AN OPTINA
ELDER. A STORY
Olga Rozhneva
On learning
that I work at Optina Hermitage, people often ask me, “Are there elders at
Optina in the present day?” or “How can I get to talk with an elder?”
At first, I was
troubled by such questions… After all, more often than not, we—even those of us
who have been in the Church for a long time—are beginners, spiritual infants…
My first spiritual director, Abbot Savvaty, who had already lived within the
Church for 40 years, and who had 25 years of experience since his ordination,
would sometimes say about himself, “I have studied in a religious school; well,
perhaps I completed two grades… but my spiritual director, Fr. John
Krestiankin, he, well… he was a spiritual professor….”
Yes, an Elder
is a spiritual professor… But why does a spiritual infant need a professor? Any
Optina spiritual director is capable of answering a beginner’s questions… but
people obstinately continue to look for an Elder. They seek our Optina
Schema-Abbot, now a Schema-Archimandrite, Fr. Ilie (Nozdrin). They ask him
questions, ask his prayers, and want to be given an Elder’s blessing. I told
Abbot A___, a renowned spiritual director at Optina Hermitage about how this
disturbed me, and he answered:
“Do not let it
disturb you. Elders are the beauty of Orthodoxy, the spirit of Orthodoxy, the
witness to the truth of our Faith. Through an Elder, a person sees God. In the
19th Century, when thousands would come to the Monastery to visit St. Ambrose,
were people disconcerted? Sometimes, you hear from our contemporaries, ‘Now,
there are no more Elders.’ In what century did the Psalmist David say, [the
Lord] ‘forsaketh His saints?’ That Jesus Christ—yesterday and today, remains
the same One, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit remain the same gifts …
Everyone who
has had occasion to meet with Fr. Ilie is certain that even the briefest of
meetings with him is an event of great spiritual importance in their lives. I
feel the same. By God’s grace, I was able to speak with the Elder on several
occasions, to go to him for Confession and to receive Holy Communion from him.
In 2009, after Fr. Ilie questioned me about my earliest stories, he blessed me
to work as a writer. It was after receiving the Elder’s blessing that over the
course of three years, I, who had never had any dealings with publishers or
with the book publishing industry, wrote my books Monastic Encounters, and True
Stories.
I began to
carefully record stories about the Elder that his spiritual children so
generously shared with me, as well as accounts by other people who had simply
had the opportunity to meet with Fr. Ilie. These stories were somehow “gentle,
quiet ” ones: It was as if the Elder’s meekness and humility extended both into
the stories and into the storytellers… You wanted to relate their accounts in
hushed tones, as people do when talking about some precious, cherished secret.
Nun Philareta
permitted me to record her account of her encounter with the Elder.
All of her
life, Mother Philareta—then simply Liudmila Grechina, had believed in God, but
she became a regular churchgoer only as an adult. After graduating from the
Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), she was an aerospace engineer, working in the
area of data storage for satellite rocket launching. She is convinced that, had
she not come to God, she would already be dead, as are several of her
co-workers who were of the same age as she. When someone is spiritually
growing, the Lord does not cut off the unripe fruit, but grants the person
additional time in which to mature.
Liudmila
Grechina’s coming into the Church was something quite miraculous. She and her
son were on vacation in Italy. Going out for an evening walk, she was enjoying
the vista of hills in the distance, and the wonderful view of a monastery that
could be seen from the prominence where she stood. Suddenly, she heard a voice
saying:
“When you
return to Russia, you will go to the monastery.”
These words
were so clear and distinct that, upon returning to Russia, Liudmila—then
already 57 years old—decided to consult an Elder. She came to Optina Hermitage
to see its Elder, Fr. Ilie.
It is always
difficult to get to see Fr. Ilie. There are always more people wanting to ask
his advice, to ask his prayers, or to just get his blessing than can be
accommodated in one day, even by such an ascetic. However, with God’s help,
Liudmila was not only able to talk with him immediately, but was able to become
his spiritual child. It was granted to the Elder to foresee her future monastic
path. He immediately proposed that Liudmila go to the Novodevichy Monastery.
“What? To
Novodevichy? But it is a museum, batiushka!”
The Elder
smiled and replied:
“There is a
monastery there. It has already been open for four months.”
“But who would
take me in at my age?!”
“Go, go! Fear
not; the abbess there will accept you!”
And he
described the abbess and gave such an assurance, without ever having laid eyes
upon her.
Liudmila moved
to Novodevichy Monastery, and has been living there for 18 years. Fr. Ilie
became her spiritual father. True, she does not get to go see him often. Once,
after she had already been tonsured a nun, she thought to herself, “I rarely
see batiushka. Does he perhaps not even consider me his spiritual child?” The
idea saddened her. A couple of days later, she received a letter from the
Elder. It began with the following words: “My spiritual child!” Batiushka had
brought her solace …
Mother
Philareta recalled instances of her spiritual father’s penetrating vision:
“Batiushka could sometimesrepeat word for word things said in a cell at
Novodevichy Monastery, even though he was at Optina Hermitage, 400 km from
Moscow.”
She once
happened to bring her spiritual father a gift—a natural cotton cassock of
extremely high quality, obtained on a pilgrimage to Alexandria. She put the
gift in a bag, and went in search of the Elder. No one could see what was in
the bag; it was to be a surprise for batiushka … She was walking through
Optina, and spied the Elder talking to some pilgrims, next to a church.
Mother
Philareta stood off to the side, and waited for Fr. Ilie to finish his
conversation, so that she might give him his present. While waiting, she
recollected that the Elder would always immediately give away any gifts he
received. She remembered how, when a pilgrim gave him a jar of strawberry
preserves, he immediately gave it to Mother Philareta and said, “Lets give
those preserves to matushka, who needs them more than I do.”
And her
thoughts began to turn to the cassock: So batiushka won’t be wearing it; he
will give it to someone else! I wish he would wear it himself! It is such a
good inner cassock! No, he won’t be wearing it himself… He will certainly give
it to someone else…
At that very
moment, the elder turned to her and said, “All right, all right, give me my
present! I will, I will, wear it myself!”
She happened to
introduce me to her spiritual sister, Schema-nun Elizabeth, another of Fr.
Ilie’s spiritual children. Mother Elizabeth gave me an account of her meeting
with the Elder.…
She had also
come to the Faith as a mature adult, by then not only a mother, but also a
grandmother. She came to the Faith as if she had been seeking it all of her
life. On finding it, she embraced and clung to it as to a healing spring that
heals spiritual wounds. Quickly growing into the life of the Church, she lost
interest in television, and came to love fasting and church services. Finding
herself in need of spiritual direction, she went to Optina.
The events that
followed developed in a rush. She saw the Elder, surrounded by pilgrims, and
very much wanted to talk with him for at least a minute or two. However, the
crowd was too great, and she decided to put it off until the next day.
The next day,
the Elder was not at the Monastery. He had gone to the metochion in Moscow. She
found out the telephone number of the metochion, got the courage to call, and
in spite of doubts that such a thing was possible, asked to speak to batiushka.
There was a pause, and then they asked for her telephone number, and politely
ended the conversation… “Well, that is that,” she thought. “It did not work… It
was stupid of me to even hope… The Elder has more than enough things to do
without having a conversation with every old woman who wants to talk to him!”
The very next
day, the phone rang, and, interrupting her daily tasks, she picked up the
receiver. She picked it up, and almost dropped it again, for it was
batiushkahimself who was calling! And he invited her to come see him at the
metochion.
Beside herself
with nervousness, she came, and found herself sitting next to the Elder. And he
was talking with her as if he had known her all of his life. At the conclusion
of the conversation, Fr. Ilie said, “And did you know that the path you are to
take is a monastic one?” With that, he gave his future spiritual child the
prayer rule.
For several
years, she sought spiritual nourishment from batiushka. Then the time came when
the Elder warned her, “Prepare for your tonsure.” She became extremely worried,
not understanding how to prepare… Thus, she approached Archdeacon Fr. Iliodor.
A kind and solicitous man, he immediately brought her back to the Elder and
asked the spiritual father:
“Batiushka,
would you bless me to take this sister to Shamordino, so that they might sew
her monastic vestments for her tonsure?”
Fr. Ilie turned
around, and fixed them with a careful gaze. He sometimes had such a piercing
and penetrating gaze, that it seems as if he could see not only the person
talking with him, but also that person’s past and future. Thus, after giving
his spiritual children such an intense and penetrating look, the Elder replied:
“You don’t need
to go anywhere. They will sew the vestments. At Danilov Monastery.”
She had never
had any acquaintances at that Monastery. However, the Elder had spoken, so he
must know better. The future nun returned to Moscow. At the time, she was a
parishioner at the church of Tsarevitch Dimitry, and it was at that church that
she had organized a nursing school dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr
Elizabeth. Fr. Anatoly was the parish rector. She shared with him her concerns
about monastic vestments, and he said to her:
“We will ask
one of the sisters at our school; she makes vestments. Say, Valya, come here.”
Valya came
running, and happily agreed to help. The next day, she announced that they will
sew the vestments, and that they will do it for free—to the glory of God.
“Where do such
kind people work?”
“What do you
mean, where? I work, sewing vestments, at the Danilov Monastery. That is wehre
they will be made.…”
And so the
circle was closed. And yet, the Elder had never looked at Valya face to face. …
And so,
batiushka tonsured his spiritual child in honor of Holy Great Martyr Elizabeth.
People often
ask: “What kind of person is Elder Ilie?” It is difficult to answer such a
question. How can we, living by reason and intellect, understand a spiritual
person? A spiritual person sees and understands everyone, while one who lives
by reason alone cannot comprehend one who lives by the Spirit. We only sense
the grace of God, the love and humility that emanates from the spiritual
person, and our hearts are drawn to him, and are opened up before him. …
After the
service at the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Most-holy Theotokos, batiushka
comes out onto the soleas, and the hands of pilgrims reach out to him, asking
for a blessing and for prayers, or handing him lists of names for him to
commemorate. Standing next to me is a tall, powerful man wearing an expression
of grief on his face. He tries to approach the Elder, but there are too many
people in front of us. To my horror, I notice that out of spiritual torment and
suffering, the man next to me is quietly weeping. It is hard for me to look at
a man shedding tears; gasping, I feverishly try to think of some way to help
him get close to the Elder.
However, Fr.
Ilie, who is not tall of stature, and who is completely hidden from us by the
crowd, already hears that sorrow. The crowd parts, and he comes up to the
suffering man. We see the Elder lovingly hug him, like a mother consoling her
weeping child. Through his tears, the man tries to explain, to tell about, his
woe, and the people around him recognize that it is over the loss of someone
dear to him. The man is already sobbing, bowing his head to the Elder’s
shoulder, and batiushka, himself almost weeping is tenderly hugging the sobbing
man. There is such love expressed in the Elder’s face…
Тhere
they stand, pressed against one another, and everyone comprehends that
batiushkais praying for the suffering man, with the full intensity of his
spiritual powers. Gradually, the sobbing man calms down, and his face changes
in some way that is hard to describe. It is hard to put in words: despair,
strain and depression are replaced by hope and consolation…This is what
sometimes happens when someone takes upon himself your pain and your suffering.
The next
evening, the monks of the Optina brotherhood come out of the Altar for the
polyeleos, and arrange themselves in two rows, according to seniority of
ordination. We and the nuns stand not far from the middle of the nave, along
with the pilgrims who have come to pray. We hear one of the brethren—who has
decided that the Elder is occupying a place below his spiritual rank and honor,
say to him, “Batiushka, you are standing in the wrong spot.” And the Elder
humbly goes over to the other side. Over there, it seems to the brethren that
he should be standing in a more honored place, in the other row, and they again
say to him, “Batiushka, not here; over there.” Again, he humbly crosses over to
the other side. There, they again say to him, “No, batiushka, not over here,”
until one of the senior monks, realizing what is happening, bursts out, “What
are you doing?! Leave the Elder in peace!”
Meanwhile, each
time, batiushka quite unabashedly and calmly crosses over to whatever side he
is asked to go. He, spiritual director of the monastic brethren, remains
absolutely unperturbed; he shows no indication of anger or of being upset in
any way. Being disturbed is a usual concomitant of pride and vanity: what do
you mean, I did something wrong?! That disturbance is not characteristic of one
who is meek and humble. At the same time, that meekness and that humility are
not at all self-abasement!
Batiushka
blesses a certain person under obedience to read the 50th Psalm, but the person
misunderstands, and says agitatedly, “Read it fifty times?” Everyone in the
area begins to laugh. However, the Elder does not laugh. He is a person of such
subtle discernment and delicacy, and has such love for others, that he does not
even give a hint that the person has made an error. It is as if everything is
in good order. Batiushka humbly and lovingly explains, “No, not fifty times;
you will read it once.” And all of us who had laughed are ashamed of ourselves
for having laughed at a person who had simply misunderstood…
Through His
merciful kindness, the Lord gives us elders. Bishop Panteleimon (Shatov) of
Smolensk and Vyazma wrote the following about a contemporary elder, Fr. Pavel
(Troitsky): “You know, I came to the faith when I was already an adult, and
after I had already become a priest, I would sometimes encounter thoughts of
disbelief. When I came to know Fr. Pavel, I would respond to those thoughts of
disbelief as follows: ‘If Fr. Pavel exists, that means God exists. For me, the
fact that Fr. Pavel exists was the best proof of the existence of God.’ No
matter how gloomy the darkness, no matter what thought the devil might put into
my stupid, empty, head, no matter what feelings might be crowded in my evil,
hardened heart, my remembrance of the fact that Fr. Pavel exists, and the
knowledge of the grace that is given man by God, of course kept me from
disbelief, kept me from despondency, kept me from various temptations,
temptations that are so numerous in our life.”
Those same
words could be said about Elder Ilie. …
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