Letters (2005 translation)

To the Great Empress, Blessed Tsarina and Grand Duchess Paraskeviia Feodorovna. Your sovereign pilgrim, humble Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov, praying to the All-Holy God, beats with his forehead. To inform you, Great Empress, Blessed Tsarina and Grand Duchess Paraskeva Feodorovna, I convey this October 18th day to Your Highness, the steward Vasily Alekseevich Yushkov announced to me in Rostov your royal favor and an exorbitant salary, four glass vessels of vodka, called bottles, and three heads of red cabbage and handed over. I, humble one, having accepted such your sovereign mercy towards me and the above-mentioned salary, with gratitude and humbly brow beat and eat for your health for your sovereign health, and for this your sovereign gracious salary to me, your pilgrim, I consider it necessary for your sovereign long-term health to constantly pray to the All-Merciful God. To the great lord, in the Holy Spirit, our brother, the Most Reverend Job, by the grace of God, Metropolitan of Novgorod and Velikiye Luki, in the Holy Spirit, the brother of your holy bishop, the humble Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov, praying to God, beats with his forehead. May God grant you, the great bishop, good health and spiritual salvation for many years to come. Perhaps, great bishop, command us about our health and about our soul-saving good stay, it is known in the scriptures, and also your holy bishop will deign to ask about our humility: in the God-saved city of Rostov, in the house of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Rostov miracle workers, I am physically alive below the written year and month and date. Not I, Your Eminence, but Your Eminence, is a benefactor to my unworthiness, not forgetting my badness in all the years, from the house of the Wisdom of God, from his own fatherly love, sending a blessing to our humility. Just as now, you blessed me with a fair amount of fish and deigned to send me half a barrel of freshly salted Novgorod ice 1 . I am very grateful to this, and I offer my deepest respects to your hierarchy. Not having anything to repay, because I am poor, I pray to Christ our Lord, who is rich in mercy, that He may repay your Eminence a hundredfold, and let your fatherly love, which you show towards me, unworthy, be measured by His Divine love, since He Himself is Love and Lover in God-loving and friend-loving hearts to always abide. I, humble, favored by your fatherly benefits, owe your hierarchal mercy to me unforgettable in my heart by remembering during prayer time. I also pray to Your Holiness, when you stand before the throne of God, create a remembrance of me, a sinner, in your holy, God-pleasing bishop’s prayers, which I greatly demand and pray with my forehead. To Your Eminence, my benefactor, I offer my deepest veneration. Humble Bishop Dimitri Rostov, 1708, December 4 To the great lord, the bishop of God, the Most Reverend Job, the metropolitan, the most holy metropolis of Velikonovgorod, the archpastor and godly teacher, the humble bishop of Rostov rejoices in the Lord. Having received into my sinful hands the most honorable writing of your bishopric to my detriment and kindly reading it, rejoicing in spirit that I am unforgettable in your saintly mercy and that you deign to visit me with your fatherly love, to which I am as grateful as anyone, having received rich mercy from those who do not know him, thanks and worships. Unfamiliar to Your Eminence with hypocrisy, yet you honor me with your love and favor me with your good deeds, for which, giving thanks, I humbly hit my forehead. I sympathize with your holiness in your sorrows, in which may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ comfort you, and with the holy apostle I say: the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our sorrow (2 Cor. 1:3-4), may He transform your sorrows and sorrows into joy. I heard that the Hellenic-Greek teaching began for the glory of God at Your Eminence through the diligence of your bishop, and the diligence of the wisest teachers Ioannikis and Sophronius Likhudiev. I am very happy about this and pray to God to hasten Your Eminence and the most honorable teachers in this beneficial matter. For what admonishes a person if not teaching? Give me understanding,” says [the prophet], “and I will learn Your commandments (Ps. 119:73). And Christ the Lord, despite the fact that He created His disciples as teachers of the entire universe and with them enlightened the whole world, first opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45). Your Eminence will be likened to your Lord in that, wanting to have learned and intelligent people in your flock, you gathered a considerable number of disciples and offered them that teaching, Hellenic-Greek, I say, language, for from this all the wise teachings in all languages ​​originated. And I, a sinner, by the will of the Lord came to the throne of the Rostov flock, began to make efforts to study and started a Greek and Latin school, and the students studied for two years, no more, and already began to understand grammar quite well, but by God’s permission the poverty of the bishop’s house that happened to create an obstacle. Education stopped because those who feed us were indignant because many costs were incurred by teachers and students. And already everything that the bishop’s house feeds on has been taken away from us: not only estates, but also church tributes, and coronal memories, 2 and so on, and so on. Having become poor in everything, they became poor in teachings. But I will not continue writing; I will remain silent about our other behavior. Again and again I hit Your Eminence with my forehead and pray that in the future your fatherly mercy and love will not become scarce to my detriment. Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov Rostov, 1706, December 10 Honest Father Theologian, beloved brother in Christ! The death of the late Josaphat Koldychevsky, our friend and my special benefactor, frightened me, if he, such a healthy man, not old, not crippled, not exhausted by labor, was snatched away by death in such a short time, what can I, powerless, hope for? The fear of death has attacked me, and the fear is intense, for I do not know either the day or the hour in which the death judgment from God will befall me, and I am not ready for the death outcome. How will the book-writing business remain? Will the hunter take over and complete the ero? And there is still a lot of work to be done in this matter; one year it may not be completed, and perhaps the next year it can barely be completed, but the end is at the door, the ax is at the root, the death’s scythe is over the head. Alas for me! I don’t regret anything and I don’t have anything to regret: I haven’t collected wealth, I haven’t accumulated money. One thing I regret is that the book-writing that has begun is far from being completed; and I also think about the Psalter. It’s a pity that the Bryno theologians interpret the Apocalypse in the wrong way. Dumka is just around the corner, and death is behind us. However, I entrust everything to the will of our Lord, who possesses the living and the dead. If He desires, He can also raise up a child for Abraham from a stone (see Matt. 3:9). I must remember the soul of the deceased in my, albeit sinful, prayers. The deceased lent me his love. Do you remember how he served me, the sick one, lovingly, not disdaining weakness, together with your honesty and with Mr. Dmitry Alekseevich. How can I not remember him, who passed away, and how can I not pray to God for you, the living! May God save Father Kirion, who fed me cherry berries during my illness. I remember and thank you for all this kind deed of yours, and I pray to God for you. For the deceased, hope is in God that He will not deprive him of His mercy. For all the people condemned him and almost put him in hell alive, but the Court of God decides contrary. Human judgment is one thing, God's judgment is another. People have condemned, God will not condemn the one whom people send to hell with their opinion and tongue. Who expected that there would be a thief in paradise, a publican among the righteous, a harlot in the palace of heaven? Doesn't everyone send them to Gehenna, seeing their life? But God’s mercy does the opposite: God shames human judgments with His merciful destinies. If the soul of the deceased temporarily remains in detention somewhere for his sins (and who is without them?), then the treasure of the Church, the prayers, I say, for the deceased, constantly performed, are powerful to redeem him from his debts, to which we, sinners, will also strive. Desiring God's blessing on your honesty, I bow. I sent a gift of grapes to your honesty; there is nothing to bite with your teeth, written on a piece of paper - a teaching that was said in the cathedral. There will soon be another one, which is in Pokrovsky, but the third one, which is in Ivanovsky, will not be, because I have forgotten a lot, and besides, I don’t have the time, I have a lot to write 3 . A good man who came from Moscow, having given me a letter from your honesty, only appeared to us within the boundaries of time and immediately took up the path; I waited forcibly for this little scribble of mine, with which I thank your honesty for your written visit. And I apologize for the fact that I don’t write to your honest people often: sometimes I’m too lazy, sometimes I’m lazy, and sometimes there are no riders to whom the charter could be presented. However, I will correct myself in the future, if, God willing, I will be alive. Stefan Vasilyevich, while with us, did not hesitate, he only listened to the Presanctified Lenten Liturgy and ate milk mushrooms with my unworthiness. May God keep him on that path and manage everything for the better! Out of friendship, I’ll let you know: the months of June and July were printed and sent to me from Kyiv, but August, I think, is waiting for Alex there. God would grant that this month would end quickly and be brought to my sinfulness! I ask you to pray for that and for me, an unworthy arch-sinner. To all, to all, to all, low brow, especially to Father Kirion and Father Joseph the Judge. The humble Bishop Dimitri to the honest nun Varsonofia Evfimievna is God's blessing. There is one Father, common to us all, God, who lives in heaven and is present everywhere. One great Archpastor is Christ, who passed through heaven; one Comforter of all – the Holy Spirit. So, may the Heavenly Father be your Father, Provider, Guardian and Shepherd. May Christ, the Son of God, save you, His lost sheep, which He redeemed with His honest Blood. May the Comforter Holy Spirit comfort you in your sorrow and guide you on the path of salvation. If you, out of our humility, ask for any consolation, then we, the humble, offer you this useful advice: cast away from yourself the thoughts of this world and leave the thoughts of your sadness, with all your soul, with all your heart and with all your mind the love of Christ, place all your hope in Christ Himself, the Son of God, deepen your mind in His most holy wounds, walk after Him with zeal, and then You will become His beloved bride and heir to His palace. Because you love Him, He will love you forever in the future life, and because you work for Him now, He will reward you there. So, neglect everything temporary, vain, and do not worry about the sorrow caused to you. Look at your Christ, crucified on the Cross: what great dishonor He endured, loving us! Can we really, sinners, not endure a little sorrow out of love for Him? To the honest Father Theologist, dear to me. God will save your love, that you fulfill all my desires and requests. Having accepted the heretical catechism, he looked at it and sent it to you again. I saw it a long time ago, when I was still in Lithuania, but I forgot its creators. I don’t have time to practice it, God would give me any other hunter, because I’m exhausted. You ask me, beloved, about my health. Truly I declare to you that I am weak. Previously, my health was in half, half healthy and half sick, but now my illness prevails and barely a third of my health remains. However, as if I am taking courage and moving in the name of my Lord, in whose hand my life is. Nowadays I don’t do any work: no matter what I take up, everything falls out of my hands, my days have become dark, my eyes see little, at night the candle light helps little, and even harms me when I look at a letter for a long time, and my illness makes me lie down and moan. In my unhealthy state of health, I don’t know what to expect: life or death? Let it be the will of the Lord! I am not ready for death, but by the will and command of the Lord I must be ready, but my Lord is strong to strengthen my weakness. This autumn is difficult for me, the air in Rostov is very bad, and the waters are very unhealthy. Sorry, beloved! I can't write much. I hit with my forehead. Icedog, or icefish, is a northern fish. Coronal memory - the order of the dean about the wedding. Three sermons were preached in the designated places on August 22, 26 and 29, 1708. For the sermon of August 29, 1708, see this edition. T. I. S 655. According to the copyist's remark, this letter was written the day before the death of the saint.