Алексей Любомудров

Righteous Lady of the Kazan Land The righteous and ascetics of the past century were true lamps for our furious, restless world. The face of each of them is capable of illuminating dull souls, instilling cheerfulness in hearts, and inspiring heroism. The amazing destinies of holy people testify: no matter how hard the life around us is, it is possible and must follow the saving path of Christ. One of the righteous women of the Kazan land, who nurtured the gift of faith received in childhood and carried it through all trials, nun Antonia (Berg). She was born in 1900 in Kazan, in the family of German Alexandrovich and Maria Ivanovna Berg. My father is a professor of German, my mother is an excellent pianist and taught music. And they had three children: Lyovochka, Anechka and Manechka. The family lived together. The soul of the house was the mother, a deeply religious person, absorbed in the concerns of the Orthodox upbringing of her children. To instill Christian morality in them, she came up with a game for children - the society of “aquilists”, a society of those who strive to soar upward in their thoughts and feelings (“aquila” in Latin “eagle”). The rules of behavior were written down in the charter of this society of eaglets, among them were the following points: “don’t lie,” “don’t be lazy,” “treat strangers the same as your own.” The guys kept little books in which they kept records of their sins.” The eaglets read them aloud, the others discussed them. Thus, Maria Ivanovna instilled in children the beginnings of Christian love, spiritual improvement and repentance. All Bergs had musical abilities and beautiful voices. Maria Ivanovna organized a children's church choir: she sang in the church of the village of Ilyinka near Cheboksary; In the summer, many families from Kazan vacationed there. The eaglets staged children's performances; German Aleksandrovich himself was the “orchestra” and played the piano. The Bergs' childhood was pure and cloudless. The nanny, a deeply religious person, told the kids a lot about holy places, and these stories sank deeply into their souls. His father, German Aleksandrovich, was a Lutheran, which greatly worried his mother. Maria Ivanovna turned for advice to her confessor, the elder of the Sedmiozernaya Hermitage near Kazan Gabriel (now canonized), and he replied: “Be patient, the time has not come yet.” A few years later, my father once talked with a famous preacher who served at the Kazan Theological Academy. The conversation made a strong impression on him, and the Lutheran was baptized into Orthodoxy, feeling extraordinary spiritual joy. With the advent of the revolution, the cheerful, carefree life ended. The fate of the university turned out differently. Lev Germanovich became a professor at Kazan University, a famous chemist. Until the end of his life, he remained a deeply religious man: in the conditions of persecution of the Church, this was a feat for every Christian. Little is known about Maria Berg. They say that she painted a church in Moscow and died in the monastery. The life of Anna Berg, nun Antonia, is marked with the seal of God's mercy. Witnessing the fratricidal war, the bloody reprisals of security officers against innocent residents of Kazan in the fall of 1918, the advent of godless power, she was increasingly inclined to devote herself entirely to God. And the Lord wonderfully directed her path. Anya was pretty, sang beautifully, and worked as a choirmaster in clubs and hospitals. When she turned twenty, her mother sent her to study courses in Petrograd. Anna set off on a difficult and dangerous journey in conditions of devastation and civil war. Then she decided to fulfill her long-standing desire - to make a pilgrimage to Kyiv. Having reached some city, she, almost without funds, with only one suitcase, sat down at the station and began to cry in despair. Here a military man noticed her, approached her and sympathetically asked what her grief was. Anna, fearing the stranger, said that she was going to see her sick husband, but could not get there. Then he said that he was taking soldiers in the same direction and could take her on the train. Having entrusted her fate to the will of God, Anna agreed to go. In the carriage, soldiers began to approach her, but the officer sternly pulled them back, saying that the woman was in grief. Anna got off at one of the stations. Suddenly two men in uniform approached her and demanded documents. She was not taken aback: “I’ve been traveling on the train for a long time, I need to go away, hold my suitcase, I’ll be right back.” Having said this, she ran away from them, but was left without things and money. Anna visited Chernigov, prayed at the relics of St. Theodosius and went on foot to Kyiv. She walked through the forests and ate russula. When I got there, my legs were bleeding. Blessed Seraphim met her in Kyiv. “Girl, do you want to come with me? “I just need a cell attendant,” she told Anna and took her to her. Anna went through a difficult school of obedience, humility and prayer with Mother Seraphima. The blessed one forced her to read the Psalter aloud for a long time. It happened that a girl would doze off, and Mother Seraphima would start tapping her on the head with something, saying: “It’s not you, but the demons!” And Anna felt easy and good. Mother tested the humility of the young novice this way: she would dress her up in a colorful jacket and skirt, multi-colored stockings and make her walk around the city in such a wild outfit. Passers-by laughed at her, others shouted angrily: “Why are you pretending to be a fool!” These life-saving lessons cleansed the soul and turned out to be very useful later. Anna retained her love for her spiritual mentor throughout her life, with whom she lived for four years. Later she remembered. “Mother Seraphim was 90 years old, but she was unusually fast: when we walked around the city, I could barely keep up with her.” In Kyiv, Anna took secret monastic vows and was named Antonia. A monk from the Near (Antoniev) Caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra took tonsure. One winter, nun Antonia caught a cold in her feet. Seeing her standing for hours on the icy stone floor of the church in light shoes, the deacon took pity on her and gave her boots. And yet my legs hurt more and more, and in the end they almost became paralyzed. Then Antonia almost crawled to the church to the relics of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara (they have been in Kyiv for many centuries) and began to fervently ask her for healing. The sick woman was applied to the relics. As if a gracious force lifted her, nun Antonia rose to her feet and was able to walk again. In the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery there was an ancient revered icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God. During the service, it was above the royal doors of the “Great” church, and then it was lowered for the worship of the faithful. One day, Antonia, while kissing this icon, suddenly heard a voice: “Now I am your mother.” Anna understood what this meant. She wrote down the day on which this happened and prayed fervently for the newly departed Mary. Later the news came that it was on this day that her mother, Maria Ivanovna Berg, died in Kazan. A friend of Maria Ivanovna said that the dying woman saw Anechka sitting on a chair next to her bed... Thus, the souls of righteous people united in prayerful communication as one of them passed into eternity. Life in Kyiv became more and more difficult, and Mother Antonia had to wander through cemeteries, spend the night in the fields, endure hunger and cold. She asked Mother Seraphima to let her go to Diveevo, and she replied: “Go, you will feel good there.” The nun arrived at the famous Diveyevo monastery, founded by St. Seraphim, the miracle worker of Sarov. At the holy spring, the elder himself appeared to her in a vision and blessed her. The abbess there was Abbess Alexandra. “What can you do?” - she asked the newcomer and, having learned that she could act as regent, she was delighted: there were several choirs in the Diveyevo Monastery and good regents were needed. Antonia revealed to the abbess that she was a cassock nun and, having entered the monastery, she no longer hid her monasticism. The abbess assigned the young nun to the spiritual mentorship of an experienced old woman, schema-monster Seraphima. In Diveevo, Mother Antonia led the choir for three years, until the monastery closed in 1927. Here she wrote the poem “The Feat of Elder Seraphim,” which has now become a folk song, soulfully sung by pilgrims in Diveevo. Silent night, spectators - Stars look from heaven. There, along the path under the pine trees, Stood with the will of the Lord All without attention to the external "God, be merciful to the sinner" - Hard labor among the mountains. After the monastery was closed, Mother Antonia and the abbess moved to Murom, where she became a psalm-reader. At that time, Hieromonk Pimen, the future Patriarch, served in Murom, and she remembered his spiritual conversations. Her elderly father, German Aleksandrovich, came to visit his daughter in Murom, and he died there as a deeply Orthodox man. When Berg lay on his deathbed, his face seemed to shine. During the war, nun Antonia returned to her hometown of Kazan, and here new ordeals began for her. No one allowed monastics into their apartment: at that time it was dangerous. She wandered for a long time, hiding in basements and attics, leading the life of a wanderer. Here, probably, the meaning of the lessons of the Kyiv mother Seraphima, who foresaw the trials ahead of her and prepared her for them, was fully revealed to her. Brother Lev Germanovich, professor, famous scientist, lived in Kazan. He himself was a believer, he loved his sister very much and helped her with things, but he could not accommodate her, and besides, his wife did not like her. Perhaps nun Antonia would not agree to live in a secular family. So she followed the blessed ones who carried out the feat of pilgrimage and foolishness for the sake of Christ, and became a “homeless wanderer of the city of Kazan.” One of the few operating in the city at that time was the church in the name of Yaroslavl saints Theodore, David and Constantine at the Arskoe cemetery. Mother Antonia began to serve as a psalmist and regent in this church. At first she was not paid any money, but was allowed to spend the night in the church gatehouse. In this church there were many shrines saved from the atheists, collected from closed churches. In fervent prayers before the revered icons of the Savior Not Made by Hands, the Mother of God of Kazan, Feodorovskaya, Tolgskaya, falling before the relics of the Kazan saint Guria - an ascetic man of prayer who endured many persecutions and desecrations in his life - Mother Antonia carried out church obedience until the end of her days. Sometimes she was visited by friends of her youth, with whom she had once spent the serene years of childhood and youth. For them, people who were purely secular and, for various reasons, alienated from the Church, the fate of Anna Berg seemed tragic: a beautiful, capable pianist suddenly became a “fanatical nun.” Homeless, poor and starving, she was sympathetically asked if she was satisfied with her life, was she happy? She answered: “I don’t need anything else, I’m happy with everything.” Having renounced the vanity of the earthly world, having become the bride of Christ, Mother Antonia had great spiritual consolation from the Lord, which is unknown to worldly understanding... In 1950, Archbishop Sergius (†12/18/1952) was appointed to the Kazan See. During the first service in the cemetery church, he drew attention to Mother Antonia, handed her a prosphora and quietly said: “Hold it tight, there’s something else here.” There were 200 rubles under the prosphora. Vladyka, himself a man of holy life, immediately saw in Anthony a person of grace and realized that she was in great need. Vladyka bought a small house for nuns in Kazan, and Mothers Sergius, Mikhail and Antonia settled in it. After the death of nuns Mikhaila and Sergia, Mother Anthony took cell attendant Maria Nikolaevna Okhotina (a doctor by profession) into her house. When the house was demolished, Antonia's mother settled on Gvardeyskaya Street, in house 5, on the second floor, where she lived for the rest of her years. Her last cell attendant was Antonina Shelaeva (who has now taken monastic vows with the name Anna and serves in the same church at the Arskoe cemetery). It testifies to the spiritual gifts of Mother Antonia, who acquired unceasing prayer and often prayed all night long. All her life, mother fulfilled the commandment of her first mentor, Blessed Seraphim: to make twenty prostrations to the ground every day. I never judged anyone. At times I seemed to be acting like a fool. They turned to nun Antonia for advice and help. One day a woman approached her on the street and said: “Mother, what should I do? I am a doctor, married to a Tatar, my mother-in-law hates me and beats me. I am an orphan, there is no one to intercede. At home, I’m afraid of what’s going on...” Mother Antonia answered her: “Go to any grave, pray, read “Theotokos...” 150 times, ask Her, and everything will be settled.” Apparently, her mother sent her to the grave so that she could pray in front of the cross in a secluded place. It was impossible to pray openly in front of people: believers were fired from their jobs. After some time, this woman met Mother Antonia again and rushed to her with the words: “I am so grateful to you, because now there is silence in our house!” Mother had the boldness and strength to pray for people possessed by demonic obsessions. Her cell attendant said: “We had one young man at our church: he sang and read in the church. One day he went into the house of a warlock and looked at a book about magic out of curiosity. Since then I have changed and stopped going to church. I began to pray for him, and suddenly something seemed to come over me: I couldn’t pray or do anything, my hands gave up. This did not escape Mother Antonia: “What’s wrong with you, Tonechka? – she asked. Why are you so sad?" I told her that I tried to pray for Volodya (that was the guy’s name). “Why should you, with your strength, pray for him,” mother became excited, “but the enemy will take revenge on you, he will turn you upside down!” After my mother’s prayers, everything bad immediately left me. That's how powerful her prayer was. I remember one more incident. I sang in the choir, I had a soprano, and then one day my voice broke. I went to the doctor, and he strictly said: “Don’t sing, don’t read, otherwise you’ll be left completely without a voice.” I was upset and told everything to my mother. “Our doctor is the Lord, he will heal and help,” she said. After that, my voice quickly improved.” The Lord granted His saint nun Antonia a quiet and peaceful death. She had eaten almost nothing in recent days. Her will was short: to bury her body and take out the prosphora for the repose of her soul. Mother died on the Week of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, May 24, 1986. When the Psalter was read over the deceased, her beloved cat cried at the coffin in a completely human way... They wanted to bury Mother at the Arskoye cemetery: here, in the church, she worked for many decades, here her brother rested. The grave had already been prepared, but some insurmountable circumstances arose and she was not allowed to be buried here. She rests in the Tsaritsyn cemetery in Kazan. The Lord received into His monastery a righteous woman and ascetic who had the opportunity to endure a difficult monastic feat during the fierce persecution of Orthodoxy. Now, we believe, she stands before the Lord for the salvation of everyone living in the Kazan land and in the Russian country. Rest, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant nun Anthony and have mercy on us with her holy prayers!