant 32 ans, il y mena ce ministère pastoral, y ajoutant l'éducation des enfants et puisant sa force dans la Liturgie: "Il n'y a rien de plus vivifiant que la Liturgie" écrit-il dans son journal "Ma vie en Christ". Bientôt les foules vinrent à lui. La poste même dut ouvrir un service spécial pour lui distribuer les lettres qu'il recevait. Apôtre de la communion fréquente, il voyait venir à lui tant de gens pour se confesser qu'il accepta la confession publique. A tous, il communiquait la grâce de la présence du Christ. Canonisé en 1990 par le patriarcat de Moscou, Jean de Cronstadt (1829-1908) est l’une des figures majeures de la spiritualité russe. Une personnalité hors du commun et aux multiples facettes, qui a manifesté avec une rare intensité l’unité entre sacrement de l’autel et sacrement du frère, vie de prière et engagement social... Biographie, témoignages d’époque et extraits de l’œuvre de Jean de Cronstadt, éditions du Cerf. Saint Jean de Crondstadt
01/11 - 19/10
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Glorifié
par l'Eglise Russe Hors Frontières en 1964 et canonisé en 1990 par
le Patriarcat de Moscou, Saint Jean de Cronstadt naquit le 19 octobre
(a.s.) dans le village de Soura, situé dans la province d'Arkhangelsk
dans le Nord de la Russie, dans une famille très modeste. Sortit premier du
séminaire d'Arkhangelsk il obtint une bourse pour l'Academie de
Théologie de Saint Petersbourg . Ordonné prêtre il fut affecté à la
Cathédrale Saint André de Cronstadt, ville portuaire « mal famée » ! C'était
un lieu d'exile administratif pour des malfaiteurs de la capitale ! Une
grande quantité d'ouvriers manúuvres de la base navale, vivant dans de
misérables masures, mendiant et buvant. Les citadins souffraient de toutes
sortes de maux de la part díun monde tombé bien bas. Ce furent, précisément,
ces gens à première vue perdus, qui attirèrent l'attention du jeune
pasteur ! Tous les jours il se mit à visiter les misérables habitations , à
parler, à consoler, à prodiguer ses soins aux malades et à leur fournir une
assistance matérielle, distribuant tout ce qu'il possédait, rentrant chez lui
souvent déshabillé, fréquemment sans chaussures ! Une activité pastorale
aussi inhabituelle de la part du jeune prêtre (il avait à peine plus de vingt
ans) suscita des blâmes et des reproches de toutes parts et nombreux étaient
ceux qui au début ne reconnaissaient pas la sincérité de l'attitude du Père
Jean, se moquaient de lui, le calomniaient de vive voix ou dans la presse, le
traitant de faible díesprit. Peu à peu, au fil des années, ceux qui s'étaient
moqués de lui, ceux qui l'avaient injurié, calomnié, persécuté, se rendirent
à l'évidence qu'ils avaient devant eux un véritable pasteur, un vrai disciple
du Christ qui offrait sa vie pour ses brebis ! Bientôt apparut chez le père
Jean le don merveilleux d'intercession qui le rendit célèbre à travers toute
la Russie, et bien au-delà des frontières russes. Il serait impossible de
citer tous les miracles qui ont eu lieu grâce à l'intercession du «
batiouchka » encore de son vivant ! Après sa mort aussi bien en Russie que
dans l'émigration et aujourdíhui de nouveau en Russie un grand
nombre de miracles furent consignés ! Gravement malade pendant le carême de
Noël, refusant de rompre le jeune, ainsi que le lui demandaient les médecins,
il célébra pour la dernière fois la liturgie en la Cathédrale Saint André de
Cronstadt. Il rejoignit le Seigneur le 20 décembre 1908, ayant auparavant
annoncé le jour de sa mort.
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Canonisé en 1990 par le patriarcat de Moscou, Jean de Cronstadt (1829-1908)
est l’une des figures majeures de la spiritualité russe. Une personnalité hors
du commun et aux multiples facettes, qui a manifesté avec une rare intensité
l’unité entre sacrement de l’autel et sacrement du frère, vie de prière et
engagement social. Promoteur de la communion fréquente et de la confession
commune, il attirait chaque matin des milliers de fidèles à la cathédrale de
Cronstadt. Serviteur des exclus et des déshérités, il fit construire plusieurs
institutions sociales et accomplit de nombreux miracles et guérisons
Son père était sacristain dans un petit village des environs d'Archangelsk dans
l'extrême nord de la Russie. Jean aimait les longues liturgies. Il poursuivit
ses études à l'Académie théologique de Saint-Petersbourg et, malgré bien des
peines, il servait Dieu joyeusement : "La tristesse, dira-t-il plus tard,
est une apostasie et la mort du cœur."
Attaché à la cathédrale de Cronstadt, il évangélisa ce port de guerre où se
mêlaient l'injustice sociale, la misère et la dégradation morale.
Pendant 32 ans, il y mena ce ministère pastoral, y ajoutant l'éducation des
enfants et puisant sa force dans la Liturgie :"Il
n'y a rien de plus vivifiant que la Liturgie" écrit-il dans son journal
"Ma vie en Christ". Bientôt les foules vinrent à lui. La poste
même dut ouvrir un service spécial pour lui distribuer les lettres qu'il
recevait. Apôtre de la communion fréquente, il voyait venir à lui tant de gens
pour se confesser qu'il accepta la confession publique.
A tous, il communiquait la grâce de la présence du Christ.
CHAPITRE 7
DE LA COMMUNION DES SAINTS ET DE LA
VIE ÉTERNELLE
§, 1. - DE LA COMMUNION DES SAINTS
Les Saints du Seigneur ont su le mieux apprécier
l'oeuvre sublime de la rédemption du genre humain opérée par Dieu,
l'Incarnation du Fils venu des cieux, son enseignement, ses Souffrances, sa
Mort, son Inhumation, sa Résurrection et son Ascension au ciel; car ils ont
travaillé pendant toute leur vie à leur salut et à celui des autres avec
sincérité, avec fermeté, avec persévérance, en un mot, de tout leur coeur. Pour
leur salut et celui des autres, ils renonçaient à leur propre existence, ils
jeûnaient, ils priaient, ils veillaient, ils luttaient par l'action et par la
parole, par l'intelligence et par la plume. Et nous autres, nous ne savons pas
apprécier cette oeuvre sublime, nous restons devant elle froids, distraits,
insouciants. Le monde visible seul nous préoccupe, et les choses de ce monde
qui ne sont que fumée !
Celui qui a embelli le ciel d'étoiles, n'a-t-il pas pu embellir bien
plus encore son ciel spirituel dans la très sainte Vierge Marie ? Celui qui a
parsemé la terre de fleurs les plus variées, aux couleurs les plus bizarres,
qui l'a inondée de parfums et d'arômes, n'a-t-Il pas pu embellir sa Mère
terrestre de toutes les fleurs les plus variées de la vertu et déverser sur
elle tous les arômes célestes ? Certainement il en est ainsi. C'est pourquoi la
Reine des cieux est devenue le ciel et le temple de la Divinité, embellie de
parures inénarrables et imprégnée des arômes les plus suaves, plus exquis que
tous les parfums de la terre. Oh ! si la Bonté divine, en vertu des prières de
sa très pure Mère, daignait m'embellir aussi, moi, qui suis si hideux, si Elle
daignait verser aussi ses arômes sur moi, qui suis si impur ! Rien n'est
impossible au Seigneur. Venez et accusez-Moi, dit-il, si vos péchés, aussi
rouges que l'écarlate et le vermillon, ne deviennent comme la neige ou la
toison la plus blanche.
La Mère de Dieu est une même chair, un même sang, un même esprit avec
notre Sauveur, puisqu'elle est sa Mère. Quel immense mérite lui appartient par
la grâce de Dieu, qui a voulu qu'elle fût la Mère de Dieu lui-même, qu'elle lui
prêtât sa chair très pure et bénie, qu'elle le nourrît de son lait, qu'elle le
portât dans ses bras, qu'elle l'habillât, qu'elle protégeât son jeune âge, en
le couvrant de baisers et de caresses. Seigneur ! qui donc pourrait décrire la
grandeur de la sainte Vierge ! Il n y a pas de langue qui puisse vous louer
assez, comme vous le méritez; il n'y a pas d'intelligence au ciel qui puisse
suffisamment chanter votre gloire, ô Mère de Dieu ! Il faut l'invoquer avec une
confiance sincère et par un naïf mouvement du coeur... Elle est un avec Dieu,
comme le sont tous les saints.
Celui qui prie le Seigneur, la sainte Vierge, les anges et les saints,
doit, avant tout, avoir le désir de corriger son coeur et sa vie, et d'imiter
ces êtres célestes, selon les paroles : Soyez donc miséricordieux comme aussi
votre Père Lui-même est miséricordieux. (Luc 6,36). Vous serez saints, parce
que Moi je suis saint (1 Pier 1,16). Ceux qui prient la sainte Vierge doivent
imiter son humilité, sa pureté qui dépasse toute imagination, sa soumission à
la Volonté de Dieu (par exemple, lorsqu'il nous arrive de voir des injustices)
et sa patience. Ceux qui prient les anges doivent songer à la vie d'en haut,
aspirer à l'état spirituel, en repoussant peu à peu tous les désirs charnels,
toutes les passions, et se pénétrer d'un amour ardent pour Dieu et pour le
prochain. Ceux qui prient les saints doivent les imiter dans leur amour de
Dieu, dans leur mépris pour la vanité du monde et les biens terrestres, dans
leurs prières, dans leur abstinence, dans leur renoncement à toute propriété,
dans leur patience à supporter les maladies, les privations et le malheur, dans
leur amour du prochain. Autrement la prière ne servira qu'à faire vibrer un
espace d'air.
Ne te décourage pas et ne te laisse pas aller au désespoir, si tu sens
dans ton âme le souffle meurtrier qui allume la colère, la malice, l'impatience
et le blasphème, ou si tu es surpris par une prostration provenant de pensées
impures et mauvaises. Fais appel au contraire à toutes tes forces, pour les
combattre avec énergie et les supporter avec courage, en invoquant du fond de
ton coeur notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, le vainqueur de l'enfer. Reconnais
sincèrement et avec la plus profonde humilité que c'est toi entre tous qui es
le premier coupable, que c'est toi qui es le plus indigne des hommes, et le
Seigneur, en te voyant si humble et si résolu dans ta lutte, viendra à ton
secours. Invoque aussi le secours toujours prompt de notre Protectrice la très
sainte Vierge, Mère de Dieu, en lui disant : guérissez, ô très pure Vierge, les
amères douleurs de mon âme, et delivrez-la des ennemis qui ne cessent de lutter
contre moi.
Rends grâces à notre divine Protectrice, toujours prompte à nous
secourir, la toute pure et toute clémente Vierge Marie, Mère de Dieu, qui nous
sauve des morsures et des meurtrissures du démon, si nous l'implorons
sincèrement. Porte vers elle le regard de ton coeur dirigé par l'Esprit saint
qui est partout, qui remplit tout et qui est simple. Tu ne manqueras pas de la
voir, comme si elle se trouvait auprès de ton coeur. Dis-lui alors : ô sainte
Vierge Marie, prompt secours des chrétiens, sauvez-moi de l'ennemi qui me
poursuit ! Et elle te sauvera immédiatement, selon ta foi, selon la force de
l'espérance que tu as en elle. L'abattement, le feu brûlant et le découragement
pénible que tu éprouvais disparaîtront à l'instant. Seulement il faut avoir
présent à ta pensée et croire fermement que le saint Esprit est partout, à
chaque endroit, qu'il est un Être simple, que tout le ciel nous est proche avec
lui, de même que tous les anges et tous les saints. Il suffit de croire, mais
avec fermeté, que nous n'avons qu'à invoquer le Seigneur ou la sainte Vierge,
ou tel saint, et le faire de tout notre coeur, avec une foi lumineuse, avec un
repentir sincère de nos péchés, et le salut brillera pour nous à l'instant. Le
secours que nous prodigue la Reine des cieux est véritablement miraculeux. Il
agit sur notre âme comme un baume salutaire, comme un arôme délicieux, comme
une eau calmante, et pour l'obtenir nous n'avons qu'à contempler la Reine
clémente des yeux de notre coeur, en mettant toute notre espérance dans sa
bonté et dans sa puissance. Mais c'est là le difficile, - cette contemplation
unie d'une foi ardente à la Mère de la divine grâce, ou au Seigneur, ou aux
saints !
L'ennemi s'efforce de tout son pouvoir de s'interposer comme un mur
épais, impénétrable et noir, entre notre âme et Dieu ou la sainte Vierge, ou
les anges, ou les saints, et il ne permet pas, le misérable, que le regard de
notre coeur pénètre jusqu'à eux. Il obscurcit notre coeur par tous les moyens,
il dissipe notre foi, il nous décourage, il nous brûle et nous ravit toute
lumière. Tous ces agissements du démon, il faut les regarder comme une illusion
de l'esprit malin. Dissipons ce mensonge; démolissons ce fantôme de muraille,
et nous retrouverons la douce Vierge Marie, nous retrouverons le Seigneur, nous
retrouverons les saints. Force ce mur, franchis-le; tu es sauvé ! Ta foi t'a guéri.
(Mt 4,22).
Si tu es entouré d'ennemis et si ton âme est plongée dans la douleur,
implore le secours de la Reine du ciel, la très sainte Vierge, Mère de Dieu. Ce
n'est pas en vain que nous l'appelons Reine. Ce titre lui appartient de droit.
Son pouvoir suprême s'étend sur toutes les forces qui nous sont hostiles, et
elle nous sauve par sa puissance de leur persécution, car nous constituons,
tout indignes que nous sommes, l'héritage qui lui est dévolu.
Si la très sainte Reine et Mère de Dieu, par l'effet de son union à
Dieu, et par son incomparable coopération aux oeuvres du Maître suprême de
l'univers, secourt promptement tous ceux qui le lui demandent avec foi et avec
espérance, si elle les délivre de tout mal et exauce leurs prières, dans tout
ce qui est utile pour leur salut, combien plus cela est vrai du Seigneur ! Il
n'y a qu'une condition pour obtenir de Lui toutes ses faveurs, et cette
condition la voici : Ne sois pas incrédule, ne sois pas froid et dur comme une
pierre envers Lui, mais fais preuve envers Lui d'une foi ardente et de
gratitude pour ses bienfaits et prouve un repentir sincère de tes péchés, ainsi
qu'un amour profond pour ton Sauveur, uni au Père et au saint Esprit. Pense
seulement a quel point le Sauveur t'a profondément aimé.
Et le glaive percera votre âme, afin que les pensées cachées au fond des
coeurs d'un grand nombre soient révélées. (Luc 35). Ces paroles de l'Écriture
se sont accomplies à la lettre et dans toute leur force, relativement à la Mère
de Dieu, elles s'accomplissent aussi pour les hommes bons et pieux, dont le
coeur se trouve soudain transpercé par le glaive de la persécution, afin que
les pensées du coeur de ceux qui sont en rapport avec eux soient révélées. Cela
signifie que le Seigneur les met parfois dans de tels rapports avec d'autres
personnes, qui cachent dans l'âme une très grande malice sans la montrer, que
celles-ci révèlent ce mal malgré elles, comme un poison qui s'extravase d'un
vase trop plein. Leur bouche commence à parler, et le mal s'en précipite comme
un torrent ou comme un fleuve. C'est alors que ces personnes commencent à
commettre des actions indignes du nom d'homme qu'elles portent, et ce n'est
qu'alors qu'on découvre de quelle nature sont ces hommes, que l'on croyait être
des gens d'esprit, d'éducation et dignes d'estime.
Pourquoi la croix nous inspire-t-elle une si grande vénération que nous
la mentionnons dans nos prières après l'invocation de la très sainte Vierge,
mais avant d'invoquer les puissances célestes ? Parce que, après les
Souffrances du Sauveur, la croix est devenue le symbole du Fils de l'homme;
c'est-à-dire, elle nous représente le Fils de Dieu qui S'est incarné et qui
S'est voué aux souffrances pour nous sauver. C'est sur la
croix que Jésus s'est offert Lui-même en sacrifice à Dieu le Père pour
expier nos péchés, c'est sur la croix et par la croix qu'Il nous a sauvé de
l'esclavage du démon, et c'est pour cette raison qu'elle nous inspire une si
grande vénération. Par conséquent elle constitue pour les fidèles une grande
force qui nous délivre de tout mal et surtout des maléfices de nos ennemis
invisibles.
L'effet merveilleux que la sainte Croix produit sur notre âme ravagée
par le venin du mal, nous persuade jusqu'à l'évidence :
1° que nous avons réellement une âme, que cette âme est un être
spirituel;
2° que nous sommes entourés de méchants esprits, dont le seul contact
est mortel pour notre âme;
3° que notre Seigneur Jésus Christ existe, qu'Il est Dieu, et qu'Il est
toujours avec nous, en raison même de sa Divinité,
4° qu'Il a effectivement accompli sur la croix l'oeuvre de notre salut,
par le mérite de ses Souffrances et de sa Mort, et qu'Il a détruit par la vertu
de cette croix la puissance du démon. Oh ! combien de preuves nous donnent en
faveur de notre foi les seuls effets merveilleux que nous obtenons par la vertu
de la sainte croix ! Gloire soit à jamais rendue à la religion chrétienne !
Les anges ne peuvent pas concevoir et ne cessent d'admirer la Sagesse,
la Bonté et la Toute-puissance que le Seigneur nous a prouvées, en prenant un
Corps de chair dans le sein de la sainte Vierge Marie. Tous les cortèges des
anges ont été saisis d'admiration pour l'oeuvre sublime de votre Incarnation, à
la vue de l'inaccessible Dieu qui S'est fait homme accessible a tous. Gloire à
votre Bonté ! Gloire à votre Générosité ! Gloire à votre Sagesse ! Gloire à
votre Puissance !
Par son Incarnation, le Seigneur nous a initiés à tous les mystères de
la foi qui étaient inconnus ou peu connus dans l'Ancien Testament. Par son
Incarnation, nous autres, misérables pécheurs, nous avons reçu la grâce de son
très pur Corps et de son Sang, nous nous unissons intimement à Lui et il réside
en nous, de même que nous résidons en lui. Par son Incarnation, la très sainte
Vierge Marie est devenue notre puissante Protectrice et notre Refuge qui nous
sauve des péchés, des malheurs et des adversités, en priant pour nous jour et
nuit. Elle est devenue notre Reine et Souveraine, dont la puissance détruit
tous nos ennemis
visibles et invisibles, et en même temps nous avons en elle notre Mère
par la grâce, selon les paroles du Seigneur adressées sur la croix à son
disciple Jean : Voilà votre mère; et à elle-même : Voici votre fils. (Jn
19,27).
Si nos anges gardiens ne nous gardaient pas des embûches du démon, oh !
que de fois nous serions tombés de péché en péché ! Les esprits du mal se
plaisent à nos tourments : aussi quelle violence n'auraient-ils pas déployée
pour nous torturer. C'est ce qui arrive si quelquefois le Seigneur permet à
notre ange gardien de nous quitter, et de donner pleine liberté aux maléfices
du démon. Oui, les anges de la paix, nos fidèles conseillers et les gardiens de
notre âme et de notre corps, sont toujours avec nous, à moins que nous ne les
éloignions par les abominations de la luxure, de l'orgueil, du doute et de
l'incrédulité. Nous sentons, pour ainsi dire, qu'ils nous couvrent des ailes de
leur gloire immatérielle, et seulement nous ne les voyons pas. Les bonnes
pensées, les bonnes intentions, les paroles et les actions qui tendent au bien,
ce sont eux qui nous les inspirent.
Le Seigneur gardera non seulement tous les os (Ps 30,21), mais même les
images, les images des saints et des justes, qu'Il ne laisse pas périr dans la
putréfaction, dans le mépris et l'abandon, mais qu'Il glorifie par des
miracles, comme nous le disent les récits sur les apparitions des icônes
miraculeuses, surtout celles de la très sainte Vierge, notre Reine du ciel et
Mère de Dieu. Voilà à quel point l'image de l'homme, surtout d'un homme saint,
cette coupe bénie de la grâce, est chère au Seigneur. Il opère par cette icône
des miracles et prodigue une force invisible qui guérit et qui console.
Beaucoup d'entre nous se livrent souvent à la vanité, à des illusions
insensées, à des moments où notre préoccupation aurait dû se porter sur ce
qu'il y a de plus sublime, de plus important dans la foi ! Voyez cet homme : il
reste là, devant les icônes de notre Seigneur, de la sainte Vierge, d'un ange,
d'un archange, d'un saint ou d'un corps des saints, et souvent au lieu de se
sentir porté à la prière, au lieu de se détacher de toute préoccupation
terrestre, le voilà qui fait mentalement ses comptes et calculs, qui énumère
ses revenus et ses dépenses, qui se réjouit d'un bénéfice qu'il a su gagner
dans telle affaire ou qui s'afflige d'un insuccès. Quant au profit ou à une
perte de nature morale, il n'y songe même pas. Ou bien, il pense du mal de son
prochain, et se plaît même à augmenter ses faiblesses, à le soupçonner, à
l'envier, à l'accuser. Ou bien encore, pendant l'office divin, il se met à
examiner les personnes environnantes, leurs toilettes, leurs traits, à chercher
des yeux celles qui lui plaisent ou qui lui déplaisent, à faire des projets
pour la journée qui commence, à penser comment il en disposera, chez qui il se
rendra, où il ira s'amuser, et ainsi de suite.
Souvent ces idées lui surviennent même au moment où s'accomplit le saint
et sublime mystère de l'eucharistie, devant le très pur Corps et le très pur
Sang de notre Seigneur, lorsque nous devons entièrement nous recueillir en
Dieu, concentrer toutes nos pensées sur le mystère de notre rédemption, qui
nous a délivrés du péché, de la malédiction et de la mort éternelle, de même
que sur le mystère de notre sanctification en Jésus Christ. Oh ! à quel degré
de défaillance et de mondanité sommes-nous arrivés ! Et tout cela, pourquoi ?
Parce que nous négligeons la question de notre salut, parce que nous n'y
pensons pas, parce que nous manquons de fermeté dans notre foi en l'éternité,
ou même encore plus parce que nous n'y croyons pas du tout.
Les saints sont grands par l'élévation de leur âme, par leur foi, par la
fermeté de leur espérance en Dieu et par l'ardeur de leur amour pour Dieu, pour
lequel ils ont renoncé à tout ce qui tient de la terre. Oh ! que nous sommes
insignifiants et petits vis-à-vis d'eux; combien nous leur ressemblons peu !
Ils sont sublimes par leurs actes d'abstinence, de veille, de jeûne, de prière
incessante, de pratique de la parole divine et de méditation. Oh ! combien nous
leur ressemblons peu ! Mais au moins combien ne devons-nous pas les honorer !
Avec quelle vénération ne devons-nous pas leur demander de prier pour nous !
Aussi nous ne devons nous permettre dans aucun cas de nous adresser à eux avec légèreté
ou irrévérence, car nous ne devons pas oublier qu'ils sont déifiés, unis à la
Divinité.
Comment faut-il passer les jours de fête ? Nous fêtons ou un événement
sublime, dont le résultat a été merveilleux pour les croyants, ou le souvenir
glorieux d'une personne, par exemple : le Seigneur, la Sainte Vierge, les
anges, les saints, personnes sacrées dont l'intervention a été une source de
bienfaits pour le genre humain et pour l'Église de Dieu en général. Il faut
approfondir l'histoire de l'événement ou de la personne, se rapprocher dans son
coeur de l'un et de l'autre, en devenir le contemporain, s'y assimiler;
autrement la fête sera imparfaite et désagréable à Dieu. Les fêtes doivent
influer sur notre vie, ranimer notre coeur, réchauffer notre foi aux biens
futurs, et perfectionner la sainteté des bonnes moeurs. Cependant nous passons
les jours de fête plutôt dans le péché; nous les voyons arriver sans nous
donner la peine de réfléchir sur leur importance, et nous les rencontrons d'un
coeur incrédule et froids et nullement préparé à ressentir les grands bienfaits
que Dieu nous a accordés dans la personne ou dans l'événement que l'Église nous
prescrit de fêter.
§ 2. - DE LA MORT ET DE L'ETÉRNITÉ
Le temps coule sans s'arrêter. Mon corps change et
dépérit à vue d'oeil, à mesure que j'avance en âge, et enfin il finit par
disparaître. Le globe terrestre, comme son mouvement le démontre, semblable à
une horloge que l'on aurait montée,décrit son éclipse dans l'espace infini avec
une rapidité incroyable, comme s'il voulait arriver le plus vite possible à la
fin de la route qui lui a été tracée dans l'immensité. Tout change, tout passe.
Ou donc se trouve l'immuable, le perpétuel ? Il se trouve dans la puissance qui
met en mouvement toutes les choses et qui les dirige vers leur but respectif.
Il se trouve dans l'origine, dans la cause première de tout ce qui a été crée
avec tant de variété. Ce principe premier est simple; il n'est pas composé de
parties, et par conséquent impérissable et éternel. Il est dans les esprits des
anges et des hommes crées à l'image de la cause première. Tout le reste de ce
qui nous entoure n'a pas plus d'existence qu'une bulle de savon. Si je
m'exprime ainsi, ce n'est pas pour abaisser la grandeur de la création, mais
pour fixer un point de comparaison entre le monde purement matériel et les
esprits bienheureux.
Un jour viendra ou ces mains qui aiment à prendre tout ce qu'on leur
donne, seront croisées sur la poitrine et ne prendront plus rien. Ces jambes et
ces pieds qui aiment à marcher dans le mal et qui n'aiment pas à rester debout
ou à genoux pendant la prière, seront étendus pour l'éternité et ne feront plus
un pas. Ces yeux qui aimaient à regarder avec envie le bonheur du prochain, se
fermeront et leur feu s'éteindra pour toujours. Ces oreilles qui s'ouvrirent si
souvent avec plaisir aux chatouillements de la médisance et de la calomnie,
n'entendront plus rien; aucun tonnerre ne les réveillera plus. Elles
n'entendront que la trompette de l'ange qui sonnera à la résurrection des
morts, et alors notre corps impérissable sera ressuscité ou pour Ia
résurrection de la vie ou pour Ia résurrection du jugement. (Jn 5,29). Que
restera-t-il donc en nous de vivant après la mort, et quel doit être l'objet de
toutes nos préoccupations pendant notre vie ? C'est cette partie de nous-même
que nous appelons de notre vivant notre coeur, c'est-à-dire l'homme intérieur
qui vit en nous, ou autrement notre âme, c'est elle qui doit être l'objet de
nos soins. C'est votre coeur que vous devez purifier, pendant la durée de toute
votre vie, afin que votre âme soit ensuite capable de voir Dieu. Quant à notre
corps avec ses besoins, n'en prenez soin qu'autant que cela est nécessaire pour
maintenir votre santé, vos forces physiques et la propreté. Tout devra subir la
mort, tout sera emporté par la terre. Faites donc tout votre possible pour
perfectionner en vous ce qui aime et ce qui hait, ce qui vous tranquillise et
ce qui vous inquiète, ce qui vous réjouit et ce qui vous afflige. Perfectionnez
votre coeur ou l'homme intérieur, le principe qui pense et qui réfléchit.
Le royaume de la vie et le royaume de la mort marchent l'un à côté de
l'autre; je dis marchent, parce que j'emploie ce mot de royaume dans son sens
spirituel. Le chef du premier, c'est-à-dire du royaume de la vie, est Jésus
Christ, et celui qui est avec Lui se trouve indubitablement dans la région de
la vie. Le chef du second, c'est-à-dire du royaume de la mort, est le prince de
la puissance de l'air, le démon avec les esprits du mal qui lui obéissent et
dont le nombre est si grand qu'il surpasse infiniment le nombre de tous les
hommes qui habitent la terre. Ces enfants de la mort - les sujets du prince de
l'air - font une guerre acharnée aux fils de la vie, c'est-à-dire aux chrétiens
fidèles et usent de tous les artifices, de toute leur ruse pour les attirer à
eux par la convoitise de la chair, par celle des yeux et par l'orgueil mondain;
car c'est par l'effet de nos péchés, à moins que nous ne nous en repentions,
que nous passons de leur côté. Quant à ceux pour lesquels le péché est pour
ainsi dire un besoin de chaque jour, qui boivent l'iniquité comme de l'eau,
l'esprit du mal ne s'en occupe pas, parce qu'il les tient déjà en son pouvoir,
tant qu'ils vivent dans l'insouciance du bien de leurs âmes. Mais dès que ces
pauvres coupables se tournent vers Dieu, dès qu'ils confessent leurs fautes
volontaires et involontaires, oh ! alors la guerre éclate, les armées de Satan
se soulèvent et commencent une lutte incessante ! Ce que je viens de dire vous
montre combien il est indispensable de chercher Jésus Christ, le Chef de la
vie, le Vainqueur de l'enfer et de la mort.
Que sera-t-il de nous dans l'autre vie, lorsque tout ce qui nous réjouit
dans ce monde, la richesse, les honneurs, les plaisirs de la table, les
vêtements, les demeures somptueuses et toutes les choses qui nous attirent
auront disparu pour nous, lorsque tout cela ne sera pour nous qu'un rêve, et
lorsqu'il nous sera demandé compte de nos actes de tempérance, de pureté, de
douceur, d'humilité, de charité, de patience, d'obéissance, etc. ?
Limite probable imposée à l'existence du monde visible et
particulièrement a celle de l'humanité. - Le monde visible est, pour ainsi
dire, le point d'appui des êtres corporels, afin qu'ils ne disparaissent pas
dans l'immensité. - L'Écriture sainte nous offre un témoignage plus exact et
plus clair sur le monde visible que le monde visible lui-même ou la disposition
des différentes couches de la terre. Les documents gravés par la nature dans
les entrailles de la terre sont inertes et muets et n'expriment rien de précis.
Ou étais-tu, homme, quand je jetais les fondements de la terre ? Étais-tu
auprès de Dieu lorsqu'Il érigeait l'univers ? Qui seconde l'Esprit du Seigneur
? Qui est entré dans son conseil ? Qui l'a conduit ? Et vous, ô géologues, vous
vous vantez d'avoir mesuré l'esprit du Seigneur dans la formation des couches
de la terre, et vous l'affirmez contrairement aux Écritures sacrées ! Vous
ajoutez plus de foi aux lettres mortes des couches terrestres inanimées qu'aux
paroles du grand prophète Moise qui a été inspiré de Dieu et qui a vu Dieu !
§ 3. - DE L'UNION AVEC DIEU.
À quoi peut-on connaître qu'un chrétien est en union
avec le Christ ? On le connaît quand ce chrétien a souvent recours à Jésus
Christ, quand il prononce fréquemment ce nom si doux pour l'invoquer, quand son
coeur se tourne souvent vers Lui, pour faire appel à son secours. En effet, il
est naturel que le croyant manifeste sa foi en Jésus et par la bouche et par le
regard, car il sait que sans Jésus il est impuissant et sans joie. Il est rare,
très rare, que l'homme qui reste loin du Christ porte ses pensées vers le
Christ; et si cela lui arrive, il le fait, mais sans foi, sans sincérité, sans
amour, mais en quelque sorte par hasard ou par nécessité, comme s'il
s'adressait à quelqu'un qu'il ne connaît que fort peu, dont la vue ne donne à
son coeur aucune joie, aucune douceur, aucun charme, aucun attrait. Au
contraire, nous remarquons que ceux qui sont en union avec le Christ n'ont pas
une pensée à laquelle Jésus ne soit pas associé, et qu'ils ne vivent que de
lui. Le Christ est leur souffle, leur nourriture, leur demeure, en un mot,
tout; ils s'attachent à Lui pour ainsi dire par tout leur être, à cause de la
douceur de son Nom et de l'attachement de sa grâce, selon la parole du prophète
: mon âme s'est attachée à Vous. (Ps 62,8). Et ce contact intime les remplit
d'une félicité inénarrable que le monde ignore. Tels sont les indices auxquels
nous reconnaissons ceux qui ont trouvé Jésus, et ceux qui ne l'ont pas encore
trouvé . Ces derniers n'ayant pas de foi sincère, passent leur vie à ne se
préoccuper que des choses du monde, cherchant à s'amuser, à bien boire et à
bien manger, à s'habiller avec goût, à satisfaire leur bon plaisir, à tuer le
temps dont ils ne savent que faire, ce temps qui les cherche de son côté et
fuit rapidement à leurs yeux, les jours succédant aux jours, les nuits aux
nuits, las mois aux mois, les années aux années; jusqu'à ce que retentisse
enfin l'heure dernière, l'heure terrible où il leur sera dit : arrêtez; le
cours de vos jours est terminé, votre temps est perdu, vos péchés et vos
iniquités sont là devant vous, formant comme une montagne qui va s'écrouler sur
vous et vous écraser de son poids dans l'éternité.
Plus le moyen qui nous unit à Dieu est sûr et énergique, tel que la
prière et la pénitence, plus l'adversaire de Dieu et le nôtre s'efforce de le
détruire. Il n'y a rien qu'il néglige; il profite de notre caresse, de la
faiblesse de notre âme, de notre attachement aux liens et aux soucis de ce
monde, de notre scepticisme si fréquent chez quelques-uns; de notre peu de foi
ou de son absence totale; des pensées impures, méchantes et blasphématoires, de
l'angoisse du coeur, de I'obscurcissement de la pensée; tout enfin est mis à
profit par l'ennemi chez les personnes inattentives, pour mettre un obstacle à
la prière, cette échelle qui nous permet de monter jusqu'à Dieu. De là vient
qu'il y a si peu de personnes qui prient sincèrement et avec ferveur, et qu'il
y a tant de chrétiens qui font très rarement leurs Pâques. La moitié même de
ceux-ci ne les auraient peut-être pas faites, si notre loi civile n'obligeait
chacun à se confesser et à communier annuellement. Bien des gens le savent par
l'expérience.
Celui qui est uni à Dieu aime inévitablement et par un effet pour ainsi
dire tout naturel son prochain, parce que ce dernier est l'image de Dieu et en
même temps enfant de Dieu, s'il est chrétien, membre de Jésus Christ,
Homme-Dieu, et son membre à lui : parce que nous sommes membres les uns des
autres (Eph 5,30); parce que nous sommes les membres de son Corps, formés de sa
Chair et de ses Os (1 Cor 6,17). Tout ce qui tient à la terre, la nourriture,
la boisson, le plaisir et la beauté terrestre, le vêtement, la gloire, lui est
indifférent, car il ne peut pas servir deux maîtres. Son coeur est uni au
Seigneur, il est plongé en lui, englouti par l'amour dont il déborde pour lui,
et tout ce qui tient à la terre, tout le charme de ce monde, disparaît pour lui
dans le Seigneur. Tout disparaît jusqu'à son propre coeur, le coeur de chair,
coupable et rempli de passions, qui s'évanouit en s'identifiant avec Dieu dans
un même esprit : mon coeur est disparu; mais celui qui s'unit au Seigneur est
un même esprit avec lui (1 Cor 6,17). Restant uni au Seigneur, iIl voit tout à
la vraie lumière, et apprend à connaître le véritable prix des choses de la
terre et du ciel, surtout la vanité, le néant de tout ce qui est matière et la
vérité, la supériorité infinie, l'éternité des biens spirituels. Il trouve en
Dieu la purification des péchés, la sainteté perdue, la paix, le soulagement,
la véritable liberté, la joie dans l'Esprit saint. Il trouve en Dieu la
nourriture et le breuvage spirituel, propres à sa nature, la douceur spirituelle,
le vêtement spirituel, lumineux, splendide, blanc comme la neige, et la beauté
inénarrable qu'il pourra admirer éternellement, ainsi que la lumière
inaccessible, dont il sera éternellement environné, et une demeure, en harmonie
avec les besoins de son âme, qui deviendra elle-même une demeure où résidera la
sainte Trinité.
Notre union avec Dieu dans la vie à venir et dans la lumière, dans la
paix, dans la joie, dans la félicité qui en résulteront pour nous, nous en
avons l'avant-goût ici-bas. Après la prière, quand notre âme revient en quelque
sorte d'une visite au Seigneur et d'une intime union avec Lui, nous sentons un
bien-être, une tranquillité, une légèreté, une joie, comme des enfants
réchauffés au sein de leur mère; ou, pour mieux dire, nous éprouvons ce
bien-être inexprimable de Pierre devant la transfiguration de Jésus : Il est
bon que nous soyons ici. (Luc 9,33). Persiste donc dans ton labeur sans
discontinuer, en vue de ta félicité infinie future, dont tu ressens un
avant-goût, même ici-bas; mais n'oublie pas que nous ne voyons Dieu maintenant
que comme dans un miroir et sous des images obscures (1 Cor 13,12). Quel sera
notre bien-être lorsque nous serons en réalité intimement unis à Dieu, lorsque
les images et les ombres disparaîtront, et que le règne de la Vérité et de la
vue directe commencera ? Oh ! nous devons jusqu'à l'heure de notre mort faire
tous nos efforts pour obtenir la félicité future et notre union future avec
Dieu !
Notre vie est simple, car elle se trouve dans Jésus Christ, le Fils de
Dieu, l'Être supérieurement simple, éternel, qui n'a pas eu de commencement.
Dieu vous a donné la vie éternelle, et cette vie est dans son Fils. (1 Jn
5,11). Pourquoi donc cherchons-nous la vie dans les hommes, dans les plaisirs,
dans l'argent, dans les honneurs, dans les parures et dans tant d'autres choses
qui méritent le mépris ? La vie du coeur n'est pas dans ces choses: elles sont
les synonymes du tourment, de la désolation et de la mort de l'âme ! Pourquoi
abandonnons-nous la source des eaux vives, le Seigneur, et creusons-nous des
citernes, fosses crevassées qui ne peuvent retenir l'eau. (Jer 2,15). Pourquoi
sommes-nous dans une agitation, dans un mouvement continuel ? Pourquoi
éprouvons-nous cette soif des plaisirs, de l'argent, des honneurs, des parures
et d'autres choses pareilles ? Tout cela est mort, pourriture, cadavre. Le
prince de la mort le démon, est un être simple lui aussi; aussi use-t-il de
moyens fort simples pour nous entraîner dans ses filets et nous frapper à mort.
Nous devons être par conséquent toujours sur le qui-vive, et repousser tout
attachement aux choses de ce monde, afin d'éviter les coups de notre ennemi.
Lorsque nous avons Jésus dans notre coeur, nous sommes contents de tout;
la gêne est pour nous l'aisance la plus parfaite, I'amertume est une douceur la
misère une richesse, la faim une satiété, l'affliction une joie ! Mais lorsque
Jésus ne se trouve pas dans notre coeur, nous sommes mécontents de tout : rien
ne nous rend heureux, ni la santé, ni le confort, ni les rangs, ni les
honneurs, ni les plaisirs, ni les palais, ni l'abondance d'une table pourvue de
plats et de vins de toute espèce, ni la richesse de la toilette, en un mot
rien. Ah ! combien Jésus, le Dispensateur de la vie et notre Sauveur, est
nécessaire à l'homme ! Et pour qu'Il entre en nous, combien il est utile
d'avoir soif, d'avoir faim, de dormir peu, de s'habiller simplement, de tout
supporter tranquillement, avec patience et sans rancune. Le persécuteur de nos
âmes, le démon, nous épie à chaque moment, tâchant de souiller notre âme par un
péché ou par une passion, de nous faire prendre une habitude coupable et
d'augmenter les obstacles dans la voie de notre salut. Il s'efforce surtout de
nous inspirer l'indifférence envers Dieu, envers tout ce qui est saint, envers
l'Église, envers l'éternité et envers l'humanité.
Quel est le but de notre vie sur la terre, mes frères ? Ce but, c'est
d'aller nous reposer en Dieu, après avoir traversé toutes les épreuves qui nous
sont envoyées sous forme d'afflictions et de misères terrestres, et, après nous
être sanctifiés toujours de plus en plus par la vertu des sacrements. Oui,
d'aller nous reposer en Dieu, car Dieu est le repos de notre esprit. C'est
pourquoi nous chantons en priant pour les morts : Seigneur, donnez le repos à
l'âme de votre serviteur. Nous demandons pour le décédé le repos, cet objectif
de tous les désirs, et nous le demandons à Dieu. Par conséquent est-il
raisonnable de s'affliger outre mesure de la perte de nos morts ? Venez à Moi,
vous tous qui êtes chargés, et Je vous soulagerai, dit le Seigneur. Et nos
défunts, morts d'une mort chrétienne, arrivent à cet appel du repos. Pourquoi
donc nous affliger ?
Il y a un sentiment qui rend la paix à ma pensée et à mon coeur : je
veux l'écrire ici pour qu'il reste toujours présent à ma mémoire et pour qu'il
me soutienne au milieu des labeurs et des soucis de la vie ! Quel est ce
sentiment ? C'est la maxime chrétienne, si pleine d'une vive espérance et d'une
force pacifiante si miraculeuse : Tout est pour moi dans le Seigneur. Voilà mon
trésor inappréciable ! Voilà les paroles précieuses qui peuvent rendre l'homme
tranquille dans n'importe quelle position, avec lesquelles on peut être riche
quand on est pauvre, généreux quand on est riche, riant envers les hommes, et
toujours plein d'espérance malgré nos péchés. Tout est pour moi dans le
Seigneur. C'est Lui qui est ma foi, mon espérance et mon amour, mon courage, ma
force, ma paix, ma joie, ma richesse, ma nourriture, ma boisson, mon vêtement,
ma vie, en un mot, tout. Oui, chrétien ! Le Seigneur est tout pour toi : sois
donc aussi tout pour le Seigneur. Or, puisque tout ton trésor se trouve dans
ton coeur et dans ta volonté, et puisque le Seigneur te demande ton coeur, en
disant : Mon fils, donne-moi ton coeur, (Prov 23,26), tu dois, afin d'obéir à
sa Volonté toujours clémente et parfaite, renoncer à agir selon ta volonté
corrompue, passionnée et rebelle. Renonce à ta volonté, reconnais uniquement la
Volonté de Dieu et répète : Que votre Volonté, non la mienne, soit faite.
Le Seigneur est ma vie ici-bas; le Seigneur est ma délivrance de la mort
éternelle; le Seigneur est ma vie sans fin au ciel; le Seigneur est ma
purification et la libération de mes péchés sans nombre; Il est ma
sanctification. Le Seigneur est ma force aux moments de ma faiblesse, mon
soulagement dans l'angoisse, mon espérance dans le découragement et dans la
détresse; le Seigneur est le feu vivifiant qui réchauffe ma froideur; le
Seigneur est ma lumière dans l'obscurité, ma paix dans le trouble; le Seigneur
est mon défenseur dans les tentations. Il est ma pensée, mon désir, mon
activité; il est le flambeau de mon âme et de mon corps, ma nourriture, ma
boisson, mon vêtement, mon bouclier, mon armure. Le Seigneur pour moi est tout.
Ô mon âme, ne cesse pas d'aimer et de remercier le Seigneur ! Mon âme, bénis le
Seigneur et que tout ce qui est en moi bénisse son saint nom. Mon âme, bénis le
Seigneur et garde-toi d'oublier ses innombrables bienFaits. C'est lui qui
pardonne toutes tes iniquités, lui qui guérit toutes tes infirmités; c'est Lui
qui rachète la vie de la mort, lui qui te couronne dans sa miséricorde et dans
ses compatissantes bontés; c'est lui qui rassasie de biens ton désir. (Ps 102).
La vie a venir. - C'est l'état d'une complète pureté où doivent arriver
nos âmes par le chemin d'une graduelle purification. Mais la plupart du temps,
ce chemin est obscurci et obstrué par le péché et par le souffle du démon.
Cependant quelquefois par l'effet de la grâce divine, il s'éclaire et alors l'âme
voit Dieu auquel elle s'unit en toute sincérité par la prière et par le
sacrement de la communion.
Accordez-moi, Seigneur, la grâce de pouvoir aimer chacun de mes frères
comme moi-même, de ne jamais éprouver de rancune contre eux et de ne pas
travailler pour le démon. Faites que je puisse crucifier mon amour-propre, mon
orgueil, ma cupidité, mon incrédulité et mes autres passions. Faites que le mot
: amour mutuel soit votre nom, que nous ayons une foi ferme en vous et la
conviction que vous nous tenez lieu de tout. Soyez, ô mon Dieu, le seul Dieu de
notre coeur ! Faites que nous n'en ayons pas d'autres, faites que nous
conservions l'union dans l'amour, selon votre commandement, et que nous
méprisions comme une poussière tout ce qui tend à nous désunir et à nous
éloigner de l'amour ! Amen ! Ainsi soit-il !
SOURCE : http://livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Cronstadt/communion.htm
Saint John of Kronstadt, born as Ivan Ilyitch Sergieff, the son of poor
peasant folk, was born on the 19th of October 1829 in the little village of
Soura, in the province of Arkhangelsk in the far north of Russia. His parents,
poor and simple though they were, took great pains with his education, both
spiritual and temporal. From school, where he had gone to the top of his class,
he went to the seminary. From there he was sent in 1851, at government expense,
to the Theological Academy of Saint Petersburg. While he was there his father
died, and it was with great thankfulness to God that he accepted the post of
registrar.
Having considered becoming a monk, and going to eastern Siberia as a
missionary, he came to the conclusion that there were many people around him as
unenlightened as any pagan, and he decided to work for their salvation, after a
dream in answer to prayer, in which he saw himself officiating in some unknown
cathedral.
Soon after completing his studies he married Elisabeth, daughter of the Archpriest
K. P. Nevitzki, and he was ordained priest in December 1855. Appointed as
assistant priest at Saint Andrew's Cathedral, Kronstadt, when he entered it for
the first time he recognized it as the church he had seen in his dream; and
there, first as curate, and afterwards as rector, he served throughout the
fifty-three years of his ministry. Cherishing a lofty ideal of the priestly
vocation, he continued nightly to study and pray that he might perfect himself
in it, while during the day he devoted himself to the many poor of his parish.
Father John, whose predecessors, apparently, had hardly even dared to
penetrate the worst parts of the town, spent much of his time there, striving
to heal bodies and souls alike, attracting to himself first the children, and
then, through them, their parents. Often he found no time to eat until the late
evening, and even then he would sometimes be summoned out again, and not return
before the small hours; he gave away his own shoes, he gave away the
housekeeping money: his wife gradually accustomed herself to it, and finally
became something like his keeper.
In 1857 he was invited to teach the scripture in the municipal school at
Kronstadt, and he accepted with joy, for he loved children, and always took
great pains with them. When his fame had spread and he was constantly visiting
Saint Petersburg, then to his own, his colleagues and pupils great regret, he
was forced to abandon his teaching post.
Another object of Father John's concern and labor was the removal of the
widespread poverty that afflicted Kronstadt. At first he gave these beggars
money for food and shelter, but he soon came to see that this was not merely
useless, but positively harmful. In 1868 he conceived the idea of founding a
House of Industry, comprising a number of workshops, a dormitory, a refectory,
a dispensary, and a primary school. He formed a committee, and appealed for
funds. His appeal was answered by rich and poor from all over Russia, and the
House of Industry was founded in 1873. Father John administered a total of over
$25,000 a year in numerous charities, half of it in Kronstadt.
There is an attractive power in the personality of Father John of
Kronstadt, in his portrait, the magnetism of his writings, and in his diary My
Life in Christ. There is a peaceful and consoling quality in the notes of
his diary, not to mention the very subjects of his talks, which spiritually
exalt, uplift, and strengthen.
SOURCE : http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kronstadt
The life of
the pastor of Kronstadt
On October
19, 1829, in the far north of Russia, a weak and sickly child, named John
(Ioann), was born in the family of Ilia Sergiyev, church reader in the
village of Sura in the Archangelsk province. This child was the future
luminary of Christ’s Church.
From his
earliest years Vanya went with his father to their poor and humble church,
served in the altar, loved the service books, became very pious. His favorite
book was the Holy Gospel. All of this became a firm religious foundation for
the boy in his later long and glorious life in Christ.
Learning came
very hard to Vanya in his childhood, which sorrowed him greatly, but also
served to spur him on to especially fervent prayers to God for help. And a
miracle occurred! Once, during his sojourn in his religious school, after a
fervent prayer during the night, the boy experienced a sudden shiver all over
his body, and it was as though a curtain fell from his eyes, as though his
mental sight opened up, and he experienced lightness and joy in his soul.
After that night the boy immediately began reading with great ease, began to
comprehend and memorize everything with the greatest facility. He finished
his school at the top of his class, graduated from the Archangelsk Seminary
in first place, and entered the St. Petersburg Religious Academy.
His spiritual
development proceeded even more successfully. In the academy St. John dreamed
of missionary work among the native tribes of North America and Siberia;
however, observation showed that the residents of St. Petersburg did not know
Christ any better than the aborigines of other countries. While pondering his
aspirations, St. John repeatedly saw a childhood vision: he saw himself as a
priest in a certain cathedral and accepted it as a sign from above. After
graduating from the academy in 1855, St. John was ordained a priest. Upon
first entering the St. Andrew Cathedral in Kronstadt, to which he had been
assigned, he stood stock-still on the threshold: this was the very church that
had been revealed to him many years before in his childhood vision! St. John
spent the rest of his life and pastoral activity in Kronstadt. Many people
even forgot St. John’s surname (Sergiyev), and even he himself signed as John
of Kronstadt.
After graduating
from the academy, St. John wrote in his diary: “I’ve learned a great deal.
Glory to Thee, O Lord! But I wish to know more. My spirit thirsts for
knowledge. My heart is not satisfied, not sated. I am studying and will
continue to study,” Stepping onto the path of independent life with such
sentiments, the young pastor continued his book learning with great zeal. But
already from the very first days of his priesthood St. John began his
spiritual labor of engaging in charitable deeds of love, deliberately keeping
them secret. Although afterwards he would say that he was not leading an
ascetic life, these words were spoken by him out of deep humility. In
reality, while concealing from people his spiritual feats, St. John was the
greatest ascetic, and he began implementing the knowledge of conquering the
self from the first days of his priesthood. Prayer and fasting constituted
the foundation of his spiritual labors, as well as abstinence, and that not
only in food, but also in all emotions. The daily serving of the liturgy
alone, which St. John took on as a rule, required extensive fasting according
to Orthodox church rule. However, St. John did not limit himself to daily
services, constant prayer at all times and in all places, divine
contemplation, fasting, and abstinence. From his first days as a priest he
dedicated himself to serving the poor and the destitute, always sought them
out and found them, helped them, took care of the ill, comforted those in
despair, bringing to all not only the words of Christ, but also His living
love and light. “There are many happy families without us, Liza. Let us
dedicate ourselves to serving God,” – St. John, virginal to the end of his
days, would say to his wife Elizabeth.
Daily St.
John went among the poor and the destitute of Kronstadt, spoke with them,
comforted them, looked after the sick, and helped them financially according
to his resources. Actually not even according to resources, but way beyond
them, for quite often the young pastor came home without his overcoat or
boots, having given them away to the poor. All of this became a habit, a
rule; but such a life gave rise to attacks upon St. John from all sides. He
was chastised by his own family, he was mocked by others, he was berated by
his spiritual superiors. For some reason the uniqueness of the young priest’s
Christian life irritated those around him. He was called a fool-for-Christ.
The diocesan administration forbad his salary to be given into his hands
(because, upon receiving it, he gave it away to the poor to the very last
penny), called him in for explanations. But St. John bravely endured all
these trials without changing his lifestyle. And with the help of God he
triumphed over everyone and everything, and for all the things for which in
the first years of priesthood he had been mocked, abused, maligned, and
persecuted, – he was subsequently glorified, as it became understood that he
was a true disciple of Christ, a genuine pastor who gave his life for his
people. “One must love every person, both in his sin and in his shame… One
should not confuse the individual, who is an image of God, with the evil that
is within him.” Without such sentiments it would have been unlikely for St.
John to have been able to mollify those to whom he reached out – the beggars
of Kronstadt, most of whom had been sent out of the capital for drunkenness
and begging. Here St. John was met not only with rudeness, but often with
hostility, enmity, aggravation. St. John’s patience and love overcame
everything, and the results of his spiritual labors may be seen from the
following example, one of a great many, recounted in the letter of a simple
craftsman:
“At that time
I was 22-23 years of age. Now I am an old man, but I still remember well the
first time I saw batyushka. I had a family, two children. I worked and drank.
The family went hungry. My wife quietly begged on the side. We lived in a
ramshackle hut. One day I came home not too drunk and saw a young priest
sitting inside, holding my son in his arms and saying something to him very
lovingly. The child listened to him quite intently. It seemed to me that
batyushka looked like Christ in that picture called “The Blessing of the
Children.” At first I wanted to curse: why was he hanging around here?… but
batyushka’s loving and solemn eyes stopped me: I felt ashamed. I lowered my
eyes, while he continued to look at me, looking straight into my soul. He
began to talk. I cannot even hope to reproduce all that he said. He spoke
about my hut being like paradise, because wherever there are children, all is
light and warmth there, and that I should not trade this paradise for the
smoky atmosphere of a bar. He did not accuse me, – no, he kept excusing me,
only I did not feel like being excused… He left, while I just continued
sitting there quietly… I didn’t cry, although my soul was on the brink of
tears. My wife kept looking at me… And ever since that time I became a decent
man again…”
Such was the
faith in Christ and the love with which St. John burned from day to day, from
year to year, without a single thought for human glory and other worldly
vanity, preaching the light yoke of Christ to hard-working and burdened
people, abnegating his own self, wearing himself out with fasting and prayer,
drawing upon himself hostility and aggravation from envious and hardhearted
people.
In addition,
St. John was a wonderful preacher. He set himself the rule of reading a
sermon at every service. He did not seek eloquence, but spoke simply and
often without any special preparation. His sermons had a strong effect on the
common people. In reading these sermons in print, one is struck by their
depth of thought, extraordinary theological learning, and simplicity and
power of each word. All thoughts, all deeds, each minute of his life were
committed by St. John to the glory of God, so that it was not surprising that
his sermons were endowed with the strength of Christ.
Thus through
St. John – through his prayers and fasting, through his love-filled deeds,
and through his inspired words – the light of Christ illuminated the
embittered and wretched Russian people. In turn, these wretched people were
the first witnesses of his miraculous healings. The vagrants of Kronstadt
were the first to discover St. John’s holiness, but his discovery soon spread
all over Russia with the assistance of the righteous Paraskeva, who had been
sent to serve God’s servant St. John, who was still hidden from the world at
that time.
The gift of
miracle-working made St. John renowned far beyond the bounds of Russia. It is
totally impossible to enumerate all his miracles, a considerable number of
which concerned the poor and illiterate people, who were unable to describe
or publish what they had seen. Moreover, not all the press was sympathetic to
St. John either. The atheistic intelligentsia and its press suppressed news
of the manifestations of God’s power, while in 1905 they made use of the
freedom of the press to abuse and malign St. John. Nevertheless, many of his
miracles were recorded and retained in memory. The gravest illnesses, before
which medical people stood in total helplessness, were healed by his prayers
and placing of hands. The healings usually took place secretly (privately),
but sometimes the miracles occurred also in the presence of a multitude of people.
St. John healed all those who appealed to him, including Moslems, Jews,
foreigners from France, Italy, Switzerland, America, and other countries.
There remains an exact report of St. John’s own description of his very first
miracle. He described it to his fellow priests as follows: he once received
an appeal to pray for a sick person; St. John began to pray; and, as usual,
“I entrusted the sick one into God’s hands, asking the Lord to fulfill His
holy will in regard to the sick person.” But unexpectedly there appeared an
old woman whom St. John revered for her righteousness (this was the
above-mentioned Paraskeva) and demanded that St. John pray for the absolute
healing of the sick person. “I remember that I felt almost scared then,” said
St. John. “I thought to myself: how can I have such daring? However, the old
woman insisted and believed in the power of my prayer. Then I confessed my
lowliness and my sinfulness before the Lord, saw God’s will in this matter,
and began to plead for the sick person to be healed. He became well… Another
time the healing occurred again after my prayers. Then I saw in these two
cases the direct will of God, a new obedience for me from God – to pray for
all those who would ask it of me…”
From the
lives of the saints we know that the gift of miracle-working was given by God
to His saints as a reward for their great labors, their prayerful endeavors,
their fasting, deeds of love, compassion. We have seen that each day in the
life of St. John was a day of great spiritual labor. And for this the Lord
Jesus Christ, Whom he served so faithfully and zealously, glorified him.
St. John
spent almost 25 years in his spiritual labors known only to the common people
of the city of Kronstadt and partially St. Petersburg. He performed his labor
of love and his service to the Heavenly King with humility and meekness. And
it was not he, the ascetic who had given up the world and his own self, who
needed glory. “Not to us, not to us, Lord, but to Thy name give glory.” By
God’s special providence and through the previously-mentioned righteous
Paraskeva the glorification of St. John and the revelation of Christ’s
luminary to all of Russia took place. The Lord appointed St. John to be not
only the pastor of Kronstadt, but of all of Russia.
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The entire
believing part of Russia streamed to the miracle-worker. This glory, which to
many seemed enviable, was a new and very onerous burden for St. John.
Formerly, he himself used to go out to people solely within the bounds of his
city. Some small freedom of movement and unrestricted time remained. Thus,
for over 20 years St. John taught the Law of God in the city schools. Now
even this small iota of freedom disappeared. Thousands of people from all
ends of Russia daily arrived in Kronstadt, seeking help from St. John; he
received an even greater number of letters and telegrams. It was physically
impossible for one person to cope with such a number of requests; the need
arose for having secretaries, the teaching of the Law of God had to be
ceased, necessity dictated the institution of general confession as a rule
and private ones as an exception.
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In this
manner the second part of St. John’s life and pastoral activity outwardly
differed considerably from the first. Let us look closely at how St. John now
spent his time, in order to understand the burden and the majesty of his
spiritual labor. St. John got up at 3 A.M. and prepared for serving the
matins in the cathedral. For a brief while he took a turn around the garden
of his parish house, praying silently. Around 4 A.M. he went off to the
cathedral. At the gates of his house he was met by a waiting crowd of
pilgrims. He could speak individually with only a few of them. The majority
were content to just receive his blessing, kiss the hand of the
miracle-worker, touch his garments, catch his luminous gaze. At the cathedral
St. John was met by hundreds of local beggars, to whom he gave charity
according to established custom. At 4:00 began the matins, which St. John
served without curtailing a single hymn and read all the canons himself.
Before the beginning of the liturgy there was confession. Afterwards, without
leaving the church, St. John began to serve the liturgy. The cathedral, which
could hold up to 5,000 people, was usually full of the faithful, so that
communion took a long time, and the liturgy never ended before 12 noon.
During the service letters and telegrams were brought to St. John straight
into the altar, and he immediately read them and prayed over them. After the
service, surrounded by thousands of the faithful, St. John left the cathedral
and went to St. Petersburg in response to summons from countless numbers of
sick people, from whom he returned home not earlier than 12 midnight, sometimes
catching an hour of sleep on the train. And at 3 A.M. he got up again. Many
nights St. John did not go to sleep at all (he prayed instead), yet no one
ever saw him tired or drowsy. If we think carefully about the manner of life
that was led by St. John, we will readily understand that only by God’s
miracle could one live and work thus for decades. Such a life and such labors
were above human powers; they were supernatural. Only earthly angels and
celestial humans, as it is said of saints, can live like that.
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In spite of
being so busy, St. John found time to keep a spiritual diary, wherein he
recorded on a daily basis all the thoughts that came to him during prayer and
contemplation, as a result of the grace-filled illumination of his soul by
the Holy Spirit. These thoughts filled up an entire wonderful book, published
under the title “My Life in Christ.” This book represents a true spiritual
treasure-trove and will for all ages remain a witness to how the great saint
lived and how should live all those who wish not only to be called, but
actually be, Christians. The basic idea of all of St. John’s writings is the
need to have sincere and ardent faith in God and to live according to faith,
the need for constant battle against passions and vices, and the need to be
loyal to the faith and the Orthodox Church as the only source of salvation.
For his
native land Russia St. John was like a thundering prophet of God – preaching
truth, denouncing lies, summoning to repentance, and forecasting God’s
imminent vengeance for sin and apostasy. Being himself an image of meekness
and humility, love for every person, irrespective of nationality or religion,
St. John adopted an attitude of great indignation towards those godless,
materialistic, and liberal trends, which subverted the faith of the Russian
people and sabotaged Russia’s thousand-year-old government. Subsequent events
of the bloody Russian Revolution and the triumph of the godless and inhumane
Bolshevism showed how right was the great saint of the Russian land in his warnings
and prophetic visions.
St. John
stayed in Livadia during the last days of the life of Emperor Alexander III,
and the Sovereign’s very repose took place in his presence. The ailing
Sovereign met St. John with the words: “I dared not invite you on my own.
Thank you for coming. Please pray for me. I am quite ill.” This was on
October 12, 1984. After the Sovereign prayed on his knees together with St.
John, there was a considerable amelioration in the Emperor’s condition. This
continued for 5 days; on October 17th things got worse again. In the last
hours of his life the Sovereign said to St. John: “You are a holy man. You
are a righteous man. This is why the Russian people love you.” “Yes,” said
St. John, “your people love me.”
Together with
glory and honor, large sums of money flowed to St. John for the purpose of
charity. The amounts of these monetary sums may be judged only approximately,
since St. John immediately gave everything away. Only postal receipts were
recorded. According to people close to St. John, a good million rubles a year
passed through his hands. He took in with one hand and gave out with the
other. There were cases like the following: once, in the midst of a huge
crowd, St. John received a packet from a merchant’s hands and without opening
it, immediately passed it into an outstretched hand of a beggar. The merchant
became agitated: “Batyushka, there are a thousand rubles there!” – “His
luck,” calmly replied St. John. Sometimes, however, he refused to accept
donations from certain people. There is the well-known case where he did not
accept 30,000 rubles from a wealthy widow. This case was a prime example of
St. John’s clairvoyance, since the woman had gotten this money in a tainted
manner, for which she subsequently repented.
St. John did
a great many charitable deeds with these donations. He daily fed a thousand
beggars. In Kronstadt he set up a House of Industry, comprising a school, a
church, workshops, and an orphanage. In his native village he founded a
convent and built a stone church, and in St. Petersburg, on Karpovka Street,
he founded another convent (in which he was later buried).
Having
attained a high level of prayerful contemplation and impassivity, St. John
calmly accepted and put on the rich vestments presented to him by his
venerators, since these vestments were for the glory of God and not his own.
Moreover, they even served to conceal his spiritual feats. But the donations
he received he gave away to the very last penny.
St. John
reposed on December 20, 1908, having foretold the day of his death. Tens of
thousands of people attended his funeral, and a multitude of miracles
occurred at his tomb, both then and in the times that followed.
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His was a
truly extraordinary funeral. Throughout the entire expanse from Kronstadt to
Oranienbaum and from the Baltic train station in St. Petersburg to the St.
John monastery one could see crowds of weeping people: “Batyushka, our
batyushka, wherefore are you leaving us?” – desperately cried the common
people. The people’s tears at the funeral were so bitter and sincere, that at
times even the singers of the Pavlov Life-Guards regiment could not refrain
from crying. The mournful ringing of the bells, the quiet flickering of the
candles in the gathering darkness of the foggy St. Petersburg evening, the
singing of the funereal canon, and the tears of the people – all merged into
a majestic and mighty accord that will long not be forgotten by witnesses of
this event.
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Never before
was there an occasion where such a multidinous crowd of people was struck by
the sorrow of a common loss. St. Petersburg remembers the ten thousand people
attending the funeral of Emperor Alexander II, remembers the thirty thousand
people at Dostoyevsky’s funeral, but the multitude of sorrowing Orthodox
people (not less than sixty thousand ) that were present at the funeral of
the Kronstadt pastor – that is an unprecedented event, the like of which no
one can remember. Thus Russia bid farewell to the pastor who himself was the
image of the people’s goodness, the people’s conscience, the people’s faith…
What does the
life of St. John of Kronstadt teach us? Truly it was a great sign of the
times, sent to Russia on the eve of its unimaginable catastrophe. In the
person of St. John, as in a droplet of water, was reflected the sun of the
great soul of the Russian people: unshakeable faith in Christ, simplicity,
humility, meekness. St. John came from the common people and retained this
simplicity of origin, simultaneously uniting with it a great mind and a wide
array of knowledge. St. John was truly an image of the multi-million Russian
people, a mirror reflecting the bright characteristics of Holy Russia. In him
were merged and reflected the feelings of tsar and peasant, merchant and
nobleman, rich man and beggar, – all those who embraced in their heart the
commandments of Christ.
The righteous
St. John of Kronstadt was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad on
November 1, 1964.
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St. John of
Kronstadt’s power of healing
All of St. John of Kronstadt’s earthly suffering
was also tied in with the fact that he dared to selflessly help people with his
power of healing, expelling demons from them or the malignant illnesses that
the latter sent upon them. St. John, who possessed the power of forbidding
demons to dwell in people, acquired unique experience in the following: (1)
testing the power of God and the grace of priestly resources and the Holy
Fathers’ prayers of exorcism against the demons; (2) identifying the presence of
demons in a person on the sole basis of external appearance, behavior, and in
private conversation with him; (3) cleansing people of demons, thus voluntarily
drawing upon himself the inevitable physical and mental suffering resulting
from the demons’ revenge; (4) becoming convinced, as he gained practice, that
in actuality the Lord helped people to combat demons through him not when he
himself wished it, but only when he was called upon by God through the sick
person’s faith in him as a healer, for such faith also came from God.
Varied and instructive were the methods practiced
by St. John for the expulsion of demons and the comprehensive healing of all
attendant illnesses and sorrows. But a common factor in them was the healing
prayer composed by the saint: “O Lord, Thou said that whatever we asked for in
Thy name, Thou would do it for us Thyself, and Thou also said that the heavens
and earth would pass, but Thy words would not pass, and that not a single
stroke or iota of the law would pass. Therefore, I entreat Thee in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, forgive Thy servant (name) all his sins, both
voluntary and involuntary, and heal him.”
St. John always read this prayer so fervently, as
though he did not even ask, but demanded from God forgiveness of the sick
person’s sins. St. John traveled all over Russia in response to summons from
the sick, but most frequently he read the healing prayer from afar, as soon as
he received their telegrams. In such cases, the turning point in the illness
usually occurred at the time of the reading of the healing prayer.
In 1904, at a meeting with the clergy of the city
of Sarapul, St. John described to them how he arrived at the daring to pray for
the healing of all the sick people of Russia (and later – of the whole world).
One time in Kronstadt batyushka was asked to pray for an ailing man. St. John
prayerfully gave the man over into God’s hands and asked that His holy will for
the sick person be fulfilled. When the sick man got well as a result, this
became widely known, and the faithful insistently began to ask batyushka to
pray for the health of various sick people. At first he refused out of a humble
realization of his unworthiness and sinfulness, but the faithful forced their
pastor to once again pray for another sick man. This was also successful, and
afterwards St. John no longer refused his help in such cases.
As to what the blessed pastor of Kronstadt
experienced in all of this, and how difficult it was to earn from God
forgiveness of sins and healing, – St. John himself described it thus: “The
Lord, as an artful physician, subjects us to various trials, sorrows,
illnesses, and misfortunes, in order to purify us like gold in the furnace. A
soul that is hardened in various sins does not easily undergo cleansing and
healing, but has to be forced to a great extent, and only through lengthy
experience in patience and suffering does it become accustomed to virtue and
begins to love God, from Whom it was alienated after becoming attached to all
kinds of mortal sins. Such is the purpose of the trials and tribulations sent
to us by God in this life.”
During personal contact with various sick people in
difficult and hopeless cases, St. John was often drenched in sweat during
prayer, or was subjected to attacks from those possessed by demons. In the
majority of cases, quick and complete healing usually occurred right away. For
Orthodox people St. John was accustomed to pray for help solely by himself,
while in the case of other believers or non-believers, he forced the sick
person’s relatives who had appealed to him to pray jointly with him. For
complete healing of those possessed by demons, he forced the unfortunates to
look him straight in the eye and to make the sign of the cross independently
several times. To the healing prayer St. John frequently added a special
moleben, took out particles for the sick during the liturgy, gave them
communion, and also sent them items that belonged to him or food blessed by
him.
There were times when he could not help people for
whom he was asked to pray (due to the latter’s unbelief), but he readily helped
those who asked him themselves, if he saw God’s will in that. In such cases he
simply made them the recipients of divine mercy without providing any
explanation.
In several confirmed cases St. John was even able
to resurrect the dead, and on one particular occasion he returned to life a
corpse that had already begun to decompose, just as did our Lord Jesus Christ
in resurrecting Lazarus who had been dead for four days. After the saint’s
repose, his miraculous healings of people did not cease, but continued as a
result of praying to him, prayerfully touching objects that had belonged to
him, and also during his appearance to sick people in dream visions. The saint
saved not only those who were dying from grave illnesses, but also those who
found themselves in difficult circumstances of life; he helped establish
successful family life, delivered people from ruinous passions, and also saved
many Russian people during the time of the brutal Red terror, turning many of
the persecutors, moreover, onto a path of repentance and atonement for their
godlessness.
In healing some of the illnesses, the saint used
symbolic actions – embraced and drew the sick person to himself, struck the place
of illness from the outside, etc. The possessed ones he healed by sprinkling
them with holy water, pressing a cross to their forehead, giving them holy
water to drink and prosfory sanctified in their name to eat, and finally giving
them the Holy Mysteries. The possessed ones who were brought to him spewed out
blasphemies and curses at the saint, spit upon him and the cross he presented
to them, tried to beat him up, but his humble prayer for them before the altar
inevitably succeeded in the end.
However, there were cases where instead of his
usual help the saint either foretold the sick person’s unavoidable death or
refused help completely. The most prominent of such cases was the repose of
Tsar Alexander III, which the saint at first tried to put off by laying his
hands on the Sovereign’s head. Prior to his death the Tsar was tormented by the
most severe headaches. The laying of St. John’s hands caused the headaches to
disappear, and thus the saint spent many hours near the dying anointed Sovereign,
but could not prevent his repose. Such was the will of God.
It was noted that the saint could not prevent the
death of sick people in cases where it was ordained by God not so much for the
sins of these individuals, who were known for their righteousness, but for the
sins of all the people, as in the case of the Tsar’s repose, or for the mortal
sins of parents when their children died. The saint also could not prevent
death in cases where the sick person lived among sinful surroundings and did
not have enough willpower to combat them. In such a case the grave illness with
its attendant suffering served as a purifying factor for the salvation of the
soul, while a continued sinful life was displeasing to God. In these cases the
saint even refused to pray for healing.
St. John of
Kronstadt and the patristic inner prayer
Of great
merit is St. John’s work in preaching the patristic inner prayer to Russia.
St. John wrote that “the vision of God is a requisite for prayer.” St. John
himself was granted visions of spiritual forces, both of the lower and higher
order. Once a certain abbess stood together with St. John near one of the
bridges across Neva River, while a funeral procession passed by them. The
saint told the abbess that he saw demons in the procession, who were
rejoicing over the perdition of a drunkard’s soul. On August 15, 1989, on the
day of the Dormition of the Holy Virgin, for the first time in his life St.
John was granted a vision of the Mother of God and heard Her blessed voice
calling him “a dearest child of the Heavenly Father.”
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In view of
the fact that when starting upon inner prayer, novices suffer from the
wandering of thoughts that is inflicted upon them by the devil, St. John
offers practical advice on how to overcome this impediment. He writes that in
prayer “there is the sin of inattention to which we all are subjected
terribly; we should not forget it, but repent of it; we are inattentive not
only at home, but also in church. When you do your rule of prayer, especially
by the prayer book, say the words of the prayers with heartfelt strength, do
not hurry from word to word without having felt its sincerity, without having
instilled it into your heart, but work constantly at feeling with your heart
the sincerity of all that you are saying. Many church readers, who read with facility,
end up with false prayer: with their lips they appear to be praying, they
seem to be pious, but their hearts are dormant and do not know what the lips
are saying. This happens as a result of their hurrying and not thinking over
with their heart what they are saying. Only those can pray quickly without
harming their prayer, who have learned to engage in inner prayer with a pure
heart. All others should wait until each word of prayer is echoed in their
own hearts. Sometimes it is well to say a few words of prayer of one’s own,
full of ardent faith and love for the Lord.
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We should not
always converse with God using the words of others, we should not forever
remain infants in faith and hope, but should manifest our own mind, offer
from our hearts our own good words; moreover, we get used to the words of
others and our prayer becomes cold. And how pleasing to God is our own
babble, which issues directly from a believing and grateful heart.”
Out of his
own spiritual experience the saint offers us the following revelation: “Try
to achieve a child-like simplicity in your dealings with people and in your
prayer to God. Simplicity is man’s greatest blessing and merit. God is
absolutely simple, because He is absolutely spiritual, absolutely good. May
your heart, too, refrain from dividing into good and evil.”
Speaking of
his own endeavors with the Jesus prayer, St. John writes: “When you have
Christ in your heart, make sure you do not lose Him and together with Him
your inner tranquility, for it is bitterly hard to begin anew; all your
efforts to attach yourself once again to Him after falling away will be hard
and will cause many bitter tears. Cling to Christ with all your might, attach
yourself to Him and do not lose your sacred connection with Him. Christ,
introduced into the heart through faith, dwells there in peace and joy. When
you notice that your heart is cold and unwilling to pray – stop and warm your
heart with some dynamic vision – for example, of your iniquity, of your
spiritual poverty and blindness, or of God’s great and continuous blessings
upon you and all of mankind, especially Christians, – and afterwards continue
to pray unhurriedly, with warm feeling; even if you do not have time to
finish all your prayers, that does not present a problem, since much greater
benefit accrues from warm and unhurried prayer than from reading all the
prayers without any feeling. It is well to pray continuously, but not all are
capable of such an effort, thus to each his own. Whoever is unable to cope
with lengthy prayer should preferably pray briefly, but with an ardent soul.
One should ceaselessly address the Lord and be with Him every single moment,
in order to avoid being overcome by demonic irritation or dejection. By using
the spirit of dejection, the enemy has led many people away from the narrow
and salvific path and unto the wide and smooth path of perdition. While
praying count yourself for nothing and accept prayer as a great gift from
God. Pray without any hesitation, with heartfelt simplicity: just as it is
easy to think, so should it be easy to pray. Prayer is the breath of the soul
just as air is the breath of the body. Our souls breathe with the Holy
Spirit. One cannot utter a single heartfelt word without the Holy Spirit.
While praying you are conversing directly with the Lord, and if your heart is
open through faith and love, you will at the same time breathe in the
spiritual blessings issuing from Him. Learn to pray, force yourself to pray;
at first it will be hard, but afterwards, the more you force yourself, the
easier it will get, but initially you must always force yourself. When you
pray to God, look with the eyes of your heart inside yourself, at your soul.
The Lord is there, in your thoughts and in the movements of your heart, just
as He is outside of you and everywhere. The heart’s insensitivity to the
genuineness of the words of prayer comes from disbelief and insensitivity of
one’s one sinfulness, which comes, in turn, from a hidden feeling of pride.
From his feelings during a prayer a person can discover whether he is full of
pride or humility: the more ardent is his prayer, the humbler he is, and the
more insensitive the prayer – the greater his pride.”
All these
instructions on the part of St. John concerning prayer are aimed at novices,
since they concern mostly verbal prayer and only the beginnings of inner
prayer. The saint himself, however, had attained the supreme gift of constant
inner prayer, which was confirmed by Hieromonk Nikander of Valaam: “In truth,
Father John’s face bloomed with God’s grace, with constant inner prayer.
During the sanctification of the Holy Gifts, Father John submersed himself
entirely in inner prayer, his face became wondrously transfixed, and it was
apparent that he did not see those around him and even tarried in saying the
priest’s exclamations. Deep and ardent prayer attracted him completely to
God.” The Muscovite judge Peter Pavlovich Yastrebov also confirmed that while
St. John served the divine liturgy, during the priest’s prayers in the altar
he was granted spiritual visions. At such moments the saint seemed to be
somewhere far away, seemed to be conversing with God, Whom he clearly saw in
front of him on the altar table. Such moments left an indelible
impression on the faithful.
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St. John of
Kronstadt and the enemies of Christ
Beginning
with St. Cyprian of Carthage, the majority of martyred Christian priests and
monastics earned their martyric crowns precisely due to the vengeance of
demons, whom they exorcized from God’s creations. Such a lot also befell St.
John, who worked earnestly in this field and thus earned the demons’ violent
hatred and lust for revenge. Since holy people like St. John no longer fear
the demons’ visible appearance, having the power from God to exorcize them,
the demonic vengeance upon St. John took place through the pagan people who
serve them, through unbelieving priests, atheists, heretics, Catholics, and
Jews, who slandered him in their press and used every opportunity to do him
physical harm.
Let us first
look at St. John’s false friends, who subsequently turned out to be his
actual enemies, for they attempted to link their godless affairs with his
holy name. In reality, guided by the holy principle that “for God there are
neither Hellenes, nor Jews,” St. John generously offered charity to all who
asked for his help, including those of other faiths. It is known for sure
that in 1900 he donated an array of bells to a Catholic church and gave
significant contributions to Jewish, Tatar, and Chinese charity organizations.
However, when
an Imperial manifesto came out in September 1905 on the participation of
political parties in the work of the National Duma, the first leaders of the
nationalistic Black Hundreds party turned to St. John with a request to bless
their activity as an “Alliance of the Russian People,” so that the organized
left would not be the only party represented in the Duma. The saint gave them
his blessing to preserve the unity of the Church and to faithfully and
truthfully serve God’s commandments and the Orthodox Tsar. Subsequently,
however, the Black Hundreds did not fulfill even a single one of his
requirements. They immediately splintered into a number of small, conflicting
groups which were far removed from government interests, but were
immoderately fond of demagogy. The influence of Russian pagans was very great
among them, for example the exposed sorcerer Iliodor, who bore the rank of
hieromonk, yet threw people into confusion with his anti-government
diatribes. In the Duma the Black Hundreds immediately adopted the role of the
right opposition to the Tsarist government and did their utmost to hinder the
reforms of Stolypin.
St. John
could have equally been accused of personally promoting the Ioannite sect
that sprang up around him. The fact of the matter was that his astounding
miracles had an overwhelming effect on some Russian and Tatar pagans: they
proclaimed him to be the Living God and venerated Him accordingly. The
Ioannites continuously lay in wait for him and followed him, in order to
steal some part of his clothing to serve as a talisman, and one time an
especially fanatical sectarian attacked St. John himself, trying to bite off
one of his fingers. The saint constantly explained to these sectarians that
he performed miracles through the power of the Holy Trinity, while he himself
was like all others – a sinful and unworthy person, possessing no merit
without the grace of God. But they did not want to believe him and continued
in their delusion.
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Just as in
our present times, during the time of St. John of Kronstadt’s service
throughout Russia and the world, the Orthodox Church comprised quite a number
of clergymen with lukewarm faith. The holy pastor said of such: “The present
terrible decline in faith and morals is related to the coldness which many
hierarchs and clergymen display towards their flocks.” He himself was
continuously persecuted and harassed by them during his lifetime. Even
Metropolitan Isidore of St. Petersburg himself often did not understand St.
John’s situation, forbidding him to wear the holy vestments he received as
gifts and trying to prohibit St. John from serving within the precincts of
other parishes. The rectors of these parishes, being people of little faith,
did not believe in the power of God being manifested through the saint,
envied his popularity, and by means of slander tried to prevent St. John from
serving in their churches.
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The primary
target of St. John’s denunciations was the godless intelligentsia. In a 1900
sermon the saint referred to it thus: “More than ever before, heralds of
false enlightenment have now appeared in Russia, having grown up on Russian
soil; some of our scientists and writers wish to re-educate the youth in
their own fashion, not on the basis of true Christianity, but on the basis of
false faith and false freethinking; they cloud and defile the minds and
hearts of young people with false concepts and worldviews; they create their
own laws of life, so-to-speak, they write their own gospel instead of
Christ’s, and with their lack of morality they completely corrupt the morals
of our youth.”
The saint
throws out a challenge to the growing atheism in Russia and to its
apologists, declaring: “There are many who call themselves educators and
teach young people that Christ was a mythical personality, that He did not
exist at all. I am not a prophet, but I warn you that all of you will be
erased from the earth by God’s judgment. Beware of the day when Christ, that
“mythical personality,” will issue a command to his angels in regard to you,
as He said in a parable in the Gospel according to Luke: “But those Mine
enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and
slay them before Me” (Luke 19:27).
According to
the testimony of Colonel Krylov, in the city of Yaroslavl there lived a
certain prosecutor, a veteran card-player and atheist, who constantly mocked
St. John. When the saint served a liturgy in that city, the prosecutor was
among those who came up to kiss the cross. However, the clairvoyant St. John
did not give the cross to the blasphemer and pushed him aside. Such rejection
served to bring the prosecutor to repentance.
In Moscow St.
John once served a moleben in a certain home and then offered the cross to
those who were present. All came up to kiss the cross except the children’s
tutor – a student in a local university. Batyushka then said to him: “Are you
a pagan, or a Moslem, or a sectarian, that you do not find it necessary to
kiss our Lord’s cross?” Right away batyushka advised the master of the house
to get rid of such a godless tutor, which the master did on-the-spot.
Another time
St. John came to a pious family in Moscow, which had a student who was a
follower of Voltaire, did not acknowledge God, and mocked the priesthood.
Upon his arrival batyushka immediately went up to this student and commanded
him to go to confession right away and to take communion. The saint’s
penetrating glance and unshakeable conviction forced the freethinker to do
all that was necessary for his soul. Several days later he died unexpectedly.
In analyzing
the reasons for the defeat of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese war, St.
John said: “Nowadays members of the intelligentsia in the Russian army are
infected with Western ideas, godlessness, and Tolstoy’s teachings, are
ashamed to call upon the name of God and to venerate icons of the Lord and
the Mother of God, do not believe in God, in His providence, in the
invincible might of the Omnipotent Lord Who is strong in battle, and for this
reason they suffer defeat after defeat from external and internal enemies –
traitors and revolutionaries. Return, Russia, to your holy, pure, salvific,
and victorious faith and to your Holy Mother Church, and you shall again be
victorious and glorious as in the olden times of faith. Leave off believing
in your vainglorious, clouded mind and in the insane counsel of your earthly
idol – non-resistance to evil, – and battle with all evil, extinguish it
immediately, fight it with your God-given weapons of holy faith, divine
wisdom and truth, prayer, righteousness, the cross, courage, loyalty and
faithfulness of your sons.”
In denouncing
the soul-destroying ulcer of Tolstoy’s teaching, in a 1902 sermon the holy
pastor said: “The adulterous and sinful world has proudly reared its head
against the Church in the person of wickedly-philosophizing writers, headed
by Count Tolstoy and his fans and adherents, and teaches our baptized people
not to believe in Christ’s teaching, not to believe in the existence and
immortality of the soul, in the resurrection of the dead, in Christ’s Dread
Judgment, but to live according to one’s worldly will – disrespect the holy
ties of matrimony, disrespect parents and elders, engage in adultery and drunkenness,
lie, steal, murder, and willfully take one’s own life.”
Condemning
parliamentary politicians, St. John cried out in 1907: “Keep silent, you
illusionary constitutionalists and parliamentarians! Depart all who oppose
God’s will! It is not for you to rule the thrones of earthly kings. Depart,
audacious ones, who are incapable of controlling even their own selves, but
who argue with each other and do nothing beneficial for Russia.”
In regard to
the activity of the National Duma, the saint said in 1906: “We wish to rule
our own selves without God, with only our proud reason; this is why we do not
have a real, God-pleasing, firm, and rational government, we vacillate here
and there, we have no peace, but everywhere only murders, thefts, robberies,
arson, everywhere only iniquity, immorality, and insubordination. What will
come next? If our godless ones, whom we have among all classes of people, do
not humble themselves and do not turn to God in repentance, acknowledging
their frailty and uselessness without Him, and that only in Him and with Him
lies our might and our well-being, – then we can expect nothing good, but
undoubtedly only the worst.”
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And here are
batyushka’s words concerning the year 1907: “We are not living in peaceful
times, but in a time of strife and rebellion, a time of lawlessness and
godlessness, a time of arrogant flouting of divine and civil laws, a time of
a senseless wandering of minds which have tasted some human wisdom and have
become overweening, because, according to the word of God, knowledge makes
one vain, while love instructs. It is obvious to everyone that the Russian
Kingdom is trembling and tottering and is close to falling. Why has the
Russian Kingdom, formerly so great, so mighty, and so glorious, become now so
weak, humiliated, agitated? Because it has derailed from its firm and
unshakeable foundation – the true faith, since the majority of the
intelligentsia has fallen away from God, Who Alone is an unshakeable and
eternal power, by Whom both heaven and earth are held in wondrous harmony for
so many millennia. Various kingdoms have disappeared from the world arena for
their disbelief and lawlessness. And the longer this adulterous and sinful
world exists and succeeds in its iniquities, the weaker and frailer it
becomes, the more it totters, so that by the end of the world it will become
a veritable corpse or cinder.”
And further:
“Let us pay attention to our contemporary religious and political condition.
Now is a terrible time of disbelief and apostasy, a time of all kinds of
soul-shattering iniquities; many people have morally turned into wild beasts
or evil spirits. There is nothing holy for them, there is no immortal soul,
there is no God, there is no resurrection and retribution, there is no
impartial, exact, and strict judgment for all words and deeds, and they
therefore say: ravage, kill, burn, steal, violate others, lie, deceive, do
not obey superiors, be your own boss – you will not be held accountable for
anything. A well-known Russian godless writer (Tolstoy) is especially to
blame for the corruption and godlessness of the Russian people, primary the
intelligentsia, and generally all ill-intentioned publicists are to blame;
their godless writings, scattered all over Russia in millions of printed
pieces of paper, have flooded the Russian land and have pushed the youth off
its foundations of religious and civil faith. May the iniquitous, evil,
prideful Satan be damned for his conceit in regard to his Creator and for
being the first to engender the arrogant idea of feeling equal to God and
declaring war on Him and His eternal truth, holiness, infinite wisdom,
beauty, and invincible power. This worldwide evil force has agitated the
whole of Russia, has created and continues to create in it all kinds of
troubles, rebellions, disbelief, blasphemy, insubordination, infamy. Turn to
God, O Russia, thou who hast sinned before him more than all the peoples on
earth, – turn to Him in tears and repentance, in faith and virtue. Thou hast
sinned above all others, for thou hast had and still hast the most priceless
treasure – the Orthodox faith with its salvific Church, which thou hast
trampled and spit upon in the person of thy vain and arrogant sons and
daughters, who believe themselves to be educated, but true education in the
image of God is impossible without the Church.”
In his book
“The Living Sheaf,” St. John expressed the opinion that the greatest enemies
of Orthodoxy were Leo Tolstoy and the Catholics. In regard to Papism he
wrote: “The Catholics have come up with a new head of the Church, having
humiliated the sole true Head of the Church – Christ. The most damaging thing
in Christianity, in this divinely-revealed and celestial religion, is the
primacy of man in the Church, for example the Pope, and his imaginary
infallibility. It is precisely the dogma of infallibility that contains the
greatest error, since the Pope is a sinful man, and it would be a great misfortune
for him to imagine himself to be infallible. How many great errors, harmful
to men’s souls, have been thought up by the Catholic Papist Church – in
dogmas, in customs, in canonical rules, in the service, in the deadening
pernicious attitude of Catholics towards the Orthodox, in the blasphemy and
slander of the Orthodox Church, in the abuse directed towards the Orthodox
Church and Orthodox Christians! And for all of this it is the supposedly
infallible Pope who is to blame, together with the doctrine of his Jesuits,
full of their spirit of deceit and hypocrisy. The Lord Himself is forever
present in His Church; what need is there for a deputy – the Pope? And can a
sinful man be the Lord’s deputy? He cannot. There can be a king’s deputy, a
patriarch’s deputy, but no one can deputize for the Lord, the eternal King
and Head of the Church. The Pope has fettered the spiritual freedom and
conscience of Christian Catholics. The Catholics are concerned with the Pope
and not with Christ, they battle for the Pope and not for Christ, and their
ardor in faith often turns into a passionate, man-hating, frenzied
fanaticism, a fanaticism of blood and sword, of bonfires, of intolerance,
hypocrisy, deceit, and cunning.”
Of
Protestants and heretics in general the holy pastor said: “Without Christ as
the Head, the Church is not a church but a self-ruling mob. Such are the
Lutherans, the Russian dissenters, the followers of Tolstoy. Human frailty,
blindness, human passions have now surfaced in the churches that have fallen
away. The Lutherans do not pray for the deceased, nor do the Anglicans. The
Protestants have a totally distorted conception of the Church, because they
do not possess the grace of lawful clergy, they do not have the sacraments,
except for baptism, and they do not have the most important thing: communion
of the Body and Blood of Christ; they do not have the celestial branch – the
Heavenly Church, since they do not acknowledge the saints; neither do they
have the underworld branch, since they do not recognize departed souls and do
not pray for them, believing it to be unnecessary. The Anglicans and the
Lutherans do not want to have any icons, nor venerate them! This is also
bizarre and absurd. The saints are God’s friends, His members in whom He
resides. Why are we not to venerate their images? The Lutherans have fallen
away from the Church and have remained without its Head, and the Anglicans as
well: they have no Church, their union with its Head has been severed, they
have no omnipotent aid, while the devil battles with all his might and
cunning, and holds everyone in his enticement and perdition. There are many
who are being destroyed by godlessness and depravity.”
Concerning
St. John’s relations with the Jews, it should be noted that he believed the
policy of the Russian Tsars in regard to non-baptized Jews, in terms of
isolating them from the mass of the Russian people in the Pale of Settlement,
to be a very wise decision, since he thought that only such a policy would
deliver the Russian people from inevitable subjugation to the Jews, which
subsequently did happen in Russia. For this reason batyushka did not give his
blessing in 1890 to V. Solovyev’s project to expand the rights of the Jews in
Russia, which project was later rejected also by the Tsar himself.
Meanwhile, a
direct confrontation between St. John and the Jews arose only during the
revolution of 1905. St. John’s detractors asserted that his activities were
directed only towards making money, that all his molebens and blessings were
done strictly for pay. Crude slander! He never asked for anything. He took
only what was given him, and even that only to pass on to the poor. He was
hardly ever at home, and thus his home furnishings were extremely modest,
even though more than a million rubles a year passed through his hands. Only
Pharisees and hypocrites manage not to have any enemies and be respected by
all. Christ and His apostles had many enemies and died from their terrible
malice. The righteous one of Kronstadt could not but likewise have enemies.
The great
pastor’s dirtiest and lowliest enemy was the Jewish press. For three years
(1905-1908) it daily mocked the pious pastor, mocked his miracles, his
charity, the veneration of his followers. Slanderous stories were made up,
feminine veneration of him was vilified, popular ardor towards him was spit
upon. St. John courageously spoke out against the revolution, and in his
homilies he reminded the authorities of their duty to suppress rebellion. The
Russian leadership amazedly learned from him that Apostle Paul himself
obligates the use of the sword. The Jews could not forgive St. John for this.
Becoming supporters of Leo Tolstoy, who rejected the church and state, the
Jews rained down a whole torrent of dirt upon St. John, who had stood up for
the defense of the Orthodox Church and the Russian state.
Once, during
the bringing out of the Holy Gifts from the altar, a Jewish student
approached the saint and hit him in the ear with all his might, as a result
of which St. John lost hearing in that ear and spilled the Holy Communion.
Later on there was an armed seamen’s rebellion in Kronstadt, instigated and
fanned by revolutionary Jews. These latter decided to use the event in order
to make short work of St. John. However, the saint guessed at their trickery
and did not allow himself to be talked into going and persuading the rebels
to lay down their arms. After the failure of their plan, the revolutionaries
decide to lure St. John into a trap and, taking advantage of his incessant
concern for the sick, passed his entourage a message that an ill person was
in need of the saint’s prayers. The saint had a foreboding that he would be
met by enemies en route, and several times he warned his entourage, but they
continued to plead with him for the supposedly sick person. The saint was led
into a very rich house and was taken to the ailing person in the next room.
When St. John went in there, the room was locked from the inside and the
noise of a struggle could be heard. Then the women who had accompanied
batyushka immediately remembered his foreboding of misfortune, tried to break
into the room, and finally had to send for the coachman, who broke down the
door. By that time St. John’s iniquitous attackers had managed to give him
several knife wounds and had almost suffocated him. The coachman delivered
St. John from his attackers and took him home. As soon as the saint regained
consciousness, he immediately made the witnesses swear a terrible oath not to
tell anyone of what had happened until his death, in order to avoid a pogrom.
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The remaining
three-and-a-half years of his life the holy martyr suffered such terrible
pain from his wounds that he could not sleep at all. Only the Divine liturgy allowed
him to have a couple of hours of relief from the unbearable pain, and so
despite his frailty he continued to serve daily until his very death, and
when he could no longer walk at all, he lay in the altar and took communion.
Thus during
the Divine liturgy on 20 December 1908, at which the saint was present
together with all the people who were praying for him, he quietly reposed in
the Lord. He was buried in the burial vault of St. John’s monastery.
I.K. Surskiy
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St. John of
Kronstadt as server of the Divine Liturgy
St. John of
Kronstadt was a great intercessor for the Russian land. He was renowned for
his pious and holy life, for his multidinous miracles, for his extensive aid
to the needy. While engaging in constant prayer, he placed the Divine Liturgy
above all else, regarding it as an eternal great miracle, and gave himself up
to it entirely. In his “Reflections on the Orthodox Church Services” St. John
wrote: “There are people for whom the Liturgy is everything on earth.” And
undoubtedly, when he wrote this, he obviously had himself foremost in mind.
It was well-known that from his very first days of priesthood he strived to
serve the Divine liturgy as frequently as possible, while in the last 35
years of his life he served it daily, except for those days when he was very
sick.
He apparently
vividly felt and clearly realized through his personal life’s experience the
supreme significance of this great sacrament in his life and work. And in
fact, he always said and wrote that all his vigor, his indefatigable energy,
his activity, which was beyond the strength of a common mortal and which left
him not more than 4 hours out of 24 for sleep and rest, could only be
explained by the fact that by the grace of God he daily served the great
sacrament and partook of the Holy Mysteries.
In his
diaries he often turns in thought and pious feeling to the Divine liturgy and
does not even find sufficient words to express its majesty and its fruits for
the faithful.
“What is more
majestic, moving, life-giving on earth than the commemoration of the liturgy?
In it is expressed and realized the greatest sacrament of God’s love for
mankind – the union of God and man.”
“Without the
sacrament of the Body and Blood, without the liturgy, the greatest deed of
our Saviour’s love, wisdom, and omnipotence could have been forgotten, the
fruits of His suffering could have been lost; for this reason He has
commanded us to commemorate the sacrament of His Body and Blood not only in
remembrance of Him, but for the sake of close communion with Him. This
sacrament is commemorated all over the world.”
We all love
life, but there is no true life within us without the source of life – Jesus
Christ. The liturgy is a treasure chest, a source of true life, because
within it the Lord Himself, the Master of life, offers Himself as food and
drink to those who believe in Him, and in His own words gives life in
abundance to His communicants: “Whosoever eateth My flesh and drinketh My
blood, hath eternal life” (John 6:54). If the world did not have the
Most-holy Body and Blood of the Lord, it would not have its greatest benefit
– the benefit of true life.”
“The Divine
liturgy is an unceasing and supreme miracle in the grace-filled kingdom of
God; it is, so-to-speak, a perpetual sacrifice of the Lamb of God; it is the
remembrance of His redemptive suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and
His second coming; it is a perpetually continuing sacrifice on the part of
the Son of God to God the Father for us, sinners, that will continue until
the end of the world. ‘Thine own of Thine own we offer to Thee, in behalf of
all, and for all’: for the Lord suffered for all of us, and died, and arose,
and thus reminds and will remind all generations of mankind of His sacrifice,
and will offer it to all sincere faithful and all seeking salvation as food
and drink for sanctification and regeneration until the end of time, in order
for all the faithful to be saved.”
“The idea of
the liturgy is for all to be one in Christ. During the proskomedia and the
liturgy all the saints, beginning with the Mother of God, are summoned to
participate in the service together with the priest. Just think of the
closeness to each other of all the celestial denizens, and earth dwellers,
and the Mother of God, and all the saints, and all of us, Orthodox
Christians, during the commemoration of the Divine, universal,
all-encompassing liturgy!”
St. John’s
words and attitudes never differed from his deeds and his life. As he
understood the liturgy, so did he teach it, so did he serve it, serving it
extraordinarily, living each word of the prayers, giving himself up
completely to the remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is “both the One
Who offers and the One Who is offered, both the sacrifice and the high
priest” in the liturgy.
Watching him
serve the liturgy both in Kronstadt and in the various churches of St.
Petersburg, one could not but see that he served each liturgy as though it
were the very first liturgy in his life. He lived spiritually from liturgy to
liturgy. Everything else was secondary for him and did not engage and fill
his soul as did the liturgy.
Being
incredibly kind and sociable, he never refused to share a meal after the
liturgy with his co-servers and parishioners. There he is, after having
spoken separately with various individuals especially needing his comfort and
help, quickly entering the room where the meal is being served,
affectionately greeting all those present, and then invariably beginning to
talk about the Church, about the temple, about the service. The idea of the
union of all faithful in Christ continues to rule his actions, and he shares
food and drink with those sitting near him. But St. John never stays until
the end of the meal, since here he has already provided comfort, warmth, and
illumination with his inner light, and now he must hasten to others,
especially to the sick, the elderly, and the frail, who cannot come to him
themselves, but who hunger for his presence.
It is extremely
hard to describe how St. John served the Divine liturgy. He was an ardent
flame before God; he represented the complete union of a pure image of God
with its Original. During the liturgy the entire Heavenly Church – prophets,
apostles, martyrs, hierarchs, venerables, and all celestial denizens were
like close living friends to St. John. His praying was also unusual. He would
suddenly completely forego making the sign of the cross and only bowed deeply
or raised his eyes to heaven, or he would stand on his knees for a long time
without moving.
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He read the
prayers as though he saw the Saviour, or the Mother of God, or the saints
right in front of him, and he either prostrated himself in great humility before
them, or spoke boldly, as if demanding the fulfillment of his entreaties.
Sometimes St. John used special movements that accorded with his inner
emotions. Thus, during the hymn about the Son of God’s incarnation, he would
pick up the holy cross from the altar table and kiss it several times with
tenderness and sometimes with tears. After the transubstantiation of the Holy
Gifts he sometimes bowed deeply over the diskos with the Holy Body or the
sacred chalice with the Blood of the Saviour, kissed the edge of the sacred
vessels, and tears of tenderness streamed abundantly down his face.
It was
impossible not to notice that immediately after partaking of the Holy
Mysteries, St. John’s face became illuminated, shone with joy, his usual
fatigue and tiredness disappeared, and he became “young” and energetic.
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It should be
said that the priests and the faithful greatly valued prayerful contact with
St. John during the liturgy. He was constantly invited to serve at feasts and
church celebrations. While he was still alive, a church feast felt incomplete
without him, and thus he not only served in all the churches of Kronstadt and
almost all of St. Petersburg, but also in many churches of Moscow and
practically all the major cities of Russia. Wherever he served, many priests
and deacons would always gather there; wherever he went, there were always
myriads of believers, those people upon whom faith rests in this sinful
world, and even the world itself stands only because of such people. Wherever
he went, there was always a triumph of love and brotherhood, there was always
a feast of faith. The importance of St. John in this regard is immense. Being
continuously surrounded by a host of clergymen while serving the liturgy, he
was always a teacher to them in this most important aspect of their service.
In this case he was truly a pastor of pastors!
Protopriest Pavel Lakhotsky
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St. John of Kronstadt and Russia’s Spiritual Crisis
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought
to desolation; and every city or house divided within itself falleth (Luke 11:17).
Never before
has so much been said or written about any of the saints or venerables as
there has been of St. John of Kronstadt. Our aim, therefore, will not be so
much to present a complete picture of him, who is so well-known to us, as to
characterize his era and clarify the historical significance of St. John.
St. John
lived at a time when the spiritual crisis being undergone by Russia was
reaching its apogee: a fatal dichotomy reigned in all spheres of our nation’s
life.
On one hand
there was a great spiritual revival of asceticism, which began in the 19th
century and embraced all religious Russian people, and which was now
producing its rich harvest; on the other hand, the overwhelming majority of
society was in the grip of an opposing movement, alien to us and coming from
the West, of atheistic and revolutionary influences.
St. John
emerged from the sphere of spiritual revival, he was completely enveloped by
its spirit and its light, and the wave of this renaissance lifted St. John
high onto the top of its crest. The Lord placed His flaming candle high upon
the candlestand.
Another wave,
that of godlessness and destruction, the wave of the spirit of the
Antichrist, lifted to its crest Leo Tolstoy, who became its universally
acknowledged prophet. St. John stood up sternly and imperiously against the
enemies of the church and state, continuously accusing them, summoning them
to repentance, threatening them with God’s punishment. In this lay his
prophetic calling and service.
I.
ST. JOHN IN THE SPIRIT AND POWER OF ANCIENT HOLY FATHERS Road to holiness
After the
reforms of Peter the Great and subsequent ones, which were all aimed against
monasticism, Russian monasticism suffered an era of decline, but with the
coming of the 19th century the outlines of a spiritual renaissance could
already be seen.
The foundation
of this revival was laid by Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky: from the
second half of the 18th century he engaged in translating the writings of the
Holy Fathers (Philokalia) from Greek into Slavonic and revived ancient
Eastern asceticism in his monastery in Moldavia. In this asceticism the
center of gravity lies not in external labors, but in inner endeavor,
specifically in attaining impassivity. The end purpose of all these endeavors
becomes a direct meeting with God – the “acquisition of the Holy Spirit.” In
this regard, the guidance of elders in spiritual endeavor was also revived.
The
renaissance of monasticism in Russia is also linked with the name of
Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg, who published the “Philokalia” in
1793 and, moreover, appointed disciples of Paisius as abbots of many Russian
monasteries, who subsequently revived ancient traditions in monastic endeavor
that were almost forgotten in our land.
A multitude
of holy ascetics appeared in this age of renaissance. In the early period we
see that greatest of saints – St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759-1833). “Saint
Seraphim’s gift of holiness,” – says a church historian, – “like all gifts
coming from above, issues from the Father of Lights, while the saint’s
personal achievements come from his heroic endeavor. His spiritual philosophy
arose from the same life-giving river of Russian ascetic revival, along which
the saint led the boat of his life.”
Father John
Sergiyev was born in 1829, not long before the repose of St. Seraphim and,
similarly to the latter, wished to lead the boat of his life along the same
shining currents of spiritual renaissance.
We do not
know which religious individuals were close to St. John during his study at
the Academy, nor who was his spiritual father, but we may assertively state
that there was no dearth of experienced ascetic guides in those times.
Moreover, one book of ascetic writings after another began to appear in
print. Those times were the heyday of spiritual revival.
By that time
the disciples of elder Paisius’ disciples became concentrated primarily at
the Optina Hermitage, which became a spiritual center and was renowned for
its clairvoyant elders and its propagation of spiritual writings. Beginning
in 1847, a group of professors and writers, headed by Elder Macarius,
translated and published patristic writings. Their activity coincided with
St. John’s academic years (1851-1855) and the first years of his priesthood.
At the same
time, the future hierarch Ignaty Bryanchaninov (1807-1867) served as abbot of
the Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg, which he had founded. He
represented an attractive and charming image of a true ascetic. St. Ignaty
was a disciple of Elder Leo of Optina and the author of “Ascetic Efforts,” in
which he described the path of inner endeavor on the basis of the teaching of
the Holy Fathers and warned against falling into delusion. St. John was known
to have ties with the Sergius Hermitage in his young years, and these ties
continued into later life.
Another
prominent contemporary of St. John was Bishop Theophanus the Recluse
(1811-1984), who worked for almost twenty years on the Russian translation of
the “Philokalia” and through his writings and letters provided guidance to
the religious segment of his contemporary generation.
Although St.
John was a lay priest and did not have monastic tonsure, his inner life
consisted entirely of monastic endeavor in accordance with patristic
tradition. He constantly spoke of inner spiritual endeavor, of “invisible
warfare” – not only against passions, but also against the spiritual host of
wickedness in the heavenly places, and spoke of the prayer of the heart and
of the power and efficacy of the name of Jesus.
He spoke in
detail of his spiritual endeavor on December 12, 1900 in his homily for the
45th anniversary of his ordination into priesthood. Here he touched upon his
first steps along the way of spiritual warfare, although self-testing,
self-realization, and constant prayer were his life’s work until the very
end. Deepest humility was his shield and his visor: “In body I am dust and
ashes, while my soul lives and rests only in God. He is both the light of my
thoughts and the strength of my heart, while by myself I am nothing.”
Here is what
St. John says of himself in the above-mentioned “Homily”: “After being
ordained a priest and pastor, I soon learned from personal experience with
whom I was entering into combat in my spiritual field of endeavor –
specifically, with the strong, cunning, indefatigable prince of this world, who
breathed evil, destruction and the hellish flames of Gehenna, and the
spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places… This combat with a
strong and cunning invisible enemy clearly showed me how many frailties,
weaknesses, and sinful passions there were in me, how much the prince of this
world had in me, and how strongly I must battle with myself, with my sinful
inclinations and habits, and conquer them, in order to be as invincible as
possible from the adversary’s arrows.
There began a
spiritual combat, self-monitoring, the sharpening of spiritual vision,
self-instruction on continuous inner prayer and the calling upon of
the all-saving name of Christ; like the psalm-writer, King David, I
began to constantly lift my spiritual eyes unto the hills – to heaven, from
whence came obvious and immediate sovereign help (Psalm 121:1-3), and my
mighty enemies were routed, while I received freedom and inner tranquility…
This warfare
continues within me to this day; and the long duration of the spiritual
warfare taught me much, especially the experienced perception of all
intricacies of spiritual warfare, of all the numerous snares of the unseen
enemies, and the firm and always assured calling upon the name of Jesus
Christ, before which they are unable to stand; in this unseen warfare I
came to know the constant nearness of the Lord to me, His immeasurable
bounty, His quickness to hear me, the infinite holiness of His nature, for
which even a single unrighteous thought is abhorrent, even an instantaneous
desire for sin or pleasure in sin, since God’s holiness seeks and absolutely
demands from all of us holiness in thoughts, holy zeal in feelings, holiness
in all the movements of our will, in all words, in all deeds.
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In this
warfare I came to know the incredible depth of God’s longsuffering towards
us, for He alone knows the entire frailty of our fallen nature, which He
mercifully took upon Himself, except for sin, and He therefore commanded us
to forgive the sins of others “sevenfold seventy times”; and He surrounded
and continues to daily surround me with the joy of deliverance from sin and
with inner tranquility. The mercy of God which I have experienced and the
Lord’s customary nearness to me assures me of hope in my eternal salvation,
and of all those who listen to me and follow my guidance towards salvation.”
St. John then
speaks of how, while serving the wondrous services and communing daily of the
most-holy and life-giving sacrament, he felt within himself “its life-giving
nature for the soul and body, its victory over sin and death, and the
feelings of redemption, peace, liberation, and fervor of the spirit which it
engendered.”
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Thus by means
of inner endeavor and a daily serving of the Liturgy, St. John ascended from
power to power, attained and was granted greater and greater gifts of the
Holy Spirit. And all these gifts were abundantly poured upon St. John and
testify to his holiness, his widely-known clairvoyance, miracle-working, and
the countless healings he performed.
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II. PROPHETIC
SERVICE
How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not (Matt. 23:37).
The 19th and
early 20th centuries were a flourishing not only of monastic endeavor: this
was an era of renaissance in all spheres of the nation’s life. In church art,
after a period of decadence, one could observe a return to beautiful ancient
images. The higher theological academies were becoming liberated from the
alien influences of other religions and were stepping onto their own inherent
path. An independent school of theology was being created.
Due to a
continuous reign of Orthodox emperors, the canonical service of the monarch
as loyal son of the Church and guardian of Orthodoxy was being reinstated.
The anticanonical synodal structure was doomed, and things were progressing
towards the restoration of the patriarchy.
An upsurge
was felt in everything. Russia was taking great strides towards the
flourishing of its culture, towards the pinnacle of its well-being, might,
and glory.
But on a par
with the creative and constructive forces, the centrifugal forces of
destruction were developing even more rapidly.
The
overwhelming majority of Russian society was infected with the corrupting,
godless, revolutionary spirit that came to us from the West and was depicted
with great genius in Dostoyevsky’s “Demons.” Moral decay was quickly spreading
along with godlessness. Even some of the members of the destructive camp were
aware at times of the impasse reached by the leftist intelligentsia and into
which it was leading the whole of Russia.
In a paper
read by him in December of 1908, Russian poet Alexander Blok speaks of it
with great force and clarity. He perceives the intelligentsia’s doom: “It is
condemned to wander, move, and degenerate in a vicious circle. Without a
superior guiding principle, revolt and violence are inevitable, beginning with
the decadents’ vulgar theomachy and ending with open self-destruction – all
kinds of debauchery, drunkenness, and suicide.” Blok saw the dead-end to
which the intelligentsia had come, to which it had led Russia, but there was
no repentance in him: he immediately joined the Bolsheviks.
A vivid
description of what was happening in Russia was provided in 1901 in the
magazine “The Helmsman” by St. John’s great contemporary – Archbishop Ambrose
of Kharkov. “What can one say about our so-called light literature, – says
the elderly archpastor, – that is so assiduously being spread among the
people? It is a conduit for inane and untalented works that corrupt the
people’s taste and distract them from serious spiritual reading.
And what is
the state of our educated society, which loves to judge so freely and with
such self-assurance about all current events and manifestations? It is a
market where all kinds of liberal ideas and judgments are offered and
exchanged.
Numerous and
severe reproofs will rain down upon me, of course, and accusation of
offending high society and the most educated classes of our social system.
But someone must open the eyes of these carefree and blinded people, who are
rushing towards perdition and dragging and entire great nation after them!
I am an old
man, over 80 years old, I am already living through a fifth reign, and I
consider it a sin to die without telling my Fatherland the bitter truth. I
saw with my own eyes the reforms of the last century, both favorable and
unsuccessful, in the spheres of education, state and social institutions; I
saw the quick change in social mores and was amazed that our thinkers do not
notice the fall of our people from the firm mental and moral height upon
which stood our ancestors, do not see how our spiritual resources are being
dissipated, how the purity and stability of our family life and the
simplicity and modesty of our customs are being lost.
Let me be
reproved for my harsh speech. My words are justified by current events and
inarguable facts: our higher cases and progressive estates are being
permeated by a spirit of disbelief and rejection of Christ’s teaching. They
are becoming lost to the Church and are tearing themselves away from the
millions of Orthodox people of whom they are supposed to be the leaders.
Their disbelief and liberalism are infecting the semi-educated officials,
merchants, scribes.”
The
archbishop then goes on to vividly describe the moral disintegration which
with catastrophic speed was overwhelming the common people more and more, and
the helplessness of the na?ve measures that were being undertaken to oppose
this evil. “A sad picture,” – he says, and then continues:
“Have you
ever seen what remains of luxurious fields of ripe wheat after a cloud of
hale passes over them? – you see only naked straws and sheaves in the ground…
Have you ever read of what remains in abundant fields after an enemy army
passes over them, or they become the seat of battle? Only the bitter wailing
of the landowners can testify to the force of the disaster that struck them…
Such is the
danger that threatens our Church and our great people!”
The imminent
destruction and its causes were also seen by St. John’s older contemporary,
holy Bishop Theophanus the Recluse (1815-1894), already in the late 19th
century, when he said: “They have become mired in Western dirt up to their
ears, and yet they think: everything is all right!.. Within a generation or
two our Orthodoxy will dry up… Orthodoxy, sovereign monarchy, nationality –
that is what we must preserve! If ever these principles change, the Russian
people will cease to be Russian. They will then lose their sacred tricolor
standard.” With his sermons and letters Bishop Theophanus continuously fought
against the putrid spirit of godlessness and revolution
Earlier our
great ascetics and saints, such as the venerable Seraphim of Sarov, the
ascetic of the Glinsky Hermitage Father Iliodor, who had had the famous
vision about Russia’s forthcoming destinies, as well as the Optina elders and
others warned of God’s punishment that was coming upon Russia for its
abandonment of God. This was also foreseen and talked about by our great
writers and thinkers, such as Dostoyevsky, Leontyev, who clearly indicated
the causes of the collapse, and even before that warnings were issued by
Kireyevsky.
There were
many among St. John’s contemporaries who saw and spoke of the collapse and
fought against it, but St. John’s denunciatory and prophetic voice rang
louder than all others. He personally bore on his shoulders the entire burden
of prophetic service.
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In the days
of the revolution of 1905, St. John was subjected to an extraordinary
outpouring of hate and malice when he sharply and openly stood up against it
and thus diverged from progressive society. The situation even came to
insults and physical attacks, so that St. John was in constant danger. A
society for the protection of St. John was organized under the chairmanship
of Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow.
In his time,
a whole galaxy of “progressive” writers ridiculed the Church and the
government, trying to outdo one another in blasphemy and mockery. But Leo
Tolstoy surpassed them all.
St. John
addressed the following words to them: “Here are modern insolent abusers –
Tolstoy and all his adherents and followers, true antichrists, liars
according to Apostle John: ‘Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is
the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son’ (1 John
2:22)… Does Tolstoy believe in the Son? He does not! What follows then? ‘It
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God’ (Heb. 10:31).
Let us all believe until the end of our lives and let us hold firmly unto our
confession.”
In “The
Helmsman” for the year 1901 we find the following words: “If we disregard all
of Tolstoy’s other works and only look at the two chapters in his novel “The
Resurrection” that describe a liturgy in a prison church, even this will be
enough to become horrified at the Count’s malicious mockery of the greatest
Orthodox sacrament – the holy Eucharist. And just think of all his blasphemy
against our miracle-working icons! Before such blasphemy against Christ and
His Church, the mockery of the Lord at His trial and especially on Golgotha
by the Jews who had crucified Him truly fades into insignificance. The latter
denied Christ’s divinity only conditionally.”
Professor
Speransky wrote in the newspaper “The Russian Thought” of the fact that
Tolstoy represented an unparalleled situation of a government within a
government, that around him was circumscribed a circle of absolute immunity.
And Suvorin justly remarks in his diary: “There are two tsars in Russia –
Nicholas the Second and Leo Tolstoy. Which one is stronger? Nicholas the
Second cannot do anything to Tolstoy, while Tolstoy continuously undermines
the throne of Nicholas the Second.”
Tolstoy
himself confirms it: “I did all that I could to achieve this goal (land in
prison). Perhaps if I had taken part in a murder I would have achieved it,
but as it is, I called their tsar a most hideous creature, a brazen murderer,
all their divine and state laws – the vilest lies, all their ministers and
general – poor slaves and hired killers: and despite all of this I still go
free!”
St. John
replies to him on behalf of the Lord: …“You are trampling abominably upon the
New Testament blood that I shed in suffering on the Cross for the entire
world, you are trampling upon My gifts like swine.” But God is not to be
mocked. In His righteous anger He will scorn your foolishness, your
stupidity, your malice, hate, and pride, and He will scatter you like dust in
the wind”… “You will die in your sins if you do not believe in Me,” – said
the Lord to the Pharisees. Woe unto Leo Tolstoy, who does not believe in the
Lord and is dying in the sin of unbelief and blasphemy. ‘Terrible is the
death of sinners’ (Psalm 33:22). And the death of Tolstoy will be a fearful
lesson to the entire world. His family members will of course try to conceal
this.”
St. John
entreated the Russian people: “Learn, O Russia, to believe in the Almighty
God Who rules over the world’s destinies, and learn from thy holy ancestors
to stand strong in faith, wisdom, and courage. The Lord has entrusted us,
Russians, with the great and salvific gift of the Orthodox faith… Arise, ye
Russians!... Who has taught you insubordination and senseless revolts, which
never existed in Russia before?... Cease your madness! It is enough! It is
time for both you and Russia to stop drinking from the chalice full of
poison!”
“O righteous
God! Both the pastors and the flock are mute before Thee. ‘They are all gone
aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doeth good,
no, not one’ (Psalm 14:3). What will finally happen under the disorder that
now exists in our life? Lawlessness is spreading all over the earth; the
kingdom of the enemy is spreading and Thy kingdom is growing smaller; there
are few of Thy chosen ones left, in whose hearts Thou rests; there are many
more slaves of the devil, in whose hearts is enthroned the man-killer of yore,
sitting there like a thief. What willst Thou do with us, Lord? The blood of
Thy Testament is crying out from the earth, but the voice of Thy Gospel is
not penetrating the hearts of Christians. Thy commandments are being
disregarded, church canons are being violated, – what willst Thou do with us,
Lord?”
In 1907,
during a quiet period in Russia, seeing the universal lack of sensitivity and
repentance, and foreseeing with his prophetic gaze the forthcoming incredible
suffering of the Russian people, St. John, though burdened with heavy
illnesses and being on the edge of the grave himself, ceaselessly thundered
out his prophecies, and with a feeling of ardent pity no longer spoke but
cried out, raising his hands upward: “Repent! A time is coming that is horrible
beyond imagination!” “The impression was overwhelming, all those present were
overcome with dread, and crying could be heard all over the church. All of
us, – said an eyewitness afterwards, – were perplexed: what would it be? War?
An earthquake? A flood? However, from the prophet’s words we understood that
it would be something much more horrible, and we surmised that the earth’s
axis would turn over.”
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“The people
of the first antediluvian world, – said St. John, – were given 120 years to
repent, and they were warned that for their sins there would be a punishment
from God – the flood. Time passed, but the people became more depraved and
did not think of repentance, nor did they believe the prophet of repentance,
the righteous Noah, – and God’s words came to pass exactly. The Jews did not
believe their prophets who told them that they would be taken into captivity
by the Babylonian king and continued to worship idols, – and so they went
into captivity, and Jerusalem was razed, and all their wealth was taken over
by the Babylonians. The Jews who were Christ’s contemporaries did not believe
in Christ as Messiah and crucified Him, and Christ’s prophecy concerning
Jerusalem soon came to pass, and the Romans destroyed the Jews mercilessly.
And now in
our present times the people have also gone mad, they do not listen to the
call of the Church, they say – these are all fairy tales, the priests are
deceiving us for the sake of income.
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O ye blind and
hardhearted ones, are not the events foretold by the Gospel coming to pass
now in front of your very eyes? Here is the destructive war, the famine, the
plagues. Do you not believe in God’s justice even now? But know ye that
judgment is at hand, and that the Lord is coming soon in His glory to judge
the living and the dead!”
Just as in
ancient times the Lord sent prophets to urge the people to repent, so it was
that during the time of the Russian people’s abandonment of God, a great
prophet was sent to them to confirm by countless miracles and instances of
clairvoyance his forecast of God’s forthcoming chastisement.
But the
Russian people did not heed the prophet’s appeal, and thereby they were
inevitably doomed.
The path to
Russia’s renaissance, as well as to the personal salvation of each one of us
has been clearly indicated by St. John, and this path – the path of universal
repentance – is the only one; there is none other.
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St. John of
Kronstadt’s prophecies about Russia
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In the
century following the repose of the memorable pastor, St. John of Kronstadt,
his glory shines like a resplendent sun. New and new rays of this sun shine
upon us in the form of accounts of his countless miracles. The memory of his
name evokes the bottomless sea of divine grace, of which he was the carrier.
What can be
more glorious or richer than the gift of miracle-working? When people have
tried out all the natural resources, when there is no longer any hope of
human assistance, then in great despair the soul cries out to God’s saint and
by his word receives healing.
To what can
this gift be compared? If one compares it to something in this world, then
one may say that it unites wealth, and power, and wisdom, and yet at the same
time the gift of miracle-working surpasses them all. Who is richer than the
one who has the gift of miracle-working, and of what significance are worldly
riches in comparison?
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Whose power
is greater than the one who has this divine gift? Which king or dictator can
compare to the one who commands the laws of nature? Whose worldly wisdom can
compare to the one who bears divine wisdom within himself?
And such a
superhuman lived in our homeland, among the Russian people, and was our elder
contemporary. It is primarily for this great and splendid gift of
miracle-working that the Russian people venerate St. John of Kronstadt.
However, the
glory of St. John is by no means dependent on this one gift of
miracle-working. There is another and no less important side to his activity
– his gift of prophecy.
It may –
alas! – sound paradoxical, but the state of our humiliated and suffering
homeland for the last century confirms the glory of St. John, who sternly
prophesied the coming of these sufferings, but remained “a cry in the
wilderness.”
He was a
loyal son of his homeland, he loved his dear Russia as few others did, loved
all the boundless beauty of Russian life, but above all he loved God’s Church
and the Holy Trinity, in Whose grace-filled rays he lived. He prophesied
God’s forthcoming punishment of Russia for its falling away from the Holy
Church in the person of its ruling circles, mainly the intelligentsia.
“God is not
to be mocked, – said St. John. – I look upon Russia and I become filled with
dread and sorrow, seeing how it is suffering and how it will yet suffer, if
it does not return wholeheartedly to its native faith, to the Orthodox
Church.”
“Russia, – he
said at another time, – is agitated and suffering from a bloody internal
battle, from a bad harvest and famine, from a great increase in the cost of
living, from godlessness, from an absolute loss of morals. These are evil
times – people have turned into ferocious beasts, even into evil spirits. The
government has become weak. It wrongly understood the freedom that it gave to
the people. It itself has become obscured in mind and did not provide the
people with a clear understanding of freedom. Evil has grown in Russia to
monstrous proportions, and it is almost impossible to correct it.”
This was said
by St. John in the period of 1904-1908, and at the same time he explained how
it had all occurred.
“The morals
of all classes of Russian society have nowadays become tremendously weak.
Daily life has become putrefied with all kinds of sins – abandonment of
faith, ignorance of God, and sacrilege, especially among the educated elite,
have become widespread and commonplace, depravity has become a daily custom,
the press and literature are permeated with enticement. All have betrayed or
are betraying God in one way or another, all have abandoned the Lord, and His
righteous wrath has been ignited. Universal disasters are overwhelming us for
the heavy sins and iniquities of the entire people.”
In such a
spirit the great pastor denounced the universal vices of Russia, but his
voice was muffled by the so-called progressive and falsely liberal press,
which unanimously abused him as an extreme reactionary, a retrograde, a man
behind the times in that enlightened 20th century.
St. John,
however, had a clear understanding of where all this came from in the Russian
land.
“Our current
overeducated members of the intelligentsia, who have alienated themselves
from their Mother Church, shun God’s wondrous design for our salvation and
all the sacred images of God’s deeds and all His saints, yet they are madly
interested in decadent art and sculpture. There are those who throw away
enormous sums of money on these voluptuous images, yet look upon the poor
with squeamishness and disgust, not wishing to spare them even a few kopeks.”
“How trite
people have become and how depraved, completely losing the Christian spirit
and becoming like pagans and sometimes even worse in their way of life. It is
the unbridled press, especially the underground one, that has brought our
intelligentsia and partly the common people to such a state of immorality.
For a long time it had coveted freedom and has finally grabbed it. In one way
or another this scythe will reap us all. The Dread Judgment awaits mankind.”
In his ardent
love for Russia St. John pointed out that the foundation on which Russia
stands is the Orthodox monarchy.
“What would
you be without a Tsar, O Russians? Your enemies would try to destroy even the
very name of Russia, for the guardian and protector of Russia after God is
Russia’s Sovereign, the Royal Tsar, and without him Russia is not Russia.”
What an
amazing prophecy! As though the great pastor foresaw those four ominous
letters – USSR.
St. John
continuously coupled the rule of the Orthodoxy monarchy with Divine
Providence. “Only God can empower a chosen individual to occupy the throne
and entrust him with monarchical power, vesting him in glory, majesty, and
strength.”
St. John also
denounced those statesmen who were destroying Russia. “Our current restless
and unacknowledged politicians desire a constitutional or republican form of
rule in Russia, but they do not understand the history and character of the
Russian people, who cannot be without a Tsar, who live only by him, and who,
after God and the Heavenly Queen, place their hopes in him alone. Thus let us
venerate the Tsar as a ruler given by God for the good of Russia.”
Though
denouncing his beloved Russia, St. John still believed in its shining future.
“Russia is being tempered by woes and disasters. Stand firm, Russia! Repent
and pray. Shed bitter tears before thy Heavenly Father, Whom thou hast
offended immeasurably. The Lord, like an artful physician, subjects us to
various temptations, sorrows, illnesses, and woes, in order to purify us like
gold in a furnace. Such is the purpose of all the trials and miseries sent to
us by God in this life.”
All the
prophecies of St. John of Kronstadt have come to pass in full force. In
truth, he was not only a great miracle-worker, but also a great prophet. We
should venerate the resplendent glory of this great miracle-worker and
prophet, and entreat him to pray for a great miracle for his ardently-loved
homeland – the miracle of the resurrection of Russia.
O great
pastor! Hear thou our prayers, if not for the sake of us, sinners, then for
the fulfillment of thy prophecy on the purification of the gold of the
Russian soul in the furnace of fiery tribulations, for the glory of thy name
and for the glory of God in Holy Russia.
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Bishop Nikon
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The righteous
Saint John of Kronstadt, the teacher of faith and guiding light of Orthodoxy
who was venerated by the entire Christian world, reposed in the Lord on
December 20, 1908 by the old calendar (January 2, 1909 by the new calendar).
Eight years later our homeland was visited by a great misfortune: there came
upon us the sad days of the vile “February” (revolution).
When hearing
the name “Father John,” I vividly remember my childhood years. Until 1880 my
parents lived in their home in Kronstadt. The windows of our house faced
Cathedral Square, and up to the age of ten I always saw before me the
beautiful and majestic St. Andrew’s Cathedral which stood in the middle of
the square. In the 70s and 80s the rector of the cathedral was Protopriest
Paul Trachevsky. The assistant pastor was Protopriest John Sergiyev.
The residents
of Kronstadt, which may be considered a suburb of St. Petersburg, were used
to seeing the clergy of their churches follow the customs of the capital as
concerned fashion and cut of clothing, for the priests there paraded around
in cassocks made of expensive materials.
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When Father
John Sergiyev, the humble son of a church reader from the Sura village in the
province of Archangelsk, unused to the luxury of the capital, arrived as
priest at our cathedral, many of the parishioners expressed their
disappointment. “Well, well,” they said, “what a priest has been sent to us…
No looks at all.”
In those
years Kronstadt was a commercial port, a harbor for St. Petersburg. Foreign
ships and sailboats transferred their cargoes to barges in the Kronstadt
harbor. Thousands of dockers made up the work force. This was a totally
unique element, consisting of vagrants by profession, typical “proletariats
according to the theory of Karl Marx.” Naturally these kind of people
regularly spent on drink all they earned during the summer days. But when
winter came along, the wharves became covered with ice and the harbor became
empty. Then the dockers – dirty, ragged, and often barefooted – were to be
found on the city streets with their hand held out.
St. John,
having finished a private service somewhere, is returning home with a cabby.
From all street corners tens of such “proletariats” run towards him. St. John
leaves the cabby and first gives this crowd some moral instruction. Taking
off their caps, they patiently listen to him. Afterward batyushka takes out
his purse and tries to see whether there is anything left in it from the
previous street handout. The purse becomes completely emptied out.
St. John
realized, of course, that such aid to the poor was only a palliative measure.
This gave rise to his project of building a “House of Industry.” My father
was one of the primary people who helped St. John accomplish his plan. The
“House of Industry” was to serve as a soup kitchen for the hungry and a place
to spend the night. In the work hall of this home, all who so desired could
do some simple work and receive pocket money. The home had a church in which
St. John served.
Batyushka was
an old friend of my parents’ and often visited our home. He was dearly loved
and greatly respected, and everyone knew that he led a holy and ascetic way
of life. But to my parents he seemed in all respects to be an ordinary man.
One could converse with him about all the affairs that were currently of
interest to society. And suddenly everyone began reading in the newspapers
about miraculous cases of healing by his prayer. Judging by the suddenness of
the miraculous change which St. John’s life underwent, it is quite obvious
that it occurred by God’s Providence. St. John’s life as a common man ended;
his “saint’s life” began. He no longer belonged to himself. He became the
executor of the supreme will of God.
My younger
brother entered the Naval Corps in 1888. Father wished St. John to bless him
for service in his new field of endeavor. He took his son and reached batyushka
with great difficulty. St. John blessed the young man and said: “May the Lord
preserve you, son Andrew, both on the water and under the water.” Upon his
return home, father expressed his surprise to his wife in regard to
batyushka’s words: “What does it mean – under the water? Do you suppose he’ll
be drowning?”
Let me remind
you that this was all in 1888, i.e. 10 years before the appearance of
newspaper reports on submarine trials. St. John’s words were later forgotten,
and my brother remembered the prophecy only 20 years later, when he became
the commander of a submarine.
While a cadet
in the corps, my brother came down with an acute form of typhus. His parents
were summoned, because the doctors said there was no hope for him. Mother sat
at his bedside day and night, since he had already lost consciousness and was
dying. Father was able to get to St. John and tell him of his woe.
St. John, who
at that time was renowned as a healer, chose a moment and came to the corps’
hospital, where he had never been before. There was no one in his entourage
who knew the layout of the corps buildings. But St. John, without asking
anyone, drove up to a side gate that was unknown even to us, old cadets, and
quickly striding through the labyrinth of courtyards, went into the hospital
directly to the ward where my brother lay. Greeting my mother, he then loudly
said to my brother: “Son Andrew, let us pray together. Repeat the words of
the prayer after me…” And suddenly my sick brother, who was lying unconscious
and had already lost the gift of speech, began saying: “In the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” In a faint but clear voice he
repeated after batyushka the words of the prayer. His voice continued to
become stronger and clearer…
The prayers
were read and batyushka, bidding my mother farewell, briefly said to her: “He
will get well.” St. John’s very appearance at my brother’s bedside was a
miracle. So was his cure a miracle.
Afterwards my
brother sailed on submarines, participated in a campaign with the squadron of
Admiral Rozhdestvensky, and took part in the battle with the mighty German
squadron in the Gulf of Riga, where he commanded the destroyer “Emir
Bukharsky.” He also took part in the White Movement. Many times he saw death
around him, but the Lord preserved him. He died in America in 1944 at the age
of 70.
St. John has
left us physically, but he has never left us without his help. The Undimmed
Light with which he illuminated the hearts of the Orthodox faithful will
never fade, and St. John himself will always come to our aid.
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Memoirs of a
Kronstadt resident
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St. John of
Kronstadt’s very appearance, especially in priestly garb, was enough to
produce spiritual delight in the faithful, fortifying their faith in the
Lord. His blue eyes, shining with love and prayerful inspiration, gave the
impression that he saw Jesus Christ before him. This impression was
strengthened by his moving and heartfelt exclamations and prayers, expressed
as a petitionary conversation with the Lord Who was visible to him. The faithful
were also struck by his lack of gray hair, very unusual for his 60-65 years
of age, and especially by his extraordinary gait, which made it seem as
though he were flying over the floor of the altar or the ambo, carried by the
heavenly powers.
During the
church services performed by St. John, the spacious St. Andrew’s Cathedral of
which St. John was the rector was always full to the utmost. St. John’s
powerful influence over the faithful was especially felt during general
confession, which he was forced to use in view of the enormous number of
people wishing to confess to him.
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One can say
with absolute assurance that there was not a single soul in the overcrowded
church that did not wholeheartedly repent of its sins, naming them with loud
weeping and wailing.
In order to
be able to continuously entreat the Lord for others, St. John welcomed all
the faithful who came to see him from all corners of Russia in his House of
Industry, where special rooms were assigned for this purpose and were let out
at minimum cost. Passing through these rooms, St. John served molebens for
the visitors, miraculously healing their physical and spiritual illnesses,
instructing and fortifying them in the Orthodox faith, and providing
magnanimous material aid to the needy.
In view of
St. John’s clairvoyance, those who came to these rooms with fraudulent
claims, trying only to get money out of him, were totally unsuccessful. There
were times when St. John, coming into a room and just glancing at an unknown
visitor, would sternly say: “You are unworthy. Repent and cleanse yourself of
your great sin through prayer and fasting, and then come back.”
The writer of
these lines personally experienced St. John’s clairvoyance, when he was taken
by his father to get Batyushka’s blessing: “Bless him, Batyushka, for he is
going off to apply to the Cadet Corps.” Placing his hand on my head and
half-closing his eyes, St. John confidently said: “You will pass.” – After
that, as though seeing with his spiritual eyes the mortal danger that awaited
me in the distant future, he added in an agitated voice: “Quickly make the
sign of the cross.”
Sixteen years
passed after that blessing, and the time came when during our “bloodless
revolution” I was placed against the wall to be executed together with other
officers. Unexpectedly for my own self, the command “Aim!” was interrupted by
my semi-conscious but commanding voice: “Wait! Let me cross myself!” The
several seconds that were spent in making the sign of the cross saved me from
the terrible fate of the other officers, for in the meantime my soldiers
hurriedly arrived and rescued me from inevitable execution.
Having given
himself entirely over to the Lord God and to unfailing prayers for those who
appealed to him in person and by mail, St. John still found time to publish
religious works. The degree to which his writings were inspired by the Holy
Spirit can be somewhat judged from his inspired homilies, which the faithful
in church listened to with spiritual trepidation, since it seemed as though
St. John were literally reading their doubtful thoughts and providing clear
and concise answers to guide them on the path to eternal salvation.
For the poor
and the indigent St. John was not only a miraculous intercessor before the
Lord, but quite literally their provider, offering them material and
financial aid. He received resources for such aid from wealthy people all
over Russia, who wrote to him with fervent requests for prayer. Those who
were particularly destitute gathered in great multitudes in front of his
House of Industry, and after blessing them, St. John threw money out of a bag
to them from the balcony. The same situation could be seen whenever St. John
rode through the streets.
Providing an
all-around example to the faithful during his life, even after his death St.
John did not leave them without his intercession in the Heavenly Kingdom
whenever they appealed to him with faith and prayer, receiving miraculous
healing from the Lord.
S.K.
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Kind pastor
and miracle-worker
In the 1890s
my family lived in Peterhof, the summer residence of the Russian emperors. At
that time my father was the head of the Peterhof palace administration. I
have no recollection of when and how my parents became acquainted with St.
John of Kronstadt, but I know that St. John treated them with great
affection. About six times a year St. John came to visit my parents. His
arrival led to a great rise in religious fervor not only within our family,
but also among our numerous staff. If my father happened to be away from
home, he would be immediately informed of St. John’s arrival, and he would
quickly return home, while St. John, as he waited for my father, sat in the
living room and conversed with my mother and us children. As soon as my
father arrived, St. John served a moleben and blessed all of us and all the
members of our staff. After that he was invited into the dining room, where
he only drank a cup of weak tea and ate a piece of white bread, and then
proceeded to converse with my parents. When St. John departed, my father
always gave him an envelope with money for the poor.
As soon as
St. John appeared in the driveway, he was usually awaited by a huge crowd of
people wishing to receive his blessing, or requesting his prayers for sick
family members, or poor people asking for his aid. I saw with my own eyes how
St. John would take out the envelope he had received from my father and would
hand it over to a destitute person without knowing what sum was inside the
envelope. Everyone knew of his extraordinary charity and kindness.
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Many years
have passed since then, but the image of the kind pastor has become
deeply-ingrained in my memory: of middle height, lean and middle-aged, with
blond hair, kind gray-blue eyes, and a penetrating glance, he always
attracted us children. He was always dressed in a dark-gray cassock. He
always had a calm appearance and spoke in calm but curt phrases. Among the
local populace St. John of Kronstadt enjoyed the greatest respect, and people
believed in that the Lord heard his prayers. Batyushka was a true pastor of
our Orthodox Church.
In July of
1894 my father became very seriously ill from twisting of the bowels. Local
physicians thought that an operation was necessary, and that it was
impossible to do without one. Several medical luminaries from Moscow were
summoned, while our palace physician, Dr. Yuditskiy, remained constantly at
my father’s bedside.
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The Moscow
doctors arrived in the morning and also confirmed the absolute necessity of
an operation, which was scheduled for 7:00 in the evening. By that time all
the requisite materials were to be delivered from our palace hospital. My
mother sent a telegram to St. John in the city of Kronstadt, asking him to
pray for my father. At 3:00 in the afternoon my father was visited by Emperor
Alexander III, while at 4:00 St. John himself arrived.
This time he
seemed very concerned and concentrated, and immediately went into the bedroom
of my father, who lay there with a very high fever. St. John, who was usually
calm and quiet, served a moleben very nervously this time.
When he
finished the moleben, he came up to my father’s bed and said: “Dmitriy
Stepanovich, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, sit up!” – Dr. Yuditskiy,
who was nearby, ran up to St. John, exclaiming: “Batyushka, the sick man
should not move, because his bowels may become perforated!” – To this St.
John replied very firmly: “Everything is possible in the name of the Lord”
and, turning to my father, again said: “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
I command you to sit!” Holding a cross in his right hand, with the left he
helped my father to sit up. He then sprinkled my sick father with holy water,
and after crossing him with the cross, he gave him the cross to kiss, then
leaned over my father and kissed him, saying: “The Lord God will make you
well; now lay down quietly.”
We all kissed
the cross, after which St. John went out into the hall next door and gave
everyone else the cross to kiss. After that St. John was invited by my mother
into the dining room, where, as usual, he drank a cup of weak tea and ate a
piece of white bread.
As soon as
St. John left my father’s bedroom, Dr. Yuditskiy came up to my father and
checked his pulse. The pulse had fallen rapidly. Believing that this could
have happened because of a perforation of the bowels, Dr. Yuditskiy ran down
to the lower floor where the guestrooms were, as well as my father’s
reception room and office, and where all the guest surgeons were waiting for
the evening and the appointed operation. He reported that the sick man’s
pulse had fallen rapidly, and that a perforation had probably occurred. The
doctors hurried upstairs to my father’s bedroom. The pulse was normal, and
from a high fever the temperature had fallen down to almost normal. The
doctors waited for about an hour, in case this was a perforation, but then
they were forced to admit that the illness was gone.
The Lord had
heeded St. John’s prayers, and my father rapidly regained his health and soon
afterwards was able to resume his official duties. This miracle of healing
was known to all: from Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Fedorovna down
to the last servant in Peterhof.
Colonel N.D. Pleshko
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Pastor of all
Russia
(Commemorated November 1st / October 19th, and January 2nd / December 20th )
Those times were called “the 19th century, the iron
century.” In accordance with this epithet, iron logic should also have
been manifest throughout it. And initially this expectation was being
fulfilled. Indeed, was it not clear where Russia was heading in that
century – towards materialism and atheism? But how to combine with the
theory of the progressive godlessness of Russia the phenomenon of Saint John of
Kronstadt, who was born on October 31, 1829?
Initially he did not understand his mission.
He dreamed of going off as a missionary to the Aleuts, to soften the
coarse customs of pagans. However, having been appointed priest to
Kronstadt, here, too, he discovered enough pagans. Batyushka visited
their homes, shared his last with them, sometimes returned home without his
outer garments. The church administration was upset with him over this
and began to pay out his salary not to him, but to his wife, in order that he
not give it away to the poor. Once a certain pious old woman asked him to
pray for the healing of a very sick person. “You just ask God directly to
heal him.” – “How can I show such daring?” – thought St. John, and suddenly
felt that he was given permission to do so. And he almost demanded from
the Lord to heal the unfortunate sick man. The next day he was told that
the latter was fully recovered. From that moment the miracles gushed forth in a
powerful stream as was probably never seen in the history of Christianity from
the times of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The blind began to see, the
lame began to walk, the dead came back to life. With great delay some of
St. John’s miraculous healings began to be recorded, with an indication of time
and place, the name and address of the person who was healed, and with
documents confirming the occurrence, particularly physicians’ testimonials.
This selective chronicle took up several tomes. The miracles
reached an absolutely unprecedented level: people were healed from a note to
him, from a submitted photograph, from a telegram!
However, the greatest miracle was St. John of
Kronstadt himself. By all laws of nature no man could have survived the
daily regimen that he followed, yet he remained in good health until nearly the
age of eighty. Every day he served the liturgy, which meant constant
fasting and getting up at 3:00 in the morning to prepare for the service.
Thousands of people took communion from him, so that the duration of this
sacrament was often up to three hours. After that St. John preached a
sermon, to which people reacted as to the words of Christ Himself.
Afterwards batyushka saw visitors, and then went out to serve
privately-requested needs. He returned home late at night, and it is
absolutely unfathomable where he still found the time to write his homilies and
his thoughts that were published under the name of “My Life in Christ.”
He obviously lived in an extended dimension of time, and time can be
extended only by the One Who created it. His superhuman burden was made
more difficult by frequent travels all over Russia, thanks to which hundreds of
thousands of people were able to touch upon his holiness. How much he was
loved and venerated is attested to by the following: whenever he sailed
somewhere on a steamship, crowds ran after him along the shore. And
throughout the entire land thundered his appeal: “Learn, O Russia, to believe
in the Almighty God, Who rules the fate of the world, and learn faith, wisdom,
and courage from your holy forefathers!”
The main theme of his appeals to the people
was the intolerability of revolution. “Cease your insanity! Enough,
enough!” – thundered his voice all over the world. And with the
uncompromising directness of a prophet he presaged: “If things in Russia
proceed in this manner, and if the godless and the insane anarchists are not
subjected to the just punishment of the law, and if Russia does not cleanse
itself of its multitude of chaff, it will fall into ruin just like the ancient
kingdoms…”
The great pastor was unable to prevent the
revolution. Does this mean that he suffered defeat? It would
undoubtedly seem so: the godless and the madmen did take over. But this
is what must give us pause: Russia did not fall into ruin! Moreover, it
was able to live through the Civil War and the subsequent destruction, and to
restore itself, becoming a mighty power. In pondering this and analyzing
the facts, one comes to an amazing conclusion: the post-revolutionary
development of Russia, which was renamed the USSR, did not go the way the
revolutionaries had intended, and in this sense they did not turn out to be the
victors. The Russian people exhibited such unyielding resolve in striving
to remain Russian, that the Bolsheviks became exhausted in their struggle
against the people’s tenacity. And in our attainment of such strong
immunity to godlessness and madness, the help and service St. John of Kronstadt
was simply invaluable. The Lord Himself sent him to us, in order to
breathe into Russia, on the eve of its great catastrophe, a reserve of
spirituality that allowed it to survive under satanic rule.
Viktor
Trostnikov (Reprinted from “Argumenty i fakty,” No. 44)
Orthodox Spirituality
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In her
canonization and glorification of St. John of Kronstadt, the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad not only confirms for her own faithful the sanctity of their
beloved and venerated pastor and father, but now holds up his holy example of
a life in Christ for the whole world to see. Up to this time, one might
say, he has belonged to the Orthodox Russian people. Few outside of
faithful Russians have been aware of the last flowering of Holy Russia, of
the profoundest Orthodox spirituality that occurred just before the
Revolution; St John was the most fragrant blossom of this flowering. In
his life of asceticism and constant prayer, in the spiritual care he devoted
to the thousands and millions of Orthodox believers who comprised his flock,
and above all in the untold miracles he worked during his own lifetime and
after his death, miracles which continue to the present day, – St. John is
revealed to be beyond doubt one of the greatest of Russian and, indeed, of
all Orthodox Saints.
This
great Saint has had a special role to play in the life of the Orthodox
Russian people. He was a prophet who foresaw the fall of the Russian
Empire and the exile of the Russian faithful. Seeing the spiritual
cause of this fall in the worldliness and lack of living faith that were so
widespread in the last days of the Empire, he called Orthodox faithful to repentance
and renewed awareness of their Christian vocation and responsibility.
His appeal is still heard today, and if the Orthodox Russian people
dispersed in exile throughout the world are still faithful to Holy Orthodoxy
– even if only a small remnant – it is in part due to his still-living
example and his holy prayers.
But now
St. John, while remaining the spiritual patron of the suffering Russian
people, has become a Saint of the universal Orthodox Church of Christ.
It is no accident that his canonization has taken place outside of
Russia, in the still free world into which he foresaw that the Russian people
would be sent, and in which Orthodox churches would be erected, as a
testimony of Christian Truth before a world that is, despite its pretensions,
unbelieving. To this unbelieving world, in all the languages in which
his words have been and will yet be translated, he now speaks the same
message that he spoke to the Russian people in his own lifetime. This
world, with its imposing outward structure that makes it seem to some so
secure, is actually tottering, its foundation rotting away from the self-love
and unbelief with which it is filled. Its fall is at hand, and the same
godless beast that once swallowed the holy Russian land now stands ready to
devour the rest of the world and complete his aim to exterminate the last
Christians and lead apostate humanity in its worship of Antichrist.
This,
perhaps, is what lies before us if we do not return to the path of a
righteous Christian life. There are some who would consider such thoughts of
the imminent Second Coming of Christ and the terrible Last Judgment, of which
St. John constantly reminded us, to be too “negative.” But if his
warnings were correct, then we have to fill our hearts not with fear and
terror, but with tearful repentance, with zeal to lead a truly Christian
life, and with fervent hope of attaining the Kingdom of Heaven, which is our
true home.
It is
to nothing but a genuine and profound Christian faith that St. John calls us.
In an age when too many pastors preach a “new Christianity” that is
only worldliness in disguise, his is a rare and much-needed voice – not for
Russians alone, not for Orthodox Christians alone, but for the whole world,
if it will but listen.
O holy Saint
of Christ, John of Kronstadt, pray to God for us!
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Voir aussi : http://livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Cronstadt/table.html
http://www.editionsducerf.fr/html/fiche/fichelivre.asp?n_liv_cerf=4525
