29. Поневоле удерживать в обители никого нельзя. О жизни мирских лиц в монастыре

Your Reverence, most honorable in the Lord Mother Abbess Lyudmila! I received your letter dated June 2. You ask whether to let the novice Daria go to her brother. “You can’t keep anyone in the monastery against your will.” It is not for nothing that the old proverb has developed: “A slave is not a pilgrim.” Ekaterina Karlovna wishes to settle in your monastery with a contribution, but in such a way as to live as a laywoman. Well, let him live a worldly life for now. There are such examples in monasteries. And some lay people lived with us in Optina without dressing in monastic dress, but before their death they wished to be tonsured into the mantle and thus died as monks. May God bless the construction of the school and help us continue and complete it in time. Asking for you and your entire monastery the peace and blessing of God, I remain with sincere goodwill. You might be interested in: