A certain pious woman, always spending her days in prayer and fasting, had great faith in our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God and always besought Her protection. This woman was always tormented by her conscience about some sin she had committed in her youth, which, out of false modesty, she did not want to reveal to her confessor, but when announcing it, she vaguely expressed herself in these words: "I repent even of those sins that I either did not declare or did not remember." In private, in her secret prayer, she daily repented of this sin of the Mother of God, always beseeching the Lady to intercede for her at the judgment of Christ for the forgiveness of sin. Thus, having lived to a ripe old age, she dies; when on the third day they were preparing to bury her body, suddenly the dead woman rose and said to her frightened and amazed daughter: "Come closer to me, do not be afraid; call my confessor." When the priest came, she said in front of all the people: "Do not be terrified of me. By the mercy of God and the intercession of His Most-Pure Mother, my soul was returned to repentance. Scarcely had my soul been separated from my body, when at the same moment the dark spirits surrounded it and were preparing to cast it into hell, saying that it was worthy of it because through false modesty it had not revealed its secret sin, which it had committed in its youth. At such a fierce moment, our Most Holy Lady, the Helper, appeared and, like a morning star or like lightning, instantly dispersed the darkness of evil spirits and, commanding me to confess my sin before my spiritual father, commanded my soul to return to my body. And so, now, both before you, holy father, and before everyone, I confess my sin: although I have been pious throughout my life, the sin that lay on my conscience and which I was ashamed to confess to my spiritual fathers out of faint-heartedness, would have brought me down to hell, if the Mother of God had not interceded for me." Having said this, she confessed her sin, and then, leaning her head on her daughter's shoulder, she was transported into eternal and blessed life. ("Secrets of the Afterlife". Compiled by Archimandrite Panteleimon. Moscow, 1996)

Dying

I will tell you about one toiler, Pelagia, who lived sixty years ago in the village of Shipilovka, Kostroma district. This peasant woman lived in the same house with two daughters-in-law, whose husbands were away for most of the year to earn money. Their house was small and not rich: in addition to one cramped hut in which they were accommodated, there was also a barn for livestock in the yard. At first, Pelagia lived with the children in the same room; but then, for the secret nocturnal feats of prayer and contemplation of God, she began to go into the vestibule, where she spent whole nights, going to bed only before dawn. Finally, in order to hide her exploits from people's eyes, she decided to stay forever in that stuffy hut, and only occasionally did one of her beloved daughters-in-law spend the night with her. She didn't want anyone but this daughter-in-law to see her prayer. And while the latter was sitting in this hut and doing needlework, Pelagia went into the vestibule and prayed. Her food was the coarsest; She even invented a special food for herself: she stirred rye flour thickly and used this raw dough instead of bread, and even then very little, while she took other food very rarely. During the day she spun flax as usual, and divided the money she earned into two parts: one part she gave to the church, and the other to the poor, so that at night she went to the house of the poor and quietly put her alms on the window, opening it a little, or threw the money at the beggar. One night, the toiler, as usual, prayed in the vestibule, and the daughter-in-law slept in the hut. Before morning, the daughter-in-law woke up and saw that her mother-in-law was kneeling in a prayer position. After standing for a few minutes in fear and confusion, she said to her: "Mother, mother!" But there was no answer: Mother was already cold. Then another daughter-in-law came for homework. Seeing that their mother-in-law was dead, they dressed the deceased and laid her on the table; And on the third day they put her in a coffin and were about to take her to church, when suddenly her face came to life, she opened her eyes, threw back her hand and crossed herself. The family was frightened and rushed to the stove corner. After a while, the revived woman said in a low voice: "Children.. Do not be afraid, I am alive," and then she got up, sat down, and with the help of her family rose from the coffin. "Calm down, children," she said again. "Were you frightened when you thought I was dead?" No, I am destined to live a little longer. God, in His goodness, desires the salvation of everyone, and, leading us to blessedness by mysterious destinies, He arranges everything in such a way that both death itself and the return to life will serve for the benefit of many!" What happened to her when she was considered dead, she said almost nothing about it, only with tears she exhorted her children to live piously and to shun all sin, affirming that great bliss awaited the righteous in heaven and terrible torments for the wicked in hell! After this, she continued her toiling life for six weeks, tenderly directing her mind's gaze to the land of her heavenly homeland, and finally moved to the heavenly dwellings. (Novgorodsky P." Paradise Flowers from the Russian Land". Moscow, 1891; "Secrets of the Afterlife". Compiled. Archimandrite Panteleimon. Moscow, 1996)

Miracles of St. Joasaph

Your Reverence, Father Archimandrite Evgeny! I have the honor to bring to your attention the miraculous restoration of my son's health through the prayers of St. Joasaph, who rests with his relics in the Holy Trinity Monastery in Belgorod. It would be desirable that this restoration of health be recognized as miraculous both on your part and on the part of others who read this letter; otherwise, it cannot be placed among the miracles performed through the prayers of St. Joasaph. It was like this: on August 29, 1881, my first son was born, who was named Alexander in holy baptism; A month after his birth, he was visited by an uninvited guest - a cough called "whooping cough". I went to the doctors, but they would not help him in his illness; one of them even said: "Father John, I will tell you frankly: we have no means to cure whooping cough, and therefore you do not worry any more; It can go away on its own either in 6 weeks or in 3 months, and if it lasts up to six months, then consider your son dead."

After this I began to weep and, being in tears, mentally turned for help to the local saint of God - St. Joasaph with the following words: "Your Grace Joasaph, for your true Orthodox faith and good deeds the Lord has glorified you with the incorruptibility of your relics, give us the opportunity to glorify you and together with you and God, wondrous in His saints - do this, that my dying son may come to life (at the same time I promised to go to the veneration of the relics with him and his mother and sister)," but before he had time to say so, to finish his prayers, the son opened his eyes and at the same moment began to show their movements, and then a smile; after two hours he began to seem to us thin, but not dying, and from that day his cough completely ceased. In May of this year, 1881, I fulfilled my promise. He told Father Benjamin, the treasurer of the monastery, about the miraculous restoration of his son's health, and at the same time expressed his desire that this miraculous restoration of health be recorded in the book of miracles performed through the prayers of His Grace Joasaph, but he advised me to report this in writing, to which I agreed. My late father told me about my middle brother, who is now a priest in the village of Kryukovo, Joasaph. He was born, according to his deceased parent, dead. His father was sorry to see him like this; he turned to God with the following words: "Lord, why hast Thou deprived me of the happiness of seeing my son alive, and with what have I sinned, that through me he will not now be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?!" After this he began to read akathists: to the Son of God and His Mother, the Queen of Heaven – and during the reading of the akathist to the Mother of God, he mentally turned to the Monk Joasaph with a request for the granting of life, and to his request he added that if he came to life, he would call him Joasaph, and he immediately cried out; then a priest was summoned, the Sacrament of Baptism was performed, and in it the infant received the name Joasaph. As for what is written in this letter, I testify that it was written as it happened, out of a clear Christian conscience, and I confirm it with my signature with the church seal attached. 1881, December 17. Kursk province, Timsky district, the village of Suvolozhye, priest Ioann Feofilov. ("Belgorod Wonderworker".Life, Works, Miracles and Glorification of St. Joasaph, Bishop of Belgorod. Moscow, 1997)

Father John of Kronstadt resurrects the dead

The wife of Ov, a quite healthy and prominent woman, who already had three or four children, was pregnant again and was preparing to become the mother of the next child. And suddenly something happened. The woman felt bad, the temperature rose to forty, complete impotence and pains unknown to her until then had tormented her unbearably for many days. Of course, the best doctors and obstetric luminaries of Moscow were summoned, of which, as you know, there has never been a shortage of Pirogov clinics in the city. We also sent a telegram to Father John in Kronstadt... In the evening of the same day, a brief dispatch came from Kronstadt: "I am leaving by courier, I pray to the Lord. John Sergiev." Father John of Kronstadt had already known the Olov family well before and had visited their house during his travels through Moscow. And, summoned by the telegram, the next day, about noon, he entered the Ovs' apartment on Myasnitskaya Street, in which by this time a whole crowd of relatives and acquaintances had gathered, obediently and reverently waiting in the large drawing room adjacent to the room where the sick woman lay. "Where's Lisa?" Fr. John asked, entering the living room with his usual hurried gait. "Take me to her, and all of you stay here and don't make any noise." Father John entered the dying woman's bedroom and closed the heavy doors tightly behind him. Minutes dragged on - long, hard, which at the end formed a whole half an hour. The living room, where a crowd of relatives had gathered, was as quiet as a tombstone. And suddenly the doors leading to the bedroom opened wide with a bang. In the doorway stood a gray-haired elder in a pastoral cassock, with an old stole over it, with a sparse, disheveled gray beard, with an unusual face, red from the prayerful strain he had experienced, and large drops of sweat. And suddenly, words that seemed terrible, coming from another world, almost thundered. "It pleased the Lord God to work a miracle! Father John said. "It was a pleasure to work a miracle and resurrect the dead fruit!" Lisa will give birth to a boy..." "Nothing can be understood! - said one of the professors who came to the patient for an operation, two hours after Father John's departure for Kronstadt. - The fetus is alive. The child is moving, the temperature has dropped to 36.8. I don't understand anything, I don't understand anything... I asserted, and now assert, that the fetus was dead and that blood poisoning had begun long ago." Other luminaries of science could not understand anything either, whose carriages now and then rolled up to the entrance. That same night, Mrs. Ova safely and quickly gave birth to a perfectly healthy boy, whom I met many times later at T.'s in Karetno-Sadovaya Street in the uniform of a pupil of the Katkovsky Lyceum. Evgeny Vadimov

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Letter from Prince Lev Alexandrovich Begildeev (Sofia, Russian Invalids' Home)

"Reverent before the blessed memory of the late Fr. John of Kronstadt, I consider it my sacred duty, in testimony to the great power of his prayer, to report the following. This was in 1900. I was a young officer of the 19th Artillery Brigade, located in the city of Vinnitsa, Podolsk province, and lived there with my mother and sister. In January or February of this year, I fell ill first with typhoid fever, and then with relapsing fever. My situation was very difficult. The doctors, having exhausted all the means at their disposal, lost all hope. Then my mother, at my request, sent a telegram to Fr. John, asking for his prayers. After that, I lost consciousness; My situation was so hopeless that my mother, who loved me dearly, did not want to see me dying, and went into another room. The doctor, having prescribed an injection of camphor to maintain the activity of the heart, left for some time. I had with me my sister, who was always at my bedside, and one of my comrades in the brigade, who was on duty during my illness in turns. My sister claims that I soon stopped breathing, my pulse stopped, and I lay as if dead, but she persistently continued to give the injections prescribed by the doctor. After a while, she noticed signs of life in me: I began to breathe and a pulse appeared. I began to come to life. This moment, according to our assumptions, coincided with the moment Fr. John received the telegram. After that, I slowly began to recover and recovered. I, my sister and mother (now deceased) firmly believed that by the power of Fr. John's prayer I was resurrected, while others believed that I was healed." I gave this letter of Prince L. A. Begildeev to be read by the ordinary professor of the University of Belgrade in the Department of Pathology, Doctor of Medicine Dmitry Mitrofanovich Tikhomirov. At the same time, I asked him the question: "Could the injections of camphor bring the prince back to life?" To this the professor replied to me: "After two typhus, after the cessation of brain activity, after the cessation of breathing and pulse, the injections of camphor could not bring the prince back to life. Here, undoubtedly, was the miracle of Fr. John of Kronstadt." (Sursky I. K. "Father John of Kronstadt". Moscow, 1994)

The Resurrection of the Deceased through the Prayers of the Lay Elder Theodore Sokolov

Below is an excerpt from the biography of the righteous man of our days, compiled from the stories of friends and admirers of the lay elder Theodore (June †, 8/21, 1973) by Professor G. M. Prokhorov. In the year 1923 or 1924, Elder Theodore went to Siberia to buy eggs and butter. In the evening he was driving past a village. And he saw: a large crowd of people had gathered near the house. They said to him: "A lonely woman died here; and she has many children, and all of them are small." The elder asked to spend the night in this house. When all the people dispersed, he placed a cross on the chest of the deceased, which had been given to him by a certain God-lover who had walked to Jerusalem and from there brought this cross. Elder Theodore began to pray for the woman, and the Lord resurrected her. The elder helped her up and left this village at dawn. There are hundreds of written testimonies of healing through the prayers of the elder. The Lord healed so many people through the elder at once that it was simply impossible to record all the cases of healing. In addition, the communist authorities inflicted numerous oppressions on the elder and his admirers. ("Orthodox Miracles in the XX Century", Moscow, 1993)

On the Uncomplaining Endurance of Sorrows