A THIEF CLIMBED INTO THE ALTAR FOR GOLD, BUT SAW SOMETHING THAT HE GAVE EVERYTHING: CONFESSION OF A RECIDIVIST WHOM THE LORD SAVED

A THIEF CLIMBED INTO THE ALTAR FOR GOLD, BUT SAW SOMETHING THAT HE GAVE EVERYTHING: CONFESSION OF A RECIDIVIST WHOM THE LORD SAVED

(The story is based on the story of one priest)

The lock on the heavy oak door creaked under the crowbar like a dry bone. Arkady, who in his circles was simply called Kasha, slid inside. Silence. Thick, dense, smelling of incense, wax and something else, ancient and forgotten - the dampness of centuries. He was not here to pray. Behind him were three "trips", half a life behind barbed wire and a firm conviction: there is no God, and if there is, then not for people like him. The goal was a small rural church in Zarechye, where, according to rumors, an ancient tabernacle was kept in the altar. It might not have been gold, but there was a fair amount of silver there. For Kasha, it was a ticket to a couple of months of another, more prosperous life.

He walked along the creaky floorboards to the iconostasis. His heart was beating steadily, as usual - work was work. Having deftly opened the side, deacon's door, he stepped beyond the line where he, a mere mortal, and especially with such thoughts, was not supposed to enter. He stepped into the holy of holies - into the altar. He turned on the flashlight. A narrow beam of light snatched from the darkness the throne, covered with old brocade. And on it - she, his goal. A small casket, dimly gleaming in the light of the flashlight. His hands were already anticipating the weight of the precious metal.

He took a step, and the beam of the flashlight accidentally slid higher, onto the wall behind the throne. And Kasha froze.

Eyes were looking at him from the centuries-old darkness.

It was an ancient, almost erased fresco. The plaster was cracked, the paint had faded, and the face of the Savior was barely visible. But the eyes... They were alive. And there was no anger, no condemnation, no threat in them, which Arkady had been expecting all his life from everyone - from the local police officer to the prosecutor. In those eyes there was a bottomless, quiet, universal sorrow. Such sadness, as if the sky itself was crying for his, Arkasha's, soul.

This was not the look of a Judge, but of a Father who looks at his lost, wounded, stupid son, who had squandered the priceless gift of life on emptiness.

And at that moment, everything flashed before Arkady's inner eye. Not like in a movie - beautifully and with music, but terribly and in reality. Here is the tear-stained face of his mother, whom he had not seen for twenty years. Here is the first theft - a loaf of bread. Here is the cold of a prison cell and a checkered sky. Here is the betrayal of his friends, who set him up for a new term. His whole life was a series of falls, anger, insults and short, dirty "joy" from what was stolen. His whole life, where there was not a single bright day, not a single deed that he would like to remember.

He looked into the eyes on the fresco, and saw all his emptiness. All the vileness. And for the first time in thirty years, he felt unbearably sorry not for himself, but for the One who looked at him from the wall with such pain. As if it was he, Arkady, who with his own hands added cracks to this ancient face, erased this heavenly paint with his sins.

The heavy crowbar fell with a crash onto the stone floor. His legs gave way. And the forty-year-old, seasoned repeat offender, who knew neither fear nor tears, fell to his knees and howled. Quietly, like an animal, burying his face in the cold slabs. He was not crying from fear of being caught. He was crying because, it turned out, he had been loved all his life. So much and so painfully.

In the morning, Father Vasily, a gray-haired village priest, opened the church and froze at the threshold of the altar. An unfamiliar man in a dirty jacket was sleeping curled up on his knees before the altar. The thief's tools were lying nearby. Father Vasily did not shout or call the police. He quietly approached, covered the man with his old cassock and began to wait for him to wake up.

When Arkady opened his eyes and saw the kind face of the priest above him, he did not run away. He began to cry again and, choking on words and sobs, began his first confession in his life. He shook out of his soul all the dirt accumulated over the decades, and the old priest listened silently, and tears also flowed down his cheeks.

They say that Arkady never left that church. He gave the priest all his meager savings - "to repair the fresco." He became a guard, a carpenter, and a janitor there. And when parishioners asked Father Vasily who this new worker was, he smiled and answered: "A man whom the Lord called by name."

Sometimes such an Arkady awakens in each of us, who steals the time of his life from God. And who knows at what moment a ray of our inner light will accidentally stumble upon that very "fresco" in the soul, and we will see this sorrowful, loving look that can turn everything upside down.

God bless you!

© Sergiy Vestnik