Prayer give us our daily bread today. Prayer "Our Father who art thou" translated into Russian in full: words, text, interpretation, power of prayer

April 18, 1993 On that day of Light Christ's Resurrection in Russia, Paschal joy in the soul of the Orthodox was mixed with sadness. After all, we have all been to Optina, where the merciful innkeeper Father Trofim met us, the angel of silence Ferapont fed us in the refectory, and Hieromonk Vasily confessed and communed in the church. They all had the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Our sorrow for them was light. They certainly are already in eternal joy with Christ. We will never see or hear from them again. Why did the Lord call them, the best of us, then? - because they were ready to become the first victims of that bloody 1993.

"I'm ready, Lord"
(Father Trofim)

My son and I, then twelve years old, first came to Optina Pustyn shortly after we learned that it had been returned to the Church, at the end of August 1989.

They read a lot about Optina and her elders, went to the monastery, which they saw in books of pre-revolutionary publications, and then there was terrible devastation. Worse than Batu, the Bolsheviks walked through the Desert.

The brethren then restored only a small gate church, and they served God in it.

But even with this devastation, the brethren, according to the centuries-old tradition that had developed in the monastery, still received pilgrims. Released for them two large rooms, called in the old way: male and female half. I had the right to look only into the "women's room" - it's better not to tell in what conditions people spent the night there.

The pilgrims told me: “You need to go to the hotelier Leonid. He will tell you where to go." We went to the dilapidated Vvedensky Cathedral. And soon the host Leonid approached us swiftly (he did everything swiftly). He was tonsured a monk with the name Trofim only a year later. I had only seen such monks before in Nesterov's paintings and images. I remember that he was weightlessly thin (but at the same time, as I later found out, he was very strong - he could tie a poker into a knot), and his eyes sparkled and merged with the sky. Unfortunately, none of the photographs convey its true appearance.

Bless me and my son to spend the night somewhere one night, - I told him.

Ah, please. Stay in the women's quarters, and the son will go to the men's, - he answered and did not even look at the passport, as in other monasteries. And, of course, I saw that I grabbed the hand of my child: I won’t let go! But he averted his eyes and said quietly: "We have such a charter." And flew away.

Charter is a serious matter. We went to the service at the gate temple. And after the service, I could not resist and, when there was no one left in the temple, I went to complain (in my mind, of course) Saint Ambrose Optinsky, to his icon: “Here, old man, you know how much we love you, how long it took us to come to you. And now we have nowhere to spend the night ... I let the child go with you to this “male half”, just know it.”

Then we went to the skete. We returned to the monastery. My child courageously went where he was sent, and I sat down on a bench. And suddenly the son returned: “Mom, the hotelier Leonid gave us the keys. He asked if you and your mother came from Moscow? - and gave the keys. Let's go, he showed me a room on the second floor, where we can spend the night together.

We opened this little room: two brand new mattresses lay on the freshly washed floor, with new soldier's blankets on them. And next to the mattresses were carefully placed two chairs. Well, just royal chambers, with that devastation.

No, no, thank you, I said scaredly. - We're on our own anyway. - And I thought: after all, you, our angel-guest, so, probably, will get it from the monastery authorities for the fact that you did not know anyone so favorably.

Well, whatever you want, - said Father Trofim, then still a novice Leonid, - otherwise the car will go anyway ... - And he flew away.

Later I learned that he himself slept only three hours a day, on his knees, leaning his hands on a chair, and that he was constantly scolded for something, but at the same time he rejoiced. Getting up before everyone else, oh. Trofim ran to the prosphora - he had to have time to bake the prosphora before the service, then he rushed to the barn - to milk the cows, then he worked in the field on a tractor, and then also arranged pilgrims. He prayed at all monastic services, at the temple he was both a sexton and a bell ringer. Secret rule he had a big one. And the unceasing Jesus Prayer.

Mom o. Trofima said that their great-grandfather came to the Siberian village, consisting of several houses, from St. Petersburg, where he served at the court of Nicholas II. After the revolution, he had to hide, so he settled in the remote taiga. There the New Martyr Father Trofim was born. As a child, he was a shepherd of a very stern shepherd who looked after the village flock. Local residents often heard how he constantly scolded the boy, but he was silent. Mom told him: “Son, go away, we’ll manage somehow,” and after the death of their father they lived very poorly. But the boy suddenly became passionately defending the shepherd: "He is very good!"

And she also said that, working after the army on a fishing trawler, her son often sailed “to foreign countries” and brought beautiful things to everyone from there. “Why don’t you bring anything for yourself, son?” she asked. - “Yes, I don’t need anything, I see your joy and rejoice myself.” If by chance he had some beautiful thing, for example, a leather jacket, someone would definitely ask to wear it. He immediately gave up and no longer remembered her.

But this is all external life, behind which stood spiritual life. The boy, who grew up in a Siberian village, where there was not a single church for many miles around, from childhood thought about the meaning of life, ran away to search for God somewhere in the forests. As a young man, when he worked for railway, wrote in his diary: “The road is like life. Runs and ends. You need to turn on the brakes near the temple more often and confess your sins - the world is going to perdition, and you need to have time to repent." And another one: “The most important thing in life is to learn to truly love people.”

In the Gospel, he was shocked by the words of the Lord: "In the world you will be sorrowful, but be of good cheer, for I have conquered the world."

His mother, visiting him for the first time in the ruined monastery, said: “Come back home, son.” And he answered her: “I didn’t come here of my own free will, the Mother of God called me.” She also recalled that he was going to go to Optina immediately after its opening. But then his documents and money were stolen from him. Then he resolutely said: "At least on the sleepers, but I will go to the monastery." And by the will of God somehow quickly managed to straighten out the documents, collect the money.

After an early mass, my son and I walked through the woods to Kozelsk. I thought about what happened to us. Obviously something important, but what? Later I realized: we went to Optina with love for her elders and for the love of the elders. And they received, by the grace of God, this precious treasure through Father Trofim.

He, according to the stories of many pilgrims, was close to the Optina elders in his spiritual dispensation. He spoke to them in playful, short sayings, often in rhyme, like the elders Ambrose and Nektary. For example, he will see a pilgrim smoking outside the monastery fence and will say with a smile: “Whoever smokes tobacco is not that peasant of Christ.” And, they say, many immediately quit smoking forever. And to those who could accommodate, he said this: "Bend like an arc, and be a servant to everyone." Or: “Through empty entertainments, passions are intensified, and what stronger passion the harder it is to get rid of it. Some were honored to hear from him: "Just as a blacksmith cannot forge anything without fire, so a man cannot do anything without the grace of God." It was also said that even when he was openly deceived, he was completely calm. He tried not to stand out in any way, but he always appeared on time where he was needed.

Once the driver, who brought pilgrims on a bus, condemned the kind hotelier for the fact that he, having gone beyond the fence of the monastery, helped a young woman to carry heavy things. Father Trofim told him: "Forgive me, brother, for embarrassing you, but a monk is not one who runs away from people, but one who lives differently, that is, in God's way."

The second time I saw Father Trofim was when we, a small group of Orthodox journalists, came to Optina in the fall of 1990 to record a conversation with the second rector of the monastery, Archimandrite (now Archbishop of Vladimir and Suzdal) Evlogy. The monastery changed unrecognizably under him, regained its former splendor. In the Vvedensky Cathedral it was already possible to perform divine services, all the buildings of the monastery shone with whiteness, the paths were tiled.

At the end of the conversation, he said: “And I will place you like a king, you will spend the night in the cells where Shamorda mothers stay with me.” Immediately, he pulled some kind of cord hanging to his right, and Father Trofim flew into the room just as quickly. His intelligent, attentive eyes expressed readiness to immediately fulfill any obedience of the abbot.

Brother, take them to their chambers, - said the future Vladyka Evlogii.

Father Trofim led us to these very chambers, but suddenly stopped not far from the platform of the temporary bell tower, near the place where the modest graves of the Optina New Martyrs would soon be, and ordered us to wait. This platform, on which the monks Trofim and Ferapont were sacrificed, they made with their own hands. Now it is a place of worship for pilgrims, they venerate it like a shrine. And to modest crosses on their graves too. We would have then stood and prayed in this holy place, but we did not understand anything, we began to discuss something animatedly.

And then the abbot came out onto the porch of his cell. He looked at us with the eyes of Christ, praying for the crowd passing by His Cross: "Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they are doing." Did he, like the New Martyrs themselves, foresee their murder at this place? - I do not know. But the fact that this place is holy, no doubt felt. We felt ashamed, we pulled ourselves to attention, like guardsmen at a parade, and one of us said:

Excuse me, Father Evlogii.

Yes, yes, - he answered sadly, - yes, yes. - And left.

Father Trofim arrived. He gestured for us to follow him. Brought to rest. I never saw him again in this world. It was said that he, eternally tireless, suddenly in the service at the very beginning Holy Week sat down on the step by the altar and quietly said, "I am ready, Lord." The brethren did not understand - what is it about? After the Easter service, the New Martyrs festive table they ate almost nothing, they were the first to get up and go to obedience. Hieromonk Vasily had to go to the skete, confess, and Fr. Trofim and Fr. Ferapont had to go to the same platform of the bell tower to call for early Mass. The killer's sword was the first to pierce Fr. Ferapont and immediately after him - Fr. Trofim. But at a time when pain pierced his entire body, having gathered his last strength - the strength of love for people - he sounded the alarm. The brethren suspected something was wrong and ran to the bell tower. No one else was killed on the territory of the monastery, but on the way to the skete, this either a Satanist or a seriously ill person overtook and pierced Hieromonk Vasily with his sword.

For the third time, I came to Optina to see Father Trofim and the brothers killed with him at their graves. Was bright week. The sun was playing. The birds were singing. For a long time I asked for forgiveness from Father Trofim for the fact that I could not respond in any way in my life to the Optina love shown to me in Christ. Answer

it could only be the same love for people. And I didn't have it.

I went along the path among the pines to the skete. I saw that an old man deep in prayer was coming towards me with his head bowed. I thought: here, we come here, sinners, vain, prevent holy people from praying. I clung to a pine tree, I wanted to sink through the ground from shame. And then the elder raised his head, looked at me with the young, sparkling eyes of Father Trofim, and said: “Christ is Risen!”

They said that when at the grave of Fr. Trofim, his brother came, he said in bewilderment: “How is it, you died ...”. That is, it did not fit in his head. And then he clearly heard: “Love, brother, does not die…”

Angel of Silence
(Father Ferapont)

The monks themselves called Father Ferapont the Angel of Silence. And they won't say too much. To one brother, Fr. Ferapont explained that he was silent not because he had taken such a vow, but simply understood how easy it is to offend a person with a word, to deprive him of peace of mind. That's why it's better to talk less.

He was also from a remote Siberian village. He ran away from there - there was a spiritual swamp, in his opinion. Not a single church in the area, young people drink too much. In some small Siberian town, he studied to be a forester. There, non-drinking students practiced yoga. Here is the paradox Soviet power: young people are not allowed to go to the temple, but please go to the sect. Drinking, smoking - you can also as much as you like.

Father Ferapont, then Vladimir Pushkarev, understood everything about yoga after the very first classes. He wrote to a friend: "Yoga is the same swamp that we have in the village, only there they get drunk with wine, and here - with pride."

After graduating from college, he lived alone for several years among the forests near Lake Baikal. I understood: where there is no temple, there is no life. He confessed to one brother: “If you only knew what sufferings I went through to Christ.” He told me that there, in the forest, he was directly attacked by demons. But he acquired the fear of God. He said: "The fear of eternal torment cleanses from passions." There, in the forest, he learned to be silent not only with his lips, but also with his thoughts.

From the Baikal forests I went to Rostov-on-Don, to my uncle. There he worked as a janitor at the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. He went to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where Elder Kirill (Pavlov) advised him to go to the monastery. He came to Optina Pustyn in 1990. Carried obedience in the kitchen, the most difficult. If sometimes he said something, it was very humbly and carefully, so as not to embarrass or upset anyone. Never condemned anyone.

In 1991 he came to his native village, said goodbye to everyone. He told his relatives: “You will never see me again.”

He also explained the reason for his silence in this way: “Whoever is silent, he acquires light in the soul, his passions are revealed to him.” He did not miss a single divine service, he was a virtuoso bell ringer. He had the gift of unceasing Jesus prayer.

Before Easter 1993, he gave away all his belongings. And the killer's long sword pierced him first. Pray for us, angel of silence, monk Ferapont! When you write about you, you are ashamed of your talkativeness.

Preacher
(Hieromonk Vasily)

About father Vasily, in the world Igor Roslyakov, a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, an outstanding athlete (he was a member of the country's water polo team), several books were written by people who knew him well, his sermons and spiritual poems were published. The Optina Pustyn website has a detailed biography of him. Therefore, I want to finish the story about the Optina New Martyrs with a chronicle record of Father Vasily about the first Pascha in the monastery:

“The heart understands as never before that everything we receive from God is received free of charge. Our imperfect offerings are eclipsed by the bounty of God and become invisible, just as fire is not visible under the dazzling radiance of the Sun… Bright Week passes in one day… Time returns only on Bright Saturday… Optina Hermitage is being restored, truth is being restored. The head of everything is Christ risen from the Tomb: “I will rise and be glorified!”

Monk Ferapont(in the world Vladimir Leonidovich Pushkarev; September 17, the village of Kandaurovo, Novosibirsk Region - April 18, Optina Pustyn, Kaluga Region) - a monk of the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the three inhabitants of Optina Hermitage killed on Easter morning 1993 (the other two are Hieromonk Vasily and Monk Trofim).

Biography

Family

He grew up as a calm, meek boy, he loved to draw.

In 1962, the Pushkarev family moved to the village of Usman in the Yemelyanovsky district and soon to the nearby village of Ordzhonikidze.

Youth

Volodya increasingly sought solitude. He was prone to unusual behavior, for example, he could come to the club barefoot and in work clothes.

In 1972 he entered the Uyar vocational school, after which he went to work in the Ordzhonikidze forestry. In 1975 he entered the Shelomkovskoye SPTU-24, where he learned to be a driver. After graduating from college, he got a job at the Construction Department No. 37 in the Motyginsky district. In November he was drafted into the army - to the Far East.

Many are afraid of death, - Vladimir reasoned. - Apparently, death is unusual for a person, and maybe that's why the soul does not want to agree with the idea of its non-existence? No, yet the soul does not die, but abides forever.

Once met with a woman who had an accident and survived clinical death. On her advice, I read the third volume of the works of Ignatius Bryanchaninov, which included "The Word of Death" and "On the Vision of Spirits", the life of St. Job of Pochaev and the teachings of Elder Siluan of Athos.

Optina Pustyn

martyrdom

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An excerpt characterizing Ferapont (Pushkarev)

But Pierre did not have time to finish these words, when they suddenly attacked him from three sides. The Boston player Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, who had long been known to him and was always well disposed towards him, attacked him most strongly. Stepan Stepanovich was in a uniform, and, whether from a uniform or from other reasons, Pierre saw a completely different person in front of him. Stepan Stepanovich, with suddenly manifested senile anger on his face, shouted at Pierre:
- Firstly, I will tell you that we have no right to ask the sovereign about this, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had such a right, then the sovereign cannot answer us. The troops move in accordance with the movements of the enemy - the troops decrease and arrive ...
Another voice of a man of medium height, about forty years old, whom Pierre had seen in former times among the gypsies and knew for a bad card player and who, also changed in uniform, moved closer to Pierre, interrupted Apraksin.
“Yes, and this is not the time to argue,” said the voice of this nobleman, “but you need to act: there is a war in Russia. Our enemy is coming to destroy Russia, to scold the graves of our fathers, to take away our wives and children. The nobleman thumped his chest. - We will all get up, all of us will go, all for the king, father! he shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard from the crowd. - We are Russians and will not spare our blood to defend the faith, the throne and the fatherland. And nonsense must be left, if we are sons of the fatherland. We will show Europe how Russia rises for Russia, the nobleman shouted.
Pierre wanted to object, but could not say a word. He felt that the sound of his words, no matter what thought they conveyed, was less audible than the sound of an animated nobleman's words.
Ilya Andreevich approved from behind the circle; some briskly turned their shoulders to the speaker at the end of a sentence and said:
- That's it, that's it! This is true!
Pierre wanted to say that he was not averse to donations either in money, or peasants, or himself, but that one would have to know the state of affairs in order to help him, but he could not speak. Many voices shouted and spoke together, so that Ilya Andreevich did not have time to nod to everyone; and the group grew larger, disintegrated, again converged and moved all, humming in conversation, into the large hall, to the large table. Pierre not only failed to speak, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed away, turned away from him, as from a common enemy. This did not happen because they were dissatisfied with the meaning of his speech - it was forgotten after a large number speeches that followed it - but to inspire the crowd, it was necessary to have a tangible object of love and a tangible object of hatred. Pierre became the last. Many speakers spoke after the animated nobleman, and all spoke in the same tone. Many spoke beautifully and originally.
The publisher of the Russian messenger Glinka, who was recognized (“writer, writer!” was heard in the crowd), said that hell should reflect hell, that he saw a child smiling at the flash of lightning and thunder, but that we will not be this child.
- Yes, yes, with thunder! - repeated approvingly in the back rows.
The crowd approached a large table, at which, in uniforms, in ribbons, gray-haired, bald, seventy-year-old nobles were sitting old men, whom Pierre had seen almost all of them, at home with jesters and in clubs outside of Boston. The crowd approached the table without ceasing to buzz. One after the other, and sometimes two together, pressed from behind to the high backs of chairs by the leaning crowd, spoke the orators. Those standing behind noticed what the speaker did not finish, and they hurried to say what they missed. Others, in this heat and tightness, fumbled in their heads to see if there was any thought, and hurried to speak it. The old nobles familiar to Pierre sat and looked back at one or the other, and the expression of most of them only said that they were very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general feeling of a desire to show that we didn’t care about anything, expressed more in sounds and facial expressions than in the sense of speeches, was also communicated to him. He did not renounce his thoughts, but he felt guilty about something and wanted to justify himself.
“I only said that it would be more convenient for us to make donations when we know what we need,” he said, trying to outshout other voices.
One nearby old man looked back at him, but was immediately distracted by a shout that began on the other side of the table.
Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be a redeemer! one shouted.
He is the enemy of humanity! shouted another. “Let me speak… Gentlemen, you are crushing me…”

At that moment, Count Rostopchin, in a general's uniform, with a ribbon over his shoulder, with his protruding chin and quick eyes, entered with quick steps in front of the parting crowd of nobles.
- Sovereign Emperor will be here now, - said Rostopchin, - I have just come from there. I believe that in the position we are in, there is not much to judge. The sovereign deigned to gather us and the merchants, - said Count Rostopchin. “Millions will pour out from there (he pointed to the merchants’ hall), and our business is to set up a militia and not spare ourselves ... This is the least we can do!
Meetings began between some nobles who were sitting at the table. The entire meeting passed more than quietly. It even seemed sad when, after all the previous noise, old voices were heard one by one, saying one: “I agree”, another for a change: “I am of the same opinion”, etc.
The secretary was ordered to write a decree of the Moscow nobility stating that Muscovites, like the Smolensk people, donate ten people out of a thousand and full uniforms. The gentlemen in the meeting got up, as if relieved, rattled their chairs and went around the hall to stretch their legs, taking some by the arm and talking.
- Sovereign! Sovereign! - suddenly spread through the halls, and the whole crowd rushed to the exit.
On a wide course, between the wall of the nobles, the sovereign passed into the hall. All faces showed respectful and frightened curiosity. Pierre stood quite far away and could not quite hear the sovereign's speech. He only understood, from what he heard, that the sovereign was talking about the danger in which the state was, and about the hopes that he placed on the Moscow nobility. The sovereign was answered by another voice, announcing the decision of the nobility that had just taken place.