Life-Saving
Splinter
When Archimandrite
Pavel Gruzdev was in a prison camp, he made it his duty to get up an hour
before the general wakeup call and wash the floor in the entire bunkhouse.
After he was released and became the rector in a parish church, he always
washed the floor in the church. One day, this humble habit rescued his life.
The brick vault of
the dome in the main aisle of Holy Trinity Church in v. Verkhne-Nikulskoye,
where Father Pavel Gruzdev served, collapsed. The church had long been in need
of repair because its foundation and other buildings near the church were eaten
away by the waters of Rybinsk water reservoir, which did a great deal of
damage. Of course, the parish didn’t have enough money to restore and repair
the church. Surprisingly, the way the vault fell in reveals God’s mercy and
providence of His chosen one.
That was how it
happened. Father Pavel was washing the floor in the central part of the church.
Suddenly, a splinter pierced his hand. It was so painful that Father Pavel
threw away the wash-cloth and went out of the church. It was at that very
moment that the vault collapsed. Huge pieces of bricks made a hole in the floor
at precisely the same place where Father Pavel had stood seconds before! When
he returned into the church, he saw clouds of dust and a heap of stones on the
place where he had stood… There was a hole in the dome, through which a clear
blue sky could be seen. Amazingly, no one was hurt during the collapse!
A Forgotten Name
Day
This is what
happened in my family this winter. My relative’s son is in the army now.
Lately, he called to congratulate his mom on her name day. He said that he had
almost forgotten about the day: life’s busy in the army, you know. When they
stood in the ranks in front of their barracks, an old lady approached him and
said, “Sonny, I’m going to celebrate my name day today. My name is Nina.
Congratulate me!” She singled him out of the entire rank for some reason.
His mother wasn’t
too surprised when he told her about it. She later admitted to me: if a boy
enjoys reading the Psalter in the army, everything’s possible. Indeed, her son
reads the Psalter voraciously whenever he can. He found this book in the
barracks library, in the leisure room. That’s how things go in our army
nowadays.
By Alexander
Tkachenko
A Raven’s Pie
Saint Kuksha of
Odessa was 63 in 1938, when he was thrown into a prison camp for five years as
a “cult minister”. Like all other convicts, he was made to work as a tree
logger 14 hours a day and subsist on a meager ration. The elderly hieromonk
endured the life at the prison camp patiently and complacently, and he even
tried to support other prisoners spiritually. Unfortunately, sometimes he felt
completely exhausted. The Lord came to his help, sometimes miraculously.
This is what the
elder wrote in his memoirs: “It was on Easter. I was weak and hungry. The sun
was shining and birds were singing, and the snow was already melting. I walked
along the barbed wire fence and I desperately wanted to eat. On the other side
of the fence, I saw cooks carrying pans with pies for the guards, and ravens
flying over their heads. I begged, ‘Hey, raven, you fed Prophet Elijah in the
wilderness, please bring me a piece of pie, too.’ All of a sudden, I heard a
loud ‘Caw’ over my head, and a pie fell to my feet: the raven had stolen it
from a cook’s pan. I bent over to take the pie, thanked God tearfully, and ate
it.”
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds
CONVERSATION