In the same way, they stirred up St. Tikhon to contemplation of God and some words and expressions that he heard or came to his memory. Thus, the expressions: "I cannot go anywhere from you and I myself am here" remind him of the omnipresence and omniscience of God. The expression, "Follow me," is about our calling to follow Christ. The words, "I owe thee much," are about the innumerable blessings of God, poured out and poured out upon us by God. The question is: whose are you?—about our Christian calling. The expression: he is at one with him – about our like-mindedness, or with Christ, when we work and serve Him, – or with the devil, when we follow his sinful suggestions. The expression: "Come back, you have gone the wrong way" is the voice of conscience and the word of God, calling the sinner to return from his evil and impious ways. The words, "Tomorrow I will come," stir up his thoughts against sinners who live carelessly and fearlessly, and who postpone repentance from day to day; – the words: "And we will go there" are the thought of the common and inevitable path for all of us to the future life after death.

All these apparently accidental occasions, leading the mind to contemplation of God, also gave rise to various holy feelings – feelings of gratitude, hope, patience, love, praise and prayer. Thus, with regard to the words, "Whom then shall I love, if not Him," which are proper to speak of God alone, St. Tikhon enumerates all the blessings of God manifested to us, and concludes his reflections with the following appeal: O God! eternal love and goodness! Vouchsafe me to love Thee, Thou Who created me, Who redeemed me from the fallen, turned me astray, and enlightened me with Thy holy word, Who nourishes me, clothes me, intercedes for me, preserves me from the slanders of the enemy, and pours out innumerable other blessings upon me; – vouchsafe me to love Thee, my highest goodness and blessedness, and to praise Thee out of love, to thank Thee, to please Thee, to do Thy holy will, to worship Thee in spirit and in truth, to sing and praise Thee, Whom the angels in heaven sing and praise unceasingly, and I also sing to Thee with a joyful spirit with a heartfelt prophet: I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength, the Lord my strength, and my refuge and my deliverer, my God, my helper, and I trust in him, my defender, and the horn of my salvation, and my intercessor (Psalm 17:2-3).

The reading or hearing of the word of God had an even stronger effect on Saint Tikhon. It led his mind to those reflections on the holy truths in which he was accustomed to practice, aroused in his heart those holy feelings that were usually born during this or that soul-saving meditation. Thus, having become accustomed to meditate on the omnipresence and omniscience of God, at the same time there arose in him the fear of offending the omnipresent God with his thoughts and deeds – St. Tikhon naturally returned to these reflections and to this apprehension when he heard the words of the Scriptures about God's omniscience, for example, the words of the Psalmist: "I will go from Thy spirit, and from Thy presence I will flee." Or when contemplating our redemption through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, giving himself over to feelings of joy, thanksgiving, and praise, he gave himself over to the same feelings as soon as the words of the Scriptures reminded him of these dogmas. Thus, during the table, listening to the readings from the book of the Prophet Isaiah, this Old Testament evangelist, the saint often, putting down his spoon, began to shed tears, tears either of repentance, or of joy and thanksgiving.

Depicting the effect of the word of God on his soul, the saint wrote: "How sweet and pleasant it is for one who reads or listens attentively to the word of God, to see by faith, as if through a glass darkly, divination, in that word of God, Creator, Redeemer and Provider, and His divine attributes; to kiss with faith and love His incomprehensible goodness, poured out on the human race; to marvel at His incomprehensible wisdom, shown in the creation of the world and in Providence for it; to praise His incomprehensible truth, with which He has defended and defends His servants, but He has executed and executes His enemies; to praise the incomprehensible majesty of His glory, to see His divine miracles, created from the beginning of the world; to hear His merciful and paternal promises, some that have come true, others that will certainly come true; – to look with faith to the future glory, variously depicted in the Holy Word, and to admire it! How delightful it is to imagine the image of our salvation described in it, by which we have been delivered from sin, death, the devil and hell – and to marvel at the goodness of God shown to us in this, and to thank Him with a joyful spirit! It is very pleasant for us to read the news in which the exploits of our army are described and the victory won over our enemies is depicted; but it is incomparably more pleasant to reread and remember the feat by which our Deliverer, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, fought for us and gloriously defeated our enemies. All this is presented in the Holy Word of God, – concludes St. Tikhon, read it yourself, Christian, and you will see."

Thus enjoying the reading or hearing of the word of God, Saint Tikhon acquired the firmest and most undoubted confidence in the divinity of the word of God, so that he believed it more than his own feelings. "Holy Scripture," he writes, "is the true word of God, which cannot deceive or lie, just as God Himself cannot deceive. You should believe him more than your feelings and the whole world. Our senses and the whole world can deceive us more easily than the Holy Scriptures." That is why he loved to exercise himself in the word of God so much, that he knew the Psalter and the entire New Testament and some passages of the Old Testament by heart.

In a similar attitude to the contemplation of God, St. Tikhon was also praying. In his soul, both contemplation of God turned into prayer, and prayer into contemplation of God, or was invariably accompanied by it. As he taught, so he acted. All his reflections on the truths of faith either take the form of a conversation with God, or end with a prayerful appeal to Him, which we have already partially seen. "I know and humbly confess," he writes, "that I have sinned much against Thee, my Creator and God, and I regret it. And I see other sins in my conscience, but others I do not see, and I see no more than I see: for the fall of sin is understood by anyone (Psalm 18:13). I pity and grieve that with them Thee, my good and loving God, my Creator, my Redeemer, my highest Benefactor, Thee, Whom the holy angels revere and worship with fear and trembling, Thee, such and such a Lord, have madly offended the last worm with Thy sins. And how many times have I sinned before Thee, how many times Thou hast seen me sinning, how many times Thou hast endured according to Thy goodness, and how many times Thou hast endured me, so many times Thou hast had mercy on me. And if Thou hadst dealt with me in the most holy truth, my soul would have descended into hell long ago, but Thy goodness and Thy long-suffering have restrained Thee, and have not allowed me, a poor sinner, to come to my destruction... Let us worship Thee, O Lord, with all my heart; and I will glorify Thy name for ever; for Thy mercy is upon me, and Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell (Psalm 85:12-13). From these and other of Thy mercies to me, which I do not know, I see that in Thy love for me and kindness, love for mankind, long-suffering and generosity, I am wholly consisted. Thy goodness, O Lord, is that I am not yet lost, I am still living. I see that Thou leadest me to eternal salvation, which Thou hast promised to those who know and honor Thee. Have mercy on me, a poor sinner, to the end, and by the grace of Thy only-begotten Son atone for all my sins, and save me unto eternal life, that there, together with all Thy elect, I may thank, praise, and sing to Thee, with Thy only-begotten Son, and the Most Holy Spirit, not by faith, but face to face, unto endless ages. Amen."

In return, the prayer was accompanied by God-inspired reflections or turned into God-inspired delight. Thus, according to the testimony of his cell-attendants, we know that in prayer and contemplation of God he had an excellent gift of tears. "Often, during the Divine Liturgy, in church, standing attentively, he sometimes plunged into reflections on God's love for the human race, on its redemption by the incomprehensible mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, on His sufferings and on the Eucharist, that in a crowded gathering he even wept aloud to all those present in the church." In a similar way, in his cell, when he prayed, "from the imagination of a twofold eternity, his cries and sobs were heard, with the pronunciation of a loud prayer: Have mercy on the Lord, have mercy on the Lord, have mercy on our sins; hear, O Lord, and destroy us not with our iniquities, and so on. And we heard weeping like the weeping of a friend after the deprivation of his dead friend." [93] Without a doubt, during the prayer of the saint, other thoughts and ideas arose in his mind, which also aroused in him tears and weeping, for example, the idea of the omnipresence of God. "Believe and think that God is near you and is before you; and in this way a true, heartfelt and reverent prayer will be aroused in you," says the saint. "Then you will fall down before Him with humility, and bow down, and sigh, and pray, and say: O Lord, have mercy! O Lord, be merciful! O Lord, hear! Then both the heart and the mind will be able to correspond to the words of your prayer."

With such a communion of prayer with contemplation of God, St. Tikhon was often delighted to the point of contemplation or amazement. What contemplation or amazement is, this is fully explained by St. Isaac the Syrian. "All kinds and types of prayer with which only people pray to God have a limit to pure prayer," he writes. "For sighing, and kneeling, and heartfelt petitions, and the sweetest cries, and all forms of prayer, as I have said, have a limit to pure prayer, and only have the opportunity to extend to it. And from the purity of prayer to the inward, as soon as the thought has crossed this limit, it will no longer have any prayer, no movement, no weeping, no power, no sorrow, no supplication, no lust, no pleasure in anything that is hoped for in this life or in the next. To this limit alone, every movement of prayer and all forms of prayer bring the mind by the power of freedom. That is why podvig is in prayer. And beyond this limit there will be amazement, and not prayer; because everything prayerful ceases, a kind of contemplation already sets in, and the mind does not pray with prayer..." "The saints in the age to come, when their minds are absorbed in the Spirit, do not pray with prayer, but with amazement dwell in the glory that rejoices them. So it happens to us. As soon as the mind is vouchsafed to feel the future bliss, it will forget itself and everything here, and will no longer have in itself any movement towards anything. Very few of the saints reach such a prayerful height.

"Just as out of many thousands there is scarcely one who has fulfilled the commandments and all that has been said with a slight defect and has attained purity of soul: so out of a thousand, only one is found, with great caution, who has been vouchsafed to attain pure prayer, to break this limit and receive this sacrament; because many could not be vouchsafed pure prayer; but very few were vouchsafed; but he who has attained that sacrament which is behind this prayer, is scarcely by the grace of God found from generation to generation."

St. Tikhon, by the grace of God, sometimes went beyond the boundaries of prayer in amazement, and as is evident from his own words, more than once. "The more times," he said, "with living faith we meditate on this great work, on our redemption in Christ, so many times will we be in wonder and a kind of ecstasy." Judging by these words, one can think that he had repeatedly been in such a state, a state of amazement. And indeed, such states happened to him often. "Sometimes in his cell, while reading the word of God, sometimes in the monastery garden, during walks and God-inspired meditations, he suddenly fell to his knees, pressed his hands to his heart, raised his eyes to grief, and his face was illumined with special joy and purity. And when such states passed, and for a long time afterwards there remained a gleam of heavenly joy on his face, and his lively, joyful disposition, his talkativeness and desire to share his feelings with others, showed that the soul of the saint was filled with admiration and involuntarily opened up in order to pour out the fullness of spiritual consolation."

Thus one morning he was walking along the garden path, and, lost in thought, suddenly stopped, as if struck by something. He fell to his knees, put his hands to his heart, looked up, as if he saw something. His face changed noticeably and brightened, depicting something unearthly and extraordinary. Seeing all this from the bell tower, the cathedral cleric, who had been announcing the news for the mass, in fear and bewilderment, immediately ran into the church and in a trembling voice, as if amazed, told the monks everything he had seen. [94] A similar incident is related to us by his cell-attendant. Often indulging in prayerful and contemplative feats in the monastery garden, the saint did not wish anyone to be a witness to his feats, and therefore he punished his cell-attendant, so that in case of extreme need, he would make himself known in advance by coughing. And so the cell-attendant did. But once it happened that, having an urgent need for Tikhon, the cell-attendant coughed many times before reaching him, but the worshipper did not hear and continued to stand facing the east, with his hands raised to heaven. Seeing that Tikhon did not hear him, the cell-attendant approached him and called out: "Your Grace!" The suddenness and unexpectedness of this sound struck him so much that even sweat appeared on his face, and he said to the cell-attendant: "Behold, my heart beat like a dove! After all, I have long ordered you to cough before reaching me." "I was coughing," the cell-attendant answered him. "Well, I haven't heard." In general, as soon as the saint noticed that the cell-attendants happened to be spectators of such states, he strictly forbade them to tell about it.

With such exercise and success in prayer and in general in spiritual feats of silence, St. Tikhon acquired filial boldness before God. Thus he prayed to the Lord to reveal to him the day of his death and received what he asked: "On the day of the week (i.e. on Sunday) will be your death," – it was said to him in a vision. Thus, he also prayed to the Mother of God that one of his friends would not leave him after death, and in a dream vision he received assurance from the Mother of God herself that it would be as he asked. Another time, in a dream vision, he also saw the Mother of God sitting on the clouds, and the Apostles Peter and Paul standing near Her. Kneeling before them, he asked for the continuation of God's mercies to the whole world, and he heard the voice of St. Paul. Paul: When they say, "Peace and security," then destruction will suddenly come upon them.

The prayer of the saint often exerted miraculous power. Thus, one of his servants, a man very devoted to the saint, caught a severe cold and fell so ill that he was already preparing for death. Wishing to bid farewell to the saint before his death and to receive from him the bishop's blessing, the sick man asked to be brought to him, and when he was brought in, among other things, St. To Tikhon: "Holy Vladyka! although I am completely dying, but if my weak and unworthy services are necessary for you and salvific to my soul, then I believe that the Lord God will hear your prayers and restore me to health." To this the saint said with tears: "Go, and God will have mercy on you." And indeed, through the prayers of the saint, the sick man was soon freed from the illness without any medicines. "He had a great and living faith in himself," the cell-attendant adds to this story, "and the Lord God listened to him on many occasions." [95]

During the time of prayerful feats, the Lord once vouchsafed His saint a vision of future glory. This was during one of Tikhon's visits from Zadonsk to the Tolshevsky Monastery. According to the custom he fulfilled here, at midnight Tikhon walked around the church and, kneeling before the altar, fervently prayed to God: "Show me what is prepared for those who love You." And then one day he saw that the heavens seemed to open and a light shone, illuminating the entire monastery, and a voice was heard: "Behold what is prepared for those who love God." From this heavenly vision he fell to the ground, and when the vision ended, from fear and sweetness of heart he could hardly crawl to his cell. [96] Once more, in a dream vision, he received a hidden revelation about his inclusion in the choir of the holy hierarchs. This was on the night before May 12, when the Church commemorates St. Germanus the Patriarch and St. Epiphanius, Archbishop of Cyprus. It seemed to him that he was in church and saw two standing hierarchs, one of whom was in patriarchal and the other in episcopal vestments. It was as if an archdeacon came out of the altar with a crystal censer, began to cense those who were present, and first censed to the archbishop, then to the patriarch, and then to himself. On this dream, St. Tikhon turned his attention and told about him as if it had happened to one of his friends.