With a deep love
for God and the Heavenly Queen, a monk once asked in his sincere prayer, “show
me what mortal in our sinful world lives like the Holy Fathers and what
struggler pleases Thee in his love for Thee and his neighbor.” After his prayer
the Heavenly Queen appeared to him, pointing directly to the Island of Zalit,
where the spirit filled Elder Nikolai lived. “Go there immediately,” She said,
“do not waste time.” The words She spoke to him entered so clearly into his
heart that he was able to write them down after this vision. This is what the
Mother of God told him:
“There lives on the
island a man of great spiritual strength, and he is particularly dear to the
Lord, because he is one from the last times. In him all of you can see the
precious manifestations of our faith and the highest love of Christ, which is
so rare and uncommon. The Elder Nikolai loves Christ and his neighbor so
excessively that nothing could distract him from the love of God. That place on
the island is to be sacred, a Temple of the Throne of God will be erected
there. Ordinary people shouldn’t work at that place; there should be monks with
pure hearts and righteous thoughts. By God’s Will, the departure time of Father
Nikolai to the Abode of God is approaching. There is no person on this sinful
earth who doesn’t need his holy blessing.”
Thus the Heavenly
Queen revealed the otherworldliness of the righteous God bearing Elder Nikolai
Guriyanov.
By this time, in Fr. Nikolai’s Russian motherland, all monasteries had been raided; monks and nuns were shot and sent to gulag camps to die. His entire mother Church was liquidated at the hands of Godless atheists. Any signs of religiousness in the country were violently uprooted and all Church Hierarchs, Priests and lay people were silenced, usually by torture and death. The totalitarianism of the Godless government strived at any cost to cut the ground from under the centuries-old tree of Russian Orthodoxy. The preservation of all ancient monastic traditions and other traditions of the Church seemed doomed. While the blood of martyrs was being spilt all around him, Fr. Nikolai continued to serve as a Priest in the Baltic States. It seemed that the mind of Fr. Nikolai was being preserved by God for his Russian people. In a world when monastics were being murdered, Fr. Nikolai preserved strict monastic tradition without any proper training. He was a lover of truth and therefore a stranger to this world. The Lord was forming in him the radical characteristics of an Orthodox Elder, a tradition being suppressed by the authorities around him. He portrayed meekness, longsuffering, love, and purity, imitating his suffering Savior. All these characteristics were instilled in him by God, he had no great spiritual guidance, but developed these virtues through his extreme denial of this world.
In 1958, the
already formed Elder was transferred to the Pskov bishopric as parish priest of
Saint Nicholas’ church on the island of Zalit in Chudskoye lake where he spent
the remaining 42 years of his life; 40 as a priest and then retiring to a small
and humble wooden cell near by. During this whole time, the holiness of the
Elder was kept secret and in obscurity. Only those who knew him saw glimpses of
the otherworldly fervor he possessed.
The Elder didn’t talk with people in complicated parables like many false self-proclaiming gurus, but he talked with simplicity and in this God’s will was revealed to the listener. He spoke to the hearts of many from all corners of the earth. He knew what was in the hearts of all who came to him; he clearly saw the past, present, and future of his spiritual children and he would simply great all with what they needed. The Lord gave him the knowledge of man’s inner state. He would never say something that would affect a person’s feelings, but to those who were haughty he would give sound advice. To one man who was very severe to his wife, the Elder simply said to him, “Be softer.” With these words the man walked away with a new revelation about himself. It often happened this way, a man would coming seeking something and leave with a new understanding about himself and a lesson he didn’t expect to hear. Fr. Nikolai was gracious and lenient to the repentant people visiting him. One visitor, standing next to the fence of the Elder’s cottage and tormenting from so much shame, that not only could he not talk to the elder but also couldn’t lift his eyes up on him, suddenly heard the quiet voice of Fr, Nikolai say to a lay sister, “Go, call him.” She went over and invited the tormented man to the Elder. Fr. Nikolai then anointed him and kept repeating: “God’s mercy is with you, God’s mercy is with you…” The oppressive condition of the man thawed and disappeared in this ray of the Elder’s love. However the elder could meet differently those, who didn’t have any repentance: “Don’t visit me anymore.” He told to one pilgrim. These are frightful words to hear from such a great and righteous man.
Shortly before his
death, the Elder said, “I will fly away on wings, I have huge and strong ones
and I will reach “there” in that moment … and at Home will pray for you all…”
After many miracles of healing paralytics, the blind, those with cancer, and
the mute, the Elder said in his last days, “”Christ is light of my entire life.
He fills all around me and in me. I gave all I could to people, to the people
of God and to Mother Church. Now I am ready and leave to the Sweatiest Savior
of the world – Christ.” Upon his deathbed, the Elder saw the Holy Archangel
Gabriel enter his room with a bouquet of lilies to symbolize the Elder’s purity
and holiness. Seeing this the Elder said, “He has blessed me, and crossed with
this lily!” The Elder then passed away on April 4th 2002.
CONVERSATION