Once we saw at a service — and it took place in Moscow — a black parishioner: he stands, prays, and makes the sign of the cross not in the Catholic way: from left to right, but in our way, that is, just from right to left… After the service, we ask him: what kind of tribe is he and why is he Orthodox. He answers in English-French: they say, he is our first African brother named Anatoly, and then he switches to a language unknown to us, and we do not understand anything.
“In short,” Father Deacon couldn’t stand it: “What country are you from?.. Well, what country!” – Our deacon is young and quite modern. The African brother said some word, which perhaps denotes the name of his fatherly side, but none of us was able to repeat this word exactly, and therefore trying to depict it now with the letters of the Russian alphabet would be too daring.
After talking in this way for another half hour, we learned that Anatoly had come to study something, but there were two whole months before the start of classes, and while he lives in the embassy of that very country, the name of which we could not pronounce, he nevertheless wants to work for the good of universal Orthodoxy, and asks for very little for his work: — to be fed lunch once a day.
— Tolyan! — Father Deacon became emotional and put his hand on the shoulder of his new brother:
— We will feed you three times — don’t doubt it! Isn’t that right, father?” Then he sighed: “Apparently, they didn’t have much luck with food at the embassy: only bananas, probably.” Yes, and those, maybe, are green… And the African prayer book began to come to the temple every morning: to serve the service, then to work accomplishments: we had restoration work going on, and there was a lot of all kinds of garbage — so Anatoly took it somewhere in a wheelbarrow. At the right time — lunch in the refectory: let’s pray, eat quickly, pray again, and again according to our obediences. And as soon as the bell rings for the evening service, Anatoly will take the wheelbarrow to its place (she also had a special place cleared under the scaffolding — like a garage), say goodbye to everyone, and — to the embassy of his indescribable country. He, of course, would have remained for the evening service with great joy, but his diplomatic compatriots had some kind of regime strictness of their own, which did not coincide with our regulations. And this is what is remarkable and therefore requires undistracted attention: Anatoly did not know either the Russian language or Church Slavonic, and our musical culture was unfamiliar to him, but he spent each service in reverent concentration, crossed himself and bowed at the right time, without looking at others… This was given to him from heaven — by his sincerity and humility. And while the African came to us, he, without even knowing it, served as a reproach to representatives of the unfortunate tribe of Russian intellectuals, who sometimes ran, as if into a temple of fire worshipers, just to “light a candle”, and immediately flew back, because “you don’t understand anything.” Poor fellows… Victims of painstaking selection work, begun back in the fifteenth century by the diligent Jew Skhariya, who managed to graft a branch of Jewish theomachism onto the Russian Orthodox tree. In the end, it was possible to nurture a tragic chimera: this branch is filled from the roots with the pure water of Truth, but instead of leaves there are hooves, horns and tails stinking with sulfur. And from this disastrous smell the neighboring foliage withers, other branches dry up… However, Anatoly managed to serve as a reproach not only to these lost people, whose primary characteristic is an obsequious attitude towards the descendants of the unforgettable Sharia, but also to representatives of another human community, which greatly multiplied in the nineties of our sad century. However, here it would be necessary to digress for a moment in order to briefly outline a page of church life that is usually not noticed from the outside. Nowadays, among those begging for alms you rarely see the sincere — by sincere I mean people who are really suffering from material disasters: these sufferers are quickly replaced by inveterate parasites. Which, of course, cannot deprive any parish of their predatory attention. And so they wander every day in a tireless line from temple to temple, like pilgrims, but, as a rule, they do not go inside: they feel uncomfortable in the house of God, which indicates an invisible spiritual kinship with the first tribe, reproached by Anatoly. And why do they repel? Not even a lie, which, of course, defiles their souls. In the end, they are unconditional businessmen, and the rules of commerce, sadly, include both cunning and slyness. The most repulsive sin of the new tribe is laziness. Limitless and unshakable.
Taking off my vestments, I hear through the open window the voice of the deacon’s father: “I know, I know: you were robbed, you have nothing to leave for… To Rostov or what?..” “Yes, our priest sent you to Rostov once already.” And the neighbor too.
— You could probably travel around the world ten times.
— Well, at least he asked to go to Perm for a change, otherwise he got it wrong: to Rostov and to Rostov…
— You won’t ask to go to Perm — you’re too lazy to think: even for a moment, but — laziness.
Here’s another one: “she’s from out of town, she was admitted to the hospital, she was discharged, she has no money to get to Kharkov, help.” This one has also been going for a long time, we have already refused her several times about Kharkov, but she doesn’t remember — she’s even too lazy to remember.
— Would you like to go to Perm? — the deacon is interested.
This Perm was given to him — is he originally from there?.. But she doesn’t want to go to Perm either.
“Okay: let’s buy a ticket to Kharkov,” the deacon suggests to her, and not for the first time.
But she doesn’t remember and agrees, hoping to resell.
“I’ll even put you on a train,” and this has already been said more than once, so he managed to get tired of the monotony.
This doesn’t suit her — she has nothing to do in Kharkov. The woman turns and leaves. But in a week he will come again and the whole conversation will repeat again. At the same time, not a single psychiatrist would have discovered significant deviations in her: after all, laziness is not listed in any medical reference book, although it may well become a fatal disease of the soul. However, psychiatry deals only with the crazy, but not with the mentally ill…
Then one day, when we were walking to the metro along the boulevard, Father Deacon pointed out to me a group of homeless people having a picnic under the old linden trees:
— An hour ago you gave your blessing to gift that little guy with food. Now the team snacks on these grubs. And after all, each of them drinks a bottle a day, thirty bottles a month — and where does this money come from if none of them works?.. By the way, my salary would not be enough for such a life. And health too…
The next day I refused this peasant. Then the whole tramp company gathered — about seven or eight people — and let’s appeal to my conscience: they say, I’m offending my compatriots, my own brothers.
“Well, brothers,” I say, “work as much as you can for the good of our father’s Church, and we will feed you from the bottom of our hearts.”
They only grin in response. Here, the fiery Anatoly taxis from around the corner with his car and passes exactly between me and my compatriots, without paying any attention to us — probably, his route is laid out this way… — Here, — I say: — There is only one person who is helping to restore the Orthodox church, and he is a black man from a distant African country of a unique name. And you lie in ditches all day long…
They left and never appeared again — presumably, they found another feeding trough. Anatoly, having worked honestly for two months, moved to the institute dormitory. There is a temple nearby where he went on Sundays: having mastered the Russian language, our brother began to confess and receive communion. Sometimes I visited the deacon’s father — they were very friendly and easily understood each other.
When school ended, Anatoly came to say goodbye: the friends hugged each other, the deacon, sobbing, hit him on the back with his hand, repeating: “Tolyan! Tolyan! He cried silently. Then Father Deacon told me that he didn’t even understand why he was so emotional.
It’s just that until now he did not know that spiritual kinship is higher and stronger than any other kinship, even blood.
Priest Yaroslav Shipov
Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Investments in the Soul!
Orthodox stories from life
