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A
CONTEMPORARY VOICE FROM HOLY RUSSIA:
ELDER ZOSIMA (+ 2002)
'LOVE
IS GREATER THAN ALL ELSE'
'I
am still alive'
Schema-Archimandrite
Zosima after death
Foreword
In
accordance with human nature, all human organizations on earth have hierarchies.
However, in the Church, which is both human and divine, there are two
hierarchies. The first is an outer hierarchy, corresponding to the human
aspect of the Church, the second is an inner hierarchy, corresponding
to its divine aspect. This second hierarchy is in fact a hierarchy of
grace, corresponding to our closeness to, or distance from, the Kingdom
of God. Its upper part is composed of those who have become holy, the
communion of the saints. Its lower part is composed of the righteous still
on earth, of whom some of the most visible are the Elders and Eldresses
of the Church, with their gifts of prayer, discernment, wonder-working,
healing, and inner sight into the past and the future, the latter known
as prophecy. One contemporary such Elder is the recently reposed Schema-Archimandrite
Zosima of the Ukraine (+ 2002), whose favourite saying was: 'Love is greater
than all else'. Let us learn something of his life.
John
- the Grace of the Lord
Schema-Archimandrite
Zosima was born Ivan Alekseevich Sokur on 3 September 1944. He never saw
his father, a Don Cossack, who was killed at the front. His mother, Maria,
came from Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, but the future Elder was born in a
Siberian prison hospital in the region of Sverdlov. A devout woman, his
mother had been imprisoned for practising her Faith. Her child was baptised
Ioann (John), on the advice of the future saint, the holy Elder Kuksha.
The Elder was at that time in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, and he
predicted that the infant would grow in 'the grace of the Lord', which
is the meaning of the name 'John'. At his baptism the baby took firm hold
of the cross and the beard of the priest. This was deeply symbolic for
his future life, for it was by the cross and as a priest that he would
live.
The
child grew up in a small mining town in the Donbass in the Ukraine. In
this industrial desert was to be found a group of exiled nuns and spiritual
children of St John of Kronstadt, among them Sister Antonina, his mother's
sister, who helped bring him up. The nuns often secretly gathered in the
Sokurs' house. John's aunt prophesied that he would live to see the canonization
and worldwide veneration of St John of Kronstadt, which of course came
about when the Church Outside Russia canonized him. From the life of St
John related to him by his disciples, the child John learnt of the courage
that Orthodox must have to survive in this world. He often said that we
must not be, 'slaves to fear'. Later he also said: 'Read the lives of
the martyrs and confessors of the twentieth century - there you will find
the true sacred history of the twentieth century'. The Elder also predicted
that the relics of St John, his favourite saint, would, one day, at a
most difficult time in Russian history, be uncovered as a blessing to
the whole world and that there would be many miracles and healings.
Thus
John was brought up in the church and, by the age of seven, he could read
Church Slavonic fluently. In those post-war years the family lived in
great poverty and John often came close to death from starvation, from
illness, or from being crushed by trains, for he would often go to the
railway-line, searching for lumps of coal to cook with. Despite their
poverty, the family kept the Church fasts strictly. The nuns, who had
all suffered imprisonment for the Faith, one for 25 years, taught John
to recite the psalms and the Jesus Prayer as he worked. John's mother
also later became a nun, under the name Mariamna.
School
and Persecution
From
the age of seven onwards, John had to go to school. Here he never took
part in anything relating to the atheist Communist Party. Later he would
say that he only had one Party: Mother Church. The teachers and the other
children mocked him and called him 'father' or 'priest' - words of insult
in Soviet times. Despite the bullying and the beatings, John always triumphed
through his love and meekness. Even when the head-teacher tried to persuade
the young child, in a six-hour interview, of the correctness of Communism,
John remained firm. The authorities even threatened to close the local
church if John went there. In fact, the more they persecuted him, the
stronger his faith became. The child was saved because he was an excellent
pupil. Later the Elder was to show interest in all sorts of things and
spoke of the importance of knowledge.
Indeed,
he considered that knowledge was vital. His favourite reading was the
twelve volumes of St Dimitri's Lives of the Saints and the Diary of St
John of Kronstadt. Later he would recommend this Diary to Orthodox, in
it the Elder said you could find the answers to all your questions. When
the militia raided the house and took away all the icons and books, miraculously
they left this Diary. In this John saw a sign. Another influence was when
Fr Dimitri Peskov, a man of prayer with the gift of discernment, came
to serve in the local church after many years of imprisonment. John served
there and learned much. Another influence was the pilgrimages the family
made. One was to Pochaev, where they now met the holy Elder Kuksha, who
prophesied the future life of John, as a priest, a monk, and a schemamonk
- a man of prayer for the whole world.
The
Way of the Cross
When
Khrushchov came to power in the Soviet Union in 1959, new trials started
as persecution increased. John, whom everyone including himself, knew
was destined for the priesthood, was to suffer. In 1961 he finished school,
an outstanding pupil, but the Communists would not let him study at seminary.
With the blessing of the local priest, who wished to test him, John went
to study veterinary science. It seemed suitable, since he suffered with
all living things. After one year of these studies, his spiritual father
blessed him to enter the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev. Here his spiritual
father became the clairvoyant Elder, Schema-Abbot Valentine. It was he
who warned the young John of the temptations that he would face in the
future. In particular, he said: 'They will ask you to be a bishop thirteen
times and once to be bishop in Japan. Refuse, this is not your path'.
All of this came to pass. Being obedient to his spiritual father, Fr Zosima
always refused the offer of the episcopate.
John
stayed at the Monastery in Kiev until it was closed by the atheists. At
that time the future Soviet Metropolitan of Kiev, the infamous Philaret,
who was to be defrocked when freedom came to the Church in the 1990s,
came with KGB agents to close the Monastery. Elder Zosima later recalled
how Abbot Valentine, ever clairvoyant, said to him: 'For your impiety
you will forsake God and be an enemy of the Church, the time will come,
you will be a traitor to the Church. And remember: for your impiety, that
you closed the monastery, God will not give you a normal death, you will
die like Judas the Traitor'. This prophecy remains to this day, for Philaret
is still alive. At the closure of the Monastery, the monks buried the
icons to save them and, though weeping, had faith that the monastery would
one day reopen, as indeed it did.
After
this John became a novice at a dependency of the Pochaev monastery in
the Ukraine. When this in its turn was closed, John received a recommendation
from a priest to go to seminary - for this recommendation the priest was
retired. John easily passed all the exams to enter the Trinity-St Sergius
seminary, but the KGB would not allow him in. He was also refused entry
at the St Petersburg seminary. He was taken in by the ascetically-minded
Bishop Paul of Novosibirsk, with whom he lived for one year as a novice.
From Bishop Paul the novice John learned much about the services of the
Church and also decided that he would never marry. This was a fruitful
time.
After
one year the novice was finally accepted for studies in St Petersburg
(then still called Leningrad) with the help of the controversial Metropolitan
Nikodim. The Elder, who was completely Orthodox in his rejection of the
heresies of ecumenism and modernism, was later to defend the reputation
of Metropolitan Nikodim, whose cell-attendant he became for a time. According
to the Elder, the Metropolitan was a pious man and did what he did only
in order to defend the Church from Communist persecution. At seminary
the young John spent much time in the library and was given the nickname
of 'bookman'. Knowledge and self-education were extremely important in
his life. In particular, he loved Church history and used to say: 'History
means spiritual roots. Can there be a tree without roots? So without history
there can be no spirituality'.
In
1975 John finished seminary brilliantly, having specialized in the history
of the Monastery of Valaam. On 3 June of that year he was tonsured a monk,
taking the name of Savvaty (Sabbatius), after one of the two founders
of the Monastery of Valaam. As he was tonsured, the Metropolitan predicted
that he would die under the name of Zosima, after the other founder of
Valaam. Six days later he was ordained hieromonk and, exceptionally, at
once awarded a gold cross. It seemed as though Fr Sabbatius would be destined
to teach, but the young priest wanted to serve others in churches. For
he had no intellectual pretentiousness and often repeated the well-known
words of St Ambrose of Optina: 'Where it is simple, there are a hundred
angels, where it is complicated there is not a single one'. The young
priest did not want to teach, but to put his knowledge into the services
of the Church. For example, having come to know Russian Church history,
whenever he read the intercession at vigil services, he would spend half
an hour going through the full list of the saints of Holy Russia in chronological
order. He knew every saint, for he was in their succession.
The
Cross of the Good Shepherd
As
a new priest Fr Sabbatius was sent to Odessa in the Ukraine, to the Monastery
of the Dormition. Providentially, he was given the cell of the future
St Kuksha, who had reposed at this very monastery. The young priest already
venerated the Elder Kuksha as a saint, for he had twice played an important
role in his life. Working in the monastery garden, the priest learnt to
flee all temptations through patience and humility. However, his time
here was to be very short. At the end of 1975, Father was transferred
to another diocese and became a simple village priest, as had also been
prophesied of him. Here he was to serve for ten years, raising up the
parish, renewing it completely, continually suffering the persecution
of the Red Baal. His work of restoration and rebuilding was a miracle,
for elsewhere in the Soviet Empire at that time churches were being closed.
Fr
Sabbatius' services were daily and monastic. They began at five or six
o' clock in the morning and lasted until midday or one o' clock. The evening
service began at four or five o' clock and finished at ten. Inbetween,
there were other services - baptisms, weddings, funerals, blessings, for
which he never took any money. People, who came all over, for this was
the only church in the region, cried at his moving services and Fr Sabbatius
sooned gained a reputation for his sincerity and knowing the secrets of
hearts. Once, for instance, a man came asking about his son in Afghanistan.
Fr Sabbatius replied: 'It is a Golgotha for them there. You son is alive...Go
home you will have news'. The prediction was correct in all details. There
were a great many such cases and also cases of the healing of demoniacs.
A single word from him was enough to send a demon scuttling out of the
sick and out of the church. Tall, thin, very poorly dressed, he expelled
many demons in this way. Here he spent nothing on himself, but would always
spend his last penny on beautifying the church.
Given
the title of Abbot in 1980, he was to suffer much from the Communists
at this time. He was arrested, interrogated, beaten, and forced to stand
barefoot on concrete floors, which was how he started to have sores on
his feet, developing erysipelas. One KGB colonel persecuted him in particular.
The priest predicted: 'You are unfortunate, for through your godlessness
you will go mad and in your old age you will eat your own excrement'.
Enraged, the colonel tried to beat him, but he was restrained by St Nicholas,
to whom Fr Sabbatius prayed. Some fifteen years later, in conditions of
freedom, the colonel's wife was to come to the Elder with her demented
husband, and ask for his prayers, for the Elder's terrible prophecy had
turned out to be exactly true...
The
KGB arrested Fr Sabbatius, beat him, tortured him. One terrible torture
was 'the music box'. This was to shut up a prisoner in a small, dark,
windowless chamber and play depressing music into it. Of this the Elder
said; 'There I learned the Jesus Prayer, without it I would have gone
mad'. Although the KGB failed in their tortures, they left the Elder with
full-blown erysipelas, lung problems and a hump back - medals for his
victory. Once when talk turned to criticism of the Patriarchal Church
by certain ill-informed members of the Church Outside Russia, the Elder
said, touching his hump: 'We are accused of co-operating with the KGB,
well, here is the sign of my co-operation with them'. Clearly, the Elder
was referring to politically-minded or simply ignorant members of the
Church Outside Russia, who without discernment, lumped all members of
the Patriarchal Church, people like Elder Zosima and Metropolitan Philaret
of Kiev and modernists and ecumenists, together. These were the very people
whom Metropolitan Philaret of the Church Outside Russia, who canonized
the New Martyrs and Confessors who finally freed Russia, rebuked in 1981,
in the resolution concerning the holy Elder Tavrion of Riga.
Seeing
their failure, the KGB next tried a familiar tactic, tried so often in
other parts of the Russian Church and at other points in its history.
This was to send Fr Sabbatius off to different parishes in out of the
way places, in fact exiling him. Thus, in 1985 and 1986 he served in three
different parishes. But those faithful to him always sought him out and
found him, as is the way of things.
The
Elder
A
few days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, on 22 November 1989, Fr Sabbatius
was appointed rector of St Basil's church in Nikolskoye. It was the most
out of the way place of all. The church was half-ruined, without an iconostasis,
and the priest's house was a tumbledown shed infested by rats and mice.
Yet here, after the Revolution, nuns had lived in exile, and before the
Revolution the Mother of God had appeared on the feast-day of the Kursk
Root Icon. A spring of miraculous water had appeared on the site of the
appearance, which again and again had broken through the cement that the
atheists sealed it with. At one time, a holy Elder called Michael had
lived here and he had prophesied that when a monk came to serve at the
church, two monasteries would be founded here and that they would stand
until the Second Coming.
In
the winter it was so cold in the unheated church here that Fr Sabbatius'
hands would freeze to the chalice. His erysipelas became worse. Yet by
the autumn of 1990 the church had been restored. A hundred people came
to help. They helped the Elder rebuild, and as they worked they prayed.
'Say the Jesus prayer, otherwise there will be no grace', said the Elder
to them. Everything was built on grace. However, once Fr Sabbatius had
restored life here, the Patriarch in Moscow decided to make him a bishop
and send him to Japan. As usual, Fr Sabbatius refused, but he was not
heeded. Than, at the last moment, nothing came of this Japanese plan,
for Fr Sabbatius caught pneumonia. Another monk went to Japan in his place.
In 1990 Fr Sabbatius was made Archimandrite, and in 1992 he took the great
schema and the name Zosima.
At
that time, with fall of the idols of communism, Holy Russia was in as
much need of the Elder as idolatrous Japan. People came from everywhere
to consult the Elder, his reputation now established. There were many
healings and miracles. Those afflicted in body and spirit were healed.
There were also many cases of the Elder's clairvoyance, as he had the
ability to read the thoughts of those who came to him. But the Elder was
not carried away by miracles and he remained sober, warning: 'Mysticism
is harmful to the soul. Our main miracle is the liturgy, repentance and
prayer'.
He
talked to everyone, the peasant and the professor, the old and the young,
finding the right words for them all, treating them all as equals. He
would say: 'Avoid extremes - extremes are not from God. Take the middle
path. Do not despair - there is no sin that is not healed by repentance.
God is merciful'. Everybody who approached him felt his love and mercy.
Often he helped people with material things, money and food. In every
parish he served in, he always set up a place to eat, a refectory. Later
he set up a 'House of Mercy', alms-houses, where some sixty elderly and
ill people, abandoned by the State, were taken care of. 'The Lord walks
here', he would say, predicting that his House of Mercy would last until
the end of the world.
Until
1998, the Elder had never thought of starting a monastery or a convent.
He would send candidates to be novices in other monasteries and convents,
he would direct benefactors to build churches elsewhere. Thus, with his
blessing and help, altogether some ten churches were built in the Donbass.
However, in 1998, the Elder went into hospital with kidney failure. A
remarkable event took place. Here, he underwent a clinical death, his
soul leaving his body but then returning. On waking after this event,
he was to recall how he had seen the heavenly habitations and heard the
most exquisite angelic singing. He was called back to life - 'the whole
earth is weeping for you', he was told afterwards.
We
do not know what happened exactly, but after coming back from death, but
in a wheelchair, the Elder set about building the Dormition Convent in
Nikolskoye, with churches dedicated to St Basil and to All the Saints
of the Russian Land. From his wheelchair the Elder surveyed the building
operations. And when he was not in hospital, he served the liturgy and
received pilgrims. Within two or three years all was built, not only walls,
but above all nuns and also monks. His main labour was not building, but
praying. Here, for instance, he gathered together parts of the relics
of over 200 saints from all over the Orthodox world.
The
Cross and the Resurrection
However,
the sufferings of the Elder were enormous. His doctors said that he suffered
for ten people. And yet, with all this, he served and helped others. Following
the tortures of the KGB, his feet now bled with sores, and yet he still
stood and served. From 1995 the sores in his feet reached the bones and
he had an almost permanent temperature of 39 to 41 degrees. Yet he spent
his nights in prayer, hardly sleeping. 'Let us thank the Lord for every
good thing and every bad thing in our life' he said. At this time his
benefactors enabled him to go on pilgrimages to the holy places in Russia,
and also to Greece, Mt Athos and the Holy Land.
These
journeys were a great consolation to Father. From the year 2000 on, his
health worsened. 2001 was spent in hospital, except for brief intervals,
for example at Easter 2001, when apparently dying fifteen minutes previously,
yet he managed to serve the liturgy at midnight. The doctors who treated
him were illumined by the light of his faith, one was converted from total
atheism. Dying and in intolerable pain, he yet gave them hope and encouragement.
At the end he lived only through the Holy Spirit, and the Lord was to
reveal to him the day and time of his end.
On
14 August 2002 Father became very ill. Calling out in pain to the Mother
of God, he announced that he still had two weeks to live. On his feast-day,
23 August, he announced to his bishop that he would die at Dormition,
28 August. But then he added that this would spoil the feast and that
he was unworthy to be buried with the Mother of God. For he loved the
Mother of God and the Dormition was his favourite feast. On 28 August
the Elder was taken to hospital in great pain. He remained in prayer the
whole time. And the Elder reposed, as he had prophesied, at a quarter
to midnight on 29 August. At church they were celebrating the service
of the burial of the Mother of God.
Afterword
When
the faithful were told the news at the end of the service, their grief
was enormous. Wailing and tears broke out. It seemed as though all Russia
was weeping as an orphan. The next day the body of the Elder was brought
to the church. It was the morning of 30 August. The monks read the Psalter
and did services constantly. At the funeral, on 31 August, there was no
room for the people in the church. There was space only for the clergy
and monastics. The people stood in a crowd of some ten thousand outside.
The monastic choir, going in procession around the convent with the coffin,
began to sing Easter hymns. Those who kissed the Elder's hand noticed
that it was still soft and very warm. The atmosphere was that of Easter
- of the Resurrection
The
main lesson of the Elder was that the greatest joy is the joy of living
with God, which nothing can ever take away. He taught this in his life,
he taught this also in his death. Those who saw the Elder's face in death,
saw joy and an unearthly rejoicing on it. After his holy repose, many
saw the Elder in dreams, announcing: 'I am still alive' and 'Zosima is
risen'. In particular he left in his will instructions regarding the Church.
He prophesied difficult times for the Ukraine, instructing all to follow
and be faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church.
At
the end of 2004 those times are now upon us and will continue. But we
are to follow the Elder's instructions. As the Elder said, Holy Russia
is not some narrow national country, not only Russia, but also the Ukraine
and Belarus. And for those of us who live outside this threefold territory,
but belong to Her Church, whatever our nationality and language, we also
belong to the same idea and spiritual reality of Holy Russia. Spiritually,
we all belong to Holy Russia. Therefore the holy Elder is calling us to
follow the same instructions.
Although
we have been persecuted by modernists, although we have been slandered
by masons, although we have been sent out by those lacking discernment,
although we have been hated by those we love, we are all to keep faith
with the Russian Orthodox Church, in the difficult times that are now
upon us.
Father
Zosima, Pray to God for us!
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