The Catalog of Good Deeds

Many do not understand the concept of faith. They think that Christians are weak intellectually, believing with insufficient evidence. Atheists often adhere to an unproven underlying assumption, that reason is the highest way to find truth. They have not understood that faith is actually a very positive attribute. Jesus thanked God the Father for not just revealing His truth to the intellectuals, but for sending His gift of faith to the humble. He said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes” (Matt 11:25).

Bishop Kallistos Ware, in his introduction to the book “The Art of Prayer”, talks about three elements of man – body, soul and spirit. He goes on to say that body, soul and spirit each have their special way of knowing: the body, through the five senses; the soul through intellectual reasoning; the spirit can come to a mystical perception that transcends man’s ordinary rational processes.

What is implied in your question is as follows. Science has made very impressive progress. Atheists often claim that faith in God is a feeble attempt to “fill in the gaps”. In previous centuries thinkers would, for example, study the amazing beauty and order of nature, but could not explain how such order could have come about just by chance, so concluded there must be a creator. Belief in God filled this “gap”. Science then progressed: for example, Charles Darwin came up with the clever idea of “survival of the fittest”. Science had filled this gap, so there was no longer a need to invoke the concept of a creator. Your question implies that now that we have reached the 21st century, virtually all the gaps have been filled by science.

Thorough knowledge of science can lead to a different conclusion. Yes, science may have offered a plausible explanation for some gaps, but as science has progressed it has found other gaps. For example, modern physics has realised that it has no explanation for the amazing “biofriendliness” of the universe. There are about 30 basic parameters (e.g., the speed of light, Planck’s constant), which if they were a little different to their present values, would mean no life and certainly no humans. Scientists have done calculations and realized that if the speed of light or one of these other constants was only 1% more or less, or if the laws of physics did not happen to be exactly what they are, then there would be no life. The earth would not be continuously orbiting around the sun, there would be no carbon, therefore no DNA, and thus no life.

Another example is the so-called mind-brain debate. Even in the 21st century, no atheist has been able to come up with a convincing explanation of what philosophers call the “hard problem of consciousness”. We are aware that we exist, we can feel. An atheist believes that this can be “reduced” to physical processes occurring in our brains, that somehow out of the complex wiring of our brains there “emerges” self-awareness. They seem to start with the assumption that there is no God, they admit that currently we have no physical explanation for self-awareness, but conclude that there must be some physical explanation, that one day science and our imagination will progress and we will explain this gap as well. We in the Church however have received from God revelation that every human being has an immortal and eternal soul, which is closely connected with his body. The Church has a deep knowledge of human nature – man unites with his existence the tangible and intangible world.

Space does not permit me to give other detailed examples. We could have also referred to modern scholarly research on the “genre” of the Gospels: they do not have the features of “legend” but of “eye-witness accounts”.

In conclusion, an unbiased thinker can be convinced that it takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian. We need to be humble and strive against the passions, we need philotimo, and to look into our faith with an open mind. We need to strive to truly pray and live the life of the Church. St Silouan was speaking from experience when he used to say, “It is one thing to know about God, and another to know God”. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8).

Source: https://www.lychnos.org/how-is-it-possible-to-believe-in-god-in-the-21st-century/

There were two monks who fell prey to lust and left their monastery. In the meantime they started saying to one another, “What's the use for us in falling into this fornication and giving up on our monastic living? We will have to suffer hellfire and torment. Let us return to the desert.”

As soon as they returned, they confessed what they had done and asked the elders to give them a penance. The elders decreed that they had to spend a year in confinement on bread and water. The monks looked exactly the same weight.

When the penance period was over, they were discharged from the confinement, and the elders were surprised to see one of the monks sad and pale, while the other had a joyful and radiant face. It was a surprise because the monks had eaten the same amounts of food. So the elders asked the sad brother, “What have you been thinking about in your cell?”

“I was thinking,” he said, “about the wrongdoings that I had committed, and about the torment that I was destined to, and by reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin (Ps. 101:5).

The elders went on to ask the other monk, “What have you been thinking of in your cell?”

He replied, “I was thanking God for setting me free from the iniquity of the world and from future suffering and for bringing me back to this Angelic lifestyle, and, as I was thinking of God, I was excited.” The elders stated, “Both kinds of repentance are equal in the eyes of God.”

Long time ago, an old man was talking with his grandson. This was what he said:

— There is a war inside each person's heart, which resembles a fight between two wolves. One of the wolves represents the evil: jealousy, envy, self-pity, egoism, arrogance, and dishonesty. The other wolf represents the good: peace, love, hope, truth, kindness, and loyalty.

The boy was moved by his grandfather's words. He thought about it for a while and then asked:

— Which of the wolves will win in the end?

The old man smiled and responded:

— The wolf whom you feed will always win.

A barber told his client:

– If there is a God, why are there so many ill people? Where do homeless orphans and unjust wars come from? If there really was a God, there would be no suffering and no pain. It is hard to imagine a loving and omnipotent God who lets all these things to happen. That's why I don't believe that there is a God.

The client replied:

– You know what? There are no barbers.

– Why? – the barber exclaimed. – One of them is in front of you and you can see me.

– No! – the client protested. – There are no barbers, or else there weren't so many unshaven and uncut people like that man over there walking down the road.

– Well, my dear, it isn't the barbers’ problem! People simply don't come to me.

– That's right! – the client nodded. – That's exactly what I want to say: There is a God! People just don't look for him and don't come to him. That's why there is so much suffering in the world.

There were some monks who were discussing humility. A noble man from Gaza heard them say that the closer one gets to God, the more sinful he considers himself to be. He was amazed:

— How can that be?

He was eager to know what these words meant.

One of the monks replied:

— Sir, who do you think you are in your town?

The noble man answered:

— I think I am the greatest and the most important man in my town.

— What if you go to Caesarea, what would you think of yourself?

— I would consider myself to be the last of the gentry.

— Who would you be in Antioch then?

— I'd be counted among the commoners.

— What if you go to Constantinople to the Emperor's Court, who would you be?

— I’d consider myself a tramp.

— This is how saints look at it. — the monk said, — the closer they get to God, the more sinful they feel. When Abraham saw the Lord, he called himself dirt and ashes.

Before the dismissal, a priest announced:

– Next Sunday, I'll be talking with you about lies. Please read the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 17, to understand what I'll be speaking about.

The next Sunday, before he started preaching, the priest ordered:

– Those of you who have read the seventeenth chapter of Mark, please raise your hands.

Almost all the parishioners raised their hands.

– You are the very people who I would like to talk to about lies. – the priest commented. – There is no such chapter in the Gospel of Mark.

A novice asked his elder:

— Is it true that happiness is not the same as having a lot of money?

The elder confirmed that it was totally true. This is how he proved his point: you can buy a bed but not a healthy sleep; you can buy food but not appetite; drugs but not health; slaves but not friends; women but not love; a house but not a home; entertainment but not fun; education but not wisdom. And the list is incomplete.

There was a man who did not believe in God and was never shy to tell everybody about his attitude towards religion. His wife, on the contrary, believed in God and reared their children in the faith in spite of the rancid remarks of her husband.

One winter night, the wife and the children went to a village church, expecting to hear a sermon about the Nativity of Christ. The wife invited her husband to go to the church with them but he declined. “All that story is absurd.” – he said. – “Why would God need to humiliate himself and appear on earth as a man? It's ridiculous!”

His wife and children left, and he was alone. After a while, a strong wind started blowing and a snowstorm broke out. The man looked into the window but all he could see was endless snow. He sat comfortably in the chair and prepared to spend the rest of the evening in front of the fireplace. All of a sudden, he heard a loud clap: something hit his window. He came closer to the window but he was unable to see anything. When the blizzard somewhat faded, he went outdoors to see what had caused the loud noise. He saw a flock of wild geese in the field near his house. They were heading south but got caught up in the snowstorm and could not go any further. They lost their way and found themselves at his farm without food or shelter. They were flying low above the field, blinded by the snow. It must have been one of those geese that knocked into the man's window. He sympathized with the poor birds and decided to help them. He thought that the cowshed was the most suitable place for them. It was warm and safe, and they could easily spend the night in the cowshed and wait for the blizzard to stop. He went to the cowshed and opened its doors wide. He was standing there, waiting for the geese to walk into the cowshed.

However, the geese were flying around in circles and apparently didn't notice the open cowshed door or didn't understand what it was for. The man tried to catch their attention but he only scared the geese. The man went back home and returned with a loaf of bread. He scattered breadcrumbs along the road leading to the cowshed. The geese didn't fall for it, either.

The poor man was on the brink of despair. He sneaked up on the geese from behind and tried to drive them to the cowshed but the geese were even more terrified and started flying in all directions, except the direction of the cowshed. There was nothing that could make them go to the cowshed, where they could be warm and safe. “Why don't the geese follow me?” the man exclaimed. “Can't they see that it's the only place where they can survive during this blizzard?” He stood there thinking and realised that the geese simply didn't want to follow a human being. “If only I were a goose, I could have saved them,” the man said aloud. He came up with a brilliant idea. He went to his cowshed, took one of his geese and brought it into the field, far from the wild geese who were flying in circles. He released the goose. The goose flew through the flock of wild geese and returned to the cowshed. One by one, all other geese followed him.

The man stood there quietly, and all of a sudden he once again heard the words that he had uttered moments before, “If I were a goose, I could save them.” Then he recalled the words he had said to his wife earlier, “Why would God become like us? It's ridiculous!” Suddenly, it dawned on him that it was precisely what God had done. We used to be like those geese: blind, forlorn, and doomed. God sent his son to become like one of us, so that He could show us the way to salvation.

When the wind and the blinding snow started to calm down, his soul was also relieved and comforted by this wonderful thought. He suddenly realised why Jesus had come. Years of doubt and disbelief dissipated together with the snowstorm. He fell to his knees in the snow and said his first prayer ever, “Thank you Lord for coming to this world in human form to deliver me from the tempest!”

Translated from: https://azbyka.ru/days/

A common issue in a couple relationship is about their spiritual life. One can be very spiritual following the way of life prescribed for Orthodox Christians and the other not making any attempt to follow the practices of the Church. If not dealt with carefully this can become a source of great conflict.

The advice that is most commonly given is to first of all have love and do not judge. With love, pray for the one who is not now interested in spiritual matters.

Here is advice from Elder Paisios when asked about this by a woman concerned about her husband:

Entrust him to Christ and pray that his heart be softened. Eventually little by little, Christ will descend in his heart, and he will start speculating. As soon as his heart is somewhat softened, then she can ask him, for example, to drive her to church. She shouldn't say to him, "Come to church with me," but "Can you please take me as far as the church?" If he takes her all the way to the church, then he might say to himself, "I've come this far; why don't I go inside and light a candle?" In this way, little by little, he may make progress.

With prayer and kindness coupled with patience you can lead your spouse to open their heart to a more spiritual way of living. If you do not approach this with love and tenderness then their heart will be hardened and your relationship potentially damaged. By seeking to discover the little nudges you can provide you can lead your spouse in the right direction. But you have be clever so that your nudges do not become nagging.

Your spiritual father can also be of help. He can help you develop your own spiritual life so that your goodness will be transferred to your spouse.

Elder Paisios points out that women tend to be pious by nature. But once a man becomes interested in his spirituality, not even his wife can keep up with him. Then the wife must be careful not to become envious of his progress. If she begins to complain about all his spiritual endeavors and calls him a monk or priest in protest, then the man needs to tread very carefully. The aim is to grow together, but you will not always be on the same step.

If a difficulty arises in this case here is what advice Elder Paisios gives to the husband,

To keep the family from falling apart I advise the husbands, "When the right moment comes, tell your wife: 'If I go to church and pray a little and do some prostrations, or if I read a spiritual book, I'm not doing this out of an abundance of devotion, but only as a means of self-restraint, to keep me from being led astray by our wretched society and getting involved with bad company.'" If the husband handles it carefully then the wife will be happy and may even go on to outdo her husband spiritually. But if he is careless and insensitive, he'll crush her...

For many years in my own life it was my wife who was interested in spiritual matters and insisted on going to Church regularly. I would find excuses to not go. But, thank God, she was patient and prayed for me. Eventually Christ got hold of me and I could not get enough. I read everything, I went to church regularly, I prayed daily, I sought counsel from a spiritual father frequently. Then I became worried that my wife was not showing the same interest as I now felt. Somehow God gave me the insight to understand that we must walk this path together and that we would not always be on the same step along this long path. So instead of going my own way, I sought ways to involve her in my efforts and was careful not to judge, but to appreciate how she led me to what now gave me great inner joy. Through God's guidance we have continued to walk a path together. We pray together, we go to services together, we share what we are reading. We have found that an active spiritual life nurtures our love for each other. We still have our arguments but they do not last long.

The challenge for all couples is to seek a shared path realizing that this may take many years to achieve but with sincerity on the part of either one of the couple, the other will be brought along with them and may eventually surpass them. It then becomes a beautiful dance where each leads the other at different times. This is the way we have been able to grow old together.

Source: http://orthodoxwayoflife.blogspot.com.by/2013/09/spiritual-life-of-couple.html

Since the aim of church rubrics is to adapt church services to the holy commemorations of the day, their compilation must have begun the very moment when these commemorations became part of Christian worship. Naturally, they were compiled in oral form at first and only later were they put into written form. This occurred in the apostolic period when at least the liturgical celebration of the Day of Resurrection certainly existed. Therefore it would not be an exaggeration to say that the first lines of our church rubrics were composed by the holy Apostles themselves. It is not surprising, then, that old Russian scribes used to call the Typicon a God-inspired book. The compilation of the Typicon began at a time when Christian spiritual life was at a high point, and this made possible the appearance of Divinely-inspired writings.

The development of our services began in apostolic times and was completed only in the 16th century, when the rubrics attained their full form as we know it today. Of course, the value of the rubrics cannot be belittled by the fact that 1500 years were necessary for their creation; to the contrary. Thanks to such a long period of development, the Church of different epochs was able to participate in this process. Each one of these epochs had its strong points and beauty and left its mark on our centuries-old Typicon. Clearly, then, the rubrics were created by the Church throughout different periods of time, and also in different areas and countries. Consequently, the rubrics were formed not only by the Apostolic Church, but by the Church catholic, both in place and in time. In the pages of the rubrics one can sense the stirrings of the fragrance of Church life; form the piety of Constantinople to the asceticism of Egypt and the Thebaid. If we stop to consider the amount of Old Testament material found in our services, we will, on hearing them, receive a spiritual sense of holy, biblical antiquity, and to "walk with one mind" with the Church of the Patriarchs and Prophets.

Although the service rubrics were the creation of the Church as a whole, they were primarily developed by her most worthy sons. Their first hand authors were people who knew no other life than that of prayer and fasting, those for whom the sweetness of worship allowed the intake of food once every five days, those who slept either standing or sitting, who finished their all-night vigils in churches which were then locked from the outside and set ablaze by pagans, martyrs whose blood was sometimes mixed with the Blood of the Eucharist. It is not possible for the pages of the rubrics which they compiled not to have been soaked by tears of compunction and the sacrificial blood of their confession of faith. It is impossible not to feel this from the texts and it is precisely this that endows the Typicon with that special spirit of holiness and purity.

The mystery of the profound effect the Orthodox service has on one’s soul lies in the fact that the participant feels the influence of the Church of all ages, personified by Her best representatives, and thus partakes in the life of the Church as a whole. This influence comes not only from the poetry and music of the services, but also from their structure; from the forty repetitions of "Lord have mercy," from the quiet prostrations which bring a long pause between the chanting and reading, from the antiphonal singing.

It is with the structure and the aesthetics of the services that the Typicon is, in fact, concerned.

The rubrics presently in use were partly compiled by St. Sabbas or, more precisely, by the monastery of our holy and God-bearing Father Sabbas, near Jerusalem. This monastery, located in the severe Judean desert, close to Jerusalem, was founded in the fifth century by St. Sabbas the Sanctified. At this time it is not possible to determine from currently available sources just what portion of the rubrics belongs to St. Sabbas himself. In any case, the home of our present rubrics is Palestine—its desert which was permeated by fasting and asceticism. Consequently, the creators of our church rubrics were brought up in the same desert which gave us Prophet Elijah and St. John the Baptist and which prepared the Saviour Himself for His service in the world. The very desert air was saturated by holy remembrances. Nearby were the greatest holy sites of the Christian world; Jerusalem with the Tomb of our Lord and the Church of the Resurrection, where prayer becomes more earnest almost of its own accord. It was here, as witnessed by a western traveler of the 4th century (Sylcia Aquinitas), that when the Passion Gospels were read "all the people would cry and weep so much that no one was left at this hour who was not moved to tears."

Translated by priest Peter Perekrestov

Edited by Lawrence Miller

From the Introductory chapter, "The History of Church Rubrics"

of The Explanatory Typicon by Prof. Michael Skaballanovitch

of the Kiev Theological Academy, 1910

A chapter from the book “Teraturgima, or Miracles of the New Century.

The first great omen of the Chernobyl disaster, which shook the entire planet in 1986, was revealed at a time of the rapid development of nuclear energy, long before the explosion of the 4th reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Witnesses recall it happened exactly ten years before the accident, on April 26, 1976. It is interpreted as a sign sent by the Lord and Our Lady 40 years ago. A local newspaper “Prapor Peremohy” (“The Banner of Victory) published an article at the time, titled “Fairytales of Clergymen.” An author referred to a cloud of an unusual shape appearing in the sky that day, which the clergymen interpreted as an apparition of the Virgin Mary. However, it was not merely an atmospheric oddity.

That evening many locals witnessed an unusually shaped cloud floating above the ground. The figure of the Virgin Mary could be discerned in it, with her face and brightly coloured raiment clearly visible. She was holding a tuft of dried wormwood, which the locals also call “chernobylnik.” Holy Mary dropped the wormwood over the town. Then the bright radiant cloud moved towards the forest and stopped over the church of the Holy Prophet Elijah. Blessed Virgin Mary faced the church and blessed it twice with both hands. As she appeared in the sky, it stopped raining and the weather became warm and mild. This phenomenon was interpreted by the local priest, Father Alexander Prokopenko. He explained that only Mother of God may give her blessing with two hands. Bishops also have the privilege of blessing with two hands; however the vision in the sky was not that of a male.

The Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah

The locals interpreted this phenomenon as a forecast of a dry summer and a poor harvest. Some people have found and picked up pieces of wormwood that fell from the sky. Many years later it became clear that this was a prediction: exactly ten years later the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. But when the disaster struck, nobody made a connection between the events ten years apart. People recalled the story much later and came to recognize it as a sign from God.

In 2002 His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine blessed the creation of an icon which captured the apparition of Blessed Virgin Mary over Chernobyl. It was painted by a servant of God, an artist from Kiev named Ioan, who also created the rest of the artwork in our church. Ioan, who is an orphan, is very religious, pious and earnest. He had been fasting and took communion before starting the work. The icon portrays the church of St. Elijah with the Queen of Heaven and Archangels Michael and Gabriel on both sides, rising in the sky above it. She holds chernobylnik (wormwood) in her hands. Two capsules with wormwood picked in the Chernobyl area are affixed on both sides of the icon. His Beatitude Vladimir blessed the image as one of Chernobyl’s locally revered icons.

A vision of the Chernobyl Saviour icon is revealed to the leader of the Chernobyl Power Plant Communist party section on his deathbed

Another famous icon of St. Elijah’s church is the Chernobyl Saviour, which has a special history. This icon is said to have originated directly from the local people. They have survived one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. After the initial panic subsided, people were looking for support and sympathy. Many of them became very ill.

Yuri Andreev, who is now deceased, was the leader of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Communist party section at the time. A Communist with a strong attachment to his party’s ideas, he became very ill after receiving huge doses of radiation. He was suffering greatly; the doctors did not expect him to live much longer. Yuri kept seeing a recurring dream: an image of an icon. He described it to the artist and gave instructions on how it had to be painted. He also told of his dream to me, and I passed his message to His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr. Being seriously ill, the Communist leader kept asking for the icon to be painted. He saw the image with his inner spiritual vision and felt a strong need for it to be created. His Beatitude gave his blessing.

The icon was painted at the Trinity-Sergiev Lavra in 2003 and sanctified at Kiev-Pechersk Lavra on the feast day of the Dormition of the Mother of God. When His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir blessed the image of the Chernobyl Saviour, three signs appeared in the sky. A dove flew above the icon before hundreds of witnesses, then a rainbow appeared in the sky, and finally the sign of the cross became visible, with the sun shining at its centre. Curiously, Yuri Andreev, the terminally ill leader of the Communist party section of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, greatly recovered after this event. The Lord healed him. It is surprising that a staunch Communist, later the president of the “Chernobyl – Ukraine” Union, was chosen for this mission. Thanks to him the icon of the Chernobyl Saviour came into the world, and the Lord has continued to heal the sick and afflicted people who come to venerate this image.

The Church of the Holy Prophet Eliah

Vladislav Goretsky, a well-known iconographer, was chosen to create this icon. The image is truly sublime, expressive and spiritual. It is also exceptional in that it depicts ordinary people alongside the image of God for the first time in the history of iconography. The souls of the survivors of the Chernobyl tragedy are portrayed on the right, while the souls of the deceased victims are on the left. His Beatitude Vladimir requested the permission of Patriarch Alexiy II to paint the images of the people in the icon. Permission was granted.

A pine tree that grew in the form of a cross

The subject of the icon is deeply symbolic. It is a visual rendition of a theme from the Book of Revelation. At the centre of the image is a “star of wormwood” falling from the sky against the backdrop of the ominous glow of the explosion. Another focal point is a crucifix-shaped pine tree. This extraordinary sign of the upcoming tragedy grew on Polissya’s land decades before the accident. This large, old tree was fully grown before the Second World War. Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant was built just two kilometres away from this huge living cross, growing at the forest edge.

After the tragedy, when the so-called “red forest” poisoned by radiation was cut down, an opening revealed a stunning spiritual vision: two symbols of the universal disaster – the exploded fourth nuclear reactor and the giant tree-cross – became connected in one.

The “Red forest”

This vision is reminiscent of the Old Testament cruciform tree watered by Lot, which was to become Christ’s cross two thousand years later. The tree is believed to have grown from the three staffs given to Abraham by the Holy Trinity, Who was revealed to the forefather in the form of three angels. Four thousand years later the Chernobyl Cross arose as a symbol of the nuclear crucifixion that would come in 1986. To the left and right of the cross are the living and the deceased liquidators of the nuclear catastrophe. Above them is the Lord Jesus Christ with a scroll of the Apocalypse, open on the page that holds the prophecy, as well as the Holy Virgin and the Archangel Michael. This is the exact vision that came in a dream to the Communist leader of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

The Chernobyl Saviour icon mystically communicates that the One holding the scroll holds the keys to the grand design and to every detail in the lives of those born into the world, as well as the events and defining moments of history, including the tragedy of Chernobyl.

The Saviour looked at the priest every night, leading him to where His image was hidden.

There is another extraordinary icon, which I have never mentioned before. It is the image of the Saviour from St Michael the Archangel’s church in the village of Krasno, located in the exclusion zone.

This wonderful icon has an unusual history. After the accident all the villagers from Krasno were evacuated due to very high levels of radiation brought on by the radioactive cloud moving towards Belarus. One of Krasno’s inhabitants ended up in St. Petersburg, where he became a priest at one of the local churches.

Eleven years ago he found my phone number and called. “Father Nikolay, I’d like to ask you for a favour,” he told me. “I have a recurring dream, in which I see the eyes of the Saviour from an icon left in the exclusion zone in Krasno. I would like you to find it – it is a large icon of Christ painted on wooden board.” “How will I find it?” I asked. “I’ll tell you where to go,” he responded.

He described the location with great precision. He named the house and the place in the house where the icon was hidden. One had to be a local to give such exact instructions for navigating the village that by now had become contaminated and abandoned.

The priest’s grandfather used to serve in St Michael the Archangel’s church for many years. The extraordinary old icon of the Saviour had been stolen from the church once, but was later miraculously restored by the Lord. The remarkable wooden church itself, built in 1800, was plundered after the Chernobyl disaster. But the grandfather, now deceased, had an opportunity to hide the antique icon, although the location remained unknown. The Lord Himself gave a sign and taught how to find the sacred icon that was dear to Him.

Thousands of kilometres away, in St. Petersburg, a priest and a native of the Chernobyl zone began to dream of this icon, the Saviour looking at him every night. I drove to the village and found the abandoned house as it had been described over the phone. Everything turned out to be true. I pulled the icon from the attic and brought it to our local church. When the icon was restored, the priest from St. Petersburg came to our church to worship and to witness his dream, which became reality.

The image of Jesus Christ in this icon is truly alive and unforgettable, his gaze forever vivid in your memory.

Angels lead a church service in the exclusion zone.

The old church in the village of Krasno has long been abandoned. However, we have had multiple witness accounts of church services being held there by the angels and the heavenly host. Staff members of the Chernobyl police force have come to me on multiple occasions between 2005 and 2009, asking to explain the meaning of what they had witnessed.

Police officers have recounted the following events. On one occasion a police unit that patrols the exclusion zone approached the village church and heard voices. They thought it was an illusion, since settlers had long left the village. There is also an abandoned checkpoint at the entrance to the village. The surrounding forest has grown thick and dangerous, making it impossible to get into the village by any other route.

The patrol vehicle moved forward towards the church. Officers could hear beautiful singing coming from the church and saw a mild glow of the lights inside the building. The men came out of the car and froze, overcome with religious fear. The Chernobyl police unit is a well-trained professional force, prepared to respond to a variety of emergency situations. Yet, these hardened men felt so overwhelmed with fear that they left the scene immediately. They went back to the same location again, but this time the church looked quiet. They did not dare enter the church and sent a report to their chief.

The police officers later came to my church and asked me to explain the nature of the event they had witnessed. I told them that the history of the church has multiple accounts of such events. Angels do not leave the holy altar until the end of time. When people have to abandon a church for any reason, angels come to worship there instead. The church in Krasno has special significance to them, since it is dedicated to the Archangel Michael, the head of the heavenly host. The place, although burned by lethal doses of radiation, still remains a sacred site, where God’s grace abides. The Lord’s will was to bring responsible witnesses to recount this miracle to the wider world. All subsequent witness accounts of the liturgy in the empty church were identical to the first description.

I have been going to the church in Krasno to lead services on feast days ever since. During one of my visits I found an icon of the Archangel Michael. I went into the loft between the church’s cupolas. It is a difficult spot to reach and quite dangerous to walk through, because of the rotting old floor boards. I prayed and walked as far as I could go, when I suddenly felt as though someone was looking at me closely. I raised my head and saw the icon of the Archangel Michael with a fiery sword in his hand, placed on a decrepit old shelf. The church had been previously plundered by looters, but this icon had remained mysteriously concealed from their sight. The icon was placed there to protect the church. It is unknown who hid the image; perhaps, the angels themselves.

The Apparition of St Seraphim of Sarov and the blessing of the annual liturgy in Chernobyl on April 26th.

This event happened in 2001 and shook me deeply. I have seen many things in my lifetime; however, this story was important unlike anything else. It helped me understand the place of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the history of the Church and the life of the universe as a whole. There is a deep spiritual interconnectedness between this explosion, the history of the Church and the history of the world at large.

The 4th reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The fishermen who were in their boats on the Pripyat River at night on April 26th saw a bright explosion of light above the church of St. Elijah the Prophet, followed by another explosion above the nuclear power plant. This was a sign described in the book of Revelation as “a great star, blazing like a torch” (Rev. 8:10-11).

When I came to serve in this church after the tragedy, the building and grounds required a lot of restoration. We worked hard to rebuild the church, and I conducted regular liturgies, even though there were very few parishioners. On April 26th, my first anniversary of the tragedy at this church, I prayed and went to bed. There were people keeping vigil in town and remembering the victims through secular rituals, concerts and feasts. I fell asleep.

My window overlooks a cliff above the Pripyat River. I remember suddenly waking up at night and looking out of the window. I saw an old man in white robes with a white beard and a staff walking towards my house. I recognized St Seraphim of Sarov, his face, gait and bearing looking exactly as depicted in the icons. St Seraphim approached my house, stopped in front of my window and looked at me closely. He hit the ground three times with his staff, then turned towards the river and walked off through the church gates towards the power plant. Then I remember finding myself in bed again. I turned on the lights and saw it was 1.30 a.m. – the precise time the nuclear disaster struck. The Lord has sent St. Seraphim to wake me up and call me to prayer and vigil that night.

I immediately had an insight: the nuclear catastrophe was one of the watershed events in human history, described in the Book of Revelation: “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water – the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter” (Rev. 8:10-11). Wormwood is a wide-spread plant in this area, also known as “chernobylnik,” hence the name of the town.

There is also a direct link between the apparition of the Holy Virgin above Chernobyl ten years before the tragedy. This land was meant to be a place where the Holy Scriptures culminated, and the Lord’s word split human history into “before” and “after” the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. I kept trying to understand why the Lord has chosen St Seraphim to reveal the spiritual meaning of the tragedy and wrote a letter to Patriarch Alexiy II. We corresponded for two years. As a result, our church officially received part of St. Seraphim’s holy relics, which I personally brought from Diveyevo. St Seraphim was a devout monk, but also an active participant in all the important events of his time. He began his spiritual journey in Kiev, where he worshipped at the holy places and the saints of the Kiev Caves monastery. He wanted to join the brothers at the monastery and received a blessing to go to Sarov. He always remained involved in the affairs of his homeland.

Ever since St Serpahim’s apparition on the anniversary of the tragedy we have conducted all-night vigils and the Holy Liturgy on the night of April 26th in Chernobyl. Numerous archbishops, bishops and members of the clergy have joined us over the years to remember the victims. Among them is Pavel, the Metropolitan of Chernobyl and the bishop of the Kiev Caves Lavra, who ordained me to the priesthood. I believe the Lord has purposefully made him the first church leader in Chernobyl.

Numerous pilgrims are also drawn to Chernobyl on this day. We usually go to the cemetery to have a funeral service for the firefighters who were the first to face the blazing nuclear reactor. Thus, through St Seraphim, the Lord has blessed us to stay awake and pray during the hour our planet suffered a nuclear explosion. In 2016 this tradition will be 30 years old.

It is unlikely we will ever be able to grasp the fullness and the importance of signs and events surrounding the history of the nuclear tragedy in Chernobyl. Yet, there is clearly a direct spiritual link between all of them. The Lord reveals all that is necessary in His own time. We must remain patient and steadfast in our prayer, as we wait to receive His knowledge.

Archpriest Nikolay Yakushin

Source: http://orthochristian.com/92606.html

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