"Rejoice, Thebaid of Russia, show off, the wilderness and wilds of Olonets, Belo-Yezersk and Vologda, who have grown up a holy and glorious multitude, instructing the world not to cling to each other by a wondrous life, take up your cross on your shoulders and walk in the footsteps of Christ... Rejoice, O thou wilderness, formerly barren and uninhabited, and afterwards, like a crene, flourishing and growing a multitude of monks!" (from the canon to All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land).

The Russian desert is evergreen spruce and pine forests, silvery smoothly flowing rivers, various lakes, the blue surface of which is quiet or agitated by the summer wind or frozen in winter.

The ancient ascetic could only see the endless desert full of mysterious power, feel the abrupt change of fiery hot days into cool nights, watch the sudden onset of darkness of the African night with all its magic of the star-studded sky.

How different is the world in which the ancient Russian hermit lived! Before his eyes stood the dark wall of scaffolding that surrounded him, leaving only a piece of bright sky above. White birch trunks at the edges of the forest or in the clearings and along the banks of the rivers slightly softened the gloomy tone of this northern landscape. Countless swamps stretched everywhere, swamps and lakes hindered the passage.

The hermit did not know the silence of the eastern desert. During the long hours of solitary prayer, which he spent standing or prostrating, his ear caught various rustles coming from the depths of the forests, the creaking of trunks during the frosty winter, the ringing of streams in the springtime, the cry of night birds at dusk or on bright summer nights, and the cracking of branches under the foot of a walking animal. And — the eternal noise of the peaks, like a low organ sound...

In contrast to the impressive beauty of the eastern deserts or the Syrian mountains, Russian nature is full of sadness and sorrow. It does not promise the hermit mystical pleasure. The uniform change of seasons, slow dying and the invariable rebirth of nature call him to calm and even work and endure all difficulties. His work – prayer, humility, fasting and renunciation of the world – is the main means of Russian asceticism. The ascetic understands the rebirth of nature from winter shackles as a semblance of his own liberation from sins, as a second birth for eternal life in God.

373

Begin with the adoption of the Christian ascetic habit of monasticism – monasticism – has become for the believer of Ancient Russia the highest goal, which allows him to overcome earthly wanderings. The Russian podpizhnik was a saint for the faithful, shining with all Christian virtues. Kazalos i> that there is no personal relationship between the ascetic and the world. Therefore, people rarely turned to him for advice regarding worldly life, to a much greater extent they saw in him an ideal of life, an example of active xpiush ans. Everyone felt within himself the possibility of someday becoming a monk, an ascetic, and hid in his soul a longing for the "life equal to the angels" as a necessary step on the road to perfection. The idea of personal salvation prevailed in Old Russian, as well as in all Russian eschatology.

The saint was first of all the ideal of the Christian life, an image, an icon, rising to this state through the Church. For the ancient Russian people, the icon is not just a picture, "but an image of the future mankind, which has all become the temple of God"1. An icon is a mute witness of a holy life, always accessible to the seeker of the heart and giving this heart new strength; He who immerses himself in this contemplation with faith enters a new world — the heavenly world of the saints...

"Once I stood in the chapel," says one of the believers, "contemplating the miraculous icon of the Mother of God and thinking about the children's bread of the people who pray here: some women, the sick, the elderly, kneeling, made the sign of the cross and bowed to the ground, I began to understand with unshakable confidence that this is a holy aspiration, and little by little the mystery of the miraculous power began to be revealed to me. of the icon that came to me: yes, in front of me was not just a painted board! Countless people of different ages with deep inner prayer, a prayer of suffering, were filled with the power emanating from the icon and again reflecting from the worshippers. It was life, it was a meeting place between the Creator and man... And when I was thinking this, I looked again at the old people, at the women with children, prostrating themselves in the dust, and at the holy icon, and then I saw the living power of the Mother of God: She looked with compassion and love at these humble people; and then I knelt down and began to pray humbly..."

For the praying contemplator, there was no difference between the icon and the saint himself, with whom he communicated through the image, "iconographically". This is the peculiarity of the relationship between the world and the saint. In the icon shone the fullness of grace-filled power, testifying to the world about its existence, the fullness from which everyone could receive according to his faith and strength. And if a person sought instruction in the field of religious and moral questions of Christian life, then this contemplation was already sufficient

374

answer for the layman. The Old Russian seeker of God did not resemble the heroes of Dostoevsky's works, because he did not indulge in moral doubts or doubts about faith and atheism, so characteristic of post-Petrine Russia. His worldview, his humility were within the framework of Christian eschatology and partly soteriology. He was convinced of the need to go through an earthly sinful life in order to sooner or later come to the monastic image equal to the angels, to take upon himself all the strictness of asceticism and thus follow Christ. There was no place for mystical contemplation in this worldview, with the exception of some saints. In ancient Russia we find hermits, recluses, stylites, but rarely mystics. In the greatest humility, devotion and self-abasement they lay prostrate in prayer before God. They were constantly concerned about repentance of the incipient evil, they were imbued with a sense of their own sinfulness. This sense of one's complete unworthiness of the grace of Divine contemplation, this humble bowing down in prayer before Christ, Who for the people was the greatest example of perfect humility, apparently did not allow the desire to participate in the mystical contemplation of Divine splendor to arise. Ascetic work did not at all aspire to mystical heights, but humbly and in firm hope hoped to dwell in the heavenly temple of Divine glory after death.

The Old Russian believer found great inner satisfaction in the divine services, which he loved and valued most of all for the splendor of the words of church hymns, for the rhetorical richness of the old sacred histories, and in general for the strict consistency of the church rule. Therefore, to the surprise of the Greeks, he could stand for many hours of all-night vigils, immersed in the verbal beauty of the stichera, canons or lives of the saints of the day. In divine services, his soul found fullness, unity of worldview, enrichment, strengthening and liberation from all needs through prayerful appeal to the Mother of God, to the saints. Here, in the church, he felt God's unlimited mercy for His creation. Therefore, in those days, prayer was the main Christian activity.