Детские и юношеские годы о. Иоанна Кронштадтского

500 versts from the White Sea, in a country “which the sun forgets for years,” Sura, the birthplace of the Kronstadt lamp, is located on the banks of the Pinega. It is difficult, even in the beautiful north, to choose something more beautiful, so to speak untouched, than the shores of Pinega. This is a constant change of a wide variety of landscapes. Empty estates, alternately high, covered with forests, then low banks, meadows. No village, no random human soul. “Far inland there is a flat meadow strip. A little further - huge mountains of iron ore, completely red, then dazzling white masses of alabaster and gypsum. My God, what mountains are these! Either they go for a mile with impregnable fortresses, and suddenly they end in deep gorges covered with dense greenery, then they rise with huge cliffs, which, every minute, seem ready to collapse over our heads; sometimes they rise straight into the sky like colossal castles of the most fantastic shapes and outlines; At their base there are bizarre caves made by nature, and above this whole magical world, high above there is a dense forest, and even higher there is a bright, blue sky. No artist in the world is able to draw this wondrous picture, which the Lord created with His single word. Let there be mountains!” (Narcisova). Unfortunately, the beauty of this majestic picture does not correspond to the life and life of those who have to live here. It's poor and dark here. The inhabitants of this region have difficulty defending their right to live in the harsh nature, they are hungry and cold, although, despite this, they love their homeland more than any southerner. And among this beauty and poverty, the future Kronstadt lamp had to grow up. The Sura is located on one of the most beautiful turns of the beautiful Pinega, at the confluence of the Sura into the Pinega. She reigns high above the entire surrounding area. Far, far to the north you can see the blue of the mountains. “Here they are, the Letovsky Hills, which were five or six thousand years ago along the banks of the great Sura River.” (O. John. Diary for 1902). “On the southwestern side, where the Sura River flows, there is a long strip of land, closed by a hill on which a forest is spread. From the south, on the very edge of the horizon, covered in a haze of fog, stretches another forest, lost in the distance. In the distance, the Sura River snakes through this space, sparkling with its streams in the brightly shining sun. Peasants are working here and there, a cart is trundling, children are running.” (Zhivotov). A beautiful corner, but at the same time it is one of the most seedy corners, as we have already said, of the dark and poor Pinega region. And, of course, the hut of the psalm-reader Ilya Sergiev in the wretched village was far from rich. The village of Sura from the side of the Sura River We still have the opportunity to see this wretched beggarly house in the Sura community 1 . This is naked, obvious poverty, extreme poverty. So, on the one hand - beauty, harsh untouched grandeur, on the other - need, this is the “backdrop” of Vanya Sergeev’s first impressions. We did not start describing the nature of the Pinega region for the sake of beauty of words. No. And this description itself does not belong to us. We took it because we needed it. The fact is that, as you will see below, with the grace of God, this “backdrop”, this harsh and beautiful nature, and need and poverty, together with the strong and beneficent influence of father and mother, created for us the Kronstadt prayer book. Fr. was born. John on the night of October 19. The newborn was extremely weak, so the parents did not even hope that he would survive until the morning; they baptized him that same night, inviting a local priest, and named him after St. John of Rylsky. By the will of God and through the prayer of his mother, the child, however, began to quickly recover and grow stronger, although he still remained physically weak until his school years. But he grew quickly spiritually. As we said, much of this growth was contributed by nature itself, which is especially able to speak to children. A pure heart sees God. Vanya loved flowers, listened to the voices of the forest, talked with affectionate Pinega, and they all told him about God. View about. Suras from Poklonnaya Gora In one of his later teachings, Fr. We read the following heartfelt lines from John: “Wonderful is Your omnipotence, O Lord! As You said at the beginning, so to this day every grain, every sapling and tree obeys You! With the onset of spring, as soon as there is a sufficient amount of warmth for the development of plants, Your soulless creature begins wonderful work in the modest unknown of the bowels of the earth, also on the stems and branches of trees, without noise, without knocking, correctly, gradually. Here they come into the light of God: not a single blade of grass, not a single leaf, not a single tree will go astray, will not forget the image (form) given to it. And look where everything comes from: the grass on the ground or a leaf on a tree unfolds, becomes wider and wider, larger and larger, and, finally, the bare earth is covered with a beautiful multi-colored carpet that attracts both the eye and the sense of smell; and the trees dress up in thick leafy clothing and cover their members. So everything is done picturesquely, elegantly, on our land from these plants! And all this comes as if out of nowhere, according to one word of the Lord, spoken once and for all! And we, brethren, do not arise into being from the same non-existence. What are we at the beginning “in the loins of our fathers?” (Heb.7:10). Isn’t it obvious through this that the Creator lets us know that in the beginning He brought everything from non-existence into being? Brothers, let us look at the plants and learn. How obvious and tangible is our Lord, our Almighty Father, in these plants! Every grass, every leaf, every flower seems to whisper to us: “The Lord is here.” Consider, brothers, the wise structure of plants and recognize God in them.” Here about. John conveyed only in theological language what he experienced and felt as a child. Even now, reading these lines and peering into the inspired, child-like face of Fr. John, we can vividly imagine him as a boy, thin, pale with the face of the youth Bartholomew from Nesterov’s painting in flowers, on the banks of the Sura. Joyful, bright, he talks with every petal, interrogates every herb about the secret of his life, about the One who brought him and every herbal past to life, and every flower seems to whisper to him: “The Lord is here - pray.” And the voice of nature spoke to him all the more audibly because it repeated the same thing that everything around him said. Father - we have little information about him, but we know that he was a man with great love for the church. The father of the still little Vanya takes him to church - and here he gets used to being completely transported to the other world - to God. With widened eyes he watched the priest in front of the throne and with a sensitive heart felt what a huge mystery was being accomplished here through the prayers of the faithful. A priest in a phelonion, surrounded by waves of incense, seems to him like an angel standing before the throne of God. The mysterious altar, into which Vanya’s religiously inclined father even “entered” somehow differently than into an ordinary house, into the upper room, reverently, solemnly, for Vanya was a place where a person can enter only with a holy thought, a holy mood. “First take the boots from your feet, here is holy ground.” Little by little, the church became for Vanya what the world of fairy tales is for children, a place of rest for the soul from the everyday and unholy impressions of the day. And already here in these years the future Fr. John began to understand and feel what he calls the “soul” of worship. And the father lay in wait for every manifestation of the child’s religiosity and gave him real good direction. Fr. himself John recalls this spiritual help from his father, uneducated, but strong in faith in God. This help was given, of course, most of all in the form of a book or a story. Old clerk's house in the village. Sura, where is Fr. John spent his childhood What did Vanya read about: about the saint, the divine, about Christ, His work and life, about the Mother of God, the saints, about how the saints lived in the deserts, how they were saved, endured hunger, poverty, they were not afraid of kings, they confessed Christ, how the birds of heaven brought them food, and the animals obeyed them, how in the place where their blood fell, flowers grew. And the image of Christ, the omniscient, omnipresent God, was pressed into his soul with sweet power, filling it with pure, reverent fear, and Christ becomes something close, dear. What his mother was like - we know enough from the stories about her. We will not repeat these stories, which are now difficult to verify, but from all of them one thing is certain: she was a simple and strong woman with a believing simplicity. Religiosity without concessions or hesitation, faith in God without doubt, the authority of a mother - these are the features of a huge, majestic image, before which one cannot help but stop with reverent respect. This mother could guide her son. And she wanted not only to be stern, but also to love. The sick Vanya could often see, especially during smallpox, which almost brought him to the grave, his mother in tears in front of the icon of the Mother of God. He saw how she prayed for him, and he learned to merge with her in deep, soulful prayer. It is not surprising that under such conditions Vanya lived all the time in an atmosphere of prayer. His thoughts - already at this time, were always grief - about God and the Heavenly Powers. For another 6 years, Vanya sees angels in reality. “One night,” says someone close to Fr. Ioannou Abbess Taisiya - 6-year-old Vanya saw an unusual light in the room... Looking, he saw an Angel in his heavenly glory among the light. Baby John, of course, was embarrassed by such a vision. The angel reassured him, calling himself his Guardian Angel, always standing around him for protection, protection and salvation from any danger. From the age of six, Vanya began to be taught to read and write. She didn't give it to him. “My father bought,” he writes in his diary, “an ABC book for me, but he had trouble reading. and I grieved a lot over my lack of development and lack of understanding. I could not in any way grasp the identity between our speech and writing or a book, between sound and letter. Yes, this was not taught at that time with such clarity as it is now; we were all taught: “Az, Buki, Vedi”, as if “A” by itself, “Az” by itself; For a long time I could not understand this wisdom, and when, in my tenth year, I was taken to the Arkhangelsk parish school, I had difficulty sorting through the warehouses, and then only from the printed ones. My father received, of course, the most insignificant allowance; life was terribly difficult. I already understood the difficult situation of my parents, and therefore my darkness in my teaching was a particularly heavy burden for me. I thought little about the significance of the teaching for my future and only mourned that my father had paid his last crumbs in vain. And with anxiety for their son, the Sergeevs sent their Vanya to school, they were afraid that he would not cope with his studies. And for the first time, their fear was justified. Vanya had a sad life in a strange city, in extreme poverty. He grew up and studied alone, without friends, without support, immersed in himself, in his childhood thoughts and plans. Life was not sweet. Of course, the food was meager, but Vanya was used to it. The bad thing was that there were no books or paper. “I walked together with other poor people who were just as poor,” says Fr. John, - “collect” paper from public places. I remember how rich I felt when the consistory executor gave me, it seems, almost two hundred. The thought of his home, of poverty there, painfully tormented him, and it seems that at this time he learned to feel with particular pain someone else’s need, to ache about someone else’s poverty, misery, at this time he most of all dreams that when he grows up, he will bring both his father and mother out of need and help everyone. Van developed a painful sensitivity to suffering. In particular, in his life, this poverty of his parents tormented him, especially because he was not given a letter. School wisdom turned out to be even more difficult for him than initial studies. The mother's affectionate help was not there, the teachers cared little about helping the students. School business was going badly. Page of the parish book c. Sura of 1829, which records the birth of Fr. Joanna Vvedensky wooden church in Sura (built about 400 years ago) He worked the whole day, and still did not have time. Therefore, driven by a fiery faith in God, he one day, going to bed, especially fervently prayed to God, asking the Lord to enlighten his mind to the understanding of the teaching. The meek and humble boy’s prayer of faith was heard, and the Lord abundantly poured out the gifts of the Holy Spirit on him. This is what Fr. himself writes about it. John: “...At night I loved to get up to pray. Everyone is sleeping...quietly. It’s not scary to pray, and I prayed most often that God would give me the light of reason to comfort my parents. And so, as I remember now, one day it was already evening, everyone went to bed. I was the only one who couldn’t sleep; I still couldn’t understand anything from what had been said, I still didn’t read well, didn’t understand or remember anything that was said. Such melancholy attacked me, I fell to my knees and began to pray fervently. I don’t know how long I stayed in this position, but suddenly it shook me all over. It was as if a veil had fallen from my eyes, as if the mind in my head had opened and I clearly saw the teacher of that day, his lesson, I even remembered everything he said. And it became easy and joyful in my soul. I have never slept so peacefully as I did that night. It was just getting light, I jumped out of bed, grabbed the books and, oh my goodness, I read much easier, I understand everything, and what I read, I not only understood everything, but even now I can tell it. I felt differently in class than before: I understood everything, everything remained in my memory. The teacher gave me an arithmetic problem, I solved it, and the teacher even praised me. In a word, in a short time I advanced so much that I was no longer the last student. The further I went, the better and better I did in the sciences, and at the end of the course I was one of the first to be transferred to the seminary.” Needless to say, Vanya’s religious mood did not weaken at all during these school years: the impressions he received from his family were too strong. “Do you know,” said Fr. John in a conversation with Abbess Taisia ​​- what first of all marked the beginning of my conversion to God and, even in childhood, warmed my heart with love for him? This is the holy gospel. My parent had the Gospel in Slavic-Russian; I loved reading this wonderful book when I came home on vacation, and its style and simplicity of speech were accessible to my childish understanding; I read and enjoyed it and found in this reading high and irreplaceable consolation. This gospel was with me in theological school. I can say that the Gospel was my childhood companion, my mentor, leader, comforter, with whom I became close from an early age.” Loneliness at school, on the contrary, raised and strengthened Vanya’s religious and prayerful mood: God was his only comforter. We know little about how his further student life went. There are only a few characteristic but random indications. School did not kill his love for nature. Nature still spoke to him, “as a friend and as a teacher, about God, eternity and truth.” His memoirs poetically describe his vacation trip home. “You walk hundreds of miles, dragging your boots on your hands, because the thing is expensive. I had to go through mountains and forests; harsh pines raise their slender peaks high. It’s creepy – God can be felt in nature. The pine trees seem like a long colonnade of a huge church. The sky turns a little blue, like a huge dome. The consciousness of reality is lost. I want to pray. “And all earthly impressions are alien - and it is so light in the depths of your soul and, it seems, the whole world is talking to you in solitude in silence. And in their own incomprehensible language, both years and centuries echo freely the solemn hymn to the omnipresent God.” “You go and see dreams.” That is, you walk, but your thoughts are far, far away with God - with God... At the seminary Fr. John was senior over the bishop's singers. This position - over the most uncultured, drunken and formerly dissolute part of the bursa - almost ruined even Ivan Ilyich. He was saved by his great love for his mother and the help of God. At the very turn to life “in the image and likeness” of the singers, he suddenly turned in the opposite direction - finally face to face with God and His Will. In recent years, Sergiev has taken up theology with ardent love: he is in a hurry to stock up on knowledge, although he does not yet know where he will have to apply it. His thought especially often dwells on the mystery of redemption, the economy of salvation. A conscious religious feeling grows in him. One vision that Father John likes to talk about seems to date back to these years. He saw the inside of a rich, recently built, renovated church - with a brilliant iconostasis. The vision occupied his thoughts greatly, but of course he could not understand its meaning. It was explained later. With high school Fr. John (he graduated from the seminary first) said goodbye with the following speech, prepared in advance and, therefore, not as characteristic and lively as his later sermons, but dear to us, like his first “word.” “Most Reverend Bishop and you, most venerable visitors! This is how Fr. began his speech. John. “There are few such days for us as this one, when to encourage the spiritual youth being formed here, everything has been done that can have a special and pleasant effect on the young mind and heart of a young man, to excite, support and strengthen his aspirations for everything good and useful. Called here from the modest, silent life of a student, we consider these hours happy and precious for ourselves, in which you have now so brightly and variedly decorated this important field of testing for us, so inappropriate for our previous state. Rarely in our lives are days so solemn for us; but the rarer they are, the more they increase the power of impressions on our minds and hearts; the more they awaken in us the consciousness of our own well-being; all the more, they arouse in us feelings of lively gratitude to the heroes of this celebration. There is no need to say that your presence here, your attention to us now constitutes our joy, our pleasure and our triumph.” Remains of antiquity in the temples of the village. Surahs. (The crowns are simple wooden hoops. The chalice, paten, and tabernacle are made of tin) “But with these feelings, so gratifying to the heart, we are disturbed by one thought that the fruits of the education we received may be far from meeting your expectations; They may even seem very meager, with little reward for the work and care of the trustee authorities. Fully presenting to your court our successes in the field of education, we are consoled, on the one hand, by the thought that your deep experience will not judge us in comparison with yourself. It was only necessary for us to act in your works ourselves for complete success in the matter. Your concerns, your efforts to provide us with useful information were obvious to each of us. How many treasures of learning have been laid before us, so that everyone can take from them what he wants to enrich his mind! How, when instructing, you tried to add variety and pleasantness to your speech, so that the truths you communicated would be easier and more convenient for the mind and heart to perceive! We felt the sweetness of your instructions in our hearts and tried to imprint them in our memory, so that later in due time we could use them to benefit ourselves and others. But most of all, you cared, like good fathers, about preserving good morality among us, for which, on the one hand, the opportunity was taken away for committing vices that could creep into the soul from the outside; on the other hand, the need for purity of life was constantly instilled, as the surest and most reliable means of being happy in any condition and age. And we became convinced how dangerous vice is always and how reliable and precious virtue is.” “After such active care of the guardian authorities for us, all that remains is, with the ability to use the education received, to be satisfied and happy in life, for those of us who have now completed the difficult field of education and are completing the course of seminary sciences. How many times will we owe you the most precious moments of happiness and delight in the knowledge of the benefits that enlightenment has brought and will bring us! Sciences, says Cicero, constitute our consolation and happiness in all conditions and ages. Yes, repeated experiments confirm this truth! But what is most pleasant and precious for us in the sciences is the thought that they will always constitute our inalienable property, that they have come to us as a result of long-term, intense labor: and what is obtained through labor is always pleasant and sweet. To fulfill on our part the duty of justice towards you, to testify to you our deepest gratitude for your good deeds, we have only a heart and a tongue. Accept at least this fruit of heartfelt gratitude to you; you yourself know that the pupils cannot give any other gratitude; as loving fathers, you consider yourself satisfied if your upbringing efforts were not in vain, but brought at least some fruit.” “Bless, Your Eminence Bishop, the pupil who tried his best to fulfill the sacred duty of justice in relation to benefactors, and seal and sanctify with an archpastoral blessing the end of the education of twenty-two people.” Monument-chapel over the grave of Fr. Joanna Since 1849 Ivan Sergiev has been at the Academy. New environment, new living conditions. Ivan Sergiev immediately managed to find himself in conditions that were especially favorable for his development. There was a free position for a clerk at the academy and Ivan Ilyich, the best calligrapher of the course, was offered this position. Constantly thinking about his family, about his mother and her needs, Ivan Sergiev readily took an enviable position with a ten-ruble salary. The place gave him, in addition to the salary, privacy. The scribe had a special room of his own, a benefit that other students were deprived of. And this clerk’s office was the place of the first prayerful ascetic labors of 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 Sergiev experienced the first delights of communication with God and the 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 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 Ivan Ilyich cried in a fit of spiritual delight and applauded the Chrysostom orbit, as his Antioch and Constantinople listeners once applauded him. Whole days, weeks and months passed in this reading, and the soul of the future shepherd was educated on Chrysostom and the Bible. From the fourth year, Ivan Ilyich’s mood, very complacent, bright and joyful, began to darken at times. Ivan Ilyich is seized by attacks of severe despair. Sometimes it seemed to him that God had abandoned him, that people wished him harm, that the sky was all covered with clouds and there was no clearing... Melancholy, heavy, painful and causeless, gripped his soul, he did not know where to escape from attacks of dark and evil hopeless melancholy and prayed... And so, by the grace of God, the clouds of hopeless despair were torn apart, the sky became clear, and the moments of spiritual joy that followed this clarification were so joyful that it seemed possible to endure three times more torment in a few hours of this consolation... At the same time, the attacks of such temptation were temporary, little by little they passed and did not return. The days passed by at work. Ivan Sergiev did not get his school diploma in vain... He worked hard and often reaped “thorns and thistles.” Detached from the world, completely absorbed in himself, Ivan Sergiev could not be an impeccable student in terms of success. Calls to answer tore Sergiev away from thoughts dear to him, called him out of the world of his constant dreams, from which it was difficult and painful for him to get out. It is not surprising that he could not immediately enter into the position of a student, he was embarrassed and confused. It was especially difficult for him to answer Professor Luchitsky. His polished, carefully crafted readings of logic and aesthetics demanded literal and accurate rendering. Sergiev could not give such a thing, and his abrupt and strong style did not at all suit the vague and lengthy manner of the Hegelian professor. The situation was unfavorable with the lectures of the Right Reverend Macarius on dogmatics. Macarius loved to have his “lessons” delivered without hesitation, but Sergiev often stopped out of embarrassment. All this, however, did not prevent the professors from appreciating the student’s seriousness and thoughtfulness, and Sergiev went along. What was the future John of Kronstadt thinking about and living at that time? 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 “Sonomarskaya” there was one of the student rooms. And here, near the burning stove, Sergiev loved to warm up. Often one of the occupants of the room 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 it, what malice will defeat it, what force will go against it?.. 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.” Little Vanya Sergiev prays before going to school 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 preach to them 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 who did not lead 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. Arkhangelsk Seminary, where Fr. studied. John 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, shouting in confusion and horror: “I am looking for God, God. We killed Him. Are we not wandering in endless nothingness? Hasn't it become 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 an indication from God that he needed to be a priest 2. Bishop Christopher, who ordained Fr. John as 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 a great 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 have partially learned the great science of self-knowledge and approaching You, in a word - I have learned a lot, 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. We received information that this house is not the one in which Fr. was born. John was both smaller and even more wretched. U o. John speaks of a vision that took place approximately 15 years before graduation from the academy, that is, while still in school.