St. Spyridon of Trimifunt is one of the most beloved saints by the people. According to many testimonies, St. Spyridon shows miraculous help in prayer for the most everyday things — about work, admission or problems with housing. In Corfu, they say that when the vestments of St. Spyridon are changed on the relics, the slippers on their feet are trampled — this is like a sign that St. Spyridon even after death walks on the earth, helping all those who mourn and pray to God for help.
Archimandrite John (Peasant) talked for a long time with people.
“Father,” complains the old woman, “half of our lives we stand in line for housing, and we live to this day all in a room.” The tightness is such that the grandchildren sleep on the same bed with jacks and support each other’s chin with their feet.
Following the old woman, a man complains and almost shouts, telling how he worked ten years in a hot shop for the sake of the apartment promised by the plant, but after restructuring the plant ordered to live long. What do we do now?
— You would have prayed to St. Spyridon of Trimifunt, says the father, and you would have been with housing long ago.
I write down the name of St. Spyridon of Trimifunt, although I do not intend to pray to him. I don’t have any housing problems. Actually, there is. But, after our family only a quarter of a century defended in line for a two-bedroom apartment, received in the end a one-room, we do not expect anything from the authorities. True, we were not removed from the queue, promising to give the due, but, judging by the timing, posthumously. So now our family has other plans – we will buy a house near the monastery in Pechora, the good of the money for this. No problem if you have the money. But here’s what is strange — later I was almost in a cashless state bought a house near Optina Desert, and here and with the money did not work. In fact, every time I went to advertise for a house, my feet were in pain as if a needle had stuck in my heels. I’m just finishing up, and the house has already been sold or considered selling. I spent six months searching for a house, and then I asked Archimandrite John:
Why can’t I buy a house in Pechora?
— Because your place is not here, but in Optina Desert.
Forgive me, Lord, my ignorance, but I did not hear of any Optina of the desert at that time, having learned from the words of the elder the only thing: they want to banish me from my beloved Pechora. I came with this resentment to my spiritual father Archimandrite Hadrian, but he also blessed to go to Optina of the deserts. I did. I didn’t like it. Ruins of temples and mountains of garbage around. The monastery was just beginning to be rebuilt. And the abomination of desolation in the holy place was so striking that I immediately went to Archimandrite Cyril (Pavlov) with a complaint against the elders, who were evicting me to an unknown place.
I remember how Father Kirill smiled, listening to my lamentations, and then said, blessing the move:
— Holy Optina, Holy Land.
How grateful I am now to the Lord who settled me in this holy land, but how difficult the road was!
— We are the Lord’s severe surgical patients, a nun later told me. Everyone has their own crown on their head. But the Lord pityes us, the foolish, and heals us with surgery.
In short, the move to Optina was preceded by that “surgery”, when everything that vanity, sometimes, the soul, was cut off. Savings have been eaten by inflation. And what seemed before significant: literary success, publications, life in the circle of celebrities – everything became unnecessary and already unlovable when his son fell seriously ill and his mother died, it seemed. There was a heavy smell of medicine in the apartment, the Moscow highway roared under the window with engines, and there was sometimes nothing to breathe in the haze of exhaust fumes. How we dreamed of a village and a breath of fresh air! But while I was fastidious, not wanting to move to Optina, the prices of local houses, which were previously cheaper than firewood, rose so much that they were no longer affordable.
This is how it happened that Father John (Krestyankin) warned about in advance: over the head there was a black sky in clouds and such desperate hopelessness that I did not even pray, but cried out to St. Spyridon of Trimifunt, begging for help. Help came immediately, and I just kept telling myself: it doesn’t happen. But it was. And soon we had already bought a house near Optina Desert, where my relatives began to come to life. I remember my son, who had been in the hospital for four months, first unsteadyly went out into the garden, and then ran off to swim in the river, and now we, as in old days, swim with him in a race. And mom’s an old mom again. Here she is carrying radishes from the garden and is glad that carrots have risen.
There are many favorites of God. But St. Spyridon of Trimifuntos was in my life the first saint through whom that abyss of God’s mercy was opened, when one learns from experience that the Lord does not give a test from above his strength, but everything is for the good and everything is providential. And I loved Saint Spyridon so much that I read him a tropar every day:
“The cathedral of Pervago appeared to be a champion and a wonderworker, to the God-bearing Spiridone, our father.” When you cried out to the dead in the grave, and turned the serpent into gold, and whenever you sang holy prayers to you, the most sacred angels who served you had you. Glory to Him Who gave you strength, Glory to Him Who crowned you, Glory to Him Who works for all healing.
I remember how the Voropaev family and children came to Optina Desert all summer, and it was impossible to rent housing. They came to me sad and said that no one takes the children to the apartment and they will have to leave.
— Let us, I suggest, read the troparion to St. Spyridon of Trimifunt.
I began to read, and the children look at me with bewilderment, not understanding the words of the troparian.
So it was necessary to tell them about St. Spyridon, for the tropar is his brief life. There is a story behind each line, and especially the children liked about how “you turned a snake into gold”. It was during a time of terrible hunger. The poor man came to St. Spyridon and wept, telling how he asked the rich man for a loan of bread for his starving family, but he refused to give anything without money.
A serpent crawled through the garden at this time, and the saint touched it with a staff, turning it unnoticed by the poor man into a bar of gold. He gave the gold to the starving man, telling him to buy it back from the rich man when there was a good harvest. Then the famine passed and there was such a bountiful harvest that the farmer more than paid the rich man for the bread borrowed and, having bought the gold, returned it to St. Spyridon. The saint carried the gold into the garden, and through his prayer the ingot turned back into a serpent, which immediately escaped from the garden. All this happened before the eyes of the astonished farmer, so that he might be sure and give thanks to the Lord, who invariably takes care of us.
St. Spyridon of Trimifunt was always revered in Russia as the patron saint of the poor, homeless, and suffering. In honor of him, churches were erected and streets were named, at least the famous Spiridonovka in Moscow. And in those difficult years, when the devastated Optina deserts were restored and everything around was in ruins, an akathist was read daily to St. Spyridon of Trimifunt in the monastery.
I told the children how wonderfully Saint Spyridon helps, and we have already read the tropar and akathist to him with great enthusiasm. Just finished reading my neighbor’s call from the street:
— I want to rent a garden house to a family for the summer. Don’t you know anyone like that?
— Got it! Yes! all the Voropaevs shouted at once.
Since then, every summer they have lived in this house.
For exactly a year I read the tropar to St. Spyridon of Trimifunt every day. I did not ask for anything, but only thanked with all my heart. A year later, a telegram came with the news that I had to urgently go to Moscow to get a two-room apartment.
I come, and the housing inspector looks at me with a fire-breathing eye and says, choking with rage:
— I know everyone by heart, but I have never seen such a blatant as yours!
I don’t understand. What kind? How? I realized that no one was going to give me anything. On the contrary, the authorities ordered to give this apartment to some people. The case was already settled, when suddenly the apartment was given to me in turn. The scandal broke out: why “missed”? And now the inspector complained to me:
— No, it’s my fault. I fought like a lion against you! I broke my head calculating your connections. I know everyone, but I don’t understand. Well, it’s yours, but let me tell you the secret, who’s behind you?
«Saint Spyridon,» I answer.
— — Who-who? — The inspector didn’t understand.
But I didn’t specify anything. However, we did not own that apartment for long. My old mother weakened over the years, and it was a long way to walk to the monastery. So we exchanged a prestigious apartment in the center for a much cheaper apartment in a green “bedroom” area to buy a new house near the monastery.
The place here is wonderful and always beautiful. At Christmas, snow sparkles under the stars, and in spring everything is white from flowering apple trees. The air is humming with the bells, and we all go to the temple. Mother is often baptized on the domes of Optina, and the son, ahead of us, goes forward. How long have I lived here, and I wonder: why am I so kind? And more and more often remembers the old Father John (Peasant), admonishing us, unreasonable: “God’s Providence governs the world and the fate of each of us.” That’s it. But I believed it only in Optina.
Nina Pavlova. From the stories of Father John (Peasant)
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