В Академии 1851–1855

Ivan Ilyich Sergiev spent four years at the academy and graduated from the course in 1855. To alleviate the difficult orphaned lot of his mother, who was widowed during his student years, he, while remaining a student, takes on the work of writing in the office of the academy and his entire salary of 10 rubles. he sends it to his mother a month. “I received 10 rubles for writing at the academy and was considered a rich man,” Fr. said with a smile. John later, recalling his student years. About the student years of dear Father Fr. John, his friend at the academy, Archpriest N.G. Georgievsky, says the following: “Fr. John was my close friend throughout my academic life. He and I sat next to each other both in the audience and in the busy room. Father John, as a student, was distinguished by his extraordinary quietness and humble character. All his comrades, during the entire 4-year course, did not see any bitterness from him, although there were cases for this, in view of his aloofness from amusements. Father John was distinguished by rare piety. After the usual evening prayer, all of us students went to bed, and for a long time he, on his knees, prayed in front of the icon by his bed. Being not tied to external life, Fr. and I. During the entire academic course, John never attended a party or went to a theater, but spent all his time reading books needed for essays.” From the outside about. John was a student at the academy, like other students, but from the inside - he was in the eyes of God the chosen one of God, a person who was destined to follow a special path of life; therefore, God's providence placed him in especially favorable conditions at the academy. The post as a clerk gave him, in addition to the salary, privacy. The scribe used a special “his” room, a benefit that other students were deprived of, and this scribe’s room was the place of the first prayerful and ascetic labors of the great righteous man and miracle worker Fr. John. The solitary room and the long nights supported and nurtured that spirit of prayer, the makings of which were given by all the previous years of family and school life. Here, alone, Ivan Ilyich Sergiev experienced the first delights of communication with God and supermundane abodes. He spent four years of his student life in prayer and reading. Even before he became a clerk, he used his first earnings from copying someone’s professorial work to buy an interpretation of Chrysostom on Matthew and rejoiced at the purchase as “a treasure of treasures.” “I especially loved,” says dear Father Fr. John - read the Bible and Chrysostom's interpretation of the Gospel. Ivan Ilyich spent long winter hours reading this. Sometimes the deep thought of John Chrysostom enveloped him to such an extent with its sublime beauty that he cried in a fit of spiritual delight and applauded the Chrysostom orbit, just as his Antioch and Constantinople listeners once applauded John Chrysostom. Entire days, weeks and months passed in this reading, and the soul of the future good shepherd was educated on Chrysostom and the Bible. What was the chosen one of God, Fr., thinking about and living at that time? John of Kronstadt? We do not have his diaries, but the memories of his comrades allow us to get a fairly complete picture of this issue. One could often see Ivan Ilyich at the fireplace on the second floor. Upstairs, not far from the present church, right next to the “Ponomarskaya” there was one of the student rooms. And here, near the burning stove, Ivan Ilyich Sergiev loved to bask. Often one of the inhabitants of No. would sit down with him, and a conversation would begin... What was this conversation about? Of course, about everything... But some topics seemed to prevail. “Most often Sergiev talked to me about humility,” writes Archpriest L. P-ov. This is a theme characteristic of Sergiev. Thus, at this time, what occupies him most is the commandment of forgiveness and conquering love. He thinks a lot about this first Christian virtue and little by little comes to the conviction that here is the strength and center of Christianity, that humble love conquers everything, that one path leads to God and the triumph of His truth, this same humble love. "Humility... What can resist him, what malice will defeat him, what force will go against him?.. When you stop in front of an easy barrier and ask yourself the question of how to break it - by force or by humble love, always answer yourself: I will take it with humble love, and you will win.” Even more often than by the fire, one could see Ivan Sergiev in the garden. He loved to walk along the alleys of the academic garden and think. The garden reminded him of his beloved Arkhangelsk forests. He does not hide from us the areas in which his thoughts moved. Most of all, he thought about the darkness - the web of evil that shrouded the world, about the sacrifice made on Calvary, about those dark and unfortunate peoples who still sit in darkness and the shadow of death. And he felt sorry to tears for these people who had not touched the robe of Christ, and he was eager to go there to preach about Christ, to call dark people to the bright Kingdom of Christ. At one time, Sergiev firmly decided to go deep into northern Siberia and America to those ignorant of Christ, take monastic vows and become a missionary. But little by little new thoughts came into conflict with this decision. Sergiev could not help but notice that next to him there is no less paganism than in Africa; he saw that the “savages” of St. Petersburg knew Christ no more than the savages of some Patagonia. He also saw the search for God beginning among the cultural classes. I saw how a cultured man who had lost God ran in horror through the streets of the city and looked for God, screaming in confusion and horror. “I am looking for God, God! We killed Him. Are we wandering in endless nothingness? Has it gotten colder? Isn’t night coming? “Where is our God? We killed God - the God of living man. And now our hands are in the blood of God and there is nothing to put in His place.” And so it began to seem to him that it was better to stay here, among these urban Christian pagans. Ivan Sergiev sought peace in prayer, and found it. According to an authoritative biographer, his childhood vision was repeated at this time, but in a clearer form. “Once,” says his biographer, “Father John, after one of his walks, saw himself in a dream as a priest serving in some cathedral unknown to him in Kronstadt. Sergiev saw in this dream God’s indication that he needed to be a priest.” A few weeks later, the fourth year of his student ended - and at one party (Fr. Sergiev almost never attended them), Ivan Ilyich met the daughter of Archpriest Nesvitsky from Kronstadt (Elizaveta Konstantinovna). He immediately proposed to her and, at the end of the course, got married. My student years are over. Life has come... Ivan Ilyich himself left the academy grateful to it for what it gave, and with an even greater thirst for knowledge. “You have abundantly revealed to me, O Lord, Your truth and Your righteousness. Through educating me through the sciences, You revealed to me all the riches of faith, nature and human reason. I have known Your word - the word of love, passing to the division of our soul and spirit; I studied the laws of the human mind and its philosophy, structure and beauty of speech; penetrated partly into the secrets of nature, into its laws, into the abyss of the universe and the laws of circulation; I know the population of the globe, I know about individual peoples, about famous persons, about their deeds that have taken their course in the world; I partially learned the great science of self-knowledge and approaching You; in a word, “I learned a lot, so that the essence of the human mind is shown to me.” “Glory to You, Lord! But I want to know more. My spirit thirsts for knowledge. My heart is not satisfied, not full. I am learning and will continue to study.” December 12, 1855, Fr. John was ordained a priest by His Grace Christopher, Bishop of Vinnitsa. When after this he entered the Kronstadt Cathedral for the first time, he stopped at the threshold almost in horror; it was a cathedral of his childhood visions, which he suddenly remembered now with amazing clarity.