The Shirt

The Shirt

A family had a tradition of sewing clothes for the poor for Pascha. And so, on the eve of the feast, grandmother tells about an amazing incident:

Spring. The snow has almost melted. The earth turns green and some special fresh damp smell speaks of spring. We all gathered at my grandmother's and work hard: we sew shirts for the poor. Mom and nanny cut, grandma sweeps the shirts away, Natasha quickly sews them on a sewing machine, Aunt Masha makes amendments, Vera sews the buttonholes and sews on the buttons. Even Kolya and Mashenka cut the threads and put them in needles.

"Tell us grandmother," the eldest grandson Nikolai asks, "why do we always sew men's shirts before Pascha?"

"According to my grandmother's will, my friend ... It was a long time ago even before the revolution. My grandmother, Nadezhda Sergeevna, spent Great Lent in strict abstinence, prayer and work for the poor. She sewed clothes herself and all the women and girls at home. to the poor: dresses, sundresses, shirts. All this was folded and distributed during Holy Week to the poor so that they could go to Matins in a new clean robe. Shirts were then sewn not from chintz, as we do now, but from white homespun canvas, and sewn there are a great variety of these shirts.

Once, a year or two before her death, Nadezhda Sergeevna on Holy Week handed out all the sewn things to the poor, and she was left with one shirt. Something strange was happening with this shirt: it went back to my grandmother several times. One beggar left the city, another died, the third became rich and no longer needed alms.

"How strange," said grandmother to her maid Ustenka. "Apparently, God intended this shirt for someone. Let's leave it with us, and you will give it to the first person who comes to ask for Christ's mercy."

Two more days passed, Great Saturday came. Nadezhda Sergeevna was sitting at her window, while Ustenka was already filling the lamps for the holiday. Suddenly a tall, handsome old man, dressed in a tightly buttoned zipun, came up to the window. He asked us to help him for Bright Week.

Grandmother sent Ustenka to give him bread, money, painted eggs. “And don’t forget to give the shirt intended for him,” shouted the grandmother to the departing Ustenka.

She handed everything over to the old man, and when she gave the shirt with a request to put it on at church for the Bright Matins, the old man suddenly raised his hands to the sky and burst into tears. “Lord, I thank you for the great mercy to me, a sinner!” He exclaimed, “and you are a kind, dear benefactress, may God bless you that after so many years you covered me on the Holy Day”.

With these words he opened his zipun, but his chest was bare. "For 16 years now I have been walking naked, and I have made such a vow before the Lord: do not ask for anything for myself. What will be served, thank for that. You are the first, angelic soul, to cover my nakedness! And what a great Holy Day, on the eve of Pascha ”.

And he again wept with joyful tears, and his grandmother cried with him at her window; she realized that the Lord had blessed and accepted her work and alms.

When she was dying, she bequeathed to her daughter and me, her granddaughter, always during Great Lent to sew shirts for the poor and also command her children and grandchildren. We are trying to do our best to fulfill grandmother's will, and I hope, my friends, that you will not forget it too,” the grandmother finishing her story.

Maria Lvova, 1940