What a Priest Sees Where People Die: Miraculous Stories about Cancer
For some
people certain things, which seem appalling to other people, turn to everyday routine.
For many years Priest Andrew Bityukov comes to people who suffer from cancer. Often
he has to witness the last hours or minutes of someone’s earthly life. Fr.
Andrew is serving in the church in honor of St. Raisa of Alexandria at the 1st
St. Petersburg State Medical University and he refuses to get used to this. He
prefers to speak not about despair, but about hope; not about the meeting with death, but with life.
I got
sick and understood something important
– Fr.
Andrew, often you see how people, who have faced a disease, begin to pray as
hard as they can. Skeptics keep saying “there is nothing special in your
prayers, this is pure psychology”. Do you know any examples when the work of
prayer goes beyond the borders of simple psychology?
– When I was young, I was working at a hospice. I have
met a woman there, who I believe was a saint. She came to the hospital when she
was already in the last stages of cancer. During our conversation it came out
that she had had more than ten abortions. What is more, most of them she did by
herself. When she got sick the first thing she asked was not “why I deserve this?”,
but “what should I do now?” She got the answer: “Pray. Here are the morning and
evening prayers. Here is the akathist for women who murdered a child in the
womb”. Every time I came to her, I saw her sitting on the bed with her glasses
on and praying. Later that person began to beam with light, the atmosphere in
the hospital room changed. People did not want to change the room, although it
was the most crowded room in the hospital. Peace emanated from her.
That person died in peace. So, this is the experience
and the result of prayer that I have faced personally.
 |
| Fr. Andrew Bityukov |
– You
have worked in an ambulance team, and you serve for many years in the place,
where people with serious and even incurable diseases are. Can you say that you
have not solved the question of the origins and reasons of people’s sufferings
yet and that nothing here causes an inner rebel in you?
– The theme of physical sufferings is rather clear to
me. St. John the Chrysostom said that a person who learned to withstand all his
diseases with patience, is close to holiness. When you see for many years, how
these people carry their paint, you understand already what this all is about.
It is much more difficult to understand sufferings that are caused in this
world by healthy people.
What concerns the sick, many of them finally
understand the sense, one way or another.
Even some unfaithful people say, “How good it is that
I have got sick – it helped me to understand something important”. We can
compare a person who is sick to the one who keeps the fast. They are restricted
in what they can do, they are isolated from the outer world. The ideas about
how one can change his life, what mistakes he has made, what is valuable in our
life and what is not, come to their mind.
– But
sometimes people get bitter because of their sickness.
– Yes, for many people their sickness is a wrong turn
in their life. They begin to blame themselves, other people and God. We have to
talk to such people and offer them to look at the situation from a different
viewpoint. I do not expect that a person will change after our conversation.
Some people did not change even after the conversation with God Himself. This
is why I say: “You can disagree with me. Now I leave, and you will stay here.
You will have questions and counter-arguments, and this is good. We will meet
once again, I will listen to you and we will continue discussing this issue”.
Listening
to people
– Do
people in severe condition have a negative reaction on you and your words about
God?
– In the departments that I visit, I do not meet with
people who do not want to see me. Not because I just do not want to, but
because they do not address me. Once a patient threw the blanket away to show
me that both his legs were amputated. The he said, “So, where is your God if I
have lost my legs?” I asked him, “Could you tell me for how long do you smoke?”
He said that it was 50 years. His disease was caused by smoking. “So, what does
this have to do with God? Didn’t you know smoking is dangerous?” Of course,
that was not the end of our conversation. I did not leave him like that. I
tried to comfort him and said that life was going on, that one could solve the
problem of rehabilitation or use the prostheses…
– What
episode from your service at the children’s hospital impressed you most of all
and why?
– I served a funeral service for the youngest patient
of our clinic. Before that, when the child was still sick, I had a very long
talk with his mother. The boy’s parents were close relatives to each other.
They both understood that their marriage was wrong, but their love was stronger
than that. In that marriage, they had three children, and the youngest of them
was born with congenital leukemia. When I was performing the funeral service,
his mother was quite calm, she behaved somehow wisely… Then she told me:
“Father, I take this not as a punishment. I know what we should do now. We will
not split up, but we will not have children any more. We will bring up the ones
we already have”. She said that not with despair, but with the desire to live
on.
With children and their parents, I have the whole
stories. Usually children spend much time in the hospital, so quite a trustful
communication emerge between us. And I see when the Lord prepares the parents
to their child’s death. This is not a sudden tragedy for them. Especially if
parents go to church, partake of Holy Communion, they are more prepared
spiritually and ready for such a result of the disease – they are ready to
accept it. Children, if they are not in pain, suffer from all this less than
their parents.
– If
parents and their child do not go to church, then what do you think your aim is:
just to comfort them or help them in their churching?
– Perhaps, just to be near. To be with them in this
difficult situation and share their sorrows if it is possible, to listen to
them. If we speak about the relations with patients and their parents, then for
me the main teacher in this is Anthony of Sourozh, who is teaching us to be
silent. Do not come to the bed of a sick person with certain phrases you have
prepared in advance. Listen to what people say, be quiet, feel the atmosphere
of their sufferings – let them all speak.
It is well-known that if someone learned about the
death of a close person and is crying now, we must not hasten to comfort this
person. We need to let this destructive power go out. When the person is calm,
we can put a hand on his shoulder and talk.
Many people rethink their whole life exactly during
their sickness, they begin to establish priorities in the right way. And if
they want to speak to a priest at this time, then here I am. Right here.
– Can you
state several main rules for a person who has found out he is sick and that
probably there will be no cure for it?
- You should value your time and people, you should
learn to contemplate. If it is a faithful person, then in this experience of
sickness he can get close to the experience of saints. Many of them were
physically ill. Remember Seraphim of Sarov, Ambrose of Optina. People came to
them, disabled and weak saints, with their pain. But these saints had their own
pain, too, and not only physical: often they faced suspicion, slander and
snitching from brethren. Ascetics lived in that situation and managed to bear
the burden of other people’s pain, which became only heavier.
A sick person can experience this if he stops asking
“Why it was me to get sick?” and say to God: “Let it be by Your Will! I want to
see what You are going to show me”. At the same time, the relatives get a great
opportunity to demonstrate their love in reality. This is not easy, but this is
for real.
It is
important not to get used to
– Do
usual feelings and emotional reactions help you as a priest or disturb you in
your interaction with patients and their relatives?
– In the interaction with patients, emotions must be in
the background. The same I say to the parishioners who feel really bad about
their relative’s sickness. Especially it concerns various senile diseases.
Often sick people behave bad with their close ones, they find really silly
words. But if you communicate with a sick person on an emotional level, you spend
too much of your spiritual and psychological forces. And with these emotions
you are binding yourself. When I worked in the ambulance, we could not lament
each dreadful tragedy – we had to get ourselves together and do our work. No one
needs your emotions in such a situation. They called you so that you can help.
When you have helped already and left, you can relax and cry, but not in the
place where people need your help. A bot is just 7 years old, but his
consciousness is adult already, he brought up that maturity in himself through
sufferings. And now he is gone – but during all that time he became a friend for
you because you spoke with him on serious issues. Of course, such loses are more difficult to
withstand.
– Fr.
Andrew, you refer to the theme of irrational things this way or another. In the
beginning of our conversation, you called the woman a saint. Are you not afraid
of speaking so explicitly: “saint”, “miracle”?
– In fact, the perception of a miracle is rather
subjective. Many people remain skeptical about the miracles described in the
Holy Gospel. Some people doubt in the holiness of generally accepted saints,
others proclaim the holiness of the people, who are dubious from both the
church and moral point of view. I talk about my personal experience – when there
is no mistaking this holiness, when you are ready to kiss the hands of this
elderly woman, because she just emits wise peace.
This is what true humility is – she is going to die in
several days, but she is calm and joyful.
How can we call such a person? She has no spite in her
heart. She is doing great.
This concerns not only elderly people. I remember one
woman who was not especially old. When I came to her so that she can partake of
Holy Communion, she was smiling all the time. I asked her, “Why are you
smiling?” She replied: “Because the Lord showed me so much in my sickness! I
must have died 10 years ago. Instead, I have managed to raise my daughter. I
got sick when she was 8, her father left us alone. Since I was a doctor, I
understood how long I could live. I prayed that the Lord gave an opportunity to
raise my child”. Such episodes persuade me that the Lord is especially close to
all these people.
Translated
by The Catalog of Good Deeds
Source: https://foma.ru/rak-istorii-o-chude.html
