Other monks of the Caves became famous for their humility and obedience, as well as for bearing bodily illnesses. Such is the image of Pimen the Much-afflicted, meek brother, who was vouchsafed to be tonsured by the Angels. Some of the brethren heard the singing, and having come, they found the monk clothed in monastic garb. The Monk Pimen suffered for 20 years and was healed three days before his death. He came to church, said goodbye to the brethren and communed of Christ's Holy Mysteries. On the day of his death, there was an appearance of three pillars of fire over the monastery.49

Great are also those monks who, in silence, great humility and obedience, formed their inner man; each of them is different, in accordance with the constitution of his soul. Together they made up an army of strong men, on whom the greatness of Orthodox Kievan Rus rested at that time.

All this holiness of the first Russian monasticism, which grew under the leadership of St. Anthony and especially Theodosius of the Caves, is felt when you find yourself in the caves of the Pechersk Monastery. Opened after the Great Patriotic War, they informed the Russian Orthodox people about the true strength and power of monastic podvig. And how many holy graves there are, one closer to the other, each more striking than the other. Here are the recluses and the silent; here are the venerable painters and doctors; here are memorable images of St. John the Much-Suffering and St. Moses Ugrin; here is the abode of abbots and some bishops; here is the ever-memorable Nestor the Chronicler and the holy prosphorons Nicodemus and Spyridon. Here the holy virgin Juliana, Princess Olshanskaya, found rest, here also twelve master architects – all of them together and each separately vividly touch the souls of the living, seeking what is closer to them in spirit, in the way of life. These are all the monks in the Near Caves, and in the Far Caves you also find living life examples for yourself.

The Orthodox shrine went to the north and took refuge in the northeast during the heavy Tatar-Mongol yoke. But the spiritual life and the monastic order did not cease. In Veliky Novgorod, and later near Moscow, a great monastery grew, and now St. Sergius of Radonezh is the collector and guardian of the holy things of Orthodoxy and monasticism, he is also the great elder of the monastery created by him and protected by God.

What if not the work of the elder – his observation of the life of the brethren entrusted to him, his night rounds of the cells, his reminder of the need for sobriety; Is it also possible for him to do things that are beyond his powers, connected with the bodily needs of man? The monk chopped down trees, built a church and cells, he stored firewood and carried water from the spring. At a time of impoverishment of life in the monastery, he lays down hard physical labor for a piece of moldy bread. For this and other – spiritual, inexhaustible guidance – he acquires, as it was in his time in Kievan Rus, a host of followers and disciples. The Lord consoles the elder by seeing the image of birds flying at the window of his cell. And the disciples of St. Sergius, truly like birds, fly away from their native monastery. They do not remain in place, do not dig caves, as in the Pechersk Monastery, they all spread out over the far and near environs of central and northern Russia, and in its various ends there arise a multitude of great and small monastic monasteries. Therefore, the north and northeast of Russia became a true new Thebaid, and many glorious names and deeds were found in it.

The silent one was the disciple of the Monk Sergius, the Monk Abraham; He wanted to remain in the monastery of his spiritual father, but he received a blessing to retire to the north and became the head of many monasteries created by him in the twilight and thick of the northern forests. The Monk Abraham drove snakes out of the forests and became the protector and patron of the remote Chukhloma region.

In the service, composed on the day of the repose of St. Sergius, September 25, one can clearly see who the God-bearing Father Sergius was for his contemporaries. The hymn-writer, who sings of his life and feats, first of all depicts the monk as a citizen of Russia. The author of the service needs to show the national significance of St. Sergius, his participation in the fate of the Russian land, his pain for the victory of the Russian army, the pain of his soul for the needs of the state. And only after the image of St. Sergius as a great citizen has been sufficiently fully depicted, does the compiler of the service bless him as the head of the monks. For all this, he needs two canons, of which only in the second does he deal in more detail with the work of St. Sergius as a father of monks.

Here there is every reason to consider the activity of St. Sergius among the brethren as the activity of the elders. Already at Little Vespers, the "multitude of monks" gathered by the monk are mentioned, and it is said that we are "thy children, and the sheep of thy verbal teachings".50 This thought is set forth in more detail and more clearly in the stichera on Lord, the invocations of Great Vespers, where, imitating the stichera written on the podvig of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, the hymn-writer exclaims: "Walking the narrow path, Thou didst say to thy disciples, O Blessed Sergius: let us not be afraid of the Lenten feat, that we may escape the terrible torment of Gehenna." And below: "Saying patiently to Sergius: For paradise, which was destroyed, we now lay aside the soft garments for the sake of the incorruptible vestments."51

In the canons to the Monk, among other doxologies, we find abundant indications of his elderly work. "Thou didst give thee a good image to thy disciples, and hast drawn many souls for salvation, who have been separated from worldly addiction,"52 we read in the third canto of the canon. "Thou hast been honoured with the radiance of the Holy Spirit, and thou hast adorned thyself with a luminous life, demanding the orders of monastics without exhaustion and receiving with love the ranks of monastics."53 Further in the canons, this idea expands: the venerable elder is a guide to the salvation of many people by the grace of the Holy Spirit given to him. "Thou didst appear to the other heaven on earth by a divine gesture, O most blessed, Thou didst bring up the flock of words, as a living angel with flesh, O God".54 The same essentially thought is given below: "The grace of the Holy Spirit dwelt in thee, the evil spirits of the persecutor, and the monastic instructor who showed it."55 And therefore St. Sergius is again and again called "a lamp of much light, who raised up to Christ a multitude of monks,"56 and also "who brought the fasting councils by a new life".57 Such is the great work of St. Sergius, a man who is blessed as "a lamp of the verbal dawn that shines upon us, and the abode of the Most Divine Trinity,"58 and as a teacher, "ruling his fatherland with true rule"59 and with his teachings, "as a ladder of heaven, raising us to the height of virtues".60

In the life of St. Cyril of Beloezersk one can find strikingly beautiful descriptions of how he and St. Ferapont were looking for a place to build a monastery. The monks ascended a high mountain, saw many forests and lakes of the surrounding region, "and loved this place", and here their great souls set aside to dwell and create a monastery. Everyone who has visited these places, full of waters and hills, knows how truly beautiful the landscape of this region is, how breathtaking it is from the beauty of the land seen from a high hill. Many with gratitude and faith contemplate on this mountain the imprint of the feet of the Monk Cyril, preserved on the compacted stone for many centuries. It was from here that the Monk contemplated the beauty of the place he had chosen to dwell. The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was and remains the pearl of our homeland, firmly imprinting the great spirit of prayer and senile reasoning of St. Cyril and his disciples.

Along with this great Belozerskaya Lavra, the humble Ferapontov Monastery, imperceptibly nestled among the hills and small lakes, is especially dear to the soul of the Orthodox. It was this monastery, a modest shelter of monks, that happened to become a true treasury of Russian icon painting, a monastery in which the frescoes of the great Dionysius and his sons have been preserved.

These same northern regions, which at one time were the outskirts of our land, brought up the spirit of St. Nilus of Sorsky, who left us a written document of spiritual life and guidance for the elders, which in no way differs in its power and depth from the writings of the elders of the first centuries of monasticism. In the introduction to his "Ustav on the Skete Life," St. Nilus says: "Since many of the Holy Fathers taught by various conversations how to do things of the heart, to watch over the mind, and to guard the mind, then I, a great sinner and foolish, having collected from the spiritual Fathers what they had said on this subject, wrote it for the remembrance of myself and others."61