The Monk Paisiy (in the world Peter Velichkovsky) was born on December 21, 1722 in Ukraine into a deeply religious family of hereditary priests. The entire Velichkovsky family, both male and female, served God. From an early age, Paisius was a man of a bookish spirit. In the house of the rector of the Assumption Cathedral in Poltava there were many spiritual books. The boy began to read the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers early. The ancient ascetics, about whom Paisius learned from hagiographic literature, became his heroes. He wanted to imitate them, to follow their path in the footsteps of Christ.
Having entered the Kyiv Academy at the age of 13, Paisiy happily began to study, without forgetting about the main thing - the soul. Having written a short rule for himself, the boy strove to strictly observe it: not to condemn his brothers even when he saw their sins with his own eyes, never to have hatred for anyone and from the bottom of his heart to forgive his neighbors for their sins.
From the first days of his studies, Paisius dreamed of a monastic life. Visiting the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in his free time, he certainly visited the holy caves, imbued with the gracious spirit of the first Russian monks. Paisius dreamed of taking monastic vows in a poor monastery, far from the noise of the world.
Increasingly dissatisfied with the level of teaching at the Academy, at the age of 17 Paisiy runs away from the Academy to finally fulfill his secret dream - to begin a monastic life under the guidance of an elder. Paisius, a young man from a noble family, becomes one of the poor wanderers who at that time wandered across the endless expanses of Russia in search of true spiritual guidance.
The spiritual life of the post-Petrine empire was in deep crisis. Church reform spared no one. Starting with the abolition of the patriarchate, turning the clergy into a bureaucratic class, Tsar Peter also attacked the monks. The number of monasteries in the country has sharply decreased. Many of them were given over to barracks and homes for the disabled. By the middle of the century, monastic life, deprived of elder leadership, became completely impoverished even in the famous monasteries.
Paisius wandered for a long time from country to country, but nowhere did he find a wise and experienced mentor. Having taken monastic vows in one of the Ukrainian monasteries, having lived for some time in Moldavian monasteries, Paisius decided to leave his homeland and go to Athos, believing there, in the famous monastic kingdom, to achieve his desired goal.
Having experienced great joy from coming into contact with the ancient shrines of Athos, Paisius soon experienced great disappointment. The Holy Mountain was no longer the kingdom of the spirit that the 24-year-old monk dreamed of. Athos was in the possession of heterodox Turks, who oppressed the monks in every possible way, which is why the monasteries became poorer and fell into unpayable debts. The monks dispersed from their monasteries. Much of the rich monastic tradition has been lost. Paisius did not find a spiritual mentor on the Holy Mountain either.
Having settled in a wretched cell, eating bread and water, and even then every other day, Paisius spent four years in solitude and silence. His consolation and guiding star are the manuscripts of patristic writings, which he finds in the monastic libraries of Bulgarian and Serbian monasteries. Absorbing the experience of the ancient ascetics, Paisius gradually turns into a wise mentor.
When young Vissarion came to his lonely cell, Paisius already had something to say to the new monk. A few years later, 50 monks already lived next to the first students. Yielding to the request of the brethren, Paisiy accepted the priesthood and became the rector of the Slavic-Moldavian brotherhood in the Ilyinsky monastery. The evangelical spirit of love firmly united monks of different ages and languages: Moldovans, Ukrainians and Russians lived with one soul and one heart.
Father Paisiy introduced into the life of the Elias monastery the practice of “smart doing”, forgotten by many on Athos. The monks worked, read the holy fathers, unquestioningly obeying the elder and constantly repeating the Jesus Prayer.
Comparing Slavic manuscripts from different times, Paisius discovered a lot of inaccuracies in the texts, which led him to bewilderment. Trying to make the necessary amendments to the Slavic manuscripts based on other Slavic manuscripts, Paisius soon abandoned his useless work. He realized that in correcting the ancient Slavic translations of the patristic writings, he needed Greek originals, but they were not in any of the famous libraries of Athos.
Elder Paisios clearly realized that without relying on the patristic spiritual experience, it was not possible to follow the unlost path to salvation and lead the numerous brethren who had entrusted themselves to him. Then the ascetic turns to God with fiery prayer. And the Lord came to the rescue. Unexpectedly, in a remote monastery in the name of St. Basil the Great, Father Paisius discovered many Greek primary sources. The joy of finding priceless treasures turned out to be so great that no everyday difficulties could shake Paisius’s determination to collect ancient Greek manuscripts of patristic writings and comprehend the depths of the spiritual experience of the ancient fathers of the Eastern Church.
Having experienced repeated oppression from non-Orthodox people and having learned about a significant increase in rent by Turkish officials, Father Paisiy made a courageous decision to return to Moldova. The Metropolitan of Moldova warmly welcomed the settlers, giving Paisius a unique opportunity to organize his monastery in Dragomirna - in the God-protected and Orthodox land of Moldova.
Everything in the new place pleases and inspires the 42-year-old ascetic. In the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, picturesquely located in the Carpathian Mountains, Paisius wrote a charter in which the hardworking life and the contemplative life peacefully coexist. Thus, Paisius put the final point in the painful and tragic dispute between “acquisitive” and “non-acquisitive”, which led in the 16th century to the defeat of the elders, the consequences of which were devastating for the entire monastic and spiritual life of Russia. Admiring the structure of monastic life in the Greek monastery of Simeon the New Theologian, immersing himself in the rich spiritual experience of the Russian elder Nile of Sorsky, Father Paisius placed the main emphasis on the inner structure of the soul of each monk. He constantly shared his prayer experience with his disciples, after the evening meal he held conversations with the brethren, read to them and commented on the patristic works.
The material for instructive lessons with the brethren of St. Paisius is the inspired writings of the holy fathers of the Eastern Church. The elder corrects old Slavic translations of the patristic writings and again translates some of them from ancient Greek. Over time, he organized a real translation school, the fruit of which was the translation of many holy fathers into Slavic and Romanian languages, which were distributed in numerous lists to the monasteries of Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Mount Athos. Gradually, through enormous joint efforts, a whole library was compiled, the most famous work of which was the collection of the ancient Fathers of the Church “Philokalia”, better known in Russian as “Philokalia”.
Until the end of his life, Paisius did not stop translating, although three times he had to start his work in a new place. The outbreak of the Russian-Turkish War and the transfer of the Dragomirn monastery, together with part of the Carpathians, into the possession of Catholic Austria, forced the monks to leave their beloved monastery and move to the Sekul monastery.
When the number of brethren in the new monastery reached three hundred people, living in extreme poverty and oppression, and there was no possibility of accepting new brethren, the ruler of Moldavia forced Paisius to move again. The elder, who had strived for solitude all his life, with tears in his eyes, left this quiet monastery forever. For the last 15 years he lived in the largest and most famous Moldavian Neamet monastery.
700 monks, numerous workshops, agricultural land, a hospital, a house for pilgrims - this is the new vast economy of the abbot and it is very difficult to manage such a monastery, much less bring it to the ideal of spiritual life. But Paisiy was not alone - next to him were his many students, who became experienced mentors.