O My All-Merciful Sovereign,
Most Holy Lady, All and Most Pure Virgin,
Birthgiver of God Mary, Mother of God,
My only and certain Hope,
Do not disdain me, do not reject me,
do not forsake me; intercede, beseech,
hear; see, O Lady, help,
forgive, forgive, O Most Pure One!
Pages 51 and 52 of Volume 1 of the Biography of Fr Sampson record how in 1928 he was arrested at the great Monastery or Laura of St Alexander Nevsky, which was then closed. Three hours before his arrest St Seraphim of Sarov had appeared to him in a dream, bent over him and read the above prayer to him slowly. The future Fr Sampson could feel the tears of St Seraphim on his brow. Waking, he wrote the prayer down. Later he asserted that it was this prayer which accompanied him through the eighteen years of camps and exile and, together with the Jesus Prayer, enabled him to survive all the horrors of that time. The prayer was the food which his soul could not do without, and he warmly recommended it to his spiritual children.
Today the same prayer is repeated by the pilgrims who come to the Elder’s grave in the Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye cemetery outside Moscow. They come reading the Akathist to him, whom they call ‘The Much-Suffering’. They ask for healing, or else to give thanks for healing received. They order panikhidas, especially on 10 July, his birthday, and on 24 August, his deathday. On those days they come in their hundreds. They give thanks for help in finding work and flats, passing exams, obtaining mortgages, overcoming addictions to alcohol or tobacco, or other drugs. They come to thank him for healing from cancer. They come to thank him for the safe return of sons from Chechnia. They come to thank him for the marriage of their children, for being found innocent when put on trial.
Nun Xenia writes: ‘I consider that there can be no nationalism in Orthodoxy...When you turn to him, when you pray to Father, then you never think who he was - English, German or Polish - he listens, understands and does what you ask, he takes part in our problems’ (P.156 of Alive, Even after Death). Nun Valeria writes: ‘Of course, everything is amazing with him: an Englishman... – and suddenly – he is a novice and is doing manual work!’ (P. 280). Here is another testimony, from among hundreds and hundreds of others, from pages 325-6 of the same work, describing an event of 10 July at the cemetery, which occurred when a young man had approached some women with an Orthodox publication:
‘Suddenly, one of the women starts shouting out all over the cemetery: ‘No, no, I don’t need this’. I was horrified, since I did not understand how I had offended her. Bystanders explained that she was ill. But all the same, the shock from her shouts did not leave me...
Then I saw three men taking the same woman to kiss the cross on Father Sampson's grave. Now she cried out in a man’s rough voice: ‘Sampson! Sampson! Don’t touch me! Don’t drive me out! I’ll catch it, I’ll leave her later!’
Understanding that they must not listen to demons (the holy fathers warn against this) bystanders read aloud the prayer: ‘Let God arise...’ But the voice went on: ‘Don’t pray! Enough! Don’t baptise me! Stop it!’ The three men just about managed to get the woman to bow her head before the cross. Then they anointed her with oil from the lamp, pouring it over her, and she calmed down. Her face was covered in sweat, her hair dishevelled, she was utterly tormented.
There were five such people among those present, all suffering from the wiles of the devil. There was a boy aged thirteen. They all resisted and shouted in the same way, as they were brought to Father Sampson’s grave. A voice gave each of them away, saying why the demons were shut up inside them: in one for witchcraft, in another for murder and so on. They all screamed, growled, begged Father Sampson not to touch them. When they brought the boy to the grave, at first he started to giggle, to mock, but when they brought him to the cross, he started to scream and wriggle like a snake. And then he quietened down, like all the others. We were all in a state of complete horror, many wept’.
O My All-Merciful Sovereign,
Most Holy Lady, All and Most Pure Virgin,
Birthgiver of God Mary, Mother of God,
My only and certain Hope,
Do not disdain me, do not reject me,
do not forsake me; intercede, beseech,
hear; see, O Lady, help,
forgive, forgive, O Most Pure One!
May all Orthodox Christians come to learn the All-Merciful prayer by heart, and so find the grace and tender mercy of the Mother of God and come to salvation.