{"id":27920,"date":"2020-01-10T09:17:11","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T09:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/?p=27920"},"modified":"2020-01-10T09:17:11","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T09:17:11","slug":"stephen-said-vladyka-all-is-well-with-me-turned-and-became-invisible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/stephen-said-vladyka-all-is-well-with-me-turned-and-became-invisible","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Said: \u201cVladyka, All Is Well With Me\u201d, Turned and Became Invisible"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Schema-Archdeacon Stephen after his tonsure into the Great Schema<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Death\u00a0is a mystery. It is our third birthday. I will be honest\u2014a day does not go by when I don\u2019t think about death. But it is impossible to fathom the depths of that word\u2019s meaning and the experience of the event itself. I can think about how I will lie in the grave, but what the soul will experience simply doesn\u2019t fit into my awareness. Any funeral rite\u2014for a layperson or an infant\u2014is simply unfathomable in its meaning. But there is a special funeral rite for monastics\u2014it is extraordinarily profound in essence, significant for the soul and at the same time so joyful that I would compare it with the\u00a0Paschal canon. If people knew how grace-filled this is, probably the whole world would want to receive the monastic tonsure if only just before death, just for the sake of this rite.<\/p>\n

You could call the funeral of one of our monastery\u2019s brothers, Schema-Archimandrite Stephen, a confirmation of this. He died at age twenty-five. As we were travelling back to the Lavra after my father\u2019s burial he suddenly said, \u201cWell who will be next after your father?\u201d I answered, \u201cMaybe me?\u201d I have to add that Fr. Stephen was always very happy for people who had cancer. He would say, \u201cWhat a lucky man! He can prepare himself, and give away all of his things himself.\u201d The month of May arrived, and I could see that he was barely eating anything. I always tell the brothers, \u201cIf some one gets sick, make sure you tell me.\u201d Illness is a natural thing, like death. We do not know God\u2019s ways. I do not try to get into what is impossible for us to know; it is enough for me that the Lord allows me to live. His good will extends to everyone, if only we would be true Christians and stand firm in our holy Orthodox faith.<\/p>\n

So Fr. Stephen admitted, \u201cVladyka, I have a lot pain just below my stomach.\u201d I said, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you say anything?!\u201d Whenever it\u2019s necessary I can call my friend Alexander Yurievich Usenko, the director of the Shalimov Institute of Surgery. Fr. Stephen was taken there the very next day. They operated on him a day after the examination. The doctor let us know what he found: \u201cThere is dropsy here, but let\u2019s hope there isn\u2019t something else… We will do a tissue study and then I can say.\u201d After the operation we took Fr. Stephen home, and few days later Usenko gives me a call. \u201cHe already has a metastasis in his bones below the waist, at the level of the kidneys.\u201d I asked, \u201cWhat can we do?\u201d \u201cNow, nothing\u201d, he replied.<\/p>\n

I had to visit the patient, but it\u2019s not easy to bring such news. I went in, sat down, and said, \u201cShall I tell you the truth?\u201d He nodded, \u201cGo ahead\u201d. \u201cYou have cancer.\u201d He crossed himself and said, \u201cGlory to God!\u201d<\/p>\n

Our young archdeacon received this news very calmly. He said that his aunt and his grandmother also had cancer. When the brothers asked me to tonsure him into the schema, we started thinking about what name to give him. Fr. Polycarp said, \u201cStephen\u2014in honor of the protomartyr Archdeacon Stephen.\u201d He did not agree to the tonsure immediately, but then accepted the offer. And so we performed his tonsure into the highest angelic image, in the caves. Of course I was in tears\u2014I knew that a youth of holy life was dying. But what could I do? At the end of the tonsure I said, \u201cUsually this is a moment when everyone congratulates you… but you know the reason for your tonsure. And I can\u2019t say a thing to you.\u201d But he just smiled, \u201cVladyka, you don\u2019t have to say anything. You have already said and done everything.\u201d I blessed him: \u201cFr. Stephen, while you still can, go to the services and sit in my place.\u201d And he came every day, and intoned the litany of peace. Then he would sit down on the chair where the abbot sits, and at the end the brothers would help him to his cell.<\/p>\n

I tell you that he did not have the slightest fear, complaint, or grievance. Only when his mother came and took his hand\u2014he weighed no more than 35 kilograms by then\u2014she simply wailed, and he took a stick and threw it at her. His mother complained about it to me, and I went in to him and said, \u201cStephen, you are not behaving decently.\u201d He asked her to leave and then he said to me, \u201cVladyka, I feel bad enough as it is, and here she is wailing for everyone to hear. It\u2019s too late to cry. I am my parents\u2019 only child and it\u2019s hard enough as it is when I think about who will take care of them…\u201d His mother was a ballerina, an awarded artist of the Crimea, and his father was a first tenor, an awarded artist of the Soviet Union. \u201cI know that they\u2019ll be left all alone. I feel so sorry for her that I can\u2019t tell you. But I know that the Lord will not abandon them.\u201d (His mother has died already\u2014the Lord took her on Pascha.) Then I reasoned with her, \u201cNina, stop tormenting yourself. Don\u2019t cry in his presence.\u201d \u201cHow?!\u201d she sobbed. \u201cI carried him as a baby in my arms…\u201d I said, \u201cThe Mother of God also held her Son in her arms when He was taken down from the Cross. Emulate her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Archdeacon
Archdeacon Stephen during the cross procession in the Lavra on the feast of St. Theodosius of the Kiev Caves. 1998.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stephen\u2019s name day was approaching. When I came to him beforehand he suddenly said, \u201cVladyka, on my name day they\u2019ll carry me into the church with the words, \u201cThe righteous shall flourish like a palm tree…\u201d and all the people will ask whose relics they brought. That will be my first and last name day.\u201d That is how it all happened. On January 8 he received Communion, and after the Liturgy ended he began to depart. I read the canon for the departure of the soul. Then I leaned toward him and asked, \u201cFr. Stephen, do you hear me? Give me some sort of sign.\u201d And a tear fell from his eyes. He always firmly grasped his tonsure cross on his chest.<\/p>\n

At the evening service the casket with the reliquary holding the finger of the protomartyr\u00a0Archdeacon Stephen\u00a0was placed in the center of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross. And when the choir sang the prokeminon: \u201cThe righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, like a cedar in Lebanon shall he be multiplied\u201d (Ps. 91:3), the brothers carried the coffin with Fr. Stephen in it through the side doors of the church and placed it next to the reliquary of Archdeacon Stephen. All the people started asking, \u201cWhose relics are those?\u201d And when they went up to them they venerated both caskets. We served his funeral rite after midnight. At 2:30 we began the Midnight Office, and then Matins, Liturgy, the funeral rite by seven, and finished while it was still dark out. And here is another paradox: Throughout the whole time, all night, seagulls were flying over the church up until the moment he was lowered into the grave. This was in January, over the Lavra… He died on the eve of his own name day and was buried on his name day\u2014the feast day of his patron saint.<\/p>\n

Once when we were walkeing through the monastery cemetery, His Beatitude Vladimir [(Sabodan) then head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church] showed me where we should bury him when the time comes, and where I should be buried. So after Fr. Stephen\u2019s death I came to the cemetery when the gravediggers had already dug the grave, and it occupied practically half of my own gravesite. I murmured a little, but Fr. Vasily said to me, \u201cVladyka, don\u2019t worry! We\u2019ll canonize Stephen, and put you in that place.\u201d There was another significant moment. The fortieth day from the schema-archdeacons\u2019 repose was approaching and His Beatitude called on me. \u201cTell me, Vladyka, what did Stephen look like?\u201d I showed him a photograph. He looked at it and said with amazement, \u201cListen, today I went into the Dormition Cathedral and saw a reliquary in the center. On the lid of the reliquary there was an icon depicted, and on the icon was… him. And then he and a multitude of monks went into the altar.<\/p>\n

\"Abbot
Abbot of the Kiev Caves Lavra Metropolitan Pavel and Schema-Archdeacon Stephen (left).\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In reply I told His Beatitude another amazing story. When our schema-archdeacon was still of sound mind, we were talking and I asked him, \u201cFr. Stephen, come to me in a dream after you die and tell me how you are.\u201d And so on January 8 I went to my cell after the service, having visited him just before. And a few minutes before 11:00 I lay down to rest. At ten till twelve, Fr. Vasily knocked on my door, and said, \u201cFr. Stephen\u2019s father has arrived.\u201d I asked, \u201cHas Stephen died?\u201d \u201cHow did you know?\u201d \u201cI just saw him.\u201d \u201cHow?!\u201d Fr. Vasily asked, astonished. Here\u2019s how it was. I was sleeping, but it was as if I had already woken up, was sitting on my bed and saw Fr. Stephen coming in. Next to him were two beautiful youths in the garments of schemamonks with kukols (monastic rounded caps) and it was simply inexpressible. He said to me, \u201cVladyka, I\u2019m well, I\u2019m healthy.\u201d I was surprised. \u201cStephen,\u201d I said, \u201cyou couldn\u2019t even get up. I was just in your cell and you were lying there unable to move.\u201d He smiled every so slightly and said, \u201cI\u2019m healthy, Vladyka, and nothing hurts.\u201d He turned and became invisible. I had only just seen this with they came to me to tell me that Fr. Stephan had died. That is how monks inform the abbot and brothers about their end. We should not believe in dreams, but there are cases when the Lord informs a person through a dream.<\/p>\n

I really loved Fr. Stephen. He was an obedient monk and full of zeal. We talked often. He had a beautiful voice, and he sang on the cliros with Fr. Polycarp. If you listen to the recording of the Akathist to the Dormition of the Theotokos you\u2019ll hear his angelic voice.<\/p>\n

I think that these are very edifying stories. They show that our reposed close ones are always with us. Only we often do not understand this. But by God\u2019s will, eternity is hidden from us by a veil of temporality.<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/orthochristian.com\/120719.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Death\u00a0is a mystery. It is our third birthday. I will be honest\u2014a day does not go by when I don\u2019t think about death. But…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-27920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-thoughts","tag-life-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2-11-1-11-1.jpeg","views":{"total":2066,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1767824598},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPyw9-7gk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27924,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920\/revisions\/27924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}