And reasoning with advice

With God, everything happens on time for those who know how to wait.

Our wings sometimes hang and we don’t have the strength to fly into the sky. This is nothing, this is the science of sciences that we go through - as long as the desire to see the sky above our heads, the clear, starry sky, the sky of God, does not disappear.

Why don't you become a pianist, a surgeon, an artist? Answer: you need to study. And in order to teach others the science of science - spiritual life - in your opinion, there is no need to study?

If sin is initially laid in the foundation of life, then it is doubtful to expect good fruit in this case.

Love for humanity is verbal fornication. Love for a specific person, on our life path given by God, is a practical matter, requiring work, effort, struggle with oneself, one’s laziness

Temptations of time, tax identification number, new documents

1. 70 years of captivity could not but leave its mark on people. Captivity is over, but a new misfortune is on the doorstep - freedom and permissiveness to all evil
2. Experience shows that those who came to the Throne from rock music cannot serve for salvation... Some cannot stand at the throne at all, and some sink to the bottom of hell with iniquities such as they did not do before taking holy orders
3. Some publish religious literature on computers, while others create disgrace. And, using the same technique, some are saved, while others die here on earth
4. Turning to bioenergetics is turning to the enemy of God
5. You cannot simultaneously take in the Blood and Body of the Lord and urine. There is no blessing from the Church for treatment with urine
6. Take the cards: you are not yet asked about your faith and are not forced to renounce God
7. The seal will appear when he reigns and gains power, and there will be one and only ruler on earth, and now each state has its own head. And therefore, do not panic prematurely, but fear now the sins that open and angle the path for the future Antichrist

Sorrow, illness, old age

1. The time has come when a person is saved only through sorrow. So, everyone needs to bow down to their feet and kiss their hands.
2. We must seek not joy, but what contributes to the salvation of the soul
3. One does not come down from the Cross given by God - one takes it off
4. The fact that you grieve is good, it is a kind of prayer. Just don’t allow any grumbling
5. In conclusion, I had a true prayer - and this is because every day I was on the verge of death
6. The last believers will be greater in the eyes of God than the first, who have accomplished more feats unthinkable for our time
7. Illnesses - God's permission - contribute to the good of man. They slow down our crazy rush through life and make us think and seek help. As a rule, human help is powerless, is depleted very quickly, and the person turns to God
8. We must fulfill the requirements of age, they are given to us from above, and whoever resists them resists God’s determination for us.
9. Congregate, confess and take communion - and with God, give yourself to the doctors. Doctors and medicines are from God, and they are given to us to help

God, His Providence and Salvation

1. The world is ruled only by the Providence of God. This is the salvation of a believer and this is the strength to endure earthly sorrows
2. God does not consult with anyone and does not give an account to anyone. One thing is certain: everything He does is good for us, one goodness, one love
3. Without everything, everything is scary and life itself is not life.
4. Life is especially difficult now, and do you know why? Yes, because they have completely moved away from the Source of life - from God
5. It is important not What do, but How and in the name Whom. This is salvation
6. There are no obstacles for those who wish to be saved at all times, for those who wish to be saved are led along the path of salvation by the Savior Himself

Family, raising children, abortion, work and study

1. If your feelings include the apostolic definition of love (1 Cor. 13), then you will not be far from happiness
2. By the command of God, you should both receive the first and most important blessing for creation from your parents. They are given sacramental knowledge about their children, bordering on providence
3. You need to know the canons of the church: a possible age difference of plus or minus 5 years, more is unacceptable
4. For each - according to the will of the mother of the unborn - baby, those others whom she gives birth to “to her joy” will reward her with sorrows, illnesses, and emotional distress.
5. If the votes are divided at the family council, then the spouse’s voice should be taken as the head
6. You must treat work as obedience, and professionally always be at the proper level, and not below average
7. Studying for the sake of killing time is a sin. Time must be treasured

Monasticism

1. You need to go to a monastery not because your family has collapsed, but because your heart burns with the desire to be saved the hard way and serve God undividedly.
2. With the Lord, both saving and honest marriage is praiseworthy. And each person chooses for himself. But both are crucifixion, that’s for sure.
3. It is appropriate for a monk to fight temptations on the spot: in a new place the same demon will take up arms against you with redoubled force by right, for he has already won a victory over you once, expelling you from the place of battle

Eldership, clergy, priesthood

1. The elders you are looking for do not exist today. Because there are no novices, but only co-questioners
2. retreats when they don’t accept God’s the first time, and then becomes silent
3. I don’t see the point or benefit of thinking for you in everything and leading you like a blind man by the hand: you will become relaxed
4. Go to church, go to confession, ask many people about issues that concern you. And only when you understand that out of many one is the closest to your soul, will you turn only to him
5. A minister of the Church needs a companion-assistant, not a hindrance
6. It is not appropriate for a priest to act - this is a grave sin for him
7. His Holiness Patriarch Alexy I (he ordained Father John - Ed.) said: “Do everything that is written in the Trebnik, and endure everything that comes along with it. And you will be saved"

Orthodox Church, preaching Orthodoxy

1. If it had been planted with a fist, then it would not have been on earth long ago
2. There is no need to talk to others about God when they do not yet have the inclination to hear about Him. You will provoke them to blasphemy
3. Faith will come to your spouse in response to your labors and wise behavior with him in everything
4. Let us not flatter ourselves with the thought that we can be more just than the Lord, but let us listen to His commands given to us by the Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers, and this obedience will be salutary for us and useful for our loved ones
5. Be afraid to fall away from the Mother Church: she alone is holding back the lava of anti-Christian revelry in the world now!

Archimandrite John (Peasant): Guardian of the Faith

About Fr. John (Peasant) has been told as much as little has been said about any of the saints who shone in the Russian land. But he has not yet been canonized as a saint - too little time has passed since his death. But few of those who personally knew Father John doubt that this man was one of those about whom Christ said - “you are not of this world.” On the birthday of Father John, the “All-Russian Elder,” as many called him in absentia (he himself categorically protested against such names), “Neskuchny Sad” remembers what this man was like and why the legacy he left touches us so much.

Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) died only seven years ago, and back in the mid-1990s, already at a very advanced age, he willingly received visitors who came to him from all over Russia at the Pskov-Pechersky Holy Dormition Monastery. Such proximity in time makes it especially close, understandable, and modern for us. In the last years of his life, he willingly shared his memories, so much more is known about the priest than about thousands of holy martyrs and confessors who ended their days in the places from which Father John was destined to return. In addition, there are hundreds of heartfelt memories left about him. People who had the opportunity to see Father John remember how inspired he served in the church. How he walked from the temple, surrounded by people, old and young, who often came just to see him - he walked quickly, almost flew, managing to answer questions and give away gifts intended for him. How he sat his spiritual children on an old sofa in his cell and in a matter of minutes resolved doubts, consoled, exhorted, presented them with icons, brochures of spiritual content (in the 1980s there was a great shortage of them), generously poured holy water on them and anointed them with “oil.” With what spiritual uplift people then returned home. Father John answered letters, the bag with which invariably stood in the corner of his cell, until his death (in recent months he dictated answers to cell attendant Tatyana Sergeevna Smirnova), and even the last Christmas in his life, many of his spiritual children celebrated, receiving the usual postcard from the priest with personal congratulations. How many of these cards did he send out every year - hundreds? thousands?

Father John (Krestyankin) was called the “All-Russian Elder” - and in fact, the will of God for people was revealed to him, for which there are many dozens of testimonies. He was also a confessor who endured prison, torture, a camp under Soviet rule, and was near death several times. And also the author of inspired sermons, which have now sold millions of copies. He also left several wonderful books, including “The Experience of Constructing a Confession,” with which many people of the generation of the 1970s. began the journey to faith.

Finally, Father John was a unique man of prayer; in his prayer he remembered all the people he met at least once in his life.

Palm of Saint Tikhon

“Until I was 14 years old, I had not met a single unbeliever,” admitted Father John. He was born on March 29 (April 11, new style) 1910 in the family of Oryol townspeople Mikhail Dmitrievich and Elizaveta Ilarionovna Krestyankin and was the eighth child. The boy received his name in honor of St. John the Hermit, on whose memory day he was born. On the same day, the Church celebrates the memory of the venerable fathers of the Pskov-Pechersky Mark and Jonah, so it is difficult to consider it an accident that Father John lived for the last 38 years of his life in the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery and it was at this time that he gained all-Russian fame.

Vanya's father died when the boy was two years old, and he was raised mainly by his mother, who was helped in any way possible by relatives, including Vanya's uncle, merchant Ivan Aleksandrovich Moskvitin. Until 1917, Vanya lived in Orel without a break and retained many touching memories of his childhood. For example, about how mother Elizaveta Ilarionovna divided between her younger children - Tanechka and Vanechka - the last testicle intended for herself, citing the fact that she “had a headache.” One of the important people for little Vanya was the local priest Father Nikolai (Azbukin), who baptized him as an infant. Once, while visiting, little Vanya was embarrassed by the lack of lean food on the table - it was a Friday. He did not eat, which made him feel unwell, but very soon the reason for his “ill health” was revealed. He happened to go home with his father Nikolai, who, unlike the boy, did not refuse the food offered to the guests and on the way gently explained to Vanya that the owners’ mistake was involuntary, so it “should have been covered with love” and not paid attention to it.

Already at the age of six, Vanya began serving in the church - soon after the local undertaker and part-time assistant to the church warden sewed a surplice for the boy from gold brocade, which was used to decorate coffins. Vanya was appointed sexton, and his mother helped him clean the lamps and church utensils.

At the age of 12, in 1922, Vanya first expressed his desire to become a monk. This happened during the departure of the Yeletsk bishop, the future confessor of Nicholas (Nikolsky), to a new place of service: saying goodbye to the Oryol flock, he asked, among others, subdeacon John Krestyankin, what to bless him for. He asked for a blessing to become a monk, which he received 44 years later.

And the next year, having arrived in Moscow and being in the Donskoy Monastery, Vanya received another blessing, which he subsequently remembered all his life - from His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, who spent the last years of his life under arrest. In 1990, when Father John lived in the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, Patriarch Tikhon appeared to him and warned about the impending division of the Russian Church (which soon happened in Ukraine). At the end of his life, after the glorification of Saint Tikhon in 1998, Father John said that he still felt his palm on his head.

Orel - Moscow - Black River

In 1929, Ivan Krestyankin graduated from school and entered accounting courses. He worked as an accountant until 1944, but his heart always belonged to the Church. It was for this reason that in 1932 he had to leave Orel for Moscow: from his first job in Orel he was fired for his reluctance to participate in regular Sunday “rush jobs,” and in those days it was difficult to find a place for someone fired. During the first weeks, not wanting to upset his mother, Ivan regularly got up in the morning and “went to work,” and at the end of the month he even brought home a “salary” - money received from the sale of the violin. But no new job was found, and so, with the blessing of the famous Oryol elder - Mother Vera (Loginova), the young man leaves for the capital.

Ivan Mikhailovich was not drafted to the front in 1941 due to poor eyesight - he had severe myopia. But the difficulties of wartime did not escape him. The future father John had to hide his cousin Vadim at home for several days, who had fallen behind the evacuation column - according to the laws of war, he could well have been recognized as a deserter and shot. During the day, Vadim hid in a chest where holes were drilled to allow air to enter, and at night, together with his cousin, he prayed to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. In the end, Ivan went to the commandant’s office with a statement about Vadim’s shell shock. The matter was resolved favorably: Vadim was sent to the hospital, and both were given coupons for military rations - this temporarily saved Ivan from the hungry existence that he led in the first years of the war.

In July 1944, Ivan Mikhailovich became a psalm-reader at the Church of the Nativity in Izmailovo. He had recently seen this very temple in a dream: he was led inside by the Monk Ambrose of Optina and asked the monk accompanying them to bring two vestments to serve. Within six months, Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) ordained John Krestyankin as a deacon, and nine months later he became a priest - one of the first to be ordained by the new Patriarch Alexy I.

The first post-war years were a time of short revival of the Russian Orthodox Church: persecution eased for a short time, and people flocked to churches. This time made special demands on priests: it was necessary to show special sensitivity and compassion, to help people in everyday circumstances, and Father John, who remained to serve in the Izmailovsky Church, gave himself to people without reserve. Until late in the evening he went to church services, confessed, baptized, married, and improved the temple. There were days when the only free time he could find for rest was half an hour before the evening service, which he spent at the altar.

The rector of the temple did not encourage the impulses of the young priest - they could attract unnecessary attention from the authorized representatives, who continued to vigilantly monitor the Church. The temple could be closed at any moment, and the overzealous ministers could be exiled to the construction sites of socialism. Much later, Father John told how one day, having doubted the appropriateness of his zeal at that time, he shared his thoughts with Patriarch Alexy (Simansky).

Dear father! What did I give you when I ordained you? - the Patriarch asked him in response.
- Missal.
- So here it is. Do everything that is written there, and endure everything that comes next.

Already at the beginning of his ministry, in the late 1940s, Father John established the custom of composing sermons in advance. He did not part with this rule until the end of his ministry and during the liturgy, as a rule, he read sermons from notebooks. But these texts were never something abstractly theoretical. Already in his mature years, the priest recalled how once in his youth, carried away by writing a sermon about love, he locked himself in a room and, not wanting to be distracted, several times ignored the knock on the door. Then going out into the corridor, he saw a neighbor who apologized and explained that she wanted to borrow money for bread. The remorse of conscience was such that the priest did not even preach that sermon from the pulpit.

In 1950, Father John graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and wrote his doctoral dissertation on St. Seraphim of Sarov. There was no need to protect her. On the night of April 29-30, investigators raided his apartment, and Father John himself was taken to Lubyanka.

Priest John Krestyankin, photo from the 1950 case .

Father John spent the next five years in prisons and camps, and returned with broken fingers on his left hand and in a pre-heart attack state. “The Lord transferred me to another obedience,” he said about his imprisonment. But it was precisely this time, spent first in solitary confinement in Lubyanka, then in Lefortovo prison (both there and there he was interrogated and tortured a lot), then in the cold barracks of a maximum security camp at the Chernaya Rechka crossing (Arkhangelsk Territory) and, finally, in he called the disabled camp settlement near Samara perhaps the happiest in his life. “God is close there,” Father John explained. And one more thing - “there was real prayer there, now I don’t have such a prayer.”

“The main thing is to pray”

Father John was arrested following a denunciation written by the rector, regent and protodeacon of the church where he served. Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), who for many years had the opportunity to communicate with Father John in the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, says in his book “Unholy Saints” that the priest even agreed with part of the accusations brought against him. For example, he did not deny that young people were gathering around him, whom he, as a shepherd, did not consider himself to have the right to drive away, and that he did not bless them to join the Komsomol, because this is an atheistic organization. He only denied his alleged participation in anti-Soviet agitation: “activities of this kind” did not interest him at all as a priest.

Five years later, when Father John is released (he was sentenced to seven years, but was released two years earlier under an amnesty), the head of the camp will ask him:

Father, do you understand why you were imprisoned?
- No, I still don’t understand.
- We must, father, follow the people. And not to lead the people.

But even in the camp, where there were many criminals, people themselves were drawn to Father John. One day he was instructed to distribute to the prisoners their earnings - a few coins each, but on the eve of their distribution, someone stole a suitcase with money. Father John prepared for the worst and only mentally cried out to God: “carry this cup past me, but not what I want, but what You want.” The next day, the suitcase with its contents was found: it was seized from the criminals and returned to the priest by their main “authority,” whose word was law for the rest.

Another prisoner, Archpriest Veniamin Sirotinsky, told how one day the director of the camp’s daughter became mortally ill. “In desperation, the boss sent for us, we asked everyone to leave, baptized the child with an abbreviated rite, gave us blessed water to drink, prayed, and - a miracle! “The next day the child was healthy.”

Several times, Father John himself was on the verge of death: he was almost killed by backbreaking work at the logging site, which was later replaced by “frying” the clothes of convicts from insects in a hotly heated barracks. However, he did not condemn anyone, not even those who reported him. Even during interrogations in Moscow, the investigator summoned the rector of the church where Father John served for a confrontation with the defendant. Seeing the informer, the priest was so happy that he rushed to hug him, but he collapsed on the floor, losing consciousness from excitement. Later, already in the camp, Father John learned that the parishioners were boycotting the informer priest, and one day he sent a note for them with the next man released. The note contained God's blessing and a request to “forgive the informant priest, as Father John forgave him, and to attend the services he performed.”

All his life the priest remembered the investigator, whose name, like himself, was Ivan Mikhailovich. “He was a good man, good, but is he alive?” - his cell attendant later retold the priest’s words. He thought about it and answered himself: “He’s alive, he’s alive, but he’s very old.”

Father John was released on the Presentation of the Lord, February 15, 1955, but he never took his eyes off him, so the risk of returning to prison never really disappeared. One day it almost happened. In the spring of 1956, when the priest had been serving in the Trinity Cathedral of Pskov for almost a year, the local authorities and the commissioner disliked him for his long sermons and for the fact that he had improved the cathedral, says Archpriest Oleg Teor. One day Father John was warned: “Get ready and leave one night, otherwise you will end up where you’ve already been.” The priest obeyed, and, as it soon became clear, not in vain: they were already preparing to arrest him, attributing the theft of state property.

Many decades later, a nephew came to the resident of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, Hieromonk Raphael, hiding from the police, who were looking for him on false suspicion. The teenager was brought to Father John, and he confirmed: he was innocent of the crime attributed to the boy, but he would still have to go to prison. After a half-hour confession, the boy himself came to terms with this thought, but still asked the priest: “how to behave in prison?” And I heard: “It’s simple - don’t believe, don’t be afraid, don’t ask. And most importantly, pray” (see “Unholy Saints” by Archimandrite Tikhon).

This special prayer, which Father John said in conditions of mortal danger, did not go unanswered. Having already been released and returned to ministry (he now served in rural parishes, mainly in the Ryazan region), Father John began to involuntarily attract the attention of parishioners with obvious spiritual gifts - an amazing gift of reasoning and insight. There is evidence of Simeon (Zhelnin), now glorified among the saints, who labored in the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery even before Father John became a monk of the same monastery. Once, when the cell attendant of the Venerable Elder Simeon began to ask for time off to go to “holy places” and at the same time visit Father John, he perked up and replied: “Go and see him. He is an earthly angel and a heavenly man."

Six parishes

Under Khrushchev, the persecution of the Church resumed with renewed vigor. The new leader of the country promised to show the “last priest” on TV, churches began to be closed everywhere, either putting locks on the doors, or turning them into warehouses (the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery was almost the only one in Russia that avoided closure during the Soviet period). Mass arrests of clergy have resumed. For Father John Krestyankin it was a time of wandering around parishes. Everywhere he appeared, sermons were preached and churches were restored - often contrary to official prohibitions. Together with the parishioners, the priest himself plastered the walls, replaced the roof, and painted the floors.

The hierarchy was forced to “take measures”: in 11 years the priest changed six parishes.

In those years, his spiritual kinship with one of the saints he especially revered, Seraphim of Sarov, became apparent. The Lord allowed Father John almost the same test that St. Seraphim suffered 150 years earlier. On the night of January 1, 1961 (Father John was then serving in the Church of Cosmas and Damian in the village of Letovo, Ryazan region), hooligans broke into the priest’s house, beat the priest, tied him up, gagged him and threw him on the floor. So he lay there until the morning, when his neighbors found him half-dead, and a few hours later Father John was already serving the Liturgy, praying among others for “those who do not know what they are doing.” Also, the Monk Seraphim, who suffered beatings from robbers who were looking for money in his cell, asked not to punish them when they were exposed.

Despite the adversities and everyday difficulties, it was rare in those years to meet such an open and benevolent priest as Father John Krestyankin was. Restorer Savely Yamshchikov, who in his youth participated in an expedition to the Ryazan region, visited churches and registered unique icons. “We often met either indifferent priests or very suspicious priests,” he recalled. The priest of the church in the village of Nekrasovka turned out to be completely different: he came out to meet strangers “with an amazing light gait - as if he were not walking, but floating in the air - with a benevolent smile,” and “his eyes sparkled with love, as if it were not strangers who came to him.” people, but his close relatives.”

In exactly the same way, dozens of people who would go to him at the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery would later describe Father John, now 70 and 80 years old. One of them, Alexander Bogatyrev, says that the priest received him, who arrived for the first time, as an old friend, “held his hand and looked affectionately through thick glasses.” “I couldn’t take my eyes off his gaze,” he writes. “These were not glasses, but a fantastic microscope, through which he saw my stained soul.” Another example is given by Tatyana Goricheva, talking about an acquaintance who came to Pechory for the first time: “Nicholas stood hesitantly at the very end of the long line, but the elder immediately noticed him, came up, hugged him (he saw him for the first time), kissed him on the forehead, on the cheeks, in the back of the head - only a mother can caress her suffering child like that. The elder asked where Nikolai came from and when he could come to him for confession.”

“There are no elders now”

Father John's childhood dream came true in 1966 - he was tonsured a monk. A year later, Patriarch Alexy I blessed Hieromonk John (Krestyankin) to serve in the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery.

This period of the priest’s life is especially well known. At this time, he wrote “The Experience of Constructing a Confession,” analyzing each commandment in detail and showing how to learn to see “your sins as the sand of the sea.” It turns out that even the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” which people usually do not consider themselves to be violators of, is often violated by us: “Everyone has experienced how an evil, cruel, caustic word kills. How then can we ourselves inflict cruel wounds on people with this verbal weapon?! Lord, forgive us sinners! We have all killed our neighbors with our words.”

It was during this period, spanning almost 40 years, that Father John (raised to the rank of archimandrite in 1973) became an “all-Russian elder”, to whom people and letters flocked from all over the country and even from abroad. The priest himself, however, resolutely opposed such a name: “There are no elders now. Everybody died.<…>There is no need to confuse the elder and the old man.<…>We need to learn that we are all essentially unnecessary and are not needed by anyone except God.” Perhaps the priest himself did not always realize that behind many of his words and answers there was something more than just experience and human wisdom. Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) calls Father John “one of the very few people on earth for whom the boundaries of space and time are expanded, and the Lord allows them to see the past and future as the present”: “We were convinced with surprise and not without fear from our own experience , that before this old man, whom ill-wishers mockingly called “Doctor Aibolit,” human souls are open with all their innermost secrets, with their most cherished aspirations, with carefully hidden, secret affairs and thoughts. In ancient times, such people were called prophets.”

One of the striking examples that Father Tikhon gives is the history of the creation of the Pskov-Pechersk metochion in the Sretensky Monastery, which began with the fact that Father John, without listening to any objections, sent him - the future Archimandrite Tikhon - to Patriarch Alexy II to ask for a blessing to create a metochion in Moscow. Not long before, the Patriarch had strictly forbidden anyone to approach him with such requests, but when Father Tikhon followed “the will of God” (this is how Father John himself explained his order), no obstacles arose.

Usually Father John did not insist on the unconditional implementation of his advice and did not so much advise as gently and carefully guide the person himself to the right course of reasoning. But if he nevertheless insisted on something, and the spiritual child did it his own way, he was very sad - self-will more than once led to tragedies. For example, Valentina Pavlovna Konovalova, the director of a large grocery store in Moscow, suddenly passed away, having decided, contrary to her father’s categorical prohibition, to remove a cataract from her eye: during the operation she suffered a stroke and complete paralysis.

In people's memories, Father John most often appears as a meek, affectionate and very loving person. “Children of God” - that’s what he called many of his visitors. “I thought: if a person can love a person like that and rejoice over every sinner like that, then how the Lord loves us!” - Abbot Nikolai (Paramonov) writes about the priest. But in his sermons and letters, Father John very often displays qualities that complement his kindness and caring - rigor (sometimes even severity), loyalty to the canons and intransigence to sin. In his sermon for the week about the Last Judgment, he demands “special attention” from parishioners and talks in detail about the torments of Gehenna from which Nikolai Motovilov, a disciple of St. Seraphim of Sarov, suffered for many years, who decided to fight the demons alone. And here is a typical excerpt from one letter written by the priest: “It’s simply wild for me to hear and read what you write about. You at least first became acquainted with the Orthodox Catechism, but you would have examined and known yourself better, and I am sure that you would have come to the only correct conclusion - you yourself must learn to live like a Christian.” The letters reveal the very essence of Father John, who calls to “stand for the faith until death.”

During his monastic years, Father John, who always had great respect for the clergy, had more than once the opportunity to humble himself: it happened that the monastery governors forbade him to receive visitors, they could even say a sarcastic word. And at the end of his days, Father John had to endure misunderstanding on the part of many former admirers, even to the point of being accused of treason - after he distributed the famous message about the Taxpayer Identification Number, which many were afraid to take, mistaking it for the seal of the Antichrist. Father John urged not to be afraid of numbers or cards, but to trust God completely: “Doesn’t the Lord know how to save His children from times of cruelty, as long as our hearts are faithful to Him.” He developed the same idea in private letters: “The seal will follow only a person’s personal renunciation of God, and not deception. There is no point in deception. The Lord needs our heart that loves Him.”

“To accept or not to accept an individual number - at one time it seemed that there was no more important problem in the Orthodox community,” recalls Archimandrite Zacchaeus (Wood), who visited Father John several times from the United States and considered him “an indisputable spiritual authority.” “But even in this "The elder said his weighty word on the question. Of course, it is grace from the Lord to know everything that concerns the lives of ordinary people living outside the fence of churches." The fact that Archimandrite John has been since the early 1990s. practically never leaving the walls of the monastery, he was aware of everything that was happening outside, truly amazing, writes Father Zacchaeus. However, this may seem more understandable if we remember the flow of people and letters that passed through Father John’s cell every year.

The mystery of death

Father John reposed in the Lord on February 5, 2006, on the day of remembrance of the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia - he himself considered this holiday one of the most significant for modern Russia. “The incessant persecutions in which the Universal Church was born seemed to have bypassed Russia,” the priest said in a famous sermon dedicated to this holiday shortly after its establishment, in 1994. “Rus' accepted Christianity ready-made, suffered by others, from the hands of its Great Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince- ruler Vladimir and grew into him with very small sacrifices. But could the Russian Church have avoided the path common to all Christians, outlined by Christ? They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, deliver you into prison, and lead rulers for my name’s sake (Luke 21:12). This God's definition of the Church has been clearly revealed since apostolic times. And for Russia, the hour of testing her faith, the hour of feat for Christ came in the 20th century, for it was not without Russia that the Universal Church had to achieve the fullness of spiritual age and perfection.”

Father John himself was such a confessor who went through these trials, was purified by them, and during his lifetime showed evidence of holiness.

Father John's departure from the world was gradual and similar to those that we find in the lives of the saints. Here are a few excerpts from the diary of his cell attendant.

“On December 2, 2004, Father John called me in the middle of the night and asked me to watch with him in prayer: “It will be difficult for you to survive if you find me in the morning already gone.” To my question: “What, have you already received a notification about this?” - He answered evasively: “I have already swam the river of my life and today I saw it.”

“On November 29, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the priest suddenly sang in delight: “Isaiah rejoice, the Virgin is with child...” - and repeated this troparion several times.<…>Father John's face shone with an unearthly light. Quietly and detachedly he said:

She came.
- Who?
“The Queen of Heaven has come.”

“From December 18, Father John received communion daily.<…>Ten days later, on December 28, it became obvious that life was leaving. It was on that day that an order came from the printing house - audio discs of the priest’s sermons, united under the title “Blessed are the Dead, Dying in the Lord.” And someone’s hand, obeying a thought that looked into the future, wrote a decisive sentence on the boxes: “Funeral set.”<…>From December 30 to December 31, at 3:30 a.m., Father John became completely exhausted and, gathering his strength, loudly but calmly said three times: “I am dying.” They began to read the waste report. We lived until the morning.<…>While singing the Easter canon, the priest’s face changed.<…>So in the last minutes of earthly life, when the soul was ready to leave the decaying body, the Spirit of God stopped the separation.<...>At the end of the singing of Easter stichera in response to the exclamation: “Christ is Risen!” - everyone heard the quiet and confused whisper of the dying man: “Indeed, Vosk-rese!” At the second cry: “Christ is Risen!” - Father John raised his hand with effort, crossed himself and said more clearly: “Truly He is Risen!” And the supernatural powerful action of the Spirit of God in Father John became especially obvious to all those gathered in the cell when, at the third exclamation, he quietly but joyfully confirmed with his usual intonations the testimony of the Risen Christ: “Truly Christ is Risen!” - and firmly crossed himself.”

“On the morning of February 5, I was preparing for Communion. Early in the morning he was dressed: a white cassock, a festive stole. Exhaustion of strength was covered with sleepy languor. I measured my blood pressure, and it, without revealing my father’s secret preparations, was normal.<…>When asked whether we will take communion, there is a silent nod of the head. He took communion and drank<…>He closed his eyes and turned slightly to the right.<…>And at that moment I realized, I saw that the priest would not open his eyes anymore. He left. The mystery of death has been accomplished."

“Usually the Lord takes a person at the best moment of his life<…>“so that he does not lower his level,” said Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov, who knew Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) personally, “but here it’s the other way around: Father John long ago achieved Christian perfection and lived only for the sake of all of us. Such people used to be called the pillars of the Church.”

“I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” the Lord promised Peter (Matthew 16:18). And He preserves His Church, but not without human participation. Thanks to such rare and amazing people as Archimandrite John (Krestyankin), we, returning to the Church today, after several previous generations were raised in atheism and the continuity of faith was almost lost forever, we still have a place to return. This continuity has nevertheless been preserved.

Igor TSUKANOV

John Krestyankin was born on April 11, 1910, in a large family, in the city of Orel. He was the eighth and youngest child. John's father, Mikhail Dmitrievich Krestyankin, died early, and the burden of responsibility for supporting and raising children was taken on by his mother, Elizaveta Illarionovna. She was a deeply religious woman, and John owed his primary education in the field of Christian morality to her.

They say that in infancy Vanya was not distinguished by enviable health, and his mother prayed a lot about this, and even made a vow to God to dedicate her son to Him.

By the providence of God, John joined church life in early childhood. At the age of six, he was noticed by a bishop, whose carriage John repeatedly ran after when he went to services in the cathedral. One day, meeting the child’s gaze, the bishop ordered the coachman to stop, invited the boy to his place, asked his name and whether he wanted to help him at the altar. For Vanya, this proposal was above all expectations, and he, happy, of course gave a positive answer.

So, already at the age of six, he performed the duties of a sexton, and later - a subdeacon. As a child, his spiritual mentors were local archpriests: Nikolai Azbukin and Vsevolod Kovrigin. Of course, Archbishop Seraphim (Ostroumov) also had a significant influence on his fate.

At about the age of twelve, Ivan expressed a preliminary, but quite firm desire to devote his future life to monastic feat. When, on occasion, he reported this desire to Bishop Nikolai (Nikolsky), he, after thinking about it, said that it would certainly come true. And so it happened.

After school, which Ivan graduated from in 1929, he continued his studies in accounting courses, and then got a job in his specialty in his hometown. Due to frequent overtime assignments, he could not adequately devote his personal time to visiting the temple. This made him dissatisfied, but when he decided to confront his superiors with his disagreement, the superiors erupted in dissatisfaction and he was fired.

For some time he could not find a job and in 1932 he moved to Moscow, where he became the chief accountant in a small enterprise. Work did not prevent him from attending services. Soon Ivan entered the circle of Orthodox young people, discussed issues of spiritual life with them, and this friendship strengthened him even more in his intention to follow the spiritual path.

During the war, he was not called up to the front, as he was exempt from military service due to myopia. In 1944, he became a psalm-reader at the Moscow Church of the Nativity in Izmailovo, and in 1945 he was ordained a deacon at the same parish, and soon a priest.”

As if there was no war...

The beginning of the pastoral path

In 1944, John began to perform the duties of a psalm-reader in the Church of the Nativity of Christ, located in Izmailovo. In January 1945, Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) ordained him a deacon, and at the end of the year, Patriarch Alexy I ordained him a priest.

Carrying out his pastoral ministry zealously and responsibly, Father John combined it with his studies at the Moscow Theological Academy - he passed exams in the disciplines studied at the Theological Seminary as an external student.

The active preaching activity of the young priest, who was quickly gaining popularity among believers, his principled position, and his reluctance to make “impossible concessions” to the authorities irritated the latter.

In April 1950, Father John, without having had time to defend his Ph.D. thesis, was arrested on charges of anti-Sovietism. They say that the priest who informed “who should” about the content of Father John’s sermons was boycotted by the parishioners. Father John later forgave him for his weakness and asked the parishioners to follow the same.

At first, the arrested person was kept in Lubyanka and Lefortovo prison. And in August 1950 he was transferred to Butyrka prison, where he was held together with criminals. During interrogations, the investigator behaved rudely, threatened, and exerted pressure, which cannot be said about the priest, who reacted to all accusations with restraint and prudence, rejecting far-fetched slander.

They report that when a recruited clergyman was brought to him for a confrontation, Father John was so heartily delighted at his visit that he, broken by a wounded conscience, fainted and fell.

In October, Father John was sentenced to seven years in prison and was sent to Kargopollag (Arkhangelsk region). At first, the priest worked in a logging camp, but then, due to health reasons, he was transferred to another place.

After his early release in 1955, Father John was sent to the Pskov diocese, and after a short time (in 1957) to the Ryazan diocese. During this period he changed several parishes. This was caused by the inertia and hostile attitude towards him on the part of the local authorities.

Monastic feat

On June 10, 1966, Father John became a monk, and in 1967 he entered the brotherhood of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery. In 1970, he was elevated to the rank of abbot, and three years later, in 1973, to the rank of archimandrite.

In addition to the traditional duties associated with his rank and position, Father John devoted a lot of time to meetings and conversations with people who needed his instructions, prayers, and blessings. There were so many people who wanted to meet with the priest that the reception of visitors, which began after the Divine Liturgy, lasted until late in the evening, with short breaks for meals, and sometimes continued after midnight.

A significant part of the pilgrims who sought personal meetings with him revered him as a blessed, spirit-bearing elder. And this is not surprising, because in addition to numerous virtues, Father John possessed spiritual wisdom and, as noted, the gift of foresight. Meanwhile, Father John himself, out of humility of heart, was more than critical of himself.

Towards the end of his life, due to poor health, partly undermined during his imprisonment, Father John could no longer receive everyone who wanted to communicate with him as actively as before. But he was connected with many by correspondence.

On February 5, 2006, Father John, having received the Holy Mysteries of Christ, fell asleep in the Lord. He was 95 years old. When saying goodbye, the elder was given due honors. The funeral service was attended by bishops, dozens of priests and ordinary pilgrims, the spiritual children of the deceased. The body of the ascetic was buried in sacred caves.

The creative activity of Father John Krestyankin as a writer

Among the literary monuments of the pastor’s spiritual heritage, a significant part belongs to published letters (see:). As a rule, they are all full of love and care. In them he gives moral instructions and advice, sometimes denounces, and promises to pray.

In addition, many of the soul-helping instructions of Father John are known to us from such works as “”, “”, “”.

During the spread of unrest and panic among believers regarding the assignment of TINs to Russian citizens, the priest expressed a firm judgment that, first of all, a Christian is distinguished not by the presence or absence of an individual number assigned by the state, but by faith and virtue.

Current page: 1 (book has 3 pages in total) [available reading passage: 1 pages]

So said John Krestyankin

Start living according to the law of love. This law is clear to both believers and non-believers.

* * *

Life is a difficult business. And it becomes unbearably difficult when God is expelled from it. After all, when God is expelled from the house, the most evil spirits come in His place, sowing their deadly weeds.

* * *

A small evil that falls, like a speck, into the eye of the soul, immediately puts a person out of order in life. It is a trivial matter to remove a speck from the eye of one’s body or soul for oneself or another, but this is a good thing without which one cannot live.

* * *

Life itself teaches life. And the most important and important art for a person is to learn to live in peace and love with everyone.

* * *

We have been given from the Lord the commandment of love for people, for our neighbors. But whether they love us or not, we have nothing to worry about! We only need to take care that we love them.

* * *

The main task of a wife - a mother, blessed by God by nature, is to be a truly Christian mother, because the future of the world always lies in her children.

* * *

* * *

So God’s call came to you in the form of illness. Please respond. Are there any serious debts? Are you married to your spouse? Were there any mortal sins? And don't despair! Turn to the Lord with your whole being - soul, heart, and mind. See the miracle of God's mercy over you.

Our hope and strength lie in the unshakable confidence that nothing happens in the world without God, but everything happens either according to His will or according to His permission. All good things are accomplished by His will and His action; the opposite happens only by His permission.

* * *

A person falls away from the Source of life, does inappropriate things, and his soul becomes sick; but if he becomes stagnant in delusions, the body also becomes ill.

At the very entrance to the religious area there is a certain “hypnosis of big things” - “you have to do some big thing - or nothing at all”

With God, everything happens on time, especially for those who know how to wait.

* * *

Imagine for a moment a person who does not wash off bodily dirt all his life! So the soul requires washing, and what would happen if there were no Sacrament of Repentance, this healing and cleansing “second baptism”!

* * *

Everyone has probably seen it more than once, or maybe they remember from childhood what happens when it gets warmer in winter and children roll snow globes. They will take a tiny ball, the size of a fist, and roll it down the hill: in the blink of an eye, this ball turns into a huge lump of wet snow! The same thing happens with the sinful state of our soul. Watch yourself!

* * *

Understand for yourself, my friends, how important it is for us to vigilantly monitor our behavior so as not to drive our faithful Angel helpers away from us. According to the teachers of the Church, man was created in order to replenish the number of fallen angels.

With God, one day is like a thousand years - and a thousand years are like one day, and this is eternity that has invaded earthly time. And our lives are also an example of this, for they too flow into eternity, erasing time.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Only love crowns the path of spiritual improvement, leading to deification (restoration of the image and likeness of God in oneself).

* * *

It is impossible to live thoughtlessly these days. God rules the world, not people. There can be no orders in spiritual life. The Lord gave man spiritual freedom, and He, He Himself, in no case and never deprives a person of it - this freedom.

I pray and ask you: do not complain about life. Thank God and do not start life with earthly, and even with modern standards.

To understand God, one must rise from the earth.

There is no need to invent anything. The Lord has been in your life for a long time and is leading you through it, and not from the moment you realized it.

Try it, live carefully for at least one day, watch yourself. Who are you in relation to people? First get to know yourself, then try to live resisting sin. You will find out how difficult it is, and having learned, you will learn to be lenient towards human weaknesses and will not condemn anyone.

In order for you and me to be truly Orthodox Christians, we must have living and constant communication with the Orthodox Church in her prayers, teachings, Sacraments, we must know our faith, study it, be imbued with and live by its spirit, be guided by its rules, commandments and statutes. And most importantly, it is necessary to constantly restore in oneself through deep repentance the image of a truly Orthodox Christian, following the example of the holy people of God who have lived at all times.

* * *

To repent means to change sinful thoughts and feelings, to improve, to become different. It is good to realize your sins, to feel the severity of the Fall. But in place of the defiled life that is blotted out by the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance, we must begin to create a new life, a life according to the spirit of Christ. Growth, spiritual ascent “from strength to strength” is necessary, as if along the steps of a ladder.

Now we live in vain, we do not have the attention to see the traces of God’s Providence in our lives, we do not have the understanding to understand what the Lord wants from us in the circumstances of life given to us. And all this is because we forget about the only purpose of earthly existence, that it is only the path to eternity. We forget and often become daring fighters against God, opponents of God’s definitions about us, not accepting the immutable truth that the only feat of the cross in a person’s life charts his path to salvation - to blissful eternity. Only narrow and cramped gates lead to the Kingdom of Heaven.

* * *

The fleeting river of time rushes like a swift stream into eternity. And only the Holy Church and the feasts of God stop this movement for a moment, as if counting down time. And our entire life, from birth to departure from it, is reflected in this annual circle, reminds and calls: “Know yourself, look into yourself, human being. Who are you, how do you live, and what awaits you ahead? After all, you, along with this stream of time, are rushing towards timelessness, towards eternity.” And so every day, every year.

* * *

Our friends, let us rise from the ground, look at the Cross of Christ, before us is an example of complete and true self-sacrifice. He, being the Son of God, came into the world in the form of a slave, humbled Himself and was obedient even to death, and death on the cross. He denied life itself to save us. The Lord Savior calls us to reject sin and death, which sin feeds for us.

* * *

The work of our salvation begins with the denial of ourselves and our sinfulness. We must reject everything that constitutes the essence of our fallen nature, and must extend to the rejection of life itself, surrendering it entirely to the will of God.

* * *

We must recognize our everyday truth before God as the most cruel untruth, our reason as the most complete unreason.

* * *

Self-denial begins with a struggle with oneself. And victory over oneself is the most difficult of all victories due to the strength of the enemy, because I myself am my own enemy. And this struggle is the longest, because it ends only with the end of life.

* * *

The struggle with oneself, the struggle with sin will always remain a feat, which means it will be suffering. And it, our internal struggle, gives rise to another, even more severe suffering, because in a world of evil and sin, a person walking the path of righteousness will always be a stranger in the life of the world and will encounter hostility towards himself at every step. And every day the ascetic will more and more feel his dissimilarity with those around him and experience it painfully.

* * *

God! You know everything; Do with me as you please.

* * *

Self-sacrifice inevitably continues to demand that we begin to live in all its fullness for God, for people, for our neighbors, so that we consciously and uncomplainingly accept and submit to all sorrow, all mental and physical pain, so that we accept them as God’s permission for the benefit and salvation of our souls .

Self-sacrifice becomes part of our saving cross. And only through self-sacrifice can we raise our life-saving cross.

* * *

The cross is an instrument of execution. Criminals were crucified on it. And now the truth of God calls me to the cross, as a transgressor of the Law of God, because my carnal man, who loves peace and carelessness, my evil will, my criminal pride, my pride still resist the life-giving Law of God. I myself, having recognized the power of the sin living in me and blaming myself, as a means of saving me from sinful death, clutch at the sorrows of my life’s cross.

The consciousness that only sorrows endured for the Lord will assimilate me to Christ, and I will become a participant in His earthly fate, and therefore in heaven, inspires me to feat and patience.

* * *

The Cross of Christ is terrible. But I love him - he gave me the incomparable joy of Holy Easter. But I can only approach this joy with my cross. I must voluntarily take up my cross, I must love it, recognize myself as fully worthy of it, no matter how difficult and difficult it may be.

* * *

To take up the cross means to generously endure ridicule, reproach, persecution, and sorrow, with which the sinful world is not stingy to bestow upon the novice of Christ.

* * *

To take up the cross means to endure, without grumbling and complaining, hard, invisible labor on oneself, invisible languor and martyrdom of the soul for the sake of fulfilling the truths of the Gospel. This is also a fight against the spirits of evil, which will violently rise up against the one who desires to throw off the yoke of sin and submit to Christ.

* * *

To take up the cross is to voluntarily and diligently submit to the hardships and struggles that curb the flesh. While living in the flesh, we must learn to live for the spirit.

* * *

We must pay special attention to the fact that each person on his life’s path must lift his own cross. There are countless crosses, but only mine heals my ulcers, only mine will be my salvation, and only mine will I bear with the help of God, for it was given to me by the Lord Himself.

* * *

An unauthorized feat is a self-made cross, and bearing such a cross always ends in a great fall.

* * *

What does your cross mean? This means walking through life along your own path, outlined for everyone by the Providence of God, and on this path to experience exactly those sorrows that the Lord allows.

* * *

Don’t look for greater sorrows and achievements than those on your life’s path - pride will lead you astray. Do not seek liberation from those sorrows and labors that are sent to you - this self-pity takes you off the cross.

* * *

Your own cross means being content with what is within your bodily strength.

The spirit of conceit and self-delusion will call you to the unbearable. Don't trust the flatterer.

* * *

How diverse are the sorrows and temptations that the Lord sends to us in life to heal us, how varied are people in their physical strength and health, how varied are our sinful infirmities.

* * *

Yes, every person has his own cross. And every Christian is commanded to accept this cross with selflessness and follow Christ.

And to follow Christ means studying the Holy Gospel so that only it becomes an active leader in carrying our life’s cross.

The mind, heart and body with all their movements and actions, obvious and secret, must serve and express the saving truths of Christ’s teaching. And all this means that I deeply and sincerely recognize the healing power of the cross and justify God’s judgment over me. And then my cross becomes the Cross of the Lord.

* * *

“Lord, in bearing my cross, sent down to me by Your right hand, strengthen me, who is completely exhausted,” my heart prays. The heart prays and grieves, but it already rejoices in sweet submission to God and its participation in the sufferings of Christ. And this bearing of one’s cross without grumbling with repentance and praise of the Lord is the great power of the mysterious confession of Christ not only with the mind and heart, but with deed and life itself.

* * *

The cross is the shortest path to heaven. Christ Himself passed through them. The cross is a fully tested path, for all the saints have traversed it.

The cross is the surest path, for the cross and suffering are the lot of the elect, these are the narrow gates through which they enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

* * *

The development of sin and the distortion of life occurs gradually: it begins with a darkening of the mind (in order for the mind to be bright, one must read the Holy Gospel daily and see life and evaluate it in the light of the Gospel truths), this is followed by relaxation of the will, and a snowball of sin rolls off, grows and grows, until you get crushed. The relaxation of the will is followed by a distortion of conscience, when we see everything in a distorted light, and for everything we receive corruption of the body.

The time has come when a person is saved only through sorrow. So we must bow to each sorrow’s feet and kiss its hand.

Illnesses - God's permission - contribute to the good of man. They slow down our crazy rush through life and make us think and seek help. As a rule, human help is powerless, is depleted very quickly, and the person turns to God.

The path of salvation is one at all times, and it is outlined for us in the Holy Gospel. And there are no obstacles for those who want to be saved at all times, for those who want to are led along the path of salvation by the Savior Himself. We only sincerely desire to follow Christ.

The time in which the Lord has brought us to live is the most turbulent - confusion, confusion and confusion shake the unshakable, but this is not the end. Even more difficult times lie ahead.

And do not forget, children of God, evil is powerless, we are eternal, God is with us.

God has no forgotten people, and God’s Providence sees everyone. The world is ruled by God, only God and no one else.

The main thing in spiritual life is faith in God’s Providence and reasoning with advice.

Humility will conquer all flattery.

It's not a matter of the amount of prayer, it's a matter of living appeal to the Living God. Faith that the Lord is closer to you than anyone else closest to you, that He does not hear the rustle of your lips, but hears the prayerful beating of your heart and what it is filled with at the moment of your turning to God.

We must stand to the death in faith.

Where there is no God, the enemy of God rules there. And the “punishment” or the hardship of life are his tricks. And when a person, after a long period of enemy leadership, turns to God, then the enemy’s intensified revenge begins for some time, and a lot of patience and undoubted faith is needed that the enemy is strong, but only the Lord is omnipotent, and He will not abandon those who diligently resort to God’s help .

Always be happy. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks for everything.

Fear division and schism in the Church! Be afraid to fall away from the Mother Church, she alone is holding back the lava of anti-Christian revelry in the world now! Be afraid to judge the Church hierarchy, for this is destruction even without the Antichrist seal!

If you live for God, for the sake of God and for the glory of God, this is salvation, this is the true, and not the ephemeral, meaning of life.

Fear nothing in life except sin.

Remember, child, that the most valuable thing is to learn to surrender yourself entirely to the will of God.

So let us live like servants of God: everything in the depths of our hearts and nothing for show, for the crowd.

What God has determined will undoubtedly happen. But when, how? This is not given to us to know, and Scripture warns us against wanting to know this.

If our entire young generation (our future) is brought up on other people’s “bread” (and ideas), then the Motherland will become foreign to them, and so will they.

Even in former times, the elders did not command the inheritance of God. The person himself must think about what to take a blessing for.

Everyday turmoil has gripped us so that people understand that it is impossible to live without God.

You have to work on your soul yourself and not expect that what you didn’t sow will grow on its own.

* * *

In these days, when heaven and earth rejoice over the ineffable mercy of God - about the birth of his Savior into the world, when the Orthodox Church, with its 2000 years of suffering in the truth and its saving labors, affirms that God is with us, when a host of Russian illustrious new martyrs laid in the foundation of the Church is the fruit of its red sowing, and by God’s grace the people of Russia began to remember their glorious Christian past and now find their way to the temple of God to God - we would rejoice and live with living faith and undoubted hope in God and in His Holy Church.

* * *

Live and remember daily that the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which we received in holy baptism, has made us children of God and thank God.

* * *

But no, in these spirit-bearing and holy days, the dark shadow of spiritual indignation has agitated the minds and hearts of believers and deprives them not only of the joy of universal and eternal triumph, but also of faith and trustworthiness itself.

* * *

Orthodox Christian believers themselves: priests and laity, forgetting about the Providence of God, about God, give power to dark forces.

* * *

Even the great pillars of the Church have made mistakes.

* * *

It is necessary to fight the spiritual plague.

* * *

For Orthodoxy the Lord will have mercy on me.

And by wasting the present time in idleness or wasting it on sin, we kill time and lose the value of human life.

All around there is only talk about opening monasteries, churches, about grace, about God. Yes, our dears, there is a lot of talk, but the combination of the human and the Divine today is simply monstrous. In an unimaginable internal “harmony,” verbal piety and church-going are now combined with the cynicism of perversity. Horrifying idle talk, slander, deceit, lies, falsity, selfishness and lawlessness of cohabitation coexist in the conscience of many with sighing, crying and receiving the Holy Mysteries. And a person thinks that he is with God.

* * *

According to the teachers of the Church, man was created in order to replenish the number of fallen angels.

* * *

However, the weight of this lump of sin, which we manage to roll out in our souls, will press on until a prayer of permission is read by the priest over the head of a sincerely repentant sinner during the Sacrament of Confession.

Modern spiritual science is especially difficult because you have to be disappointed in the person closest to you - in yourself.

* * *

It takes a lot of work to build the house of the soul. He will falter and even be disrupted more than once until his mind and soul mature. Be patient. May the Lord strengthen and make you wise!

Do you know the proverb? Love us black, and everyone will love us white!

They greet you like September and see you off like they do in May.

And my job is to pray that the Lord will manage everything for the good, for the benefit of the worker and for the benefit of those for whom he works.

Do not forget that a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. It’s good when the soul is one. May God make you wise!

* * *

And sometimes you need to go for your spouse so that there is no blatant division in his life between the life of a single person and a family life.

* * *

Then the mercy of God will grant you some consolation. He, in addition to our understanding and comprehension, will guide our fragile boat through life with His firm hand. Everything is by Him, everything is from Him, everything is to Him - that’s how we live.

So do not complain about external things, but confess your weakness.

* * *

Be reasonable and consistent in what you choose in life.

And when you free yourself from all opinions about yourself, all the people around you will be angels compared to you.

* * *

Carnal love is one of the components of marriage, and it is blessed in the Sacrament of Marriage, and it is a sin to those who dare to blaspheme marriage.

* * *

At this stage of your life, I would advise you to live without further ado. Do not demand from yourself or from your loved ones anything more than what they have and what they cannot give now.

* * *

It would be good to accept the law of married life - to be stricter with yourself, and more lenient with your spouse. The time for thinking and choosing is over when you decide to combine your lives.

* * *

Two people should form one harmonious person. And this is creation, this is creativity. And this is also a cross for life.

God created the first people directly, but He creates all their descendants indirectly - by the power of His blessing, which is always real.

Human souls, like people themselves, are created by God through the mediation of parents, in a way that is completely inexplicable to us.

God still remains the Author of our soul, according to the initial blessing for the birth of a child.

In a person it is necessary to distinguish between soul and spirit. The spirit contains a sense of Divinity - conscience and dissatisfaction with anything. He is the power that was breathed into the face of man at creation. The soul is a lower force, or part of the same force, assigned to conduct the affairs of earthly life. From the same rank as the soul of animals, but exalted for the sake of combining the spirit with it.

* * *

If we had never sinned after our baptism, then we would forever remain holy, immaculate and free from all defilement of the flesh and spirit, saints of God.

* * *

We, while advancing in age, do not advance in the grace and mind of God, as our Lord Jesus Christ excelled in this; on the contrary, as we become corrupted little by little, we are deprived of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God and become sinful and many-sinful people in many different ways.

* * *

The Lord, out of His great mercy, gives us grace, and we must keep it tightly so as not to lose it, for without grace a person is spiritually blind.

* * *

He who gathers wealth in this world is blind; this means that his soul does not know the Holy Spirit, does not know how sweet He is, and therefore is captivated by the earth.

* * *

The human soul is the totality of all our feelings, thoughts, desires, aspirations, impulses of the heart, our mind, consciousness, free will, our conscience, the gift of faith in God.

It is often observed in life that people who are healthy and wealthy cannot find complete satisfaction in life, and, conversely, people exhausted by illness are full of complacency and inner spiritual joy.

* * *

Both soul and body live their own lives.

* * *

The Lord had to suffer not for the dust into which our body would turn, but for the happiness of our immortal soul.

* * *

God is eternal, He has neither beginning nor end to His Being. Our soul, although it has a beginning to its existence, but it does not know the end, it is immortal.

* * *

Our God is God Almighty. And God endowed man with the traits of power; man is the master of nature, he owns many secrets of nature, he conquers the air and other elements.

* * *

God is the Omnipresent Spirit, and man is given a thought that can instantly transport him to the most distant ends of the earth. In spirit we are together with our loved ones, separated from us by a long distance.

* * *

God is the Omniscient Spirit. The human mind has the stamp of this Divine property. He can embrace innumerable masses of knowledge; A person’s memory stores this knowledge in him.

* * *

God is the All-Holy Spirit. And man, with the help of God's grace, has the power to reach the heights of holiness.

* * *

The soul brings us closer to God. She is a Temple not made by hands, intended to be a dwelling place for the Spirit of God.

* * *

A person is not born a ready-made Temple of God.

* * *

The one born is only destined to be one. Only after baptism does the soul receive the right to become the Temple of God. For at baptism she is sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

* * *

God rewarded the soul with a great gift - he gave it free will.

* * *

In the temple the soul receives reinforcement to endure all earthly trials. In it, she is watered not only with drops of God’s grace, but with its abundant rain. It pours out on us through common prayers, chants, and blessings of the clergy. And if our prayer is deep and sincere and comes from our inner being, we feel the closeness of God, His presence in the temple among us.

* * *

You cannot leave a hungry and thirsty soul without saturation. If she is not satisfied on the path of her earthly life, then her hunger in eternity will be immensely difficult.

* * *

But due to our sinfulness, we may not notice the hunger of the soul. And it manifests itself in languor of spirit; often incomprehensible to us, seemingly causeless, melancholy.

* * *

The Guardian Angel given to us is like our expanded and revealed conscience. He strives with all his might to save us, and we have no right to interfere with him in this. We must help him in his efforts to save us. We must ask him to enrich our mind with an abundance of holy thoughts and strengthen our habit of pious reflection.

* * *

Every sin leaves ulcers on the soul. And they are healed by repentance.

* * *

And love... they have never talked so much about love as in our time of all liberalism and humanity, and the principles on which true love is based have never been so trampled upon. Love is on the lips, and self-interest is in the heart: they demand love for themselves - and are indifferent to others, they love, that is, they caress and flatter only those who are useful, and turn away from those who truly need and deserve help and love.

* * *

You know, there are many places where one of the undoubted signs of the approaching end of the world is decisively indicated - this is precisely: SURPRISE. Moreover, this term should be understood not only in the sense of the “suddenness” of the hour, but even more in the sense of LACK OF EXPECTATION FOR THE END.

* * *

Guardian Angels are the servants of our salvation, so we are not alone in our earthly life, in our labors for the salvation of our immortal soul.

* * *

The Lord will never take away freedom from a person: grace is always ready to help everyone in salvation, but we do not always accept its help with our free will and reason.

* * *

The soul, cleansed from sins, represents the bride of God, the heir of paradise, the interlocutor of the Angels. She becomes a queen, filled with the grace-filled gifts and mercies of God.

* * *

The soul was not created for sin. Sin is disgusting and alien to her, who emerged from the hands of the Creator pure and sinless.

* * *

An indicator that a healthy soul lives within us is our desire for prayer. In a person who does not feel the need for prayer, the soul dries up.

* * *

The soul is hungry when there is no prayer in the heart. When the heart hardened and became alien to everything holy.

* * *

The hunger of the soul is stronger than the hunger of the body.

* * *

People do not see their soul and therefore, unfortunately, do not know how to appreciate it.

* * *

The human soul is spiritual and immortal - this is a dogma.

* * *

The thirst of the soul is the thirst of our thought to expand its knowledge. Do not limit them only to the knowledge of the visible. And to have the opportunity to penetrate into the spheres of the invisible world - the spiritual world, and this thirst for inner grace-filled peace, inner peace, happiness, which would not be disturbed, despite the hardships, sorrows, disasters surrounding each of us... This is the thirst for freedom of spirit, so that no sinful fetters would not prevent her from expressing herself in any form of good deeds.

* * *

The soul is the totality of all mental and rational actions. Our entire inner being, the inner content of a person, is to some extent a characteristic of a person, determining his actions, his actions, his behavior, his life. It is inspired by the immortal and rational Spirit of God, and during life the soul and the Spirit are united as one.

* * *

The soul seeks God and communication with Him, yearns for Him... strives for its original source, reaches out to its Heavenly Father, like a child to its mother.

* * *

Our Guardian Angel is a being who endlessly loves us. He loves us with the fullness of his love. And his love is great, and its effect is strong, since, contemplating God, he sees eternal Love, which desires our salvation.

* * *

The human soul is an immortal, intelligent, active spiritual force, received by man from God during creation, giving man the opportunity, under the influence of the grace of the (Holy) Spirit of God, of unlimited development and deification.

* * *

The soul can only be seen through revelation and Divine enlightenment.

* * *

The soul is an incorporeal force, a personal independent spiritual nature. That intelligent, thinking, highest spiritual force that brings into harmony and combines different parts of our body into a single harmonious whole. But at the same time, the soul itself is guided by the Holy Spirit of God, Who brings its many different aspirations, movements and thoughts into strict order.

* * *

It is that spiritual principle in a person that reveals its activity in all parts of the body. This is the free, endowed with the ability to desire and act, the independent immortal essence of human nature. During earthly life, it is closely connected with the body and bears all its burdens and sorrows. Acts in the body and through the body, with the assistance of its organs. She leads the body, being herself led and directed by the Holy Spirit of God.

* * *

Only the intelligent eyes of individual people, enlightened by the grace of God, can see the soul.

* * *

We can say about the soul that it is a combination of high qualities of love, suffering, and heartfelt disposition.

* * *

The soul is that part of our nature with which we know God, pray to Him, turn to Him in all our life circumstances (prayer is the food of our soul).

* * *

The soul is that rational part of our nature with which we are able to recognize good and evil and choose our path in life.

* * *

This is that rational and thinking part of our nature that allows us, through the efforts of our will with the help of God, having known His will and loving it with all our hearts, to build our lives on the basis of the commandments of God.

* * *

This is that part of our nature that allows us to consciously follow the path indicated by God, fighting all the temptations and tricks of the spirit of malice.

* * *

This is that part of our nature that gives us the opportunity not to be carried away by earthly temptations, but to have a single goal in life - the desire to know God and, as far as humanly possible, to feel the presence of God already during our temporary earthly life.

* * *

The soul is a piece of God in us, it is the seat of the Holy Spirit. Through the soul, God is constantly present in us, and He, our Heavenly Father, is constantly with us in this way, because He lives in our soul. Having been created immortal and inspired by God (during creation) by breathing the Spirit into her, she received her destiny to become the Temple of the Spirit of God Not Made by Hands, a place of permanent dwelling in us. And if a person sanctifies it with holy baptism and does not pollute it with his everyday sins, then the Spirit of God is constantly present in it and it becomes the Temple of God. That temple of God not made by hands, which is destined to live forever, containing God within itself.

* * *

The soul is the source from which a person’s activity flows in his actions, in his determination (for good or for evil); This is the connection that gives our human nature the opportunity to be close to God, inspires the desire to strive for God. And the Lord Jesus Christ, by His atoning sacrifice, breathed new life into our immortal soul, life in such close and intimate communication with God, which cannot be compared with any communication between people. We enter into a spiritual union with God, and through the Sacrament of Holy Communion we become one with Him with our bodies.

Attention! This is an introductory fragment of the book.

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Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) was one of the most revered modern clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church at the turn of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In absentia he was called the “All-Russian Elder.” The legacy he left for his descendants touches the soul. Back in the mid-90s, already at a fairly advanced age, the Monk John Krestyankin very willingly received visitors from all over Russia who came to him at the Pskov-Pechersk monastery. This closeness made it very clear to us. In the last years of his life, he enjoyed sharing his memories. Therefore, we are very lucky that we know more about Father John than about others and confessors who suffered martyrdom in those places from which the future archimandrite was destined to return.

Confession of John Krestyankin

People who were lucky enough to meet Father John at least once have the most heartfelt and pleasant memories of him. They tell how he enthusiastically performed church services and how he always walked out of the church, surrounded by a crowd of old and young people who sometimes came just to see him. How Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) walked quickly, as if he were flying, while still managing to answer questions and distribute gifts intended for himself. How he warmly received his spiritual children in his cell, seating them on an old sofa, and in a couple of minutes of conversation the person’s doubts and worries immediately disappeared. At the same time, the elder gave icons, spiritual books and brochures, generously sprinkled holy water and anointed with “oil.” After such spiritual nourishment, it is impossible to imagine what kind of spiritual uplift people felt when they returned to their home.

Caring for your spiritual children

In the corner of Father John’s cell there was a bag of letters, to which he answered with his own hand. Only a few months before his death, cell attendant Tatyana Sergeevna Smirnova helped him answer messages. Even on Father John’s last Christmas, his spiritual children also received such familiar and such sweet cards with personal congratulations.

John Krestyankin. Sermons

It was not for nothing that he was called the “All-Russian Elder”, because he had the gift of foresight, and there is plenty of evidence for this. Elder John Krestyankin endured torture in the camps under Soviet rule and miraculously escaped death several times. He became the author of numerous and very inspired sermons, which today have sold millions of copies. John Krestyankin seemed to know in advance that many people from the generation of the 70s would begin their path to the Orthodox faith with them and how much they would need them. In one of the first books, John Krestyankin begins his construction of confession by explaining the main secret that all believers need to know. It was revealed to us by Jesus Christ Himself, and it is contained in the words of Holy Scripture: “Without Me you can do nothing.”

The perspicacious elder was an extraordinary man of prayer, since in his prayers he always mentioned those people with whom he had the opportunity to meet at least once.

short biography

Vanya was born in the city of Orel in 1910 on April 11 (March 29, old style), in the middle-class family of the Peasants (Mikhail and Elizabeth). And he was already their eighth child. He received his name in honor of St. John the Hermit, since he was born on the day of his memory. However, it is also interesting that on this day the memory of the Pskov-Pechersk holy fathers Mark and Jonah is also honored. And this is probably no coincidence, since he would then live for about forty years in the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, where he would become famous as a perspicacious old man.

Vanya's father died very early, and his mother raised him. Relatives helped the family, including their uncle, the merchant Alexandrovich.

From the age of 6, the boy served in the church, and already at 12 he expressed a desire to become a monk, but this will happen much later.

In 1929, after graduating from secondary school, Ivan Krestyankin went to study accounting courses. Then he began working in his specialty in Orel. But in his heart he always wanted to serve God. He had a lot of work, and because of this, he often did not have time for church services, therefore, with the advice of Elder Vera Loginova, he was forced to quit and in 1932 he moved to Moscow. Then the war began. He was not taken to the front because of poor eyesight.

Moscow. Post-war years

In Moscow in July 1944, Ivan Krestyankin became a psalm-reader at the Izmailovsky Church. It was this temple that the future archimandrite saw in a dream. After 6 months, John Krestyankin was ordained a deacon, and after 9 months he became a priest with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy I.

After the war, a powerful revival of the Orthodox Church began, and more and more believers flocked to churches. At that time, people more than ever needed special sensitivity and compassion, as well as material assistance. Father John devoted himself completely to serving the church and people and at the same time studied by correspondence at the Moscow Theological Academy. Then he began to write a Ph.D. thesis about the holy wonderworker Seraphim of Sarov, but did not have time, because in 1950 he was arrested.

Camp

He spent several months of pre-trial detention in and on Lubyanka. He was sentenced to 7 years for anti-Soviet agitation and sent to a maximum security camp in the Arkhangelsk region. At first he felled wood in the camp, and in the spring of 1953 he was transferred to the disabled ward of the camp near Kuibyshev in Garilova Polyana, where he began working as an accountant. In the winter of 1955, Father John was released early.

Fellow prisoner Vladimir Kabo recalled how his eyes and whole face radiated kindness and love, especially when he was talking to someone. In all his words there was great attention and participation, sometimes there was also a fatherly instruction, brightened with gentle humor. Reverend Father John Krestyankin really loved to joke, and there was something of an intellectual in these manners.

Pskov diocese

When he was released, he was strictly forbidden to return to Moscow. Therefore, he began to serve in the Pskov diocese of the Trinity Cathedral. The authorities kept a vigilant eye on Father John's active church activities and again began to threaten arrest. Then he left Pskov and continued serving in the Ryazan diocese.

And so on June 10, 1966, he became a monk with the name John. In 1967 I transferred him to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery.

Reverend Elder

John Krestyankin lived in this monastery until his death. At first he was the abbot of the monastery, and since 1973 - the archimandrite. A year later, believers even from abroad began to come to his monastery. Everyone loved the elder very much for his high spirituality and wisdom.

In 2005, 95-year-old Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) was awarded the Church Order of St. Seraphim of Sarov, 1st degree. At the same age, the elder introduced himself; it was February 5, 2006. His body rests in the caves of the Pskov-Pechersk monastery.

"Unholy Saints"

In his book “Unholy Saints and Other Stories” he very captivatingly and interestingly describes fragments of the life and cases of insight of the famous all-Russian elder and preacher John Krestyankin.

In 2007, he even created a documentary film called “Pskov-Pecherkaya Monastery.” In his film, he used unique documentary footage from 1986, which captured the great ascetics still alive, who spent most of their time in persecution. Among them was John Krestyankin. As they strived for a great feat, they preserved the treasures of faith.

In conclusion, it would be appropriate to recall the words of Archimandrite John (Krestyankin): “It sometimes happens that a person begins to languish and yearn for no reason. This means that his soul became bored with a pure life, felt its sinfulness, was tired of the noise and bustle, and began (often unconsciously) to seek God and communication with him.”