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Life’s parts sometimes have little in common, so little that it might appear various people lived them. When this happens, it is difficult not to feel surprised that all these people carry the same name.
The defining trait of the person under discussion is that he spoke very little. He remembered the words of Arsenius the Great: I have often regretted the things I have said, but I have never regretted my silence.
Enoch was taken by the Lord at the revealment of the Antichrist
never heard this before. look into its origins.
For Christofer, the written word seemed to regulate the world. Stop its fluctuations. Prevent notions from eroding.
And even the old men only vaguely remember him because they remember indifferently, without love. But the Lord remembers with love and does not let any small detail slip his memory, thus He does not need his name.
Why did he go off to die? Why did he not die with us, the ones who loved him? Christofer wiped Arseny’s tears with his scratchy touch. He kissed his forehead. It was his way of warning us that everyone remains alone with God at the final moment.
Carrying turquoise on one’s person protects from murder because that stone has never been seen on a murdered person.
Those who took care of the deceased did not cry. In those days nobody really cried, for tears cannot soften the grief of so much death. Beyond that, there were simply no more tears.
of all his work, it was the uttering of words that took the most effort.
She’s my mama, whispered Silvester. Nothing wicked can come to me from her.
Wait, I want to say it in my own words. (He pressed his forehead to the floor, which made his voice sound more muffled.) Lord, let her live. I need nothing else in the world. At all. I will give thanks to you for centuries. You know, after all, that if she dies I will be left all alone. (He looked out from under his arm at the Savior.) With no help.
The flesh loses its sinfulness during illness, said Arseny, after thinking. It is becoming known that the flesh is only a shell. So there is no need to feel embarrassed about it.
Kseniya was pale and thus inexpressibly beautiful.
Listen, I want to ask you a favor. If you meet a little boy there, he is even smaller than you… You will recognize him easily, he does not even have a name. He is my son. You tell… Arseny pressed his forehead to an oak and felt its woodenness pour into him. You give him a kiss for me. Just give him a kiss.
A stranger to your own people, you endured everything with joy for the sake of Christ, searching for an ancient, perished fatherland.
Death, however, is not a completely unfamiliar topic for our brother Ustin: our brother Ustin is already deade within his living body. The holy fool Ustin goes about, worthie already of mourning, however the person within him has been restored to life. After living without a home, he, our brother, will have his tentes pitched in heven.
During the dayes, God’s servant Ustin laughs at the worlde, at nyghte he mourns the same worlde.
This gave the populace hope that the conjectured end of the world would be limited to just Rus’.
And, one might ask, had his love existed? And if so, then what had that love turned into during those hundreds of years gone by? And who, then, could feel that love now, if those who had loved had been reduced to dust long ago?
And so I, my love, am going to the very center of the earth. I am going to the point that is closest of all to Heaven. If my words are destined to fly all the way to Heaven, then it will happen there. And all my words will be about you.
Lots of Russians are gloomy, said Ambrogio, sharing an observation. It is the climate, nodded Arseny.
Russians are not as gloomy as you seemed to think, after all, Arseny told Ambrogio. Sometimes they are in a good mood. After a horde leaves, for example.
It is easy to follow signs, and that requires no courage, replied Ambrogio. If this were about saving
These Zheshovites’ speech surely does shine with shushing sufficient for the inspiration of sensations of sheer satiation.
Life consists of partings, said Arseny. But you can rejoice more fully in companionship when you remember that.
Our God is closer and warmer, theirs is higher and grander. Perhaps, my love, this impression is superficial and caused by my ignorance of Latin. But throughout the entire service I just could not determine if the Austrians themselves know it.
You know, O friend, any meeting is surely more than parting. There is emptiness before meeting someone, just nothing, but there is no longer emptiness after parting. After having met someone once, it is impossible to part completely. A person remains in the memory, as a part of the memory. The person created that part and that part lives, sometimes coming into contact with its creator.
The flow of fresh water into salt water, the pilgrim Friedrich softly said, is something I liken to how the sweetness of this earth ends up turning to salt and bitterness.
Further, the residents of Zara were not inclined to postpone the matter to a later date, since they were well aware that time is the arch-enemy of decisiveness.
I am sorry, my love, that I managed to do so little, but I firmly believe that if the All-Merciful takes me now, He will accomplish everything we did not accomplish. Without that belief, there would be no point in existing, either for me or for you.
And so, O Savior, give me at least some sign that I may know my path has not veered into madness, so I may, with that knowledge, walk the most difficult road, walk as long as need be and no longer feel weariness.
But is not Christ a general direction? asked the elder. What other kind of direction do you seek? And how do you even understand the journey anyway? As the vast expanses you left behind? You made it to Jerusalem with your questions, though you could have asked them from the Kirillov Monastery.
The Old Testament opens with Adam but the New Testament opens with Christ. The sweetness of the apple that Adam eats turns into the bitterness of the vinegar that Christ drinks. The tree of knowledge leads humanity to death but a cross of wood grants immortality to humanity. Remember, O Amvrosy, that repetitions are granted for our salvation and in order to surmount time.
I want to say that no things are irreparable.
Amvrosy pointed to the chalice and said: The elixir of immortality is in there and there is enough for everyone.
But the longer I live, the more my reminiscences seem like an invention. I am ceasing to believe them and they thus lack the power to link me to those people who were me at various times. Life resembles a mosaic that scatters into pieces.
Being a mosaic does not necessarily mean scattering into pieces, answered Elder Innokenty. It is only up close that each separate little stone seems not to be connected to the others. There is something more important in each of them, O Laurus: striving for the one who looks from afar. For the one who is capable of seizing all the small stones at once. It is he who gathers them with his gaze. That, O Laurus, is how it is in your life, too. You have dissolved yourself in God. You disrupted the unity of your life, renouncing your name and your very identity. But in the mosaic of your life there
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To return, O Laurus, is characteristic of people as well as birds, Christofer had once said. There should be some sort of finality in life.
They forgot about him during this difficult time, not with the harsh oblivion of the ill-intentioned but with the forced oblivion of the afflicted.
Even the dire circumstances of their life do not stop the curious: for many people, the attraction of seeing someone else’s fall with one’s own eyes is stronger than hunger. There were few sensational stories in the Middle Ages but what happened with Laurus is, without a doubt, one of them because it concerns the fall of a righteous man.
The residents of close and distant villages are not exactly glad about what happened, it is simply that their ridiculous life, mired in betrayals and squabbles, now seems a bit better.
