Letters from Filaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov and Nizhyn, to N.N. Sheremeteva, 1835-1849 : (from the archives of the village of Pokrovskoye)

Letter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 The dear grandson of Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva, Anna Alekseevna Sheremeteva, delivered to the Society of Devotees of Russian Historical Enlightenment in memory of Emperor Alexander III a collection of letters from Philaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov and Nezhin, to Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva (born Tyutcheva), stored in the family archive of the village of Pokrovsky, Ruzsky district, Moscow provinces. Filaret, following the behests of his teacher, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, did not avoid communicating with people, as the following letters clearly indicate. "We can serve God," wrote the Moscow saint, "by running away from people: we cannot serve the management of people except through communication. It is only necessary that it does not contradict the nature of the service." Letters from Filaret to N.N. Sheremeteva, filled with humility, represent a kind of repentant canon. But this direction, observed in many of Philaret’s letters, was not entirely approved by the saint of the capital city, and he, warning his pupil against extremes of this kind, wrote to him: “I doubt whether you and I have the right to be generous with humility: for this you need to be quite rich in humility; otherwise vanity, having entered the door of humility, will steal a little inner humility." But we would be misleading the reader if we only used these words to characterize the printed letters. Philaret’s letters only to N.N. are distinguished by humility and lamentation over sins. Sheremeteva. His ardent nature manifested itself differently in relations with other people and even with the Holy Synod itself. “It seems to me,” the same Metropolitan Philaret warned him, “that out of brotherly love I should inflict on you the wounds of a friend, which, according to the word of Scripture, are more reliable than the free kisses of an enemy, namely, to draw your attention to your custom of expressing yourself very sharply and suggest that you limit yourself in this, because this can cause harm in business and service. I can prove this with your answer. When you are harsh and in a restless tone they wrote a letter to Count Protasov, in response they sent you an instruction written by a secular person and signed by Metropolitan Anthony.” Let's get to know the person to whom the following letters belong, as well as the person to whom they were written. We mainly gleaned information about Archbishop Philaret from the biography of the saint written by I.S. Listovsky and published in the Russian Archive in 1887. The ever-memorable historian of the Russian Church Filaret (Gumilevsky), who died in the rank of Archbishop of Chernigov and Nizhyn, was born on October 23, 1805 in the ancient village of Konobeev, located on the banks of Tsna, Shatsk district, Tambov province. This village belongs to the Naryshkins. Filaret's father Grigory Afanasyevich was a priest in this village. At birth, Filaret was named Demetrius in honor of St. Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica, whose memory is celebrated on October 25th. According to I.S. Listovsky, the first messenger of the appearance of the lamp of our church and the prayer book for our homeland was the holy fool Alexei, who announced this event to the village of Konobeev with the ringing of bells. Philareta’s father was distinguished, despite his deep piety, as a wonderful preacher and exemplary priest, and Philareta’s mother Nastasya Vasilievna was “an example of a Russian pious woman.” The beauty of the area in which the village of Konobeevo was located made Dmitry fall in love with nature since childhood. Having become the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, he looked after flowers; from Riga he wrote that under the windows “somehow, with effort, he planted a garden in the church fence”; in Chernigov he turned the monastery courtyards into gardens with curtains of roses and other flowers. At the age of seven, Dmitry was placed in the Vyshinsky hermitage with the learned hierodeacon Nikon, the former prefect of the Ryazan seminary, where he stayed for two years. From Vysha, Dmitry entered the Shatsk Theological School. During the holidays, Dmitry and his aunt visited the Sarov Hermitage. This visit was remarkable for Elder Seraphim’s prediction about Dmitry: “This youth will be a great priest of the church and will become famous throughout Russia as a learned man.” In 1819, during an exam at the Shatsky school, Dmitry attracted the attention of Jonah, Bishop of Tambov and Shatsky (later Exarch of Georgia). At the Tambov Seminary, Dmitry was distinguished by his extraordinary diligence. In 1826, having passed the entrance exams, Dmitry Gumilyovsky entered the VII academic course of the Moscow Theological Academy. At the end of 1829, he announced to the Metropolitan his intention to accept the monastic rank. Metropolitan Filaret reacted very sympathetically to this determination and, when he was tonsured, gave Dmitry his name Filaret. A legend has been preserved that the Moscow saint was preparing him to be his successor. In his relationship with the young monk one could notice fatherly solicitude and at the same time exceptional severity. The Most Reverend Philaret, according to the testimony of his biographer, from the first minute when he appeared before the throne of God until his death in the rank of Archbishop of Chernigov and Nezhin, performed the Divine Liturgy with tears of tenderness. Many of those present rejoiced at “these tears, these sighs, and in the depths of their souls they thanked the Lord that He would give such an abundant source of tears to the archpastor, bringing Holy gifts for his sins and for human ignorance (Heb. 7, 9:7). Upon accepting the monastic rank (January 19, 1830), Filaret was elevated to hierodeacon and remained in this rank until the end of his course at the academy. On August 26 of the same year, 1830, he was ordained a hieromonk, and in September he took the chair of church history at the academy that educated him. As a learned hieromonk, Filaret was included in the council of hieromonks of the Moscow Donskoy Monastery. The academic library became the home of the young professor. Here Filaret was engaged in compiling his lectures, which were full of interest, new in content and fascinating in presentation. Filaret was a historian by vocation. Before him, church history was taught from textbooks; but he began to independently develop his subject and thereby kindled the Divine fire in his listeners. He inspired one of them, later his constant friend Alexander Vasilyevich Gorsky. Filaret, already in the rank of bishop, expressed his attitude towards science in a letter to A.V. Gorsky regarding the calm tone noticeable in the latter’s works. “It’s true,” he wrote to him, “in scientific reasoning what is most needed is peace of mind... But, as it seems to me, even in scientific reasoning, if you need to reason about a subject that is dear not only to the mind, but to the whole soul, it is unnatural to leave feeling inactive; it is unnatural for love for the subject not to express itself in the reasoning in its own way in words, in that expression, in images, breathing life and movement. It seems to me that otherwise the reader cannot help but be offended by the coldness that he sees in the writer, since this coldness refers to an object worthy of love, respect, the activity of a whole soul. True, my mood of spirit, the organization of my sinful soul, is also involved in such a judgment, so often anxious and ardent and where there is no need to get excited by feeling and imagination, but only reasoning is needed. But here I look at the Germans. reflective, learned people. But whatever you want, only the predominance of thought in him dried up his soul. Tell me sincerely, after calmly reflecting on the subject, is it good that Germans now write blasphemies against the Lord Jesus with such composure, and other Germans listen and read blasphemies with such composure? The latter, having read the blasphemies of the pagan soul, say: we may not pay respect to the wealth of information of the writer, his deep study of the subject, etc., etc. How? Respect that the gift of God uses the Christian the way Satan used it? Oh, God have mercy on us from such a state!.. Cherishing your beloved thought, I sincerely ask you - beware of German coldness towards lofty objects... Do not kill the feelings of your saints with sinful doubts, warnings, concessions, conditions of a cold mind.” On May 1, 1833, Hieromonk Philaret became inspector of the academy, and when the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archimandrite Polycarp, who was unloved by Metropolitan Philaret, was dismissed on December 14, 1834, Philaret was appointed in his place and, moreover, elevated to the rank of archimandrite. In 1837 A.N. Muravyov wrote to Prince A.N. Golitsyn that “Filaret distinguished himself before everyone by his fasting life, modesty and knowledge, and these qualities of the young archimandrite inspire general respect for him.” Archimandrite Philaret did not like the rector's service. He became involved in academic pursuits, from which, of course, his rector's duties averted him. In addition, he did not easily get along with the cold formality that his service required, and partly “with the peculiar concepts of the metropolitan.” At the end of 1841, Filaret was summoned to St. Petersburg for consecration as Bishop of Riga. Information gleaned from reliable sources indicates that Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva was far from being the good-natured and weak old woman that Gogol’s later biographer portrays her as. She was an impetuous and ardent woman; she often succumbed to fits of anger, expressed by convulsions of strong movements; her heart was fiery and truthful. With her ardor of feelings, loyalty in friendship, and exalted mind, she attracted the most diverse and outstanding people, who found joy and consolation in many years of relations with her. At the same time, she represented the image of secret evangelical charity. “No matter how pleasant your letters are always to me,” Gogol wrote to her, “but when I realized that the mail cost you, I wished that they were less frequent... I know very well that you help many poor people, and that you have every penny saved up. Why don’t you want to be economical and don’t do as I asked you? That is, give half of the letters to Aksakov and Yazykov. They are for me.” They write very little, sometimes I just get one empty package.” Nadezhda Nikolaevna didn’t care about racing on transfer boards, she didn’t care about falling out of the carriage or wandering around on a ferry in the pouring rain. Her outward appearance and way of life were very peculiar. "She always wore a dark dress, semi-monastic; her gray hair was loose, she had a cap on her head, like a skufia, and in her hands there was always a cane. Despite her advanced years, she rode around Moscow in a chaise in a couple on departure and more than once crashed on the pavement - and almost without any special consequences... She had a very burr and could not pronounce some letters at all. She expressed herself in a peculiar way. So, in order to say that she was at three luncheons, she said: “And today I am holding masses!” The venerable trustee of first the Kyiv educational district, and then Dorpat, Yegor Fedorovich von Bradke, wrote that in Moscow “a man could still ride in an open carriage with two horses, but a lady certainly had to be driven by four horses. One rich and noble lady, Mrs. Sheremeteva, lost all respect for herself because she rode in a droshky, cut her hair and dressed simply.” Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva was the daughter of Nikolai Andreevich Jr. Tyutchev and Pelageya Denisovna Panyutina. She was born on September 26, 1775; She was married to Vasily Petrovich Sheremetev and lived with him very happily, but not for long. They lived in their suburban Ruza district, in the village of Pokrovskoye. She was destined to withstand a fatal blow when suddenly, while her husband was walking, she was picked up by horses while descending the mountain - and he was brought home already dead. Nadezhda Nikolaevna's situation was desperate. She left behind children: two daughters - Anastasia (later Yakushkina), Pelagia (later Muravyova) and her only son Alexei. A serious turning point occurred in her life; but she found warm, sympathetic support in time in the person of Ekaterina Vasilievna Sheremeteva, her husband’s cousin. From then on, their close friendship united them for the rest of their lives. Their extensive correspondence testifies to this long-term, proven connection. With her gentle, loving influence, Ekaterina Vasilievna softened the passionate, sometimes unbridled impulses of Nadezhda Nikolaevna and gave her thoughts a deep, Christian structure. Little by little, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, as the mistress of Pokrovsky, became a unifying center, attracting, in addition to her family, numerous friends. Not far from Pokrovskoye is the village of Ostashovo, where the famous school of column leaders, led by Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov, flourished. His young son, Mikhail Nikolaevich, taught mathematics there. Among the students of this school was Alexey Vasilyevich Sheremetev, the son of Nadezhda Nikolaevna. The rapprochement between the Muravyovs and Sheremetev is understandable. Nadezhda Nikolaevna herself became so attached to Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov that she designated him as her son-in-law. “In September 1815, upon the return of M.N. Muravyov from the Caucasian line to St. Petersburg,” says his biographer, the venerable D.A. Kropotov, - "he spent about two months in Ostashov with his father. By this time it should be attributed the beginning of his acquaintance with the venerable Sheremetev family, who lived next door, in their ancestral village of Pokrovskoye, 30 versts from Ostashov. This acquaintance had important consequences for M.N. Muravyov. About three years later, he married the daughter of Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva, The then seventeen-year-old girl, Pelageya Vasilievna, performed the wedding ceremony on August 26, 1818 with the usual solemnity in the church of the Pokrovsky village, which had just been built and consecrated within a week.” Nadezhda Nikolaevna gave her other daughter, Anastasia Vasilievna, to Ivan Dmitrievich Yakushkin. We gleaned biographical information about him from the comments of his comrade in exile, P.N. Svistunov, published in the Russian Archive in 1870. I.D. Yakushkin was born in November 1793; studied at Moscow University and lived with Professor Merzlyakov, whom he always spoke of with respect and love. In 1811 he entered service as a lieutenant ensign in the Semenovsky regiment, with which he made campaigns in 1812, 1813 and 1814. He also took part in the Battle of Borodino. Upon the return of the guards from the campaign, the circle of officers was formed in the Semenovsky regiment in which the idea of ​​​​establishing a secret union arose. Yakushkin entered it from the very beginning of his education. Gifted with a fiery soul, Yakushkin devoted himself entirely to his work; but subsequently, not sympathizing with the direction taken by the secret society, he resigned and retired to the village, the village of Zhukovo, Smolensk province, Vyazemsky district, where he applied his labor to alleviate the lot of his peasants. His marriage to A.V. dates back to this time. Sheremeteva. According to the testimony of those who knew her, Anastasia Vasilievna was extremely pretty. Her expressive blue eyes captivated many, but as Nadezhda Nikolaevna’s beloved daughter, she was spoiled and willful; In addition, she had the ability to notice the funny side of everyone and sarcastically make fun of them. After her death, Filaret wrote to her mother N.N. Sheremeteva: “Our Nastasia often joked with people in words, but she didn’t always joke in her soul. Whatever you want, I can’t help but praise her intelligence.” The only son of N.N. Sheremeteva Alexey Vasilievich married his second cousin Ekaterina Sergeevna Sheremeteva. At a ball hosted by the Moscow Governor-General, Prince D.V. Golitsyn, Emperor Nicholas unexpectedly chose E.S. Sheremetev in a polonaise, sympathetically asked her whether her choice was free, and whether there was pressure? Always sympathizing with her family, the sovereign did not forget that many Decembrists were in contact with her fiancé’s family, and he, with his characteristic sympathy, wanted to check the rapprochement that had taken place; but when he saw from the bride’s words that it was a marriage of love, he warmly greeted her and wished her happiness. After the wedding of his son N.N. Sheremeteva remained the sovereign mistress of Pokrovsky; but being jealous by nature, although she became very attached to her daughter-in-law Ekaterina Sergeevna, she could not overcome a certain feeling of jealousy towards her only and dearly beloved son. “The night cuckoo always bites,” she used to say about the natural influence of his young wife on him. The comet that appeared in November 1825 was a celestial sign of bad luck. “All Muscovites,” testifies M.P. Pogodin,” they looked at her and wondered if something would change in the Tsar. “November 19th,” Prince P.A. narrates. Vyazemsky, - “echoed menacingly in the turmoil of December 14. This day, disastrous for Russia, and the era bloodily marked by it, was a terrible judgment for the deeds, opinions and thoughts of the present and long past.” This day resonated mournfully in Pokrovskoye as well. Both sons-in-law of N.N. Sheremeteva were involved in “this case.” Immediately after December 14, Nadezhda Nikolaevna sent her faithful servant Yakov Ignatiev Solovyov to Pokrovskoye to lift a floorboard in one of the rooms of a village house, under which were hidden papers doomed to destruction. But this did not save either I.D. Yakushkina, nor M.N. Muravyova. Both of them were arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. From here Yakushkin was transferred to Finland, where he was again imprisoned in the fortress of Fort Glory. Two weeks before the New Year of 1827, the Finnish Governor-General A.A. himself visited the prisoner. Zakrevsky and handed him bear boots from his mother-in-law N.N. for the road to Siberia. Sheremeteva. At the beginning of November 1827, Yakushkin was taken to Siberia. On November 11, his farewell meeting with his family took place in Yaroslavl. Seeing the chains on him, his wife and mother-in-law burst into tears... On June 24, 1837, Zhukovsky wrote to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna: "We passed through Yalutorovsk. There are settlers here: Muravyov-Apostol, Cherkasov and Yakushkin. Unfortunately, having fallen behind on the road, I arrived in this city at the moment when the Grand Duke was leaving it... I missed the opportunity to console the poor exiles with my visit. Yakushkin especially worthy of note in its character. His former unbelief turned into deep faith; he endures his well-deserved misfortune with amazing firmness; he is one of those few people for whom misfortune turns into a saving lesson, and who are morally elevated by the recognition of their guilt and submission to Providence: such people are worthy of mercy giving them a hand and raising them from the abyss into which they fell in a moment of error.” Living as a sharpener in Yalutorovsk, P.D. Yakushkin became acquainted with geography and botany. M.N. Muravyov was released from arrest as soon as the investigative commission completed its studies. The Pokrovsky archive contains letters from the confessor of the Decembrists, Archpriest Pyotr Nikolaevich Myslovsky, to N.N. Sheremeteva. In a letter dated July 24, 1828, Father Archpriest wrote, among other things: “How I would like to hug my children (that is, the Decembrists)! Their bones would crackle in my arms! I will send a letter from Madame Yakushkina to Madame Rozanova at the first possible opportunity through the most faithful commission agent and friend of mankind, Miller. An invaluable old man! He lives only for consolation suffering..." In a letter dated August 6: "Thank you to Mr. Leparsky for informing you about the health of I.D. Yakushkin. This is quite obligatory. I have never heard of him writing to anyone... As for their (Decembrists') feelings towards me personally, I am unable to express all my gratitude for them. I sometimes cry for one thing only before God, so that he would give me this mercy, to see in life and press one of them to my heart...” Extensive correspondence with N.N. Sheremeteva, stored in the family archives of the village of Pokrovsky and Evgeny Ivanovich Yakushkin, testifies to the friendly relations of Nadezhda Nikolaevna with Zhukovsky, N.M. Yazykov, Gogol, A.P. Elagina, Count I.X. Grabbe, A.S. Khomyakov, D.A. Valuev, the Aksakov family, Pogodin and Shevyrev; venerable writer S.E. Raich was the mentor of her son A.V. Sheremetev and lived in Pokrovsky. In particular, Nadezhda Nikolaevna was close to Gogol. In his “Notes on the Life of Gogol,” Kulish writes: “Since N.N. Sheremeteva has already passed into another life, we can, without offending her virtuous modesty, discover before the world her spiritual communication with the author of “Dead Souls.” His letters to N.N. Sheremeteva does not need any explanation; their content consists of the feelings and thoughts that embraced Gogol’s soul after the mysterious re-creation that happened to him, which he could not tell any of his friends quite satisfactorily. Let me just warn the reader that in these letters he should see not only Gogol, but also his correspondent N.N. Sheremetev. May the reader not merge these two personalities into one and mistake Gogol in particular for Gogol in general. He himself sometimes, it seems, feared this and asked some of his most sincere friends not to show his letters to anyone. “They will be foreign to everyone,” he said, “for they are written in the language of the one to whom they relate.” I will also note that, regardless of the attraction of a kind and pious soul to another similar soul, Gogol needed short relationships with all kinds of people who have a moral influence on society, as he himself discovers in his requests to N.N. Sheremeteva to inform him about all Christian deeds, no matter who performed them. In addition, and this, perhaps, was the main reason for Gogol’s rapprochement with the pious old woman, it is known that Gogol participated with monetary donations in the Christian care of N.N. Sheremeteva about the poor and needy. His letters to her do not mention this, but I have heard from people worthy of faith that he more than once entrusted at her disposal the money he had set aside to help the poor.” Gogol himself about N.N.’s letters to him. Sheremeteva wrote to her: “In my painful moments, in moments when my spirit falls, I always (in your letters) find consolation and thank every minute the hand of Providence for my meeting with you...” “(Your letters) almost always come in handy, they always more or less speak to my state of mind, my heart hears refreshment, and I only thank God for instilling in you the idea of loving me and praying for me. Only the power of love and the power of prayer helped you to say the words and instructions that were so necessary for your soul...” Regarding N.N.’s promise. Sheremeteva to send him the prayers of St. Demetrius of Rostov Gogol wrote: “My soul now needs more what is written by the saints of our church than what can be read in French. I have already experienced this.” In his famous book “Correspondence with Friends,” Gogol insulted Pogodin with a word. N.N. took a heartfelt part in the insult. Sheremetev and wrote an accusatory letter to Gogol, and Gogol, justifying himself, humbly answered her: "You need to know Pogodin better. He is the kindest soul and the kindest heart. Generosity is the main feature of his character. But at the same time, some rudeness, ignorance of decency, unconsciousness and absent-mindedness, due to the many affairs in which he was always entangled, constantly put him in an unpleasant relationship with people, in an opportunity to upset them, without the desire to upset them. I thought for a long time about how to explain all this to him and make him look back at himself, when suddenly my book, almost without my knowledge, caused him defeat... I will tell you that I was even glad about this, having the opportunity to directly explain it to him... I will also tell you, for your complete peace of mind, that I have never loved Pogodin as much as I love him now, except that he was always worthy of all respect. has changed significantly recently. Misfortunes and various emotional shocks have softened his soul to the point that it is now able to understand much of what it was previously less sensitive to. And I feel that from now on we will have great friendship both here and there. Here, my friend, is an unfeigned report on this case.” Among the people close to N.N. Sheremeteva also belonged to the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archimandrite Filaret. His letters now being printed testify to this. The still young man was tied up in the house by N.N. Sheremeteva, the simplicity of her family village life and the cordial atmosphere of the old noble nest... At the beginning of 1846 I.D. Yakushkin received the sad news of the death of his wife and in November of the same year opened a women's school in her memory in the city of Yalutorovsk, Tobolsk province. Gogol wrote to his grief-stricken mother: “Christ is risen! I was saddened to hear about your loss, but I was soon consoled by the thought that for a Christian there is no loss, that in your soul the images of those to whom you were attached live forever; therefore, no one can tear them away from you; therefore, you have not lost anything, therefore, you have not made a loss. Your prayers are sent for them as before, they also reach God, maybe be even better than before: therefore, death did not break your connection. So, Christ has risen, and with Him all those close to our souls! N.N. Sheremetev is survived by her daughter A.V. Yakushkina was only four years old: she died in Moscow, on Vozdvizhenka, on May 11, 1850, and was buried next to her husband in the Savvin Monastery. The death of Nadezhda Nikolaevna greatly saddened Gogol. At this time he and his friend M.A. Maksimovich was planning to make a long journey from Moscow to his native Little Russia and before leaving he wrote to Father Matthew: “My strong request to you, most priceless Matvey Alexandrovich; the kind old lady Nadezhda Nikolaevna Sheremeteva, whom you met with me, and who so readily rushed to fulfill your request to place the girl in the Sheremetev institution, after seventy-four years of life, full of good deeds, died. She loved me like a son, although I did nothing worthy of her love and was not even half as attentive to her as she was to me. Pray for her, kindest soul, both for yourself and for me. Serve a memorial service for her and do not forget to mention her name at the time when you commemorate the departed servants of God, who are most often remembered by you." On August 9, 1866, Filaret, in the rank of Archbishop of Chernigov and Nizhyn, also died in the city of Konotop. He was buried in Chernigov in the Trinity Elias Monastery, under the throne of the Church of the Holy Trinity. At the head of the tombstone there is an icon of the Savior with the inscription: Where Az is, there will be my servant. March 22, 1899. St. Petersburg Christ is Risen! You wrote to me a long time ago, and I still haven’t said a word to you. Good people, you say, don’t do that. This is true, but it is also true that I belong to the sinners. Good people do not live in every way the way Filaret lives. What should we do? Pray and cry. What better thing for sinners to do than pray and cry: and the saints cried. What can sinners do? Cry, cry bitterly. For Saint Ephraim, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, crying was the same as breathing air for others; he cried day and night. This is how the monk lived, but the highly reverend ones need to shed tears far more. But let us live with trust in the Lord. Let us make up for the lack of contrition with hope, the prayer of hope, let us relentlessly ask Him for mercy, let us ask Him for mercy just as relentlessly as a hungry child asks its mother for food. He himself said that he loves us more than the mother of the children. What mother would not take pity on the cry of a hungry child? We are as senseless as children. Let us be children in our feelings too; Let us turn to Him in our sorrows and needs; We will expect from Him, we will ask Him for everything. And He – our Father – will send what our souls need. This is how they lived, those who from bad gradually became good and were saved. We too will be saved. I wish Alexei Vasilyevich 2 the blessings of the Lord - for him and for his wife and for his children 3 . A. Filaret. From my heart, from my sincere soul, I wish that the Lord strengthens you for eternity. Here I am at the academy, in my quiet, calm, secluded life. This morning, that is, July 25th, we arrived through rather shallow mud. But no matter how dirty the road was, I looked at the dirt with joy, with joy that I was hastening to pleasant solitude. Now I turn my memories to the past days. I am pleased to remember the time spent in Pokrovsky; it was carried out there not for the earth: but how peaceful the soul is when it does not live for the earth. Looking through everything that I saw with you, first of all I come across an object that often caught my eye in your room. I wanted to tell you about it several times and forgot. Of course, you won’t guess what I want to say. I want to tell you my thought about “Christian Philosophy” 4, which I saw on your table. “Christian Philosophy” is a wonderful book by its title; but the name of a thing does not always correspond to the property of the thing. There are, of course, good passages in the aforementioned book. But - I confess to you - I would not want you to read this book. There is a lot of bad stuff in it. And this bad thing is all the more dangerous because it is covered with beautiful words. Here Christianity is found only in name, but it is not about Christ, but about nature. Scriptures are cited, but they are given a special meaning that does not agree with Scripture. It speaks of the internal action of grace in us, but by this we do not mean the gracious power sought for us by the merits of the Lord Jesus, but the same power that acts in the worm, that is, the providential power of God. It speaks about Jesus, about Christ, the goodness that has mercy on us through Jesus is preached with delight; but Jesus here, of course, is not the one who came to earth, suffered and died for our salvation, and who showed us in His and the Apostolic word the way to salvation. Here they mean Christ, who lives everywhere among the pagan, the Turk, and the present-day Jew and comes to the aid of everyone who knows God’s name, although he does not at all want to know the crucified Jesus and His way of salvation. Agree that no one gave us the right to invent our own paths; or rather, when we follow the path imagined by us, our death is inevitable. You know how dangerous, how terrible it is to touch the mystery of redemption with a daring thought. There is nothing more disastrous for the soul than to abandon the Redeemer. But where is redemption and the Redeemer in “Christian Philosophy”? I think, however, that you already know this, and there is no need to say much. Tell Alexey Vasilyevich about my sincere respect; I remember and will remember their kindness before the Lord, as well as the meekness of their wife. I have a book ready for Vasinka: “Vasinka,” just as small; like Vasinka, I’ll send it with the opportunity, as well as Varinka 5. Don’t scold me, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, for not answering your letter soon; it’s better to cover my shortcomings with love. Love is the best thing among Christian things. Why shouldn't we do things of love? Many people need to stock up. The path before us is so far, and it is unknown to us. It is unknown what needs we may encounter on this long journey. Perhaps something will be required that we have not even thought about. For such a case, it is not bad to be cautious and prudent. It's not bad to have other things to do. If one is missing, you can replace it with another. We cannot doubt that they will agree to accept from us one thing instead of another, as long as they are things of equal price. The trouble with a bad product: you can’t get away with it. And a good product will be welcome everywhere. And how can one not accept a good thing instead of another? Only the one who brings nothing there will be unhappy. The only unfortunate person is the one who enters the palace without having clothes suitable for the occasion. Otherwise, God be merciful. Otherwise, the one who here collects God’s mercy for himself with tears and need, he has boldness before the Lord. The one who does here the works of God’s love, although not varied, can there replace the missing thing with them, if only this is necessary. Yes, life is a great thing. It is so short, but it decides our fate for so long. She so imperceptibly takes away from us opportunities for good and so unexpectedly can bring us closer to an immeasurable, distant path. You need to have a lot of caution so as not to be deceived by your life. You must have both diligence and attention to yourself so as not to subject yourself to the deception of life. But to our misfortune, we have so little zeal for our soul and for its eternal good. We worry so much about the things around us and so easily forget about the most precious thing - our soul. This is our common property, this high quality belongs to all of us; but I am afraid for myself and afraid that it belongs to me more than to anyone else. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! As I live, so I speak and write, simply, without plans or goals - for one purpose. And now I have outlined to you what came into my soul when I met a soul seeking good. Sorry. May Christ be with you! I wish you grace from the bottom of my heart. I wish Alexei Vasilyevich and his wife and children mercy from the Lord. Sinful Filaret. Out of your love, of course, you want to know if I am healthy. In this case, I thank the Lord before you that I am healthy. D. academy. November 30 days. Evening (1836). The Lord will save you for your feelings for me, beloved old woman of the Lord! I respect these feelings and value them. But not having anything to pay off with those to whom I owe, I learn to entrust my affairs and debts to the Heavenly Father, I pray to Him that He will not leave the hearts of those who love their neighbors without His love. I received both of your letters. Both of them tell me one thing, and I will say one thing in response - this is one thing - prayer for you. Our Lord gave this last testament: Love one another. His last prayer to the Heavenly Father was: May they all be one. We poor people often share thoughts and even feelings; but let us pray for everything to the One who wanted there to be unity between us. Old lady of God! Your sacrifices, which you make with the donation of your peace for love, will remain with you. There you will see them. There they will delight your soul with joy, after which no sorrows will be remembered. If people had said that I was wasting my life in vain, wasting my strength, struggling both against myself and against people for the love of God, I would not have listened to them. But people also feel that the deeds of your love are worth doing; they reward with sweet tears, peace of mind, hope of something better; That's enough. We will do what we have to do and what we have to do; if we do it with the thought of the Lord, the work will not be lost. We can congratulate you with joy. You saw who you were waiting for. But do you know, dear God, what’s on my mind? I think that before you set off on a long journey, you will visit the Reverend. Isn’t it true that it is very, very opportune for your dear governor to cast your hopes and fears at the feet of your heavenly patron and friend? Really, this would also be a matter for which my conscience would say two or three kind words. With heavenly friends, if they seek help, there is no loss... Heaven! We will have to live with you for a long time. We do well if we often think about you, and then we probably don’t make a profit when we forget about you. Visit, really, it will be good; if not here, then there they will tell you the same thing that Filaret is now telling you. He remains with respect for you and with the desires of the right thing. Sorry. May the Lord be with you. I am glad and thank the unworthy Lord that He has established in your soul a holy desire - to seek and demand sanctification from the All-Sanctifying and One Holy One. We are all, always, always, in all situations, sinners. Let us go to Him with hope only in His mercy, only in His love, seeking the salvation of sinners. With one hope in Him, let us approach Him. Let us have nothing. If in your conscience you now do not have the courage to begin tomorrow a terrible secret, then I am afraid to take upon myself the courage to act freely where everything makes me tremble. I really wanted you here to partake of that great secret, which so secretly heals the ulcers of the soul for us, and frees us from guilt, and gives us new strength, and for eternity remains the protection of my poor, damned soul. And now this desire remains in my soul: but let your conscience choose what is due. A poor man thrown into the sea rushes to the first board that catches his eye and hurries to fight the waves on this board. God! We are sinners before You, we have lost everything that is Yours, and we have become poor in this life; in life, as in the sea, among the troubles of the soul, as in the waves of the sea - without hope of salvation, if you do not send salvation, if you drive us away from the last hopes of protection. But You, Lord, You Yourself said: I do not want the death of a sinner, You Yourself said: Come, eat, all of you. You want to save everyone. You offer the bread of life to everyone. Revive us with Your bread. May this bread be for us the bread of eternal life, which You desire for all of us. You desire, Lord: may Your desire be fulfilled in us sinners, weak and naked. If you decide to partake, it is best to do this at the late liturgy; and I will prepare for the later one. Why should you rush away from God's service? Let us pray, and the Lord will prosper us in everything. Prayer is more necessary than all other things; Service to the Lord is more important than all other services. Saturday is for the Lord. In any case, the Sabbath is for the Lord. I worried your old age so much with my assignment that I was sorry to see you in such troubles. The carriage is very good; it is exactly what we need: both spacious and light. Thank you both for your diligence and for your troubles. I sincerely wish you to meet and spend the holidays of Christ in the joy of Christ. It shouldn’t be difficult for you to fulfill this wish, and I hope that my wish will come true. Life is hard when people don’t get used to living, but after living for a short time they begin to recognize the means to spend it comfortably and become stronger in them to live a life that is not dead. What is life with the joy of Christ? She is definitely not as sophisticated as our laziness, accustomed to death - to inactivity, imagines it to us. In the life of God there is so much diversity and diversity of great objects with which the soul is glad to live not for years, but for eternity. In the life of Christ there is a time for sorrow and there is a time for consolation. See how the Church of Christ, which leads us to the life of Christ, either excites the careless soul to sorrow and weeping for sins, or delights the soul with songs glorifying the glory of Christ the Lord and His love for us sinners. We only need to diligently listen to her instructions and suggestions, and we will never remain in sinful deadness. Every day will be filled with its own special activity; even for each hour she assigns us her own tasks; following her instructions is both safe and salutary: safe because the instructions of the Church, as the instructions of experienced saints of God, as the instructions of Christ’s wise Bride, free us from bewilderment about our safety in serving the Lord. Following my thoughts, how can I not doubt whether my thoughts are true, whether my work is true? And instead of using time to fulfill the good rule, ordinary Christians are oppressed by various perplexities and waste time without any fruit for themselves. ABOUT! If only the Lord Jesus would give us the fire of that zeal that He wants to arouse in us with His suggestions! How easy it would be for us to follow the path of salvation! Let us be faithful to the rules of the Church, and for this fidelity He who promised to remain forever with His Church will not abandon us. Sorry. May Christ the Lord be with you. A.F. Golovinskaya wrote to me about V.A., thank you for caring about him. However, they would rather give you yours. Beloved by the Lord, Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I ask the Lord to do for me for you what I should do. He is also merciful to sinners. Therefore, I ask and pray to Him that He will pay the debts of the unpayable debtor. The next day, after receiving your letter, I wanted to write to you, but things got in the way, and the paper and pens were pulled from my hands. What to do with what does not depend on us? Not a word about that! There are enough things that are in our power, in our hands. How badly I do these things. No matter what you look at, zeal is either broken or wasted. Oh my God! What can we do when we are so weak! Rech in my abundance: I will not move forever. But then I turned away Your hand and was embarrassed. When there is no temptation, the soul seems strong to itself, ready to endure the unpleasant, the bitter, and the sorrowful. The temptation itself has arrived, and where is the fortress? Disappeared! The soul is burdened by the lightest, most insignificant thing. There is not enough strength to fight an empty habit. I don’t have enough patience to come to terms with the most apparently ordinary thought - with the thought that I am a weak, sinful, empty person, good for nothing, neither for myself nor for others! ABOUT! how crafty is my soul! Why does she assure me so strongly that I have enough strength for good? Then, in times of adversity, to laugh all the more at my blind trust in my strength. And how many times have I already had to endure this evil ridicule, and yet I submit to it voluntarily. May the Lord Jesus give you contrition and compunction to deserve His visit. You, of course, are preparing for confession and communion. Sorry. I wrote to you what was on my sinful soul this time. Once again I wish you blessings from the Lord. I hope, unworthy, that the Lord will not abandon those who trust in Him and, even without their knowledge, will arrange what is necessary for salvation. The Lord God will save you for your love. May He reward you with His love in eternity. He has payment. What can a person do to another in payment for the love of the Lord? Everything that is done for the Lord is very precious. If the Lord Himself pays eternal rewards to those who love Him and His will, then, of course, man cannot pay for the works of God. Let us love the will of the Lord. Let us love each other - and the Lord will love us. He Himself wants us to love each other, and He declared that whoever loves his neighbor loves Him. Let's pray for each other. Our prayer, that is, my prayer, is bad, but He is merciful - and He does not reject the sinner’s bad hope. Let us trust in Him and reward hope for hope, and He will reward. Although it’s bad, I really pray for you. He sees this. Sorry. With the approach of joyful holidays for all of Christ, what should we say first of all if not the desire to spend the holidays worthy of a holiday? Oh! when do we not need to live worthy of Christ's servants? What does our life mean if we do not spend it for Christ and with Christ? What are we? And what is Christ for us? The fish lives only in water. The bird flutters in the air. For us, without Christ there is no life. The soul only lives when it lives according to the will of Christ. The world will pass; human customs will pass away; the worries of life pass us by; There are many sorrows in life, but everything will pass and our soul will remain with us. How can we not care, how can we not pray for our soul? How not to lament, how not to fight with all your might in order to live according to the will of God? ABOUT! My God! It is not easy to follow Your path. Your path, according to Your word, is a narrow and hard path. But what will happen to us if we do not follow Your path? It is scary not to follow Your path. Where will we go when we don’t go to You? But the path is narrow; walking along it is difficult; and sometimes it’s so cramped, it’s so dark that we don’t know how or where to step. How can we deal with such a life of ours? Where is the light for our eyes? Where is the relief in our grave sorrows? We confess, Lord, we confess that there is darkness in our lives because of our sins. But where can we go from our sins? Everything, everything is with You. We may have many of our sins, but You forgive, You dispel the darkness of our sins, You strengthen us so that we walk Your path unswervingly... Everything, everything is Yours. Beat us, strike us with sorrows, so that our souls may be healed. So without the Lord, and therefore without prayer, one cannot desire salvation. Let us live with the Lord. Let us pray to the Lord that He will not leave us. That's how much he said, how little use it made. Sorry for the verbosity. I repeat the desire: rejoice in the Lord and for the Lord; live with the Lord and for the Lord. I wish Alexey Vasilyevich God's blessing and love, with which everything is good everywhere. A. Filaret. I forgot to tell you that you don’t have to copy the sermon, because it’s ready. When you come to me, bring the list you have, and after making a certificate, I will give you another or the same one. May Christ be with you. However, we must not abandon Christ either. Christ is risen, Nadezhda Nikolaevna! May the Risen Lord fill your soul with spiritual joy. Ancient Christians considered the entire time from Easter to Pentecost a festive time and spent it in spiritual joy; both fasting and kneeling were considered indecent for all these days. They glorified the Risen One both in public gatherings and in home life. We will not sin either if, in the spirit of the ancient Christians, we spend these days in joy. We are far from the spirit of the ancient Christians in our lives, in our deeds for the Lord. We do not suffer for the name of God as painfully as they suffered. Let us admit our shortcomings; Let us begin to look at ourselves as weak Christians, and nevertheless, if possible, we will enter into communion with the ancient spirit, with the apostolic spirit, so that this life-giving spirit itself will quicken our hearts for true faith, so that those who lived by this spirit, seeing our desire to be with us, will shed prayer for us weak Christians. When we have not acquired within ourselves the spirit of fiery zeal for Christ Jesus, what can arouse our laziness to this zeal, if not the spirit of the ancients, if not our communication with their life? Let's read the history of their deeds, let's do what they did, do according to our strength; This will be, at least, good in that it will deliver us from self-inflicted rules, from the arbitrariness of our sin-loving, crafty, sin-loving spirit. There is time for everything: this saying is true for all cases of our life. During the time appointed for spiritual joy, let us begin to enliven our souls with reflections on the love of the Lord Jesus for us, about His glory and greatness, let us read instructions on how we can thank the Lord who benefits us, how to bless His love for us; Let us join the Psalmist in praising the Lord; whereas at other times we confessed and repented with Him; Let us sing with the Church her joyful, solemn songs, in which she invites all creation to have fun and rejoice. Do not forget me in your joy in the Lord, as well as in your sorrow in the Lord. Sinful Filaret. I received your letter upon arrival from Moscow, where I stayed for two days because of the unpleasant news from the monastery 6. Nastasya Vasilievna 7 is at the service; her health is strengthening, but as usually happens, it is not strengthening so quickly; and therefore sometimes he feels tired even after little work. I am writing the exact truth. I think you know how Nastasya Vasilyevna and I spent the first day of Easter: she also took communion. I think that Alexey Vasilyevich is no longer with you, therefore I wish him only a prosperous journey with you - in absentia. The affairs of life also require their accuracy and correctness and may not interfere with the work of God, the work of salvation, but, on the contrary, can assist it. Our job is to pray that they will go into the creation of the soul. And He was in Cana at the wedding, and even performed the very first miracle at the wedding, but He performed a miracle for the glory of God, and not just an everyday thing. Have you stopped scolding me for not writing anything to you for so long? Scold more: where there is scolding, there is love. The trouble is when those who are dissatisfied with me remain silent about their dissatisfaction with me. Here, perhaps, they will get themselves into trouble, and I’m not the only one ready. When they tell the hard truth out loud, perhaps this truth will become soft and pleasant for me over time - there is a reason for that. And will those who tell this truth really just speak the truth, but they themselves won’t even want to touch it with their finger? No, why assume such a bad state of mind? It is true that we are eager to give advice to others, to propose rules to our neighbors, and we are not always willing to carry out these advice ourselves. It happens that if you have managed to say a kind word to another, and you think that you have done a lot, you should ask your soul in advance, look at your past life, how often I myself, in the same situation, indifferently neglected this good rule. Yes, I am unhappy when, with all my will and even joy, I place heavy burdens on the shoulders of another, but I myself run away from them! Be that as it may, I will say gratitude from the bottom of my heart when I am scolded for anything, or at least I want to say gratitude. However, look how vindictive I am! I thank you for scolding me, and at the same time I want to scold you myself. And why do you think this mercy of mine is towards you? It seems to me that you, by scolding me for my secrecy, and not hiding the thoughts of strangers and your own in front of others, want to imitate me. You will agree that you have not written to me for quite some time. I advise you to improve. May Christ the Lord be with you and guide your soul on the path to eternity. I wish you to spend holy days holy. This is the truth of Christ, that the spacious path leads to a terrible end. Let us love the narrow path, the bitter truth of Christ. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus be with you and with those who are with you. Sinful Filaret. Truly Christ has risen, beloved of the Lord! May the Lord reward you for your love for me. You have worried so much about me: I will remember this concern of yours and will appreciate it. I was waiting for a letter from you, but I did not expect you to send a letter with such worries in your soul. You have been alarmed by unjust news. You will still see me at the Academy, where we met. The Lord still bears with my sins, and I remain in the peace of God’s servant and great defender of our Sergius. I continue my previous life. As for Moscow, I was definitely given the management of the Epiphany Monastery; even I was summoned by two decrees to Moscow for Easter; but all this is for a temporary stay in Moscow, and not for residence. I was going to get acquainted with my monastery in person, but it was not possible. If you are in Moscow, I ask you to stop by for the service. I hardly know this monastery. I was only once and saw almost nothing, and what I saw I forgot. Now I am only considered the abbot of this monastery, but I did not take it into my own hands. Here is a detailed explanation of Case 8. I thank you again and again for your love for me, for your prayer for me. I am waiting for you in the same cells and with the same love. I wish God’s blessing to Alexei Vasilyevich with his wife and dear children, and bright joy for bright days. Our business will soon begin again. However, is it necessary to think that things are about to begin? They began with the beginning of life. Now there is a continuous continuation. And there? And there only what is outside of us will change. On Great Thursday I definitely communed with all my friends. Thank the Lord! R.S. The letter was written, but it was not accepted at the post office due to my delay. I am sending a letter to Moscow with the case so that it can be delivered to the post office on Thursday. Here I am in the Epiphany Monastery. I look at his position. His situation is not at all such that one can remain at peace, but one must seek peace in the Lord. What to do? Everywhere on earth there is earth - decay and death. Life and strength for everything are with the Lord. He feeds and holds everything. He also provides us with our daily bread; Our trouble is that we expect little help from Him, and more often we turn to ourselves, looking for benefits for living within our means. Yes, this is not good: this does not mean living life with Him entirely, with complete trust in Him. My monks are old, but I am still at peace among them; I am even much more at peace among them than I had hoped. They pray with me decently, they don’t live quite well, but these are things necessary for a monk. Let's pray together. I wish you to be comforted by the consolation of God when meeting with yours. With whom is it permissible and should we be comforted, if not with those with whom our life is connected by the Giver of life himself? The One who united you with bonds, He forces you to share your spiritual, sincere joy with yours, He even obliges you to do so. Where God’s love is, there is God’s blessing, there is the Spirit of God, there He Himself corrects our mistakes and forgives our sins with His love and leads souls to His Kingdom. Yes, the mother lives for the children, the children live for the mother. This simple truth and holy truth. May the Lord of peace and love be with you. I will pay you for your love for me, a sinner. Sorry. A. Filaret. Witness your heartfelt memory of them to all of you. July 15th day, 1837. Forgive me for not answering your letter soon. There was so much, so much to do and worries that on other days I was completely without myself, but with only worries. Now I'm in a monastery in Moscow. There is more freedom here, but even here the spirit is chilled by worries. This is the land! There is work on it, not peace. Work, work day and night, and yet new labors remain for every new day. ABOUT! whenever the labors of the earth are of no use to life beyond the earth. This is what we can only think about, we can only cry and lament, so that not everything we do on earth will be useless for eternity, or even dangerous. And how much work is needed in order to work profitably for eternity. Labor on earth is hard for the earth, but feats are much harder for heaven; they require much more prudence, wise attention, bloody sweat and labor. But these labors are all the easier because with them the soul does not get tired, does not weaken, but grows and strengthens. They do not kill the spirit, but revive the spirit. Sorry! May Christ be with you! Sinful Filaret. I wish God's blessing to my dear Alexei Vasilyevich. Postnikova was sick again and even sicker than before, but now she is recovering little by little. I am ashamed that you worry so much for me, and even more ashamed not to fulfill your desire; Since, due to circumstances, I have to live here for a long time (and this is not to my joy), let me ask you for permission to find a freer day than this, when I need to be with the Lord with some business. For my part, I consider it a duty of conscience to be with you as soon as circumstances permit. Sinful Filaret. I am sending you sermons; I didn't keep my word, sorry. I did what I could. I hope that you will also benefit from the readings that I send. At least that's what I wish. May Christ be with you. When will you set off on your journey? My desires will accompany you, my desires are that the Saint receives you with love, and my daughter with joy. Remember me too at the Saint. Tell Pelageya Vasilyevna about my desire for them to do everything pleasing to the Lord. I testify to Alexei Vasilyevich and my wife my respect and memory before the Lord. I bless the children. I'm hurrying to the post office. I would like N.V. I chose Morozov’s house, the house is spacious and clean, and not far from the monastery. All the benefits in comparison with other houses known to me are behind this house, if we exclude the amount that the owner does not reduce. Sorry. I pray to the Lord that He will be with you both there and here with His love. A.F. How did you get there? What are your strengths? These questions are necessary when thinking about you. It is not at your age to travel, but the power of Christ appears in weaknesses, so it usually works over everyone and everywhere, and with it we can be healthy and at peace; This is what calms the spirit when, due to weakness, it begins to wonder whether weak forces will accomplish a task that is difficult for them. I pray to the Lord, sinner, that He will strengthen you. Pray for me, a sinner, to the saints of Christ, so that they will remember me before the Lord. Especially bow down for me lower and more fervently to the Great Martyr Barbara 10. May Christ the Lord bless you! I live here in deep peace. Thanks be to the Lord. O. Savvaty could not go to Pokrovskoye, they did not let him go, but he hopes to visit after the Assumption. Sorry. With sincere love for you, Filaret. We are going to get down to our usual business. Come back to us soon. May the mercy of Christ be with you, old lady of Christ. My good old lady! Why not offer a good wish to another? Is it really better to fulfill the duty of love when we remain silent about good? True, the Savior said that there are cases when it is not necessary to offer good things. But may He Himself protect everyone, both known and unknown to us, from such cases. For my part, I am glad to see your good desire and to be able to fulfill it. With the current mail, a representation of Pospelov 11 is sent to the Metropolitan. I can’t guarantee whether the performance will be a success. Everything is in the will of the Lord! Regarding the Bethany place, the difficulty is that in Bethany there remains an extra mentor due to our new orders, and although the idea of ​​​​assigning a special place for him was sent long ago, ours, it is true, does not seem long ago to everyone: the answer has not yet been received. Nevertheless, Pospelov is intended for Bethany. Here is my sincere answer and report. Pray for me, a sinner who needs prayers. And you probably forgot that I am still waiting for you at the Lavra. It seems that keeping one’s word has not yet been excluded from the list of good deeds! Isn't it true? If so, then I will remain in the hope of seeing you in the Lavra and talking with you at least about empty things: from empty things, don’t expect anything but trifles, I assure you of this. With sincere and constant memory of you before the Lord. A.F. Christ is risen, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I tell you these words from my heart and I wish that their power will be felt by your soul. Both the Sufferer and the Risen One for us! May He also grant us sinners His mercy—to be His participants in glory and joy. I am writing to you on the very day of the great holiday. I didn’t quite listen to you, that is, instead of writing on Saturday, I write on Sunday. Our liturgy, as before, followed the morning one. And now I have already managed to calm my decrepit bones somewhat. I wanted to write to you upon receiving your first letter in order to respond to spiritual love with the same love, but I did not know where to find you with my letter. You wrote that you intend to leave Moscow soon. Let's pray, let's pray. I am very glad to hear your news about Evgeniy and Vyacheslav 12. May God grant that they will be a consolation for both you and yourself. And we cannot be a consolation for ourselves if we do not live according to the will of our Lord. How glad I would be to see Evgeniy if he is in Moscow in May! If so, send it to me; I really want to see him, I haven’t seen him for a long time. Well, minute by minute they tear themselves away from the letter, then one or the other comes, meanwhile the Reverend’s service ended. I would like to talk, but until another time. Sorry. May Christ be with you. I kiss my dear Alexei Vasilyevich with a sincere kiss and, first of all, wish you good health. Sinful Filaret. 1841, March 30th day. Elder beloved by the Lord! I don’t know, for some reason I was happy about your letter, as soon as I picked it up. May God grant that He, the Merciful Father of us sinners, will rejoice your soul too. God grant that the hopes for dear Eugene come true as they seem to need to come true. Not all sorrows, it seems, are allowed to desire rest in the midst of sorrows. However, without a doubt, the best thing will be what the Lord arranges. We are short-sighted: He, the All-Seeing One, sees even what is very far ahead; He is the loving one who arranges things as needed for our eternity. Eternity, eternity! How much is needed to see you through without sorrows and lamentations - or better yet, we will not send you past us, as we pass time past ourselves, we will not live and live the way we are preparing to live here. God! By Your great mercy, do with us according to Your will for our eternal salvation. You have nothing to expect from my prayers, and I don’t see any profit from them for myself - because I pray poorly, or rather, I don’t pray. Trouble is everywhere you look: poverty and misery. This one didn’t exist, the other didn’t happen, and I didn’t even think about the third. What should I bring to a place where they will demand so much from me and so menacingly? ABOUT! Lord, who weighs fate, save me, a sinner, a beggar, robbed from all sides! You ask me about my health: thank the Lord, now I am healthy, if only we exclude (and we must exclude) that I am treating my eyes, which hurt - I don’t know why. If you would like to know something else about me, a sinner: I think that I will soon go on a long journey - to Penza, to Tambov, for an inspection, and to Voronezh - I would like to worship the saint of God 13, it seems that this will come true. So far they haven’t answered us anything about Pospelov. What to do? Let's wait for the vacation; Probably then, together with other orders, this petition will be dealt with somehow. Sorry. Remember me, a sinner, in the prayers of your love. Sinful Filaret. May Christ save you, most honorable Nadezhda Nikolaevna! It will save you, O Merciful One, that you remembered me and wrote into the wilderness in which I am now hovering because of my sins. I’ve now been in Simbirsk for two weeks now, but God knows how soon I’ll leave it. The point is that I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow, and what the third day has in store for me. The sinner had to deal with the sins of others. On the one hand, this is not entirely appropriate, but on the other hand, is it amazing that, having become preoccupied with the sins of others, I will forget about my own, and what’s even worse: considering only the sins of others, perhaps I will begin to think of myself not as a sinner, but as a fairly tolerable person 14. The trouble is that the sinner, no matter what he undertakes, spoils himself everywhere before he has time to do anything for others, if only he has time. For the one who is established in the Lord, who is strong in the strength of his Lord, there is freedom everywhere, everywhere convenience to increase the salvation of the soul. But for such a weak, such a sinner as Filaret, a holy deed is not of help, and a pure deed does not serve as a purification. May the will of God be with me, a sinner. It remains to repeat the prayer of Macarius: Lord! save me as you wish and as best you can. In Simbirsk I received news that my mother left this world on September 1st. I feel guilty before her: she really wanted, as I found out, for me to visit her on vacation, and she was very sad that I wasn’t. Now I regret it, but it’s too late. Even so, he left the monastery so that he could see her on the way back; but it’s already too late. It happens to us that we are late everywhere. Will we make it to the palace in time before they close it for us? Pray for me, a sinner. I’m not having much fun here: there’s a lot to do, and it takes a lot of skill to do it as it should. From the bottom of my heart I wish blessings from the Lord to dear Alexei Vasilyevich with his wife and children. Wish Nastasya Vasilyevna spiritual salvation from me. The Lord be with you all. Sinful Filaret. I have just received your pleasant letter and am sending it now. The Lord will save you for your good desires for me, a sinner. If only the Lord would arrange my soul as you wish! Life on earth is so hard; it is not easy to arrange the salvation of the soul: although the grace of the Lord assists the soul completely undeservedly, completely freely, not through the efforts and prayers of the soul, nevertheless, it is not easy to arrange the soul, it is not easy because there is a lot of laziness for good, there are many inclinations to sin. Sin, like a worm, wears away the soul and wears away unnoticed. You think to yourself that everything seems to be going in order, that you have not stood out from the ranks of the decent, but you look into the depths of your soul - it is cold, and damp, and poor, there secretly crawl the worms of pride, arrogance, vanity, attachment to one’s own, to one’s thoughts, to passions acquired by habit. What to do? We must move forward, but our legs cannot move, our soul is weakened by laziness and coldness towards good. You have to fight with yourself, but there is no firmness or even desire in your soul. And how to rebel against yourself? It is necessary to rebel against bad things... Yes, it is necessary. But this bad thing is mine, the property of the soul. How to part with yours? Oh, Lord, Lord! Help the sinful soul, the soul unworthy of any of Your mercies, but for the sake of Your love for sinners, help, so that it does not perish. My hope is in You, my Savior! You write that you are ashamed that you, who visited the monk so often before, have not been with him for a whole year. Yes, and I, a sinner, also think, and even wonder, and if you allow me, I’m ready to scold. It is obviously bad that you are so indifferent to the pleaser. Don’t scold me for telling you this, but it seems that I’m not telling a lie. Christ will save you. With love to you F. To my dear Alexei Vasilyevich, I sincerely wish for a complete and speedy recovery and from the bottom of my heart I regretted and regret the illness. Please deliver the letter to Nastasya Vasilievna. I don’t know her new apartment yet. You, of course, will willingly forgive me, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, for not writing you an answer to the first letter and not saying anything about myself. I think that Andrei Nikolaevich 15 wrote to you about my situation. I didn’t write because my time was occupied with various concerns. I went here and there, and I can’t tell you the news that in St. Petersburg it is not as simple and free as in Moscow. Here everything is done tactfully, according to the rules: whether the rules are correct is another matter... My journey to St. Petersburg was not entirely quick. Here are his adventures. You saw that I went in a sleigh. But after various adventures at five miles, they spent the night in Vsesvyatsky to remove the crew from winter travel and put it on wheels. Then we stopped three times to repair the carriage. We arrived in St. Petersburg on the morning of the 3rd. Thanks be to the Lord for everything 16. Our Lord 17 received me with the love of a father, and now I am in his cramped chambers, I still do not stop crowding into the corner of St. Sergius Ave., the monk still keeps me under his roof. And do you know that for another month I will live in the same corner, resting my soul and body? This is how circumstances dispose of my time. I can’t explain to you (because I don’t know well myself) what the circumstances are that keep me here beyond expectation. But it is good for the soul when things are done independently of its orders. The exact details of the dedication are unknown. But it is very likely that it will be on December 21, as the Metropolitan said. The day of the naming has not yet been determined at all. These are all the affairs of the higher ones. These are the deeds of the lower ones, because of them am I the first sinner? How to deal with yourself? This is a task for which there is nothing more sophisticated. Yes, a sinner is such a tricky, confusing thing that sometimes you can’t understand anything. Everything is distorted and upside down! The upper is below, the lower, the earthly, the emptiest is above. How to put things in order? It would seem that it is not difficult to drive the emptiness down, but get down to business, you see that it is not so easy. Why do we love sin so much? Why are we so partial to what is rotten and even harmful? What kind of blindness is yours? What kind of stubbornness is it to love death and your destruction? Trouble is our trouble! Dear Lord! Forgive the blindness and madness of my soul. Have mercy, O Lord, on your unhappy, disastrously unhappy soul. Send Thy light and truth, that it may guide me and lead me into Thy holy mountain, into the village where Thy holy will reigns. Sorry. May the Lord Jesus, generous and merciful, visit your soul with His mercies. There are now three priests from Riga: I saw two of them today and learned something about Riga. Not much pleasant, but thanks be to the Lord for everything. Christ the Lord be with you all. I haven’t seen Evgeniy yet, and I don’t know where to find him. Now, damned, I have served, and tomorrow I am thinking of serving. Oh, that God's mercy would not be cut short by my sins! I wish the kind, dear Alexei Vasilyevich, his wife and dear children, blessings from the Lord God. To the kindest Katerina Vasilievna, 18, a blessing from the Merciful Father. I hasten to you, beloved in the Lord Nadezhda Nikolaevna, to send a debt: yesterday they gave it to me (the God-loving Maltsevs) 19, and now I am sending it; I’m in a hurry because it’s hard for you to bear a debt, even though it was done out of the love of Christ, and I wouldn’t want death (and who knows when it will come?) to find me with debts. Thank you for your love so abundant. Until now I can’t say anything new about myself. I live, thank the Lord, peacefully. True, yesterday I received difficult news: the children of the unfortunate brother (whom I told you about) want to give (his landowner) as soldiers, demanding 12,000 rubles for freedom. But what can we do? When there are no human means, all that remains is to submit everything to the will of the Lord. As the Lord willed, so be it 20. The decision about me has not yet been made. The Kyiv Metropolitan is beyond the Neva 21, and it’s not calm in Riga yet. The Lord will arrange it. I'll spend the holidays here. Sorry. I sincerely wish God’s blessings to my dear Alexei Vasilyevich and his wife and children. Christ the Lord be with you all. Sinful F. P.S. You will understand that there is freedom in my sinful spirit? From my heart, from my sincere soul, I thank you, God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna. You love me, a sinner, so much, care so much, pray so much for me that I don’t know how to repay you. May the Lord God, generous and merciful, reward you with His bounties. I don’t understand why you haven’t received my letters for so long: I sent you two letters, one after the other. In the first four days after my arrival, I did not have time to write to you; the time was taken up with traveling to the members of the synod, to Count 22: one lives at one end of St. Petersburg, the other at the other; You won’t find one at one time, the other at another, and therefore it was necessary to think about when to go where. Moreover, from the very moment I arrived, I was already told that I was supposed to spend the holidays here. That’s why I gave myself a little freedom, when to spend time worrying and when to relax. It's been quite a long time since I've been living here. But, I admit, I don’t notice how time passes. I am not idle, and time does not pass idlely. Our Lord gave me some classes, both pleasant and very useful. Yes, and I have my own things to do. Thank the Lord! Yesterday the naming of 23 took place. Things went well on my part. It seems they were not dissatisfied. The dedication will take place tomorrow. Thank you for preparing me with your prayers. I hope in the Lord that the prayer of love is always timely and effective, no matter when it is performed. May the sacrifice of love be an intercessory sacrifice for love itself, for the good and salvation of your soul. It is likely, and even already known, that many do not like the fact that the sinful Filaret, having nothing to spare, will not treat the synodal public tomorrow, but the Lord will arrange everything for the good. Our loving ruler took it upon himself to treat ten people instead of a hundred. All is vanity and the most important thing is that I remember it. Show respect from me and greet Alexey Vasilyevich, Katerina Sergeevna, Ekaterina Vasilievna, and first Nastasya Vasilievna on holidays, kiss the children of Alexey Vasilyevich and Vyacheslav. May Christ be with you all. I live in a small room, but it’s very quiet. Sorry. Christ is with you, I wish that again and again. If you see me, tell Marya Petrovna, Avdotya Nikolaevna, Katerina Ivanovna about my spiritual memory. Katerina Fedorovna is 24, please, congratulate me on the holiday. For the salvation of us sinners, may the Savior born save your soul, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. You truly comfort me with your love. I won’t say that I am constantly bored: the archpastor’s love encourages me so much, it so carefully enters into my situations, even implicit ones, that I do not know how and do not have the strength to thank properly. But you said the truth that I came here as if into a forest, as if it were a forest and a remote forest for me, a sinner; everything is wild for me here, wild because it is unknown, wild also because becoming known does not cease to be strange and inaccessible to the spirit. Therefore you can judge what my position is. Besides, I’ve been living here for quite a long time, but I don’t know when I’ll leave. They said that on the 1st the sovereign would have to appear, and after that he would have to appear at a home audience to receive instructions. When this last one will happen is unknown. And even after that, due to the circumstances of Riga, it will probably not be necessary to leave soon. That’s why, if it weren’t for the ruler’s love that consoled me like a child, it would have been too boring. If I had not been in the Vladyka’s cell (which, although cramped, is peaceful for the spirit), I would have to live in some empty cellar in the Lavra. May the Lord Jesus repay with His mercy the generous love of the Lord Father. I sent you a letter to Moscow: I did this both because you yourself wrote about your intention to spend the holidays in Moscow, and also because the previous letters sent to Pokrovskoye were not received by you for so long. Now I see from your letter (dated December 21st) that you are traveling from Moscow to Pokrovskoye. I wrote to you about my brother and his children. Now the Lord has consoled me, a sinner, with the news that my sons have been ordered to be released from soldierhood: I again owe this to the Bishop. Although even after that the brother’s fate remains difficult, thanks be to the Lord that one misfortune, and a misfortune too severe, has been removed from the unfortunate. The fact is that they demand 12,000 rubles for the freedom of a brother and two children. (and before they demanded 20,000), but he doesn’t have even 2000, even after selling everything except the shirt. What to do? We must endure. This is how the Lord pleases! You know about my dedication: it took place on December 21, and three metropolitans and three archbishops served as prayer books. May the Lord confirm His goodness in the most indecent sinner 25 . I wish the blessing of God to my dear Alexei Vasilyevich, may the Lord bless the kind soul of him and his wife, I bless the children with kisses. Sorry. Christ is with you. Sinful Filaret, Bishop of Riga. Yesterday I saw the good Countess Sheremeteva at the Metropolitan. May God grant that she will be kind until her grave amid the vanities of a rebellious and forgetful age. Address: On the Trinity Compound, on Fontanka. God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I haven’t written to you for a long time, while you have been waiting for my lines for a long time. Sorry. A sinner at every step. Such are all my affairs! Such is my soul that it is guilty everywhere. Where should I go with my damned soul? Out of your love, of course, you will forgive me. But my problem is - how many other sins there are! There are so many sins that I don’t even know about! How many such wickednesses that I sometimes remember, but do not cry bitterly, as I should! My God! Do not go into court with your accursed servant. I am very sorry about the illness of the good Alexei Vasilyevich. May the Lord preserve it for many who need it. It would be a different matter if I fell ill, if death came to me: wouldn’t it be true that the extra rubbish would be pushed out of people’s eyes? May the Lord raise him up safe and sound. At your request, they will send you my image 26. Having looked, remember before the Lord God about the unfortunate sinner, may God forgive him at least one sin. Once I left the courtyard in the evening in order to be with Pelageya Vasilyevna 27. But since two addresses were written down on one piece of paper - one of Pelageya Vasilievna, the other of Vera Alekseevna, and my memory is too accurate, then I ended up in the wrong place where I thought I would be at first. So be it! Vera Alekseevna also really wanted me to be with her; I sent it several times, so I was ashamed. And now one duty has been fulfilled. There I saw your dear child and was very happy about him. Evgeniy Ivanovich 28 visited me twice on holiday. Pelageya Vasilievna was so kind that she deliberately asked him for me, although without this occasion she did not intend to call him. We talked with him a little. He seems to have now calmed down and is jealous of scientific works. May the Lord God bless him in his good intentions and dispositions. I promised to be with him at the Lyceum when I was on the road. I don’t know whether I will fulfill my promise, the Lord’s will be done. You think that I left St. Petersburg a long time ago, but you see - things are not working out as I would like. I don’t know how to tell you anything more about this than to repeat with you: Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth. It's been raining here the other day. There was a little snow before, but now there is none at all. Our sins have spoiled the order of nature. We live in disarray; The surrounding nature has lost its ways. I bless the dear Alexei Vasilyevich. The last sinner is Filaret. You are right in reproaching me for haste in paying off the debt; made differently, but He is merciful despite my iniquities. Sorry. I don’t know anything about the time of departure. Here, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, is what you wanted out of love for me. I could not go against love in order to refuse the desires of love, but, as you will see, it was possible not to desire it as much as you desired. If I did not write to you for a long time, this did not mean that I had anything in my soul against you, no, and by the grace of God there was nothing similar to that in my sinful soul. But I didn’t write because the soul is not completely free when there are circumstances that constrain the weak soul. And you know that sinful Filaret is not strong in spirit. I continue to wait until I have to leave St. Petersburg; I don’t know when I’ll get it. Benckendorff went to Riga to give advice. How will it end? They don't expect much, and it's clear why. I visited Pelageya Vasilievna twice and didn’t see her twice. They said there was no home. The third time, of course, is no longer good to go, and there are obstacles. May Christ be with them! I wish them everything that pleases the Lord. I myself did not send the images to you, but your commission agent took them to send them to you. Whether I managed to send it, I don’t know. May God grant that Alexey Vasilyevich improves his health as soon as possible. Proof that I had no evil in my soul against you is the impatience with which I waited for your last letter, and I was glad when I received it. I wanted to know about you and the sick person, and I began to think about you like you. They told me here that Nastasya Vasilyevna was also sick, or was sick. Tell me, did they tell me the truth? And from me wish her health and salvation in the Lord Jesus. I wish from the bottom of my heart that you meet and spend the upcoming soul-saving fast with spiritual benefit. Pray for me, a sinner, too. How much does such a nasty soul, mired in passions, need, such as the soul of the careless Philaret! Let us pray for each other in order to strengthen our mutual love to some extent. Life goes on and approaches the coffin, and therefore, the report in life. Woe and terrible misfortune if we go there with an unclean soul, full of thorns of sin and passions. Meanwhile, what is there in our life, other than sins, laziness and passions, obvious or secret? Where are the feats of destruction? Where is the humility that deeply feels one’s and only one’s sins? What will the Judge see in my careless soul, inattentive to anything except the crowd of temporary objects of life? I am a barren tree, Lord! I am afraid of beheadings and terrible judgment, says the ascetic of repentance, but is my soul, hardened by habits in sin, saying this? Lord, Lord, give me contrition and tears of repentance, wasted and dried up by the vanities of life that have overwhelmed me! Forgive me, a sinner, for what I have sinned against you in word or deed or thought. The bright holiday is approaching; I wish you, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, to meet and see him off in the joy of a pure soul. You consoled me a lot with your letter, in which you described your stay in the Lavra. And I visited unforgettable places with you. Yes, now I have to talk about myself – I visited. Holy places, places of peace and quiet growth: I will be parting from you for a long time, so long that perhaps I will never be worthy to see you. All that remains is to live only by memory and only by thought to be in a place of peace. How much poor Filaret experienced during the years of his life at the Lavra! Lord, strengthen me, a sinner! About two weeks ago I visited Mikhail Nikolaevich and Pelageya Vasilievna. We talked about something old and new. I heard that kind Nastasya Matveevna 29 was very ill. May the Lord Jesus save her for eternity. Pelageya Vasilievna told me a few words about Evgeniy. Out of my usual impatience, I gave advice, but now I’m afraid that they wouldn’t complain about me for interfering in other people’s affairs; I hurry, with whatever help I can, to where, perhaps, they do not need my help. The fact is that I gave advice - not to suddenly give all the money that was sent to N.V. And the reason is that, unfortunately, it is necessary to say about new complaints against Evgeniy. It's a pity, it's a pity. Apparently, we pray poorly. I wanted to send Mikhail to Evgeny with a note; but, really, I’m afraid of people, they frighten me so much now that I consider it best to live only for my sinful soul. It’s true, absolutely true: I have so many sins that my life is not enough to consider and mourn them. Is it to strangers? I saw Vera Alekseevna four times, who had become very ill: she could barely walk from the sorrows of life. Thank the Lord that she feels herself and her calling. What should I tell you about myself? I am at times unwell, as before, although, I admit, to my surprise - not as often as I would think by my frail vessel, which is pushed here and there, unable to cope with anything. Thanks to the Lord for everything! So spring finds me in St. Petersburg, where I never wanted or thought to be. Apparently, the life of a wanderer is the most decent for a sinner! I spent the fast in my cell, but otherwise it would be impossible to live here. But it’s better not to talk about life here. Yes, here we need to pray more often. God! Let me see my sins. Lord, life is not calm: bring the sinner into Your peace! Cleanse and heal the wounds of my soul. Give me sources of tears, so that I may wash away the impurities of my soul, Lord! I need to cry a lot, ask Your mercy for a lot. But You see my poverty; You see that I have no prayer to beg You for mercy. I am irresponsible, Lord, before You, poor and needy everywhere. I cast my wounded soul to Your bounties. Do whatever you want. Sorry, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. To Alexei Vasilyevich and his wife, Nastasya Vasilievna, I wish from the bottom of my heart the blessings of Christ. Bow to the good Katerina Vasilyevna, and if the opportunity arises, I ask you to convey from me the consolation of Christ to Katerina Fedorovna with her chicks. In memory of you before the Lord. F. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Now I am free from business because I am quite unwell. And so I began to write to you in order to have a few conversations with a familiar soul. You may ask, what kind of illness do I have? Petersburg gave me fever. Isn't it true that this is not a very pleasant salary? But no other has been found yet. You just have to be content with what they give you. They promise to give me another salary at the end of this month, that is, permission to go to Riga. Will wait. May the Lord calm the soul of good Nastasya Matveevna. She was good on earth and loved the Lord. May the merciful Lord leave her to rest there after her painful life here. I would be glad, without a doubt, very glad when I saw you in Riga, but I cannot wish for it, given my desires for the peace necessary for your years. It is time for you to rest your bones, which have endured so many storms and bad weather. And my job is to endure, endure what God sends. A monk needs to endure, and if he needs to desire something, then peace and salvation for others. It's boring, but that's what a monk should do; his job is to cry and cry; he made a vow to the Lord to be where he was told. He took a vow of self-denial, and one must fulfill the vow according to one’s strength. ABOUT! May the Lord Jesus, in His goodness, send some reinforcements to bear His good yoke and His light burden. The other day I heard one remarkable case. One old woman, a teacher of one of the court ladies, a Lutheran by profession, endured great suffering while dying, so that it was painful to look at her. Her nurse came up with spiritual means, known in our Church, to alleviate the suffering of her good teacher; but how can one offer a Lutheran woman at death what she did not accept throughout her life? Finally, she decided on this: secretly, when she was tossing around unconscious from torment, she placed the image of St. Mitrofan on her. Less than an hour later, the patient became completely calm and died peacefully. This was no more than three weeks ago. This incident was so amazing that another Lutheran woman, who had witnessed both the suffering and the reasons for the calm of the dying woman, decided to join the Orthodox Church. God is marvelous in His saints! I guessed that they would be angry with me for my advice. Evgeniy, whom I loved so much, was in St. Petersburg at Easter, not only did he not come to see me without an opportunity, but even when he needed to deliver your letter, he gave it to the janitor without coming to see me. Christ is with him! The Lord will forgive youth. We all have sins, and we all have the same sin. The Lord sends us troubles as medicine, and we take it with offense. Poor blind people! Wish from me the blessing of Christ to the good Alexei Vasilyevich with his wife and his children. Sorry. Sinful Filaret. I haven’t written to you for a long time, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. The time was rather vague; I was ill, sometimes seriously, and sometimes lightly, and I still had to be concerned about my situation. Now I am going to Riga and hope that on the 15th of June I will no longer be in St. Petersburg, to which I forgive everything for the Lord, of course, relating to me. Thanks be to the Lord for His destinies; everything that happens according to His plans relates to our spiritual salvation, and spiritual salvation is the most precious of all. Yesterday I visited the sovereign in Peterhof. He accepted and spoke very kindly, with love, and spoke for a considerable time, 10 minutes, which here is considered a significant time for people of my caliber. The future is in God's hands. It confuses, and at times very confuses me; but one must learn to have trust, which also believes in things that exceed hope. What is impossible with men is possible with the Lord. Will He really leave me a sinner, although my sins deserve it? I had many sins before, but He did not leave me, He will not leave me in the future, He will punish me, but He will also have mercy again; He will give it to sorrows, but after the sorrows he will also send joy to the sinful soul. Forward, forward! Why cowardice! In war it is a harmful thing. Bow down from me to all those who love me, tell them and yourself that by the mercy of my Lord I am still the same, I still honor and love those who love the Lord, I am still weak in both soul and body. The school of life has added several new lessons to me, and I am learning them now; God grant that they serve for the benefit of my sinful soul. I don’t regret, I don’t really regret, leaving St. Petersburg. Christ is with him. I can’t help but say that I wouldn’t want any of my acquaintances to want to live in it for his fun. No, God forbid him from such a desire. You must have too strong a soul so that in such excitement of vanity you cannot move your soul from the place, or you must experience too much sorrow and bitterness in order to see ebullient life in all its emptiness. God forbid me from judging anyone. I have no doubt, I have no doubt at all, that there are those who seek the Lord here; without them, can the city stand? But I have no doubt that their godly life is martyrdom. Sorry, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. I thank you sincerely that you continue to remember a sinful man with such love. Your wanderer is now preparing for a new journey, do not forget him in your prayers. E. Filaret. God will save you, kind Nadezhda Nikolaevna, for your kind desire to console me with your letters. It definitely comforts me to read your lines as a voice about my native land, from which I am now so far away. I've been in Riga since June 20. I continue to look at the people here, at the local affairs, at the local customs. I don’t know what God will give next. But my first acquaintance, the first one who met me in Riga, has already been buried. Strange! I am not writing to you about the circumstances of my acquaintance, I only ask you to take it upon yourself to deliver the letter to the mother of the deceased. This was Lieutenant Colonel of the Gendarme Corps Pavel Aggeevich Pevtsov. You will probably read the letter to your mother when you deliver it to her. She is an inspector of the Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens, a Lutheran by confession, but as my dying son told me, she is kind and respects the statutes of the Orthodox Church. You will guess that the deceased was only known to me because he was the one who guided me on his long journey, otherwise I did not know him until that time. I thank the Lord that He gave me the opportunity to do what was necessary for his soul within his power. He died very well, in full memory and with the feeling of a Christian departing into eternity. I wrote to my mother in some detail about the circumstances of my death and illness, with the desire to say something to console her. If anything else needs to be said for consolation, take it upon yourself to do what is possible out of love for the Lord. The deceased was not entirely happy in life and left it without grief, grieving only for his mother 30 . About myself I will say that so far, thank God, I am healthy; From St. Petersburg to Riga my journey was without any troubles. I can’t even guess what awaits here. The Germans are smart people; It is impossible to live with them in such simplicity and with such ease as it was in the monastery of St. Sergius. However, we must expect everything from the Lord. If people are smart and handle their affairs wisely, the Lord sometimes even laughs at the wisdom of the wise. Rely on him! My position here is such that necessity forces me to place my hope only in the Lord alone, and nothing can be obtained from people; and yet my soul is so bad that it hopes poorly in the Lord, and weakly and little trusts in the One Savior of all. If you look at the external course of affairs, leaving some intentions aside, the Germans even received me with extraordinary respect, with various courtesies; but the essence of the matter does not change in the least. But again it must be said: everything is in the power of God. You grieve that Nastasya Vasilyevna did not see me; don’t mourn: was there anything to see? Stinking dirt. I was unwell and people were not allowed to see me; It was probably Andrei Nikolaevich who told her about me last. Christ is with her. The Lord has many means of salvation, but for such a sinner and poor person as Filaret, what should he look for? Bow to everyone who knows me, tell them that I still remember them and still wish them grace and mercy from the Lord. Sinful F. e. There are a lot of people here, and yet so far there is no one to say a sincere word with; There are even reasons to be wary of dating. If it seems to Pevtsova that I haven’t told her about many things that she needs, let me know, or let her write it herself, I will answer. You know that in such cases I am not a great sage - I say and do not what I should and do not say what should be said. It’s good that you are in Moscow, otherwise it would not have been easy for me to fulfill the desire and request of the dying man to write to his mother about the death of his son. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Forgive me for the Lord’s sake that I have saddened you so much with my long silence. Your last letter was written so mournfully that I felt ashamed of my indiscretion, which brought you to sadness. Forgive me. Not as an apology for my sins, but to speak about my circumstances, I will speak about the past. From August 4 until 16, I suffered such a misfortune that, if you had witnessed it, you would no doubt have cried until you were fed up. I was completely declared the leader of the riot: for what and how? Very simple and very free. I received two Latvians and listened to their desire to join Orthodoxy, and in the morning they gave me such a predication that God forbid I should hear such a thing! Soldiers were posted at my house; there was a commotion among the Germans throughout the city; anxiety night and day. But from what? ask again. What is the connection between holy desire and rebellion? I don’t know that, I only know that these two things connected me and connected me between them. I got two weeks. What I didn’t do, what I didn’t say for the Germans! Thank the Lord that such a test was sent. I need to be awakened: I have forgotten myself, I have neglected my soul; it was necessary to force me to remember my sins, of which there are so many. The matter is not quite over yet, for my part I said that I would like to cut off the end of the matter, if only there was an end to it; I don’t know what will happen. Yes, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna, they put me in a quiet place where I have to watch every day, they wouldn’t hook me on my rib and drag me into the air. No wonder you grieved so much as you saw me off. I was pretty calm then; True, it was still necessary to save my soul for future embitterment and suffering. But again I need to repeat thanksgiving to the Lord, who cares about the salvation of my sinful soul. If you heard that my predecessor 31, for accepting the requests of the Latvians, was considered to be the fault of the movements that took place between the Latvians due to their cramped life from the landowners, then you will understand how they could make so much noise about me, although now there is no movement or unrest between the Latvians. You will understand that if it was then announced and insisted that it was the bishop who was to blame, then, of course, it was necessary, it was absolutely necessary to affirm the same about the new bishop, so that otherwise the situation in the previous case would not be revealed. But, Lord! Forgive me, a sinner, for condemning the work of men. The court belongs to you; You are a heartbreaker; forgive me, a sinner. Pray for me, a sinner, that, despite my sins, He will arrange my soul to achieve salvation, and arrange my deeds for the glory of His holy name and to fulfill His holy will regarding the works of His hands. Now I am without worries, as if my soul has forgotten about my surroundings. Although the matter ends badly, very badly; but I wish there was such an end, just to finish the matter. I am weak in soul, weak, cowardly, unable to fight temptations. Strengthen me, Lord. Don’t tell many people that I am writing to you. Why occupy people's attention with yourself? Everyone has many things to do, everyone needs a lot of work for their soul. I ask you with my soul, do not be offended by your soul if you ever encounter silence on my part. Believe me, I remember your love before the Lord, and I will remember. But here I am in such a position that sometimes I cannot even write letters, or my soul is so burdened that it is difficult to take up the pen. Here they watch my every step, they want to know my every action. Sorry. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus be upon you, over your good children and over your chicks, your granddaughters. Thank God, thank God that Vyacheslav Ivanovich passed the exam successfully. God grant that at the end of the university course there will be a successful exam. Let us pray to the Lord God, the Father of the orphans. Sinful Bishop Filaret. Dear and dear to God Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Your letter comforted me greatly; You take such a sincere and deep-spirited part in my situation. May the Lord God reward you in the future life for your love with his love! I live here alone now. And therefore, any participation of those who know me gives me consolation: especially the kind of participation that you take. I sincerely thank you and sincerely pray to the Lord for you. You would like to know about my situation as soon as possible. I don’t know how to tell you exactly about it. However, for now, thank God, now I am calm, and it’s quite calm around me. The fact is that the matter is not over yet, and how it will end is unknown. Somehow they found out about him in St. Petersburg and they want him there. The Lord alone knows what will happen. But we must thank the Lord for the present, and leave the future to the Lord. I have too many sins, and therefore it is not surprising if things end in a not entirely pleasant way. May the will of the Lord be done! We must endure here so that we don’t have to endure there. My grief is that I have too little patience. But, Lord! Whether I want or not, save me. I sincerely rejoice in Vyacheslav; God grant that he will zealously follow the path he has now embarked on. I, a sinner, have already seen people who became unhappy because they spent their youth carelessly. And therefore, loving the kind soul of Vyacheslav, I sincerely wish that he preserves the kindness of his soul and acquires the guarantee of earthly happiness. And earthly life requires a lot. It is impossible to live here in peace without living with benefit for others: this was the case in former times, especially in the present! When the matter is completely over, then I will write to you about the end. Now we need to pray: the circumstances themselves require it. Pevtsova truly deserves condolences. She has a lot of sorrows, spiritual sorrows. God grant that they turn to the salvation of her soul. I don’t know if she told you about the special circumstances that recently aggravated her soul due to their connection with her late son. But what to do? We all have many sins. I ask you to worship your children whom I remember before the Lord. I have enough to do, but not so much that it interferes with the exercise of my conscience. I'm sitting in my cell. Sometimes I visit Russian merchants to get to know them and bring them closer to me and myself to them. Sorry. Christ is with you. Sinful Filaret. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! You have been expecting my lines from me for a long time, and until now I have left you only with expectations. However, please remember my promise. I am now writing without fully keeping my promise. I don't want you to be left with the unpleasant feeling of what the wait is like. You, of course, want to know how I lived and live? At times I scold myself for the bad, but for the good I thank the Lord. It is not surprising that there are stumps on the ground under your feet, stinging mosquitoes in the air, reptiles in the water and worms in the ground. This is as normal as it has been here for a long time. The time will come when we will see a new heaven and a new earth. If only our souls would be found not old, but renewed! Everything that passes around us will change, transform without us. But my bad soul cannot change without my labor; if I live carelessly, if from day to day my soul is not cleared more and more of thorns, but is overgrown with them: this is my business, this is my fault, and for my guilt you, Lord, will exact from me, as from a careless, careless servant. It is necessary, it is necessary to awaken your laziness, you need to encourage yourself to cultivate your field - your sinful soul. It is bad and dangerous to appear at the judgment of the World Judge, who is coming to renew the universe, to appear with a dirty, unclean, unrenewed soul. My circumstances remain unresolved. Recently a case was sent to St. Petersburg. What will happen is unknown. One cannot expect good things: one must assume so because of my sins. Do you know that on the very evening that I received your letter of October 10, where you wrote about the emperor, troubles began again and continued quite, quite. That's why I didn't write to you. It is ashamed to talk about unpleasant things to another when each of us has our own troubles, and some have very, very serious ones. The best thing is silent patience. The only trouble is that sometimes I don’t talk badly about patience, but I tolerate it very badly. Save yourself in the Lord! You are taught well, very well about the desert. They perfectly remind of the poverty of the desert, which enriched and continues to enrich those who flow into the place of the desert with spiritual treasures - of the prayer that ascended from under the hut and still ascends to heaven. The wonderful power of Christ's poverty! Wonderful strength of weakness, renouncing strongholds for Christ! I thank you that you have given me the opportunity to listen to the glory of the desert, while I am wandering so far from the desert, surrounded by the noise of people selling and buying, overwhelmed by huge stones in a gorge barely noticeable to the eye 32 . Bless the Lord, my soul, bless both all the past, which you no longer have, and for the present, which was given by the same Lord and Heavenly Father. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus be upon your children and granddaughters. Kiss Vyacheslav for me when you see him. With love to you in the Lord. With a sinful prayer before the Lord. Sinful Filaret. R.S. I was unwell for a week, but now, thank God, I have recovered. The weather here is too different from Moscow and is not entirely favorable for my health; my health has decreased a little since my arrival in Riga. Beloved Nadezhda Nikolaevna! May the Lord save us all with His grace, in it alone is our salvation. Let us turn to her with our hearts for reinforcement, for consolation, and for instruction. If you look at your life, at a series of circumstances that do not depend either on foresight or on my will, and then you must feel that without His help I am blind, a beggar, ready to stumble at every step. And if I look at my soul (but if only I looked at it more often!), if I look at how my soul is only smart for sins, strong for empty deeds and does nothing out of love for the Lord God: my miserable situation! Who will save me from the terrible fate that I am preparing for myself, living carefree day after day and day after day becoming hardened only in the habit of sin? My amazing carelessness about myself. Insane inattention to your plight! Thank the Lord that you were honored to bring confession of your sins and partake of St. secret You are very sorry for me, a sinner, you grieve that you do not receive news about me. I don’t know if you have now received my letter. On November 22, when you wrote your letter, you might not have received it, but now you need to receive it. Mail from here to you and from you here takes a long time. It’s true, we don’t always need to be close to each other in location. Let us draw our hearts closer to the Lord. In my last letter I mentioned to you why I was in no hurry to write to you: I was sick for some time, but now, thank the Lord, I am healthy. I can’t tell you anything about the circumstances. They are still in the same position; the matter does not end, but goes on. He alone knows how this will end. It seems that I have not learned to start quarrels and continue them, and this is not in my character, but peace is not established, despite the desire for peace. May the will of the Lord be done! There was a time to accomplish salvation in silence; now all that remains is to catch it amidst storms and bad weather. May His all-generous mercy not forsake me, a sinner! To your kind children, witness from me, a sinner, my sinful memory of them before the Lord. Sorry. I lovingly bless you with the blessing of the Lord. Sinful Bishop Filaret. If you, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna, are not understanding of my lessons, then I want to be understanding this time, and now, as I read your letter, I am writing to you. Be joyful in the Lord. He who is pleased to sanctify the waters with His baptism may sanctify your soul and body with the influx of the Holy Spirit. No, so that you don’t think that I don’t expect your lines from you, I’ll tell you that this time I was looking forward to a letter from you. And here are your last lines written on December 28th. Thank God, you are all safe, otherwise I was a little worried, but I won’t say what. May Christ be with all of you, with all your children, including the Muravyovs. Respecting Mikhail Nikolaevich, I sincerely wish him the blessing of the Lord. Now I'm resting. I am waiting for alarms, which, as it seems, will certainly come (since a new investigation has been promised, this is already the third), but for now all that remains is to wait for the will of the Lord and pray for sins. Because of my sins, the Moscow saints did not deign to accept me, a sinner, into their service. It's necessary! For human reasons, it was difficult for me to be released from the prison called Riga (given the real confusion here). But the main reason for this is my sins. This is certain. Yes, on the first day I was bored in the church of God: until half of the liturgy there were no more than 20 people in it, but from half of the liturgy my sinful soul was comforted, the church was filled as much as could be desired. Here, too, the Russians are accustomed to German laziness for prayer; they get up late and come to work late. You would be surprised to see the German indifference to worship. Their churches are empty even on major holidays, and there is nothing to say about Sundays. But the judgment is with the Lord! I must be wary of taking on a task that is inaccessible to me. Sorry. I also wish blessings to you and all your children. Sinful Filaret. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! From the bottom of my heart I wish to spend Holy Great Lent in the sanctuary of the spirit. I wanted to tell you about myself, because I’m sure you really want to know. I’ve been sick for two weeks, I lay in bed and couldn’t leave; Although in the morning I felt better, even then, as soon as I started writing, I felt sick and my vision darkened. First there was one illness, then another - a fever that visited me here, as in St. Petersburg, and my head hurt especially badly. Now, thank God, he has begun to recover; This is the first morning when I can write. I am sure you will not forget me in your prayers. I also received your last letter. I regret that I inadvertently confused you with words about M.N. The thing was that, according to some news, I began to doubt the health and even life of M.N. You see that it was empty fear. Relieved that this was a groundless fear, I wrote to you without thinking about my feelings and did not clearly tell you what the matter was. I'll be more careful moving forward. Enough for now, I need to rest. Forgive and pray. Sinful Bishop Filaret. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I want you to hear from me on the joyful days of Easter a sweet, joyful word: Christ is risen! For me now, when I write these lines, it is not yet time for that, but for you, when you read my lines, it will be time. So may He, the Comforter of your sinful souls, comfort your soul with His high joy. May He, rich in mercy, fill your heart with His sweetness! My wanderings here remain the same. However, now I am healthy. It is heard that Nastasya Vasilyevna was very ill, I sincerely wish her to improve her health. May the Lord Jesus be with us all. May He lead us all to His peaceful abodes, where there is no disease, no poverty, no insults, no suffering. Here, for now, sorrow is necessary for everyone. I wish blessings from the Lord to dear Alexey Vasilyevich and his sincere hearts. To Katerina Sergeevna and others who know me, by the way, to the good Avdotya Fedorovna, bow for me and speak about my memory before the Lord. Forgive me, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna. Mature, mature before the Lord under the warmth of sorrows. Sinful F. e. April 4th day, 1843. Dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Getting into the carriage to set off on the road, I received your letter dated April 16th and on the way I read it, it greatly comforted me; I thanked the Lord for your love for me, a sinner, and asked Him to reward you for your prayers for me, a sinner. I have just returned from a short trip. I was in one of the Livonian cities to look at the physical and spiritual church for the first time. I saw that the first one is not big and thin, so it requires repairs, the last one is small, but I don’t have the strength or means to help it. There is only one thing left - to pray to the Lord that there will be a harvest. It's sad to see this state of affairs. But what happens when I’m not worth the best? Lutheranism is numerous and, moreover, owns everything, so that it does not even touch anything. Involuntarily you remain silent. You are grieving that I have not written to you for a long time. In apology, if not justification, I can say that after sending my last letter I was sick again. I wrote to Postnikova because almost three months had passed since I wrote one of my last two letters to her. May the Lord comfort you for your sorrow. Now I have invented an occupation for myself - whether it will serve for good or not, I don’t know: I am remodeling the house church, which was both low and cramped, before it occupied one floor, now it will occupy two, and the length has been added somewhat. Three cells for monks are also being built; whether there will be monks is another question. The military governor is still in St. Petersburg 33. I don’t know what he’s doing there; I know even less what will happen later. Things to do, things to do! I don’t have any information from St. Petersburg, and I don’t have anyone to get it from. Sorry. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus be upon you and upon your children. How is Evgeniy doing at the Lyceum? I wish you and all yours well from the bottom of my heart; nevertheless, I remain a sinner. F. 1843, April 25th day. God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I haven't written to you for a long time. Been traveling; traveled a lot and for a long time, traveled more than 2000 miles; was not only in Livonia and Courland, but in the Vilna and Grodno provinces. Now I’m sitting in my cell, but at the end of this month I again need to go to Vilna to see the Jews 34. How are you doing? I haven't heard from you for a long time. Alexander Vasilyevich wrote that you were in the Lavra, and wrote that you showed mental displeasure at my silence. For the Lord's sake, do not scold me, but pray for me. Here I live with memories of the Lavra and Moscow; these are the most pleasant objects for me; My soul dwells on them longer than on Riga, although I myself have been living in Riga for more than a year; Riga is foreign to me. Therefore, you can judge that if I don’t write to you often, this does not mean that I forget you, no, there are many other reasons for this. May the Lord save your good soul. Pray for me, a sinner: your prayer will not be in vain either for me or for you. This is the apostolic teaching about this. Let us follow the Apostle. It is both pleasant and useful when we live to some extent according to the instructions of spirit-bearing men, and not according to the desires of our poor, sinful soul. Now for the first time I served in the renovated house church. Thanks be to the Lord. Now the church is very decent. You asked me: where will I get money for correction? Somehow I improved in this case so much that I didn’t borrow money. True, the matter was quite difficult; It wasn't as cheap as I expected. But, thank God, I graduated, or almost graduated. What remains is the second tier of the iconostasis, which is being built entirely new. It will be necessary to pay for gilding, painting and carpentry work, I paid a little for that too; but significant arrears remain. Let us pray, and perhaps the Lord will not forsake us; I have lived in the world until now, and am fed, and warmed, and washed: it is likely, very likely, that as long as I have lived, I will no longer live in the world; there remains, if only there are some ten years or months left, - I will not die of hunger, and if I die, God’s will be done. True, his health does not improve, but becomes decrepit, as if he had lived 60 years; sometimes I lie idle for a day or two, the bones beg to lie down. But what? The bones are at rest in the grave. But those who rest in the grave do not care much about what remains on this side of the grave. Everything will pass, the desires for good or sin will not pass; they will not pass away, but will go with us both to judgment and to eternity. I wish your children a blessing from the Lord. No, I remember you all before the Lord, although not often on paper... Sorry. May Christ be with you. Sinful Bishop Filaret. Dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Now I have received your letter, which I have been waiting for a long time. May the Lord save you for your love for me, a sinner. I recently sent you a letter, which, as you write, you have been waiting for a very long time from me. The contents of the letter could tell you that you could excuse my silence. But I would also like to ask you to forgive my sinful silence. Besides the fact that I definitely spent a lot of time traveling, it seems to me that what good are letters from sinful Philaret to you? He is a trashy, good-for-nothing person; lives and rots in sins; he smells of sins; all will be filled with sins. Not useful to anyone or anything. True, he himself, for the very reason that he is too worthless, must write to ask for prayer for him. But what to do with his laziness about his salvation? Negligent of all that is good. It is good for the soul to have communication with a person who devotes himself entirely to the Lord; from his excesses something may pass on to my poverty. And from a poor man, like Filaret, what can he take? He himself is naked, poor, blind, wounded and beaten. My God! My God! Help my misery. Rich in mercies, give a certain share, the smallest share of Your bounties for me, a sinner. Cover the naked with the garment of Your mercy. Enlighten the blind with the light of Your knowledge. Heal the wounded with the oil of Thy grace. If you see iniquity, Lord, Lord, who will stand? If you judge me according to Your righteousness, I am lost, unfortunate. You reminded me of the 4th of August last year. The Lord will save you for the memory of your love. For the same love, they would like to know whether the matter is over; but unfortunately, I cannot say either what is over or what is not over. The matter remains somewhat indecisive. Everything depends on the will of the Lord. You rightly wrote last year that I probably spent that Assumption Fast close to what it should have been. Yes, when they stab us in the back and in the head, then we come to our senses, and when they stop beating us, we forget again and live at random. This is exactly how I live. I would be very glad if, at your word, Alexander Vasilyevich visited me on vacation; I couldn’t even describe his joy to you; but probably my sins kept him from his good intentions. He was not in Riga, but, as he writes, was with his relatives in Kostroma, where he had not been for a long time. Let the will of the Lord be done in everything. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you and your children. Sinful Bishop Filaret. August 23rd day (1843). Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I’m sorry, I didn’t write for a long, long time, but there were so many different things that happened to me. Yes, Riga is not Lavra. I was always at peace in the Lavra, I always lived the way I wanted. In Riga it is completely different. Riga, Riga! you are heavy. But this is necessary because of my sins. You remember that once upon a time I wrote to you that the investigation was still underway. It only happened last month and this month. What this will be like—whether it will be easier or harder—the Lord knows. May His holy will be done! You wrote about the kind Countess Sheremeteva. Sorry, very sorry for the loss. I understand and feel that this is a great, very great loss for her. The child is smart and kind. I happened to see him in St. Petersburg after I saw him in the Lavra 35. But everything is in charge of one Heavenly Father, who knows what we need more than we do and cares more about our needs than we do. Blessed be His holy name in joys and sorrows, in happiness and misfortune! In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in you in Christ Jesus. Such is the will of God regarding the Christian soul that it should thank the Lord for everything; if a pagan does not thank the Lord in sorrow, he is forgiven. But a Christian knows his Lord better, it is revealed to him, it is told to him that for him the only evil in the world is sin, and everything else works for his benefit, for his eternal salvation, for his eternal joys. He was told that if the heavenly Father did not spare His Son for us, can He spare us anything from the earth if this earthly thing is necessary for our salvation? No, that cannot be. Everything that He sends to us, He sends only what is necessary for salvation. But you have the right to tell me: it’s good to reason, but why don’t you act as you reason? Sinful; it's hard to endure grief. When they are not there, they seem light... But I happened to cut my finger, and now there is a wrinkle on my forehead. ABOUT! Lord, strengthen cowardice. Give some sense to the mourner. I have asked and am asking for mercy from the Lord for you and your dear children. Sorry. With love to you, sinner F. 1843, November 24th day. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! You were definitely the first to congratulate me on this year. And I, for my part, according to my strength, want to answer you in accordance with your love, to answer you before anyone else. May God grant that your good wishes for me come true. I sent you a letter a long time ago with a Riga man in the street. I don't know if it reached you. Here I am sitting alone in my room. After mass, the local Russians visited me. I talked to them. And there are some good people here. May Christ save us all. Lavra, Lavra, will I ever see you? If I do, then, of course, I will no longer see the calm days that I enjoyed while living within your peaceful walls. Here I live in such a way that I start and end every day with either fears or sorrows. There is no progress in goodness, and worries are too, too frequent. Maybe someone else in my place would have been calmer than me. But it cannot be said that it is possible not to squeeze when pressed, not to flinch when pricked and ulcerated. May God's will be done in everything! And it’s true: everything will pass! Let us lie down in the coffin and then we will be at peace in body, at peace until the general uprising from the graves. Lord, Lord, give me mortal memory! Plant in me the root of good things, Thy fear in my heart! Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak! Heal me, Lord, for my bones are crushed! My iniquities have multiplied more than the power of my head! If you ask about health, then by the grace of God it is still fine. The weather here is the same as last year, that is, neither autumn nor winter. This is not without influence on my decrepit composition. Sorry. The Lord will save you and your children. With loving gratitude to your love, sinner Filaret. May the Lord reward you for your love, which takes such part in me, a sinner. I'm not worth anything. He became so thin in his soul, so thin that the ax was close to a worthless tree. The soul is worn out, dirty, all dirty; bad thing. There are no prayers, no contrition, no abstinence and no humility, but sins? Who will count them? Who will hug them with a word? Can you count the grains of sand of the sandy steppe? Can you count the drops of the sea? Even if this were possible, it is impossible, impossible to count my sins. O! Dear Lord! Lord, who suffered for sinners! I do not dare to look at You, burdened with my sins, defiled by my uncleanness, an insensitive sinner. I don’t know, I’m perplexed, what to pray to You for. I throw myself at Your feet without any hope for myself; I prostrate myself naked and naked, unclean and ungrateful. Do what you want! God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I have a favor to ask of you. Accept the work of doing what you can with hope in the Lord. The serf of the good Count Sheremetev, Yakov Mikhailov, served the count for twenty-six years in the management of his Livland estates. Now he submitted a request to the count to dismiss him from office. After his dismissal, he will need to have a means of living, but he is already becoming not entirely healthy, and especially with his eyes, which have been counting numbers and letters for so many years. In similar cases, the count gave a pension to others, a third or more of the salary that they received for the position before the dismissal. Can't you try in favor of this person? I am concerned about it for special reasons, important not for me, but for the church. Here's the thing. He knows Latvian and German very well. They demand from me that those capable of holding the position of priests be found among the Latvians to carry out the service in the Latvian language. Yakov Mikhailov expressed his zeal to serve the Church of God. I asked the Petersburgers to intercede with the count that he should be freed from the title of serf, and I think this matter will be done without me. And although at the same time I asked that such workers of the holy faith be given a salary that was not poor, but, on the other hand, due to the high cost of life here, there will be many needs left even with the salary; on the other hand, the count’s kindness to others allows us to expect mercy and for this purpose he faithfully served him for twenty-six years. This is your labor of love! 36 Do you express a desire to take it upon yourself to find out what is happening with my case or with the case of the two Latvians? The Lord will save you! However, it is not easy to say with certainty where this is now. In order, first of all, it recently came, of course, to the Minister of Internal Affairs Perovsky, since the sovereign instructed him to send a reliable researcher. But the minister hardly has it lying around? Where did it come from him? Where is he wandering now? It's hard to guess. I must also tell you, if I did not mention before, that the last study actually related to one of the local priests, whom the Germans accused of indignating the peasants, or of instigating things harmful to society; the latter was done actually in order to trample into the mud for the last time the matter not only of the two Latvians who came to me, but also of everyone who wants Orthodoxy. That's all I can tell you about this matter. Do what you can do out of love. May the blessing of the Lord Jesus be on you and on your children and on your granddaughters. Sinful Bishop Filaret. 1844, January 28th day. May the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone is our salvation, save us sinners! At this hour I received your letter, God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna, and now I am writing at your request. Exactly, I haven’t written to you for a long time, partly because I expected decisive news from you about Yakov Mikhailovich, whose business is not important to me out of curiosity. Thank the Lord, you calmed me down, may the Lord reward the good count and countess there. It's not about the person, but about the church. Everything depends on the Lord, but people are commanded to pray and work. I live here in such a way that I don’t know anything to say about life; emptiness drives emptiness; sins follow in a string along the path of my life. God! when will this change? Do not turn my heart into evil words to invent guilt for my sins. From the habit of sins, the soul considers sins as nothing; all you do is sins, but where is repentance, where is sorrow for them? No, the best good for my sin-loving soul is death, but it visits those who are worth saving them from the delights of evil. Recently, here too, I heard about the consolation of your Pelageya Vasilievna and Mikhail Nikolaevich and I was heartily rejoiced. General Kupriyanov 37 told me about this. Congratulate your children from me, for whom I wished and wish everything out of the goodness of their hearts. It's not really good that you're sick again. Get well so that you can work to comfort others. Let everyone cultivate what is given by the Lord. The problem is one thing. ABOUT! whenever our soul is not too lazy to get rid of this terrible misfortune. Take a bow from me to Valery Valerich 38. I asked him about a kind old man. In everything, let the will of the Lord be done. When you see your good son, tell him that you wish him better health than he enjoys. But either our desires are bad, or what we ask is not entirely good for us. With love in the Lord, sinful Bishop Filaret. I thank you sincerely for the memory of me, a sinner, kind Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I received your second letter (dated August 6), without giving an answer to the previous one. Do you wish to know about my situation? Thank you for the love. If we talk about physical health, then, thank the Lord, it is in order. The circumstances of the service are as before. As before, all that remains is to pray to the Lord, His Holy will be done! It’s not good that I pray poorly, because my circumstances improve badly. Well, patience is required! Just last week I received from the count a dismissal for Yakov Mikhailov. God bless! Out of impatience, I myself already wrote a zealous petition to the count. Now the beginning of the matter is over. Yes, just the beginning. Ahead lies work and illness. I sincerely regret that your health is not in the form in which I saw it. May the Lord strengthen your weakening strength. I am happy for Vyacheslav and Evgeniy, I am sincerely happy. May the Lord bless their lives with happiness. Sorry. Just like people, things are worrying. With love in the Lord F. e. 1844, August 16th day. I rejoice at your desire to visit St. Lavra It’s nice to be in a house of spiritual wealth, even if they didn’t give us anything in it. And they are always ready to give and distribute, as long as our hearts open to some extent with desire. Doesn't open enough? Let's ask for it to open and it will be served there. We are poor, there is a lot of wealth there. We are weak, there is a lot of strength. We are dry in love, there is a lot of strength and fire of love. Lord Jesus! The prayers of Your servants are pleasing to You. With their prayers, forgive our sins and heal the wounds of our passions, ignite our weak, barely breathing love for You. What can I tell you about myself? Same as before. And I am blind, and poor, and naked. Diseases of the soul come out and make the body sick. Sins have multiplied more than a hair on the head, like the weight of lead they lie on the soul and do not allow thoughts and feelings to rise to the Lord God. ABOUT! whenever the weaknesses of the body would add some strength to the sinful and weakened soul. Together with you, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, I offer sinful thanks to the Lord for the love that sacrificed the manor here. There are two houses there with accessories and some land for cultivating it. I don’t know what the Lord wants to do, but in my sinful soul there is an idea to build a church there for the name of the Lord. I have no funds, as I never did. Whether they will be given - this is from the Lord, and we all belong to Him. For your kind children and with their children, I ask the Lord God for blessings and protection. Forgive me, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna. Go, go, at least little by little, with your desires to the throne of grace and bounty. Sinful Bishop Filaret. 1844, December 8th day. R.S. If you see the Christ-loving Maltsevs, testify to them of my sinful memory of my soul before the Lord. Tell the same to Katerina Fedorovna Muravyova, Christ’s sufferer. February 18th day (1845). May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you, good Nadezhda Nikolaevna! You expect a letter from me and with it something for the soul. But such a poor man, such a worthless Filaret, what can he bring to you? He is so poor, so poor, like no one else. He is so upset by laziness and passions that even from the outside it is necessary to cry about him. Wherever he turns, everything is bad for him. There is no contrition, even the kind that existed before, there is no love for the Lord Jesus, who suffered for us. Pray for him, sigh before the Lord for his poverty and frustration. Faith in the Lord is strong, whether it believes in the Lord for itself or wants to extend its effect to others. Faith in the Lord raised the dead; It was not the dead who believed then; but grace-filled, omnipotent power was poured onto the dead, drawn from the faith of others. This could be exactly the case today. In the same way, even now, mental illnesses or physical suffering can be extinguished by the faith of not the sufferers themselves, but only those who, out of love, sympathize with them. That is why so much light and power is shed from the celestials on the poor travelers of the earth! One is the Source of strength and light, the Lord Jesus Christ. They hold everything together both in heaven and on earth. Everything is in His power. From Him comes breath for everything that breathes, movement for everything that moves. But the faith of the saints of God, their entire love, living in the Lord, receives the power of God and pours it onto those who turn to them for help, or to whom their love turns, compassionate with the infirmities of the weak. By the same token, your faith and your love can transmit a lot of light and strength to others, including the poor, darkened Philaret. While I want help for myself from you, I also want help for you. In spiritual life, both are inextricably linked. He who seeks good from the Lord for others seeks it for himself. The world's rich, giving theirs to others, thereby lose theirs. This is not the case with a spiritual owner: the more he depletes of himself for others, the more he gains for himself. A drop of cold water given over to another is not lost. And a heartfelt sigh for the salvation of another will respond with such sweet consolation, dissolving the heart here for life in the Lord. You once wrote to me about the joy that visited the good Count and Countess Sheremetev. ABOUT! Thanks be to the Lord of love and mercy. Your news made me very happy, since I, a sinner, was afraid that the monk would not become impoverished from severe sorrow 39 . To your good children I sincerely wish the grace of the Lord Jesus, without which all other acquisitions are insignificant and with which all poverty is sweet. With love in the Lord to you, sinner F. e. R.S. I think you heard that on holidays I was at the tomb and quite unexpectedly, just as unexpectedly I came to life. Christ is risen, Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I sincerely wish that the risen Savior may comfort your spirit with His joy. Your last letter brought a lot of pleasure to my sinful soul. The news about the kindest Avdotya Ivanovna is so pleasant, so close to the soul, that I would be glad to kiss your kind soul for it. The Lord takes good people to Himself. And what can we do here to be kind to us sinners! We don’t listen to the celestials either. But good people, living on earth, no matter how much they admonish us with example of life and words, we remain both deaf and blind. We are pleased, we have fun living and having communication only with sinners like us. Out of compassion, I feel sorry for the kind Katerina Feodorovna. But, on the other hand, the Lord knows His own. He is with his people all the time; leads them along the narrow path along which He Himself walked when He walked the earth. Tomorrow, if the Lord blesses, Yakov Mikhailovich will be ordained a deacon, and the day after tomorrow a priest. We waited a long time for the decision of his fate, but such were the fates of God. For the first time he is dedicated to the Riga Intercession Church in order to perform Latvian service for Latvians who are beginning to convert. The Latvian cause has brought and continues to bring sorrow. The Lord knows what will happen ahead. You, I think, have heard that Golovin 40 was appointed in the same case. Until now, they used all means to prevent Orthodoxy among Latvians. Whatever the poor Latvians endured: they were tormented, beaten, tortured to death as rebels, instead of giving them the bread they asked for. The situation is terrible! A man dies of hunger and screams, tormented by hunger, and he is given over to new torments just because he screams about the hunger tormenting him. But the Lord is the judge of people. I sincerely regret Nastasia Vasilievna’s illness. May the Lord God strengthen her on the path of salvation, on the short path. I kiss my kind and dear Eugene, I remember them before the Lord, I remember them, I remember them with constant love. If my sinful prayer means something to the Lord, then I pray for both of them, that their feat may be accomplished to console them, the grieving mother, and their good relatives. This Lent, thank the Lord, I have drunk enough bitterness. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Don't forget me in your prayers. You once wrote whether I remember Ivan Dmitrievich, and expressed doubt that I would remember. No, no matter how bad I am, I remember, I really remember Ivan Dmitrievich, I remember all of you and I pray to the Lord that He will lead us all into the kingdom of His eternal love. Sinful Filaret. 1845, April 20th day. It’s been a long time since I wrote to you because of my troubles, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. I felt and was sure that you were waiting for news from me about the Riga guest, 41 but in an inn, you must admit, it is not always spacious to live, it is not always convenient to manage oneself and time as one would like. The noise and crowding can sometimes lead to boredom, so you don’t know where you could run away. Now, this summer, I run away from time to time into my quiet forest, to a secluded manor. It’s good there, beautiful because it’s peaceful and calm. But business often forces one to part with peaceful solitude. The good General Kupriyanov called this manor a shelter. And this is definitely a shelter for me in Riga: here, among the Germans, you can call me an orphan and a homeless wanderer, and the forest solitude is a true shelter for me. But, I repeat, often, very often, I am forced to part with my place of spiritual rest and throw myself into a sea of ​​worries; sometimes an encounter with waves is all the more disturbing because the soul has given over to peace for an hour. But for everything, thanks be to the Lord! I sincerely thank both Alexey Vasilyevich and your good friend for remembering me. May the Lord protect you and them with His grace. I embrace the kind children Vyacheslav and Evgeniy with spiritual love. Will I ever see them? Here this year there is a big shortage of bread. The poor have suffered and are suffering a lot. Help them, Lord, to endure needs and sorrows. I rejoice that the Lord has vouchsafed you to partake of the Holy Mysteries. I too am going to serve unworthily. Elisaveta Ivanovna Golovina 42 bows to you. 1845, August 19th day. May God's blessing be with you, Nadezhda Nikolaevna. I haven't written to you for a long time. What to do? Laziness is primarily to blame. Laziness for good has become so closely related to my soul that it confuses my arms and legs. God! Do not enter into court with your servant. Do not you, good Nadezhda Nikolaevna, go to court against me. The lazy person is ready to excuse his laziness. So am I. I don't know if you know my situation. To tell the truth, it’s hard. The Germans are shooting at me with both bullets and buckshot. A hail of abuse rains down not only in words, but also on paper. The conversion of peasants to Orthodoxy is unbearable for the Germans. They lose their temper, trying to stop him. And to stop him, the first way is to prove, or at least shout, both in Riga and St. Petersburg, that the bishop is acting dirty. So a terrible firing is coming against the sinful Filaret. What are they not saying? What are they not reporting? What they don't dare do. Pray for sinner Filaret. At times he is very sad and despondent. You will say: there is no need to be discouraged? Agree. But give him patience. Give strength of meaning and will. He has so few of them. Yes, pray harder if you love someone unworthy of love. One cannot help but think that there is famine here. Everything is extremely expensive. The poor peasants now need bread. What will happen next? Take a bow to Katerina Vasilievna and Alexey Vasilievich. I wish them peace and grace. Sorry. With love to you, sinner F. You have lived a lot in the world, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, so you will not be surprised if I say: take courage in the Lord. It is difficult for those who have not yet had time to endure unexpected sorrows to endure, and for someone who has seen them a lot not to find strength for them is not entirely decent and even conscientious. Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Strive for the Lord in prayer. Pray for yourself, pray for the deceased Anastasia. Yes, it’s true that this is an unexpected death given one’s years, but look at the ways of the Lord: this death was sent when the mother was almost no longer needed for the sons. You will scold me for speaking to you so calmly. Scold him more who is the chief of sinners, but I cannot help but give praise to the ways of the Lord, both in my soul and before you. Our Nastasia often joked with people in words; but she didn’t always joke in her heart. As you wish, I cannot help but praise her intelligence in choosing the time of death. Think about it and you will agree with me. Having died in the past: for the soul is pleasing to the Lord, having died, let not malice change the mind. Thanks to You, the All-Good and All-Wise Lord. That's enough for now. Save yourself in the Lord. Save yourself and pray for sinner F. R.S. Yesterday on Saturday I served the liturgy for the repose of Anastasia. Yesterday I prepared a short letter to you and shortly after that I received yours. You, as your lines show, are very alarmed, especially because the deceased died without confession and communion of the Holy Mysteries. I can’t help but say that this requires regret from those left behind. But you know that the great Athanasius of Athos and several brothers were accidentally crushed by a collapsed cell. The destinies of God are unknown to us. Our job is to do what is necessary and possible. The rest is left to the Lord. Our business is to pray for Christian death, but whether it will be sent and if it is not sent, then why it will not be sent, we do not know. May the Lord God with His grace comfort your suffering soul. I invoke God’s mercy on you and your children and granddaughters. Sinful F. Christ is Risen! Nadezhda Nikolaevna. May the joy of the Risen One and our resurrection with Him comfort your spirit, outraged by death! To Him is our prayer for the deceased, to Him is our reverence for decisions about us and ours. Where else should we go if not to Him? Only then does the soul find some life and light in itself, when it prays as earnestly before Him and reveals its sins and its emptiness before Him. A closed, sealed vessel, if thrown into the sea itself, will not be filled with water. In the same way, our soul, floating on the sea of ​​the Lord’s goodness, remains empty until it opens to the Lord in secret prayer. You surprise me with your last letter. You write that you are waiting for a letter from me. At the very first news of the death of the late Anastasia, even before receiving your first letter, I wrote to you. The letter was not long: but it should have been received by you long ago. I sent him to Pokrovskoye. Almost at the same time I wrote to K.I. Mukhanova, in the name of Evgeniy Ivanovich, since he did not have an address for K.I. I don’t know if the letter reached K.I.? What can I tell you about Anastasia’s death? I remain with the same confidence: she died at the time when it was fitting for her to leave the earth. Think: what was she supposed to do here? Children? They, thank God, already have meaning and age. It’s another matter if death had come to her in eight or six years, then this death would definitely have been bitter, very bitter. What is our life on earth? A series of sins. So, is it better to wander in the land of sins than to be where they do not commit sins? The Lord gives us time to correct ourselves. But He knows to what limit life can be taken, beyond which it is not a life for repentance. Let us kiss His good and wise right hand. With love to you in the Lord. E.F. 1846, August 7 days. My good, loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna, may the grace of the Lord Jesus, merciful to sinners, reward your love for me, a sinner. I don't know what this means. I remember very well that upon receiving your last letter, I wrote a letter to you that same day, prepared the address and ordered the sealed letter to be sent to the post office. Where did my letter go? From your letter I see that you did not receive it. Strange! Be that as it may, this time it’s not my fault, truly, it’s not my fault. Believe me, I value your love. Yes, it’s been a long time since I parted with St. Lavra. Blessed peace of the monastery! It's not here. There are Germans here, and you can’t be at peace with them. If not themselves, then through others, they never cease to awaken my laziness. And it’s true, if it weren’t for these alarm clocks, I would probably have fallen asleep completely in my sins. God bless them - they don’t let them sleep. I repeat again, I thank you with all my soul for the memory of your love for me, a sinner. You are unchanging in your love. Despite the fact that I sadden you so much by silence or failure to communicate, you do not abandon me in your love. May God, abundant in mercy and bounty, pay you a hundredfold in that century for your Christian love. However, even with all my thinness, I remember you and yours every time before the throne of the Lord Jesus. There are many worries, many sorrows, many people, but you do not leave my sinful heart. Your letter took a long time to reach Riga: it was sent on November 27, and received on December 6. I haven’t seen Muravyov 43 yet; but when I heard that he was being appointed here, he was very happy. A new acquaintance is a monument to an old, unchangeable acquaintance: this is dear to the soul, especially mine, for which there is little of our own here, or better - nothing. Sorry. I hug you with sincere love and the kind children Vyacheslav and Evgeniy. E. Filaret. Skrypitsyn was on my way through Riga. He is an intelligent man and, I don’t know why, he doesn’t stop helping my affairs, which are so painful. May the Lord save and have mercy on him! God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! This time I don’t remain in your debt; I answer your letter with at least a few lines! Nikolai Nikolaevich 44 was here, and I was glad to meet him. You know my sin - passion for smart people, and Nikolai Nikolaevich is as smart as very few, which I have heard about for a long time. He was in Mitau with his wife and went to St. Petersburg. He stayed here only for a few hours. Please send the attached letter to K.I. She hasn't heard a line from me for so long. Apparently, this is what Riga is like, which bestows either deception or oppression. She, like you, did not receive a letter, or even just one. Muravyov is young - kind and smart, I love him, he visits me. May the Lord increase piety in his soul, which is dearer to us than anything. The rest remains on the ground. You need to go there with the affairs of the spirit. Otherwise, they will not ask about learning, or rank, or nobility. May the Lord of peace be with us. With love to you in the Lord E.F. 1847, January 12 noon. God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I am guilty before you: I did not write an answer to so many letters to you. What should we do? They're constantly shooting at me here. All I do is turn this way and that. I truly and with all my soul rejoiced when I learned about the good completion of the teaching of my kind and dear children Evgeniy and Vyacheslav. You don’t scold me because, although I have previously called Evgeniy, then Vyacheslav. This is how the soul got used to it. Now, however, I think you will say that, although I am a bad predictor, I told the truth, that my Eugene is smart, he will study well. That is why I loved and love him. However, this does not mean that I did not and do not love Vyacheslav. No, I love Vyacheslav for his kind soul, simple, alien to any cunning. I pray to the Lord that he will retain this wonderful quality until the grave. True, this quality may cause him trouble in life, but it won’t make it any harder for anyone else. To reduce the number of troubles, he only needs to be a little careful, then he will be both sweet and calm. I would also like Evgeniy to go abroad: he can make several acquisitions there. However, let my good Evgeniy Ivanovich not worry if his desire is not fulfilled. Nowadays there is something and someone to learn from in Russia. Otherwise, it happens that upon returning from abroad they repeat the proverb: red are the diamonds beyond the mountains. It seems to me that Yevgeny Ivanovich could have asked the minister to serve in Riga. Smart Russians are very much needed here, and the minister will be happy about this desire. However, let the will of the Lord Jesus be done in everything! You are wrong to think that I have something against you. No, really, there’s nothing on my mind. I didn’t write because I really have a lot to do. Sorry. I wish your children blessings and mercy from the Lord Jesus. 1847, August 7 days. May God's blessing be with you, Nadezhda Nikolaevna! I am writing to you not from Riga, but from Volmar, not from my cell, but from the home of God-loving souls. Tomorrow, on the day of St. Sergius, if God blesses, we will consecrate a new church in the name of St. Sergius. This is the second of the newly built churches to be consecrated. Next Sunday, if God blesses, the church in Valki 45 will be consecrated. Without complaining, I thank the Lord for the path He leads my sinful life. This path is difficult, sorrows are often encountered on it, various bitternesses often irritate the soul, but I only complain that I do not use sorrows as my Lord wants from me. He, merciful and loving, wants one thing for me - the salvation of my sinful soul. This is why He put me on this thorny path, so that, wounded by the thorns, I would awaken to the memories of eternal life, of future judgment. Blessed are You, my Lord, who teaches me Your holy will and my eternal salvation, how can I thank You with my unclean lips! How to lift up my heart full of sins to You. Cleanse, Lord, my heart and lips. Cleanse my hands, covered with the dirt of sins. You are the One All-Holy One, sanctify my thoughts and heart, that I may serve You, God my Savior. It’s in vain that my dear Evgeniy Ivanovich does not want to come to Riga to serve the Tsar and the Lord; he would be useful to himself and people here with his kind soul. But may the will of the Lord be done! His love for acquiring greater knowledge is wonderful, but I strongly doubt that he acquired better knowledge abroad. Firstly, today at the Russian university is not what it was before - almost as much, if not more, solid knowledge can be acquired; and secondly, and more importantly, even in Berlin, formerly deceased Berlin, there are many political anxieties and even more foolish heads and systems. I'm not talking about other places. One must be very careful not to end up with mental disorder instead of benefit. But I repeat – may God’s will be done! The point is not to have a lot, but to manage what we have well. Our merit is not in getting this or that place, but in doing well what the place requires. That is why other poor people are far richer than me before the Lord; That is why others who stand in low places are far higher than me before the Lord. Without piety, without tearful prayers, talents, honors, riches, ranks, and distinctions are less than emptiness - eternal torment. Sorry. I embrace everyone I know with love in the Lord. Having not yet read your letter, kind Nadezhda Nikolaevna, I again put pen to paper to ask forgiveness for my guilt. I am definitely to blame for paying so poorly for your love. I haven't written for a long, long time. Forgive, then, for the Lord of love, who forgives all sinners who acknowledge their sins. Then I read your letter. Here is the solution to one riddle. I received from A.I. Postnikova’s letter, where she writes that I will be pleased to see the bearer of the letter, and yet I received the letter from the post office from St. Petersburg, and until now I did not know what it meant? So Evgeny Ivanovich, whom I loved so much, did not want to visit me. What should we do? May God's will be done in everything. It's unfortunate. This means, my good Nadezhda Nikolaevna, that I also need to include myself in the number of decrepit old people with whom youth is not happy to deal. So be it! May the Lord God preserve the peace of Katerina Fedorovna’s soul; she suffered so much in her life; she suffered so much grief without seeing any consolation; since she endured, without giving up hope in the Lord, there is no doubt that a crown awaits her, ready for those innocently suffering in earthly life 46 . Our mutual acquaintances, the Golovins, are leaving Riga. I think that you already know the appointment of Evgeniy Alexandrovich to the council and the appointment of Prince Suvorov here. A little time passed before Evgeniy Aleksandrovich became close to me, but now he is leaving Riga, and it is necessary to deal with the new 47. So in this life everything is unreliable, everything changes, events after events run like waves and carry our life to the grave, after which there is judgment. Dear God! Protect my weak, sinful soul from the disturbances of sin among the waves of earthly navigation. To console you, I must tell you something special. When Vasily Mikhailovich M. left the local service: Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, speaking with me about the change in his ministry, responded to him this way: “I feel sorry for him, I began to get used to him, he is a very kind and capable young man; what he was assigned to do, he did not only carefully, but very efficiently, thoroughly.” I was glad to hear such a review and wished in my heart that V.M. got the same reviews everywhere. Forgive me, dear Nadezhda Nikolaevna. May the Lord bless your soul with grace and peace. With love to you in the Lord, sinner F.E. 1848, January 19th day. The Lord will save us all, good Nadezhda Nikolaevna! Thank you for your unchanging love. You wrote so opportunely and thus consoled me. The soul is in great sorrow and embitterment from the current circumstances. Enemies are pressing. I have already written to you that I expect many troubles from the new governor of the province. This expectation was fulfilled all too fully. It is the will of the Lord. Pray for me. I have a need, a great need, for prayer help. I can't write anymore. My heart is heavy. I’ll add one thing: never think that your letters will not be pleasant to me. There is not enough time to answer, but is it from me? Sorry. With love to you, sinful F.E. God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna, just before my departure from Riga, I received your letter. And I answer already in Polotsk, on the way to Kharkov: On October 9, 1841 I was assigned to Riga, and on November 6, 1848 I was transferred to Kharkov. So for exactly 7 years I was considered a Riga resident, and I lived in Riga for six and a half years. Thanks be to the Lord for everything. I had to leave Riga almost on the same days as you saw me off from Moscow. The Russian residents of Riga saw me off with love because they were crying. The priests escorted him a hundred miles away. Isn’t it true that this is far more than what the worthless Filaret is worth? Yes, the priests wept bitterly when they parted with me. I do not allow myself to call them my children - I called them my friends; I kept, protected, warmed with love as friends of my heart, and they felt it deeply, even much deeper than I deserve. Their hearts opened especially when they said goodbye. Even the Germans, who caused so much trouble, expressed regret that they appointed another 48 and did not leave me with them. I am writing all this to you so that you may rejoice at the gracious power of the prayers of St. Sergius, which have hitherto protected me, a sinner, and managed my affairs. When I first received the news about my transfer to Kharkov, my first thought was to visit Sergius Ave. in Moscow. But then the distance of the journey, especially the long-standing desire to venerate the Kyiv shrines, decided that I should go to Kharkov via Kyiv. God knows, will I ever have the same convenience to visit Kyiv again? You need to use the present. The future is in God's hands. I left Riga the day before my name day. Those who loved them begged to stay with them. But just as on the way to Riga I spent that day on the road, so I had to spend the day on the way from Riga. There were already a lot of tears that I’m not worth. Forgive me, may the grace of the Lord Jesus protect you. Filaret, Bishop of Kharkov 49. R.S. I’ll probably come to Kharkov for the Nativity of Christ. The road is very bad, the same as from Simbirsk to St. Petersburg. God-loving Nadezhda Nikolaevna! The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. You write that after the letter sent to you from Polotsk, I didn’t write a single line to you. This, let me say, is unfair. I believe that you didn’t receive the letter, but I’m also surprised why you didn’t? I remember very clearly that the letter was written in your name in the village. Pokrovskoe. I don’t understand where it disappeared. I also remember very well that at the end of the letter I noted “not everything can be written about and it is not always possible to write, there are obstacles.” Now, for now, I am at peace from the side of everyday circumstances. Otherwise, Riga shot at me in Kharkov too. Thank God that Vyacheslav Ivanovich and Evgeniy Ivanovich are on a good path in service. May the grace of God be with them. Thank you too for telling me something about them. I love them. In a new place there are new things to do and worries. I spent almost two months reviewing the diocese. The local diocese is deceased; this is not like Livonia. The people are kind and pious. Of course, nowhere without exceptions, but, thank God, here I still see love. The country is fertile and warm. You can die without worries. Excuse me: I need to prepare for service. May the Lord's grace be with you and your children. E.F. In January 1835, Filaret was elevated to the rank of archimandrite (highly reverend), and in December of the same year he was appointed rector of the Moscow Theological Academy (Smirnov. History of the Moscow Theological Academy. M. 1879, p. 422). Sheremetev, son of Nadezhda Nikolaevna. Alexey Vasilyevich Sheremetev, son of Nadezhda Nikolaevna and Vasily Petrovich Sheremetev, was born on February 8, 1800. He was brought up in the famous school of column leaders, together with the sons of its founder, N.N. Muravyova. He entered the service in 1816 as a column leader in the retinue of His Imperial Majesty in the quartermaster unit (which is now the general staff). In 1819 he was transferred to the Life Guards Horse Artillery. From 1822, he served as aide-de-camp to the commander of the 5th Infantry Corps, General of the Infantry, Count Pyotr Aleksandrovich Tolstoy. He retired due to illness to be assigned to state affairs: on December 2, 1827, he served in the election of the nobility of the Ruza district, Moscow province, as a mediator of amicable land surveying (from December 1839 to September 1843). He died on October 21, 1857 in his beloved estate, the village of Pokrovskoye, Ruza district, where he had lived continuously since 1850, after the death of his mother. Alexey Vasilyevich was married to his second cousin, Ekaterina Sergeevna Sheremeteva, born on December 17, 1813, died on May 7, 1890. They had ten children, but at the time of writing this letter (1835–36), there were only three more: a) Varvara Alekseevna (later Countess Musina-Pushkin), born on November 15, 1832, died on February 21, 1885; b) Vasily Alekseevich (later married to Natalya Afanasyevna Stolypina), born on February 9, 1834, died on November 5, 1884, and c) Sergei Alekseevich (later married to His Serene Highness Princess Evdokia Borisovna Golitsyna), born on March 24, 1836, died on December 15 1896 (note by Alexander Barsukov). According to the assumption of E.L. Radlov, here of course is Botin’s work, published in 1833 in Paris, under the following title: “Philosophie du Christianisme”. There was an article about this work by A.A. Kraevsky in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education of 1833, part one; This article can be looked at as an echo of the sympathy that the then Minister of Public Education S.S. expressed to this work. Uvarov. Rector Filaret received control of the Moscow Epiphany Monastery; On May 6, 1837, Metropolitan Philaret wrote to him: “That they were slow to accept the monastery is less important; and that on a highly solemn day they did not speak the appointed sermon, I cannot praise this” (“Letters of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, to Philaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov.” M. 1884, p. 12). From 1836–1839, Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov, married to Pelageya Vasilyevna Sheremeteva, was the governor of Kursk. The relics of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara are found in Kiev in the Golden-Domed St. Michael's Monastery (Complete Christian Monthly Book. Kiev. 1875, p. 327). Isn’t this Semyon Pospelov, who graduated from a course at the Moscow Theological Academy in 1840 and wrote the essay “On Confirmation,” which Rector Filaret mentions in his letter, July 15, 1840, to A.V. Gorsky (“Letters of Filaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky.” M. 1885, pp. 2–3). By decree of St. synod, June 18, 1841, rector Philaret was ordered to review the Penza and Tambov seminaries (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 7). By decree of St. synod, September 3, 1841, rector Philaret was ordered to go to Simbirsk to conduct research on the case of unrest in the Simbirsk seminary (ibid., p. 9). While still in Simbirsk, in October 1841, Rector Philaret received from Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow a notice of his appointment as Bishop of Riga, Vicar of Pskov. At the end of November of the same year, Filaret went to St. Petersburg for his naming and consecration as a bishop (ibid., p. 20). Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret, who was at that time in St. Petersburg to be present in St. Synod, had his residence in the Trinity Compound on the Fontanka. Ekaterina Vasilievna Sheremeteva, cousin of Nadezhda Nikolaevna’s husband, Vasily Petrovich Sheremetev, was born on February 25, 1782, died on March 26, 1865, a girl. She was very friendly with Nadezhda Nikolaevna. According to Vigel, Ekaterina Vasilievna was distinguished by “an unusually pleasant, unfading mind” (note by Alexander Barsukov). In St. Petersburg, on Mokhovaya, the pious house of the Maltsovs once flourished. Second Major Ivan Akimovich Maltsov, born in 1774, lived in it with his wife Kapitolina Mikhailovna (born Vysheslavtsova). His son, at that time the captain of the Cavalry Guard Regiment, Sergei Ivanovich (b. 1810), later a retired major general, married to Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Urusova, also lived with them. Daughter of I.A. Maltsova - Maria Ivanovna (b. 1808) was behind the Adjutant General Count Pavel Nikolaevich Ignatiev. Ivan Akimovich Maltsov came from a noble family, whose ancestor Bogdan Afanasyevich served in 1634 among the city nobles in Chernigov, and whose grandson Vasily Yuryevich Maltsov took up trade and joined the merchant class. The son of Vasily Yuryevich - Akim, who together with his cousin Foma Vasilyevich Maltsov maintained a crystal factory, was restored by Empress Catherine II on August 14, 1775 (according to the most humble report of the Senate) to hereditary noble dignity. His son I.A. Maltsov was enlisted in the service as a sergeant of the Horse Guards on January 1, 1786, released from the guard into the army as a captain on January 1, 1754, and on February 1, 1794, due to illness, was dismissed from service with the rank of second major; in 1813 he was appointed honorary superintendent of the Bryansk district school and held this position in 1828. Ivan Akimovich died in May 1853 from cholera, “leaving behind him,” testifies A.N. Muravyov, “blessed memory.” On May 24, 1853, Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret wrote to A.N. Muravyov: "They pray for Ivan Akimovich in my church; but I did not have a chance to pray at his tomb. They asked me how to receive him: I ordered the priest to wait by the railway, meeting him with the litiya, and escort him to church in vestments... On May 20th he served in Chudov. V.I. Nazimov was at the liturgy and came to see me, and said that on that day in the morning the body was sent with a foreigner accompanying him” (“Letters of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow to A.N. Muravyov.” Kyiv. 1869, pp. 422–423). At Pogodin’s invitation to take part in a dinner given in his garden in honor of M.S., who was leaving for foreign lands. Shchepkina, Stepan Dmitrievich Nechaev, on May 9, 1853, answered: “A rare person and a close friend of my family, Ivan Akimovich Maltsov, has died. His death greatly clouded my heart. I would be a boring guest at your cheerful dinner” (“The Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin.” St. Petersburg. 1898. XII, p. 467). Filaret's own aunt, his father's sister, was married to Naryshkin's serf peasant, Dmitriev; he and his relatives served in an economic office. The chief manager was a German. Noticing that the Dmitrievs condemned his actions regarding the peasants, he looked for an opportunity to take revenge on the Dmitrievs. "Upon the landowner's arrival at the estate, the German manager assured him that the Dmitrievs had acquired wealth illegally. Their fate was immediately decided: the property was taken away, some were assigned to mining work, the young, including two cousins ​​of Filaret, had to join the soldiers" (Russian Archive 1887, No. 8, p. 466). Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev, during his stay in St. Petersburg, lived on Vasilyevsky Island in the Pskov courtyard, which is now the courtyard of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The then chief prosecutor of St. Synod, Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Protasov. On December 5, 1841, Filaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: "The most remarkable thing for me, which will remain in my memory for a long time, was the visit to Count Protasov. He kept me with him for more than an hour, and the whole time passed in conversations, but it was a test, or better yet, torture. The questions proposed were the most difficult for the soul: for example, what is such and such a bishop like, such and such a secretary of the consistory? You will understand for yourself that there were even more interrogations about rectors and seminaries. I admit, I left him in great embarrassment and with a great heaviness in my soul. He himself later told others that he tortured me. Yes, it is easy to torture, but what is it like to be tortured? (“Letters of Filaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 27). At the naming of Bishop of Riga, Philaret before the members of St. Synod delivered the following speech: "God's chosen leaders of the Orthodox Church! It is true, undoubtedly true, that the will of the rulers of the Russian Church for me, approved by the will of God's anointed - the God-crowned Tsar, is the will of Himself who lives in heaven - the only Ruler of the church and kingdoms. This faith would be sufficient to put silence on my thoughts and feelings; with it it would be enough to say: be His will!" "But forgive the excess of the heart; it involuntarily turns to both the past and the future, involuntarily and following this faith it strives to offer praise to the Lord for the past. I thank You, Lord my God, for deigning my unworthiness to remain for so long in the house of Your beloved God-bearing Father Sergius. How will I forget you, guarded by the Matter of the Eternal Word, the school of the living words? - In silence, not disturbed by the rebellions of the world, complete freedom was given to use the abundant benefits of wisdom; and wisdom, illuminated by the light of grace, is it not a decent place in the monastery, still surrounded by the light of grace? Much teaching is the work of the flesh, says the wise one (Eccl. 12:12), but it is just as natural that in the monastery of prayer and teaching much should not be the work of the flesh. Where from deep morning to deep night the entrances to the prayer churches of grace are open, prayer made, if not at that hour, then at another, prayer performed with the love of the brethren, could revive and strengthen the spirit - and reviving the spirit was powerful to revive weakened flesh. My heart would much like to talk about the various bounties of God with which I was generously surrounded by various spiritual communications. But may the words of a grateful heart not burden the holy council of saints with their multitude. May the Lord of mercy and bounty reward with his bounties the council of rulers of the Russian Church for that blessed portion that I was allowed to enjoy for so long. "What shall I say about the lot destined for me? Shall I speak about my weakness, which is so little capable of bearing the burdens of great dignity? I am afraid to speak about it, I am afraid to remain silent. I am afraid to speak, for only the great Pauls spoke about my weaknesses freely, without harboring secret pride. I am afraid to remain silent about weakness, fearing the pride that is even more often accessible. But one cannot help but turn one’s thoughts to the difficulties of the intended service and especially the place of service. Lord! What do you want to do with me? Where will I go to proclaim the word? I will not test your judgments, Lord! and in the midst of self-inflicted wisdom, the Apostle preaches: Preach the word, be urgent and untimely, reprove, rebuke, entreat with all long-suffering (2 Tim. 4:2) and the Apostle teaches: It is not fitting for the servant of the Lord to be disobedient, but to be quiet toward everyone, a teacher, not angry (2 Tim. 2:24). How to combine these requirements in execution? One remedy is indicated: all long-suffering, since its fruit is art; nevertheless, having patience in this case is no small matter. But no, I do not contradict Your holy will, Lord! I believe and confess that Your will is effective, Your truth is effective. The instrument is weak: but You want, but You know how to do both the weak with the strong, and the unskilled with the skilled. God-bearing Sergius! My ordinary soul turns to you; You have set apart many of your children as faithful stewards of the church; save me with your prayers. Cathedral of the Saints of God! I thank your Holiness for your contempt for my unworthiness, I thank you and ask for your prayers to the Lord God, that I may be honest to Him; I don’t want to be idle, by His grace: but what to do and how to do it, He will show you, He will give you strength.” This speech in the modern list is attached to the collection of letters from Archbishop Philaret to N.N. Sheremeteva. Ekaterina Fedorovna, born Baroness Kolokoltsova, wife of the Comrade Minister of Public Education, trustee of Moscow University Mikhail Nikitich Muravyov and mother of the Decembrists Nikita and Alexander Mikhailovich. Born in 1771, died on April 21, 1848 (Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky. Russian Genealogical Book. St. Petersburg. 1895. I, 409). On December 22, 1841, Eminence Philaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: "Thanks be to the Lord! Yesterday the dedication was made. The dedication was made by the Kiev Metropolitan (Filaret), two metropolitans (ours and Jonah), Archbishops Gabriel (Ryazan), Joseph (Lithuanian) and Benedict (Vicar of St. Petersburg) took part in the dedication. Thanks to the Lord that the dedication took place on the day of Moscow St. Peter: this It’s a sign for me that the Moscow saints still remember me, a sinner, and do not reject me in their prayers. I violated the hundred-year-old rule: I didn’t give a dinner at the dedication. This, as you will understand, created a loud noise... Where could I get money for such expenses? I had to throw a thousand rubles...” (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 29). This portrait is currently kept in the village of Pokrovskoye. The wife of the faithful servant N.N. Sheremeteva Yakov Ignatiev Solovyov. Sofya Karlovna Pevtsova, née Moderakh, was born in 1783. In early childhood she was taken by her father, appointed governor-general of Perm and Vyatka, to Perm; There, at the age of sixteen, she married General Aggei Stepanovich Pevtsov. In 1812, already a widow, Pevtsova returned to St. Petersburg, where she lived, receiving a small pension, until 1826, when Empress Maria Feodorovna appointed her head of the Institute of the Order of St. Catherine in Moscow. They say that the reason for becoming acquainted with her was her poems in honor of Emperor Alexander I. Until the end of her days, Pevtsova remained the head of the institute, enjoying, after the death of Maria Feodorovna, the constant favor of both Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Emperor Nicholas I, who granted her, on the day of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her service, the Order of St. Catherine. She died on February 27, 1852, mourned by her many students and leaving behind a memory as a very educated woman who fulfilled her mission with dignity and was devoted to the fatherland and the throne (see J. Dumouchel. Recueil de lettres de Sa Majesté I’Impératrice Marie Feodorovna aux tuteurs honoraires et aux supérieures des Instituts de Moscou (1-ère livraison. Lettres de Sa Majesté à Mme de Pewtzoff. Moscou. 1833). About S.K. Pevtsova has retained an enthusiastic review from one of her contemporaries, F.F. Vigel, who met her in 1805, when he was traveling to China as part of an embassy sent there, this is what he writes about her in his “Notes”: “Like a diamond set in tin, so shone in the midst of this family Moderakh’s second daughter, Sofya Karlovna, married to Gatchina Lieutenant General Aggei Stepanovich Pevtsov, inspector of the infantry division and the chief of the Yekaterinburg regiment... She was twenty-three years old. It was difficult to find such a sweet face and such a decent, intelligent coquetry. From her glances and speeches, our entire squad suddenly began to melt, and our poor Nelidov fell seriously in love, however, and each of us could consider himself preferred. the most enlightened of all those whom I had seen before; speaking fluently in foreign languages, she enjoyed all the colors of literature and, on the eve of Asia, knew everything that was happening in Europe. Of course, our departure was still postponed...” (“Notes of F.F. Vigel.” M. 1891. Part 1, pp. 146–147). Irinarch, later Archbishop of Ryazan. He died in retirement in the Ryazan Spassky Monastery on September 25, 1877 (Tolstoy. Lists of Bishops. St. Petersburg, 1872, p. 37). Here, of course, is the word spoken by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow on September 27, 1842, upon the consecration of the Church of the Appearance of the Mother of God to St. Sergius, built over the relics of St. Micah in the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. “Who will show me a small wooden church,” the bishop said among other things, “on which the name of the Most Holy Trinity was named here for the first time? I would enter it for the all-night vigil, when in it, with a crackle and smoke, a burning torch shines for reading and singing, but the hearts of those praying burn quieter and clearer than a candle, and their flame reaches to the sky.. Open me the door of the cramped cell, so that I can breathe in its air, which trembled with the voice of the prayers and sighs of St. Sergius, which was watered by the rain of his tears, in which so many spiritual, prophetic, miraculous verbs were impressed. Let me kiss the dust of her vestibule, which was worn out by the feet of the saints, and through which the feet of the Queen of Heaven once stepped. Show me another vestibule of another cell, which one day St. Sergius built with his own hands - and as a reward for the work of the day and for the famine of several days he received a circle of rotting bread. I would like to see how, later than others, planted in this desert, the Monk Nikon quickly grows and matures until he is ready to be the successor of the Monk Sergius. I would listen to Isaac’s silence, which, without a doubt, is more instructive than my words. I would have looked at the prudent Archimandrite Simon, who realized quite early that it was more useful to be a novice under St. Sergius than to be a boss in another place. After all, it’s all here: only closed by time, or enclosed in these majestic buildings, like a high-priced treasure in a magnificent ark. Open to me the ark, show me the treasure: it cannot be stolen and cannot be exhausted; from it, without damaging it, you can borrow useful things, for example, the silence of prayer, simplicity of life, humility of wisdom." (Works of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow. M. 1882, IV, pp. 193–194). The Estonian governor at that time was Baron Matvey Ivanovich Palen. On November 1, 1843, Eminence Philaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: "I stayed in Vilna for two weeks; I shared the triumph of Orthodoxy over the power of papism. Yes, one must marvel both at what happened before in Vilna and at what is happening now. Do you know what the situation of Orthodoxy was in Vilna in the 17th century and in what state at the beginning of the 19th century? An old map of Vilna from the 17th or early 18th centuries has been preserved: it shows that there were 15 Orthodox churches in Vilna. And what did the 19th century find? At its beginning, there was only the Monastery of the Spirits, and there was a rector without the brethren... Nowadays, things have taken the opposite direction. Orthodoxy is spreading, and the papacy is constrained within its borders. God grant that what was started will not be abandoned" ("Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky", p. 133). Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Sheremetev was born on April 15, 1838. Emperor Nicholas was his successor and himself came to the christening, which took place in the house church on Fontanka. The successor was Varvara Petrovna Sheremeteva. He died in Moscow, on Vozdvizhenka, on October 20, 1843. The funeral service was performed by Moscow Metropolitan Philaret himself. He was buried in the Novospassky Monastery. The words of Job are carved on the monument: The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away: as the Lord willed, so it was: blessed be the name of the Lord forever. Metropolitan Philaret of Kyiv and Galicia consoled the inconsolable parents with his gracious letter: "Grace and peace and the consolation of the Holy Spirit to the faithful servant of God Anna Sergeevna. The only Holy Spirit, the true comforter, can comfort your heart, filled with sorrow about the unexpected death of our beloved baby Nicholas. Apparently, the Heavenly Father loved him so much that he took the innocent, pure one into the countenance of his angels. He did not heed either your maternal grief or our prayers for leaving him on earth. You love your only begotten Nicholas, but what is our love in comparison with the love of the Heavenly Father, who from his infant joys in your arms moved him straight into the joys of heaven, not allowing him to taste the sorrows and temptations of this perishing world! Nicholas, and return it to me. Let your heart respond to the voice of the Lord: The Lord gave, the Lord took away: as the Lord willed, so be the name of the Lord blessed forever. The zealous intercessor, the joy of all who mourn, the Most Holy Mother of God, who accepted the baby Nicholas forever into her mother's protection, may she comfort your sorrowful heart and strengthen your faith and hope, in your indescribable joy to see your once beloved son in the eternal abodes of the Heavenly Father. Where our true treasure is, there may our heart be! Calling on you, on your husband and on all your relatives the blessing of God and entrusting all of you to the prayers of the saints of God, I am and will remain your Excellency the most zealous pilgrim Filaret, Metropolitan of Kiev. November 8, 1843. “To your good, pious sister Elizabeth, God’s blessing,” I am very grateful for her letter, but delayed my answer due to my absence to the diocese for several days” (Count S.D. Sheremetev. My Elder Brother. St. Petersburg, 1893). From nephew Yakov Mikhailov, V.A. Mikhailov, we received the following information: “My great-grandfather, Marco Hans, was a free citizen and a native of the city of Dorpat; being already a family man, he moved from Dorpat to one of the manors of the Wenden district - Pebalg Orizgof, after the death of Peter the Great, who donated this manor, among others, to Field Marshal Sheremetev - where he kept a mill on rent. Here, after the death of Mark Hans, his own son was left an orphan, and my grandfather, Yuri (or Georg), who, being a minor, was taken under his protection by Count Sheremetev, and was later converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism, with the name Mikhail and by his godfather, who was Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev, Nikolaevich. Along with the new confession, my grandfather also had a new surname: Count N.P. Sheremetev named him Mikhailov, and then assigned him to one of his manors - Bronnitsy, Peterhof district, from where, for the sale of this manor, the Mikhailov family, according to revision tales, was transferred to the settlement of Alekseevka, Voronezh province, Biryuchinsky district. Since my grandfather continued to keep the mill after the death of his parents, he was also called Melnikov, which is probably more because his father was a mill mechanic by profession. After the death of Georg Hans, in Orthodoxy Mikhail Nikolaevich Mikhailov, there remained eight sons, including my father Alexey and the youngest of the brothers, Uncle Yakov, who, shortly after the well-known movement of the Latvians, in the late 30s and early 40s, in favor of Orthodoxy, for his translation of liturgical books from Church Slavonic into German and Latvian, according to the highest With the permission of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, he was elevated to the rank of Orthodox priest and until his death (in 1854) he served at the Intercession Church in Riga.” In addition to this information, V.A. Mikhailov told us the following extract from the Orthodox Review (May - June 1886, p. 183): “In compliance with the conditions prescribed by the instructions to Philaret (Bishop of Riga), on April 21, 1845, the joining of ten Latvians from the Riga Hernguter Society was solemnly performed in the Riga Cathedral through the sacrament of confirmation. Immediately, a service was opened in the Latvian language in the Riga Intercession Church; in the St. Petersburg suburb, a special clergy was formed for this purpose from people who knew the Latvian language, according to Philaret’s ideas, a former accountant on the estate of Count Sheremetev, Yakov Mikhailov, freed by him, known for his excellent behavior, well-versed in Latvian and Russian languages, was ordained as a priest for the Latvians. a German who took part in the translation of our liturgical books into Latvian, a man who gained the general respect of both Latvians and nobles in Livonia.” Pavel Yakovlevich Kupriyanov. Born on August 4, 1789 in the Kostroma province, Soligalitsky district, in the village of Patina. According to the old custom of noble families, he was enrolled in the 2nd Cadet Corps, where he successfully completed the course in 1806. That same year, he had to go on a campaign in the ranks of the newly formed imperial police battalion from state and palace peasants of the St. Petersburg province. In the affairs of Gutstadt, Heilsberg and Friedland, the recruits performed so well that the battalion was renamed the battalion of the Finnish Guard and equalized in rights with the old guard, and its young officer received his first military award for the battle of Friedland. In 1811, the Finnish Life Guards Regiment was formed from this battalion, which took a glorious part in the Patriotic War and in subsequent campaigns abroad. This glory of his native regiment was shared by the brave Lieutenant Kupriyanov, rising in the ranks of service with each of his new feats. Thus, Kupriyanov had the opportunity to participate in the battles of Borodino, Krasny, Lutzen and Bautzen, Dresden and Kulm, near Leipzig and finally in the capture of Paris. Kupriyanov returned from these campaigns with the rank of staff captain and with several distinctions for bravery. Combat lessons gave Kupriyanov a sober and correct view of military affairs, made him friends with the soldier, taught him to understand his needs, the conditions of his existence, and thus prepared him for independent command. Kupriyanov was also highly valued by his superiors, who gave him independent assignments; So in 1824, during the disaster that befell St. Petersburg, he was entrusted with overseeing the distribution of benefits to residents of Vasilievsky Island and Galernaya Harbor and the repair of damaged buildings. For his labors, Kupriyanov received the highest favor. In 1826, aged 37, he was promoted to major general. Two years later, the Turkish campaign began, which constitutes one of the brilliant pages in the life of the young general. Sent with 4,500 people to invest Varna, which had a garrison of about 10,000 people, General Kupriyanov fought for six days, fighting 12 hours a day, repulsed all Turkish attacks and did not yield a single inch of land. After Varna, Kupriyanov’s actions concentrated on the threshold of the Balkans, in Pravody. It was a town located between Shumla and Varna, and was not at all fortified, but was considered by the Turks themselves to be the key to the Balkans. The Turks tried several times to take possession of this position, but in vain: General Kupriyanov successfully repelled the attacks. The further success of military operations depended on the retention of Truth by the Russian army during the coming winter. At the council held on this occasion, General Kupriyanov stated that if he was given one brigade, he would put Pravody in a defensive state and defend it until operations resumed. And indeed, he heroically kept his word: despite the fact that the city was not fortified at all, that the soldiers had almost no warm clothes, little fuel, little provisions, and very few entrenching tools, Kupriyanov managed to maintain vigor in the detachment, supplied the city with a number of fortifications, guns and charges, stocked up on provisions and fodder, in a word, brought his detachment and the city itself to such a situation that, when in the spring the vizier attacked Pravody With its mass of troops, the city could withstand the siege from May 17 to May 29. This delay of the vizier's army made it possible for Diebitsch to move from Silistria to Shumla and then defeat the Turkish army at Kulevchina; Soon after, Russian troops crossed the Balkans, and the war was over. In 1831, Kupriyanov took part in the Polish War, and in 1848 - in the Hungarian campaign. Here, at the beginning of the battle of Debrechin, Kupriyanov was seriously wounded by a grenade in his right leg and had to leave combat activities forever. On July 29, 1849, he was appointed a member of the military council; Kupriyanov held this position until his death, taking an active part in the legislative work of the institution. Pavel Yakovlevich was married twice: for the first time (in 1821) to Marya Petrovna Malshina, with whom he had a daughter, Varvara, who married a Riga merchant of the 1st guild, Verman; her eldest son, for the merits of his grandfather, received the right to add his surname and be called Kupriyanov-Verman; Kupriyanov entered into a second marriage with the daughter of the Sevastopol hero Elena Stepanovna Khruleva. Kupriyanov died in 1874, on Palm Saturday (see Russian Invalid 1874, Nos. 70 and 71). According to Count D.N. Tolstoy, Valery Valerievich Skrypitsyn "once served in the guard. After several years of retirement, M.N. Muravyov invited him to the civil service, and when he was the governor of Kursk, appointed him as an adviser to the local provincial government. Skrypitsyn's brilliant abilities served as a reason for Muravyov's rapprochement with him, and when the latter moved to St. Petersburg, he contributed to Skrypitsyn's appointment in the department Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, from where he entered the Ministry of Internal Affairs under Count Perovsky and received the appointment of director of the department of foreign confessions” (Russian Archive 1881, III, 421). Count S.D. Sheremetev was born on November 14, 1844, in St. Petersburg, in his father’s house on the Fontanka. He was baptized in the Winter Palace, the successor from the font was Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich, the successor was Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In place of Baron Palen, Adjutant General Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Golovin was appointed Riga Military Governor-General. On August 7, 1845, Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, wrote to Philaret, Bishop of Riga: “I tried to introduce the new leader of your region to you, and he showed himself even then helpful in your favor.” (“Letters of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, to Philaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov.” Μ. 1884, p. 38). Filaret himself, Bishop of Riga, on May 17, 1845, wrote to A.V. Gorsky: “The new owner of the province, Golovin, has arrived here. Thanks be to the Lord and for the fact that the Russian owner has been sent. Otherwise, here everything Russian is in grave Egyptian slavery, and most of all Orthodoxy. The Germans are smart to see what the spread of Orthodoxy will lead to in civil life. But the will of the Lord be done” (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop Chernigovsky, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 180). On May 12, 1845, Golovin arrived in Riga and was “greeted with all medieval processions and rituals.” According to Yu.V. Tolstoy, Golovin “with the resettlement to Riga did not become a Livonian and acted in the guise of the All-Russian government, steadily followed the instructions of the motto chosen by this government: Orthodoxy, autocracy, Russian nationality; considered it a crime to prevent the oppressed Estonians and Latvians from leaving Lutheranism and converting in thousands to Orthodoxy; did not recognize the forcible nailing of Estonians as feasible and the Latvians to the pseudo-German nationality, despite their desire to merge with the Russian people! Can Golovin be blamed for these aspirations? It is unlikely that a true Russian will blame him for the fact that with his arrival in Riga the halls of the Governor-General's castle resounded with Russian speech, that the Latvians and Estonians heard from him for the first time that they were the sons of Russia, and not the stepsons of Germany; closed the royal doors of the holy Orthodox church before them and did not prevent the servants of Orthodoxy from accepting the rejecters of Luther's heresy into the loving communion of the universal church! Golovin could have acted carelessly, in disagreement with the rules of political cunning, when openly, without concealment, he revealed his sincere conviction that Riga, Mitava and Revel are Russian cities, that the Estlif- and Courlanders are the same subjects of the Russian Empire as the Estonians and Latvians” (“The Nineteenth Century”. M. 1872. I, 60). On August 12, 1845, Eminence Philaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: “I had A.N. Muravyov, and I was very happy with him: the Russian is so nice here. And Andrei Nikolaevich is even more like a good Christian. He told me a lot of interesting things about Rome and the Romans! With what delight he flew to Mother Russia! That’s what he kept repeating: Europe is boring to death” (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 183). Evgenia Ivanovna Golovina, née Fon-Vizin, wife of E.A. Golovin. Prince P.V. Dolgorukov calls her Elisaveta Pavlovna (Russian Genealogical Book. St. Petersburg, 1855, p. 116). Son M.N. Muravyova - Vasily Mikhailovich. He died on April 13, 1848, with the rank of staff captain (Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky. Russian Genealogical Book. St. Petersburg. 1895. I, 414). Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (Karsky). Born June 14, 1793, died October 18, 1867. In his first marriage to Sofya Fedorovna Akhverdova; in the second - on the Decembrist’s sister, Countess Natalia Grigorievna Chernyshova (Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky. Russian Genealogical Book. St. Petersburg. 1893. I, 410–411). At the end of 1847 and at the beginning of 1848 N.N. Muravyov visited the Baltic region, and in his “Notes” we, by the way, read: “According to the Baltic barons, the bitterness of the Lutherans was so strong that the bishop could not show himself on the street. The civil authorities threateningly and shamefully scolded the clergy in correspondence, so the government was forced to remove Irinarch, and in his place they put Bishop Philaret, a young an educated man who took his place under fear of the example that happened to his predecessor. Soon Baron Palen was moved to the State Council, and his place was given to Golovin, an intelligent man, but cunning, weak and preaching extraordinary devotion to Orthodoxy, however, incapable of anything else, both due to poor health, and due to his indecision and unconsciousness... Golovin received me very cordially. From him I went to the diocesan bishop Filaret. A young man, very educated, but also difficult in fulfilling his duties. He talked to me about the affairs of Orthodoxy and, apparently, did not trust the constancy of the measures taken by the government, and complained about the stubbornness of the barons. Filaret, apparently, was dissatisfied with his place. In a conversation, he explained to me many cases in which the barons made all sorts of obstacles to the establishment of Orthodoxy, but hid from me that the first impulses of the people, excited by the promises of the government, had already cooled down” (Russian Archive 1895, No. 4, pp. 424, 429). On September 24, 1847, His Eminence Philaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: “I am writing to you not from Riga, but from Volmar, where I arrived to consecrate the church” (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” p. 210). “The widow of Mikhail Nikitich Muravyov!” exclaims Pogodin. - "How many memories this name, unforgettable in the annals of the fatherland, awakened! Educator of Emperor Alexander, author of all educational regulations at the beginning of his reign, first trustee of Moscow University, ardent zealot of education, friend of Russian literature, who provided Karamzin with the means to devote himself to history, a talented writer, a noble man - this is whom fate gave her as a life partner! What brilliance and her entry into the world was illuminated with glory... The Muravyov house was then the center of everything sublime, excellent, the best in society and literature... Batyushkov was brought up here; Derzhavin, Dmitriev, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, one after another belonged to this family. There is nothing to say about the members of Moscow University who appeared here as in a fatherly home... “Muravyov “was their common father, friend, servant, mentor, advisor, protector, patron." But “other thoughts, other feelings filled the soul” of Pogodin when he entered the Novospassky Monastery and saw the coffin containing the remains of the deceased. He "imagined the last half of her long, almost seventy-year life! My God! What sorrows, what sufferings, what blows! What a terrible succession, some stronger than others, more murderous, they burst out over this poor woman! She buried her husband, children, grandchildren - all her feelings, desires, joys, hopes - except for heaven, and died on earth before she died... Peace to your soul, sufferer," Pogodin concludes, - “having sailed across the sea of life, which for you in particular has been raised by adversity in a storm, so that you may finally find peace in that quiet haven where everything and everyone is at rest...” (“The Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin.” St. Petersburg, 1895. IX, pp. 338–340). At the beginning of 1848, Riga Military Governor-General E.A. Golovin was replaced by Prince Alexander Arkadievich Suvorov. On January 14, 1848, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow wrote to Bishop Philaret of Riga: “I was pleased to hear about your improved relations with the head of the region. But now he is no longer there. I hope that you will be well with the new one” (“Letters from Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, to Philaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov,” p. 44). His Eminence Philaret himself wrote to A.V. Gorsky: "Prince Suvorov, despite the fact that the grandson of the famous love for all Russian affairs, is extremely strange in his zeal for the Germans. Whether to call him a Lutheran general super-intendent, or just a man for whom only the stars are important, I don’t know. He constantly insists that he is Russian from head to toe, and mocks everything Russian and humiliates Russians openly. He insists that he has a deep sense of truth, but patronizes Lutheranism and persecutes Orthodoxy in all convenient and inconvenient cases” (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky,” pp. 221–222). In April 1848, Yu. F. Samarin wrote to Pogodin: "I intend to address you with a request that will probably surprise you. Perhaps you have already heard a rumor about the arrival of a new governor-general, Prince Suvorov, in Riga, and about his first actions. These actions were of such a kind that they simultaneously postponed the transformation of the region that had begun for several years; the Germans raised their heads, the Russian merchants the poor bishop is crying like a child. The whole trouble came from the fact that Prince Suvorov succumbed to the bait, of course, the most tempting. The Germans greeted him as a deliverer and made him feel that he should support them, unless he wants to be branded as a characterless person, a tool of other people, etc. In a word, they took possession of him completely and came up with an idea. the following: Suvorov fortunately values ​​public opinion, or, better, he is afraid of losing the popularity inseparable from his name. If a disapproving voice could reach him from Russia, he would, without a doubt, change his mind. In Riga, naturally, he doesn’t hear him... It is necessary to arrange it so that Moscow responds to his pranks. There is a man in Moscow, under whose command he served, whom he loves, respects and fears. This is A.P. Ermolov. One word from him will be enough to bring him to consciousness. You are on good terms with him and therefore can take on the role of mediator. You will receive from me shortly after this letter a detailed report on Suvorov’s first actions; show it to Ermolov without naming me. A.P. Ermolov will probably not want to rely on this document alone to write his opinion to Prince Suvorov, but we do not ask for this. It will be enough if he forwards to him a copy of this report with a simple question: this is what they write about you - is it true? If you manage to persuade him to do this, then you will do the greatest service to all Russians, whose fate is now in the hands of Suvorov." Pogodin fulfilled Samarin's desire, as evidenced by the following lines from him to A.P. Ermolov: “I present to your Excellency a note about the miracles of Riga, which is circulating here” (“The Life and Works of M.P. Pogodin.” St. Petersburg, 1896. X, pp. 30–39). “The recall of Golovin from the leadership of the Baltic region,” as he himself writes, “was for the Livonian nobility and for the Riga magistrate class a complete triumph, to which both of them indulged openly” (“Nineteenth Century”. M. 1872. I, p. 59). After Philaret, Bishop Platon of Kovno, who died in the rank of Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia, was elevated to the throne of the Riga Church. On November 29, 1848, Filaret wrote to A.V. Gorsky: "Kovensky Platon is taking my place, the same one who was briefly the rector of Kostroma, and whom I, a sinner, had to consecrate as Bishop of Kovensky in 1843 with the Most Reverend Joseph. It will be painful for him to move from Kovno to Riga, and it will be even more difficult to manage local affairs. Dealing with the Germans is the same as carrying stones on his chest." (“Letters of Philaret, Archbishop of Chernigov, to A.V. Gorsky.” M. 1885, pp. 229–230). Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, wrote the following about him to Bishop Philaret: "Someone who was in your region told me that the Right Reverend Plato in Vilna is more successful with his courtesy to everyone than you are at home. Of course, this is a superficial success: but we should not always neglect it. We can serve God by running away from people; we cannot serve the management of people except through communication, It is only necessary that it does not contradict the character service." (“Letters of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, to Philaret, later Archbishop of Chernigov.” M. 1884, pp. 38–39). "On December 20, 1848," says Philaret's biographer, "having waited until evening in the Kharkov bishop's house, they decided that if the new ruler was approaching Kharkov, he would stop for the night at the last station, but would not arrive at night. And no one knew from which route to expect him. Meanwhile, on the road from Kyiv, a clumsy one was approaching Kharkov a winter cart, and the new Kharkov bishop sat in it, thoughtful. He was only 43 years old at that time; but seven years of suffering in Riga left a strong imprint on his face. Those who saw him as a rector noticed with surprise a change in him that was unusual for his years... Then the cart stopped in front of the porch of the bishop’s house, the bishop came out of the cart and made the sign of the cross. a sign. And he had to stand a long time in the cold in front of the doors of his new home until they found the servant with the key.” Economist Filaret announced that tomorrow, that is, December 21st, he would serve in the Church of the Cross. On that day, the day of remembrance of St. Metropolitan Peter, seven years had passed since the day of his consecration as a bishop, “seven years of sorrows and suffering, which he endured, out of his greatest humility, with complete submission” (Russian Archive 1887, No. 10, pp. 238–239). You might be interested in: