Fr. John Krestiankin on his 95th birthday.One day my
spiritual father, Archimandrite John (Krestiankin) of the Pskov-Caves
Monastery, called me and said: "I am going to die soon. So please do me a
favour, write down what you remember and what you want to tell people about me.
Because afterwards you all are going to write something anyway, and you might
come up with stories as ridiculous as they did with poor Father Nikolai, who
“resurrected cats” and other fables like that. So I want to check everything
myself for my peace of mind.”[1]
Thus, fulfilling my spiritual father's obedience, I
began this task in the hope that Batiushka himself would separate the wheat
from the chaff, perhaps suggest some things that I might have forgotten, and,
as always, correct any mistakes I might have made.
I will not write very much about what Fr. John meant
to me. My whole monastic life was inseparably connected with him. He has been
and remains for me the ideal of an Orthodox Christian, a monk, and a loving and
demanding priest and father.
It would be impossible, of course, to re-tell
everything that happened over the course of our relationship. His spiritual
counsels can be read in his published letters. In my opinion, they are the best
that have been written in the area of spiritual and moral literature in Russia
for the last fifty years. I would like to relate something else, known to me
personally.
For me, Fr. John's main spiritual quality was not only
his gift of discernment, but also his unshakeable faith in the all-good and
perfect Providence of God, which leads a Christian to salvation. An epigraph to
one of Fr. John's books is something he often repeated: "The main things
in spiritual life are faith in God's Providence and discernment with
guidance." Once, in answer to my perplexity, Batiushka wrote: "At the
moment I am reading a passage from the Old Testament, and what depth [I find in
it]: A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps (Prov.
16:9). The wise Solomon bore this out. You, also, in your own life must be
convinced that it can be no other way."
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http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/7194.htm
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