I told Fr. Arseny about Elena's last dying illness in 1943 (although every year, beginning in 1934, she fell seriously ill and lay in bed for three months with severe shortness of breath and congestive pneumonia). I told her about the amazing spiritual friendship between Elena and Elizabeth, as a result of which Lelya (she understood that she was dying) turned to Lisa in March 1943 with a request that Lisa marry me. Elena told me: I'm leaving, you can't live alone, you need a spiritually strong person. I'll be leaving soon, don't console me, I understand and know everything. I ask you to let Lisa become your wife, a person of strong character, great faith, love for people, who is able to help you in everything. She is much higher than me in her spiritual development, more beautiful and attractive. This is my will, I also asked Lisa to be your wife.

But everything turned out to be complicated and difficult, Lisa categorically refused to get married, her dream from the age of 18 was to become a nun, but my memories are not about that. The Lord nevertheless united us.

I told Fr. Arseny my life, he never interrupted or stopped, he only listened and looked at me attentively, and when I finished, I said, turning to the icons: Let us pray to the Lord, the Most Holy Theotokos the Lady and Saints Elizabeth and Zachariah, the Holy Prince Vladimir, Saints Constantine and Helena, let us thank God for His mercy. After the prayer, he spoke to me the words with which he reinterpreted, opened and evaluated everything I had said from the point of view of spirituality, faith, and all that I had not said about Elena, Lisa and myself, about relationships with others, he put before me, saying: Vladimir, Vladimir! I am amazed at the great mercy that the Lord and the Most Holy Theotokos have shown you. They sent you two amazingly spiritual women, his wife Helena and his wife Elizabeth, who by faith and the way of their lives put into you the power of faith, inwardly nourished you with this faith, and thus saved you from all evil. The Lord, by His mercy, as a boy, brought you to the great elder of Moscow, Fr. Alexei Mechev, and gave you the opportunity to be his spiritual son almost until the execution of the wonderful priest Fr. Sergius Mechev (I knew him). What you have told me about your wife Elena and Elizaveta Alexandrovna makes me, Priest Arseny, happy, and how I would like all the sisters of our small community to be like them. Thank the Lord for everything and everything, and I have known Elizaveta Alexandrovna for two years. Father told me much more, and I clung to him with all my soul and found spiritual joy and consolation in short and rather rare meetings with him.

I read almost all the memoirs about Fr. Arseny, I remember what people wrote to him who confessed to him or talked with him, amazed at his ability to penetrate the human soul with a spiritual gaze. I was also shocked at the time, and my whole story about myself seemed superficial and incomplete after his words. Addressing me, Fr. Arseny with each of his words, as if from an onion, stripped me of the husk, showing mistakes, errors, and imperfections. Speaking about Elizabeth, he emphasized her high inner spirituality and faith and, smiling with a kind and warm smile, said: She is your spiritual guide and mentor in life. Elizaveta Alexandrovna is very vulnerable, in terms of perfection and purity of soul, she takes everything to her heart, and this leaves unhealed scars. Take care of it, people with such a soul are rare.

Father Arseny possessed an extraordinary gift of clairvoyance, which sometimes frightened and surprised people who came to him. Above average height, with a slightly elongated oval beautiful face, a small beard, rather thick, once probably dark, and now almost gray hair, large kind brown eyes and always a kind friendly face, he immediately won over a person. On the left side of the face, almost from the eye itself, two scars stretched, hiding under the beard, on the right side on half of the forehead there was a whitish scar that went to the temple and disappeared into the hair of the head. The memoirs of Fr. Arseny and his spiritual children tell in detail about the severe physical suffering he endured, but he did not hunch, did not slouch, walked upright. He never complained about anything, although he was seriously ill, but always thanked the Lord and the Most Holy Theotokos for everything, constantly saying the Jesus Prayer. Of the saints, he especially revered Sts. Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov, Panteleimon the Healer, St. Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, the Apostle of Love John the Theologian, Nicholas the Wonderworker.

In 1967, Fr. Arseny had a long conversation with me, Lisa, Kira, Yuri, and Lyudmila Diligenskaya. Father asked Liza, Lyudmila, and me in detail about the community of Fr. Sergius Mechev, about the elder Fr. Alexei Mechev, and for some reason asked me to tell them about the priests we met in life. There were many names, and sometimes Fr. Arseny would say: I knew him, I met him in the Optina Hermitage, or he was the spiritual son of Elder Nektarios, and this one died in the camps or was shot. About one he said: I got lost, went to the Living Church. Listening to us, Father was sad, many names probably reminded him of friends and acquaintances who had long passed away, but some of the names of the priests we called were unknown to him. Write me the names of the priests who were shot, who died in the camps and exiles, who died, I will commemorate them, said Fr. Arseny. We wrote not only those who were mentioned to the priest, but also the names of many other priests and deacons.

In 1971, for the first time, I came across a separate notebook of samizdat memoirs about Fr. Arseny, they struck me with their extraordinary modernity, truthfulness and spirituality, which showed the life of people in our difficult time of the 1920s and 1960s. In 1975, Father died, and many of his spiritual children began to supplement their previously written memoirs, and he had to collect what he had written again and again.

In 1993, St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Institute and the Brotherhood in the Name of the All-Merciful Savior published the book Father Arseny on the basis of samizdat, which was loved by believers and quickly sold out. However, I knew that Fr. Arseny's spiritual children still had many memories that were not included in the book. More than 20 years have passed since Fr. Arseny's death, Kira, Yuri, Natalia Petrovna, Yulia, Lyuda and others who were previously friends with me have already died (in 1995 they would have been 9293 years old), their children and grandchildren were reluctant to give what they had written, or even refused. Why? It was difficult to understand, but it was so. Nevertheless, with the blessing of Fr. Vladimir Vorobyov, it was possible to collect 12 memoirs for the third edition (1998), and another 16 memoirs for the fourth edition with great difficulty.

Now I am over 90 years old, but what Fr. Arseny said still lives in me, reminding me of the need for deep faith in the Lord, constant prayer and faithfulness to the great Gospel truth, expressed in the words: love your neighbor as yourself.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Bykov.

A village is not worth without a righteous man, says a Russian proverb. Who are these righteous men, if our Russia still stands, having gone through the terrible 20th century?

These righteous men are the best people of our people, in whom the inextinguishable fire of faith burned, bishops and priests, monks and simple believers, peasants and workers, nobles, merchants, factory owners, teachers, soldiers, representatives of all classes, who were shot, exiled to torture and death in camps, persecuted for their faith in God, for faithfulness to the vocation that was given to them by God.

The lives of these people are the most beautiful pages of our history, an example of faith, loyalty and courage to us and all subsequent generations. These people, who have not departed from God even in the face of death, are many, many thousands. Almost all of them have already left this world, but there are still witnesses of their lives who can tell about them, about their confessor's feat and martyrdom.

A little more time will pass, and these witnesses will be gone. Our time is the last when it is possible to record and collect invaluable testimonies about the lives of many ascetics and confessors of the 20th century. To collect, preserve and make known the biographies of the righteous is the most important task of our time and our duty to God and people. A people who have preserved the memory of their past will be able to hope for the future, testimonies about the lives of our new saints are the best means of good education of younger generations.