On January 13, 1996, the elder Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev reposed in the Lord...

Pavel Alexandrovich was born in 1910 in the village of Bolshoi Borok, Mologa district, into a peasant family.
The father was taken to the war, the family began to live in poverty, and in 1916 Pavel went to live with his aunts, the nun Evstoliya and the nuns Elena and Olga, in the Mologa Afanasyevsky convent; first, he grazed chickens, then cows and horses, and sang in the kliros. The wearing of the cassock of an eight-year-old novice was blessed by Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, who lived for some time in the monastery. In 1928, he was declared unfit for military service due to " weak mental development ". For a short time he was a judge (from the memoirs of an old man) :

"Sometimes they come and tell us:

- There is a Decree! It is necessary to select judges from among the members of the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel.

From the monastery, that is.

- Good,- we agree. - And who to choose as assessors?
- And whoever you want, that and choose.

They chose me, Pavel Aleksandrovich Gruzdev. Need someone else. Whom? Olga, the chairman, she alone had high-heeled shoes. Without that, do not go to the assessors. I'm fine, except for the cassock and bast shoes, nothing. But as an elected assessor, they bought a good shirt, a crazy shirt with a turn-down collar. Ow! infection, and a tie! I tried on for a week, how to tie the court?

In a word, I became a court assessor. Let's go, the city of Mologa, the People's Court. The court announces: Assessors Samoilova and Gruzdev, take your seats. ". I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilova pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear:

- You, infection, at least do not be baptized, because the assessor!
- So it's not a demon, - I answered her.

Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember, they were tried for what - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “ Not,- I say - listen, you, the guy - the judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe the kids are hungry! ”

Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone looks at me and it became so quiet ...

Write attitude to the monastery: “ Don't send more fools as assessors." me, that means ", - the father clarified and laughed.

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Gruzdev, along with Hieromonk Nikolai and 11 other people, was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashentsev) of Yaroslavl. The arrested were kept in the prisons of Yaroslavl. For a long time, Pavel Gruzdev was in solitary confinement in complete isolation, then 15 people were placed in a single cell due to lack of space.

(prisoner Pavel Gruzdev, photo from file)

The prisoners did not have enough air, so they took turns crouching at the door gap near the floor to breathe.
During interrogations, Pavel was tortured: they beat him, almost all his teeth were knocked out, his bones were broken and his eyes were blinded, he began to lose his sight.
From the memoirs of an old man:

"During interrogations, the investigator shouted:" You, Gruzdev, if you do not die here in prison, then later you will remember my name with fear! You will remember her well - Spassky is my last name, investigator Spassky! Father Pavel told about this: He was perspicacious, an infection, fear, though I don’t have it, but I didn’t forget his last name, I will remember it to death. He knocked out all my teeth, only left one for divorce »."

He began his pastoral ministry after rehabilitation in 1958 and continued until his death in 1996. On March 9, 1958, in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Yaroslavl, he was ordained a deacon by Bishop Isaiah of Uglich, and on March 16 - a presbyter. In August 1961, Archbishop Nikodim of Yaroslavl and Rostov was tonsured a monk.

He served as rector of the church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region. Since 1960, he has been rector of the Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky, Nekouzsky district (formerly Mologa district). He gained fame far beyond the village and even the region. Most different people We went to him for grace-filled consolation and solutions to life's problems. He taught Christian love simply: with parables, life stories, some of which were written down and later published. Father Pavel was a model of Christian non-acquisitiveness: despite his wide popularity, he ate and dressed very simply, during his whole life he did not accumulate any material values.

In 1961 he was awarded a purple skufia by the bishop, in 1963 - a pectoral cross by the patriarch, in 1971 - a club, in 1976 - a cross with decorations. Hieromonk since 1962, hegumen since 1966, archimandrite since 1983.

Father Pavel had the gift to heal diseases, especially skin diseases. He also knew how to heal people from such a terrible disease as despondency. According to Archpriest Sergius (Tsvetkov), even when Father Pavel was lying blind, with his pipe in his side, he continued to joke until his last breath and did not lose his cheerfulness. And he healed people from despondency with just his presence.
That's how writes about this gift himself Fr. Sergius:

However, he healed not only from despondency. I remember my mother, after the unction, fell off the porch and broke some bone in her shoulder. The fracture was very painful, and the pain did not recede even for a minute. And the doctors couldn't really help. And my mother and I went to Father Pavel. And he tapped on her shoulder with his fist - that's all ... And the pain went away. I will not say that the bone has grown together right away or something else. No, the healing went on as usual. But the pain receded, left, - and for her then it was the pain that was the biggest burden. And there have been many such...

The priest had a gift to heal any skin diseases. Sometimes he used to make healing ointment in front of me. He put on the stole and mixed the components. I was watching. Once he said to me: Here you know the composition, but you will not succeed, you need to know the word ". According to doctors from Bork, Father Pavel cured any skin diseases with his ointment, even those that doctors refused. Even the elder said that one person received this gift from the Mother of God and passed it on to him. Although I think he may have been that person. Father Paul's love for the Queen of Heaven was boundless.

Father Pavel often wrote down his memoirs. Here are some of them included in the book My relatives":
The happiest day (from the memoirs of an old man) :

Archimandrite Pavel, shortly before his death, in the 90s of our (already past) century, confessed: “My relatives, I had the happiest day in my life. Listen.

Somehow they brought girls to our camps. All of them are young, young, probably, and they were not twenty. Them " benders"They called. Among them is one beauty - her braid is up to her toes and she is sixteen years old at the most. And now she is so roaring, so crying ..." How sad for her - think, - this girl, that she is so killed, she cries so ".

I came closer, I asked ... And there were about two hundred prisoners gathered here, both our campers and those who were with the escort. " And why is the girl so rebellious? "Someone answers me, from their own, new arrivals:" We drove for three days, they didn’t give us expensive bread, they had some kind of overspending. So they came, they paid us for everything at once, they gave us bread. But she took care of it, didn’t eat - a day, or something, what a lean day she had. And this ration, which in three days was stolen, somehow snatched from her. For three days she didn’t eat, now they would share it with her, but we don’t even have bread, we’ve already eaten everything ".

And I had a stash in the barracks - not a stash, but a ration for today - a loaf of bread! I ran to the barracks ... And I received eight hundred grams of bread as a worker. What kind of bread, you know, but still bread. I take this bread and run back. I bring this bread to the girl and give it to me, and she says to me: " No, no need! I do not sell my honor for bread! “And I didn’t take bread, fathers! My dear, dear ones! Yes, Lord! I don’t know what kind of honor it is that a person is ready to die for it?

I put this piece under her arm and ran out of the zone, into the forest! I climbed into the bushes, knelt down ... and such were my tears of joy, no, not bitter. And I think the Lord will say:

- I was hungry, and you, Pavlukha, fed me.
- When, Lord?
- Yes, here's that girl, a Benderovka. You fed me!

That was and is the happiest day of my life, and I have lived a lot."

Batiushka was much more than capable of a well-aimed word. Once in Borki (this is a settlement of scientists in the Yaroslavl region), Father Pavel was sitting at a table with academic physicists, among whom were his spiritual children. There was some respectable scientist there who ate almost nothing, and about each dish he said: I can’t do this, my liver is sick ... from this heartburn ... it’s too spicy ... etc. Father Pavel listened, listened and commented: ROTTEN ASS AND GINGERbread DRISHET!

And again from the memoirs of Archpriest Sergius :

The Lord extended his days. The father said: Those who beat me, who knocked out my teeth, them, the poor; a year later they were shot, but the Lord gave me so many years of life ».

Sometimes I asked him: Father, the Lord helps you in everything, reveals such profound things... Is it because you carried such a feat in your life? He always answered these questions: And I have nothing to do with it, these are camps! "I remember how he talked with Mother Varvara, abbess of the Tolga Monastery, and answered her similar question:" These are all camps, if not for the camps, I would be just nothing! »

I think he was referring to the passionate nature of every person, especially a young one. Indeed, it was suffering that forged from him such an amazing ascetic, an old man. He did not like to talk about his kindness, but sometimes it slipped by itself. One day we were walking with him, walking around the temple. He showed me a picturesque secluded place: Here, I used to read the Psalter from cover to cover »...

Father Pavel often told a joke about a patient who had an operation under anesthesia. He woke up and asked the man with the keys: Doctor, how was the operation? » He replies: « I'm not a doctor, but the apostle Peter ". This anecdote has its own backstory. And it was like that.
According to the story of Father Pavel, when he was undergoing a difficult operation to remove his gallbladder, he suddenly woke up in a different world. There he met an acquaintance, Archimandrite Seraphim (rector of the Varlaamo-Khutyn Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Novgorod) and saw many strangers with him. Father Pavel asked the archimandrite what kind of people they were. He replied: “ These are those for whom you always pray with the words: remember, Lord, those whom there is no one to remember, for the sake of need. They all came to help you ". Apparently, thanks to their prayers, the priest then survived and served people a lot more.

In the late 1980s, Father Pavel began to rapidly lose his sight and became almost blind. He could no longer serve alone, without assistants, and in 1992 he was forced to leave the state for health reasons. He settled in Tutaev, at the Resurrection Cathedral, continuing to serve and preach, to receive the people, despite a serious illness and poor eyesight. Priests and laity found answers to life's questions from him and received consolation.
Spiritual vision did not leave the elder. His simple, childishly pure faith, bold, constant prayer reached God and brought grace-filled consolation, a sense of the close presence of God, and healing to those for whom he asked. There are numerous testimonies of his foresight. Father Pavel hid these grace-filled gifts under the cover of foolishness.

The funeral took place on January 15, the day of the memory of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, whom he especially revered, living according to his commandment: " Acquire the Spirit of Peace - and around you thousands will be saved ".
The funeral service and burial was performed by Archbishop Mikhei of Yaroslavl and Rostov, concelebrated by 38 priests and seven deacons, with a large gathering of people from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl and other places.

Archimandrite Pavel was buried, as he bequeathed, at the Leontief cemetery in the left-bank part of the city of Romanov-Borisoglebsk.

(the grave of Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev at the Leontief cemetery in Tutaev, served by the brethren of the Sretensky Monastery, headed by Fr. Tikhon Shevkunov (now Bishop Tikhon of Yegoryevsky))

What a wonderful father he was! And although he is not glorified in the face of saints (today), it is believed that he is praying for. Paul before the Throne of God for all of us sinners.

Pray, father, for our Russian country, for its authorities and army, for us, for our relatives and loved ones, for those who hate us and create misfortune for us. Pray, father Paul, that the Lord would forgive us our countless sins and have mercy on us all!

With love,
rb Dmitry

Centre Orthodox culture Saint Demetrius of Rostov

Publishing house "Kitezh"

With the blessing of His Eminence Micah,

Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov

The name of the Yaroslavl elder Archimandrite Paul (Gruzdev) is revered on Valaam and Mount Athos, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Ukraine and Siberia. During his lifetime Father Pavel was glorified by many gifts. The Lord heard his prayers and answered them. This righteous man lived a mighty life with God and with the people, sharing all the trials that befell Russia in the 20th century. Small homeland Pavel Gruzdev - the county town of Mologa - was flooded by the waters of the Rybinsk man-made sea, and the Mologa exile became a migrant, and then a camp resident, having served a sentence of eleven years for his faith. And again he returned to the Mologa land - more precisely, what was left of it after the flood - and served here as a priest in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky for almost thirty years and three years ...

Among all the gifts of Archimandrite Paul, his gift of a storyteller is remarkable: he seemed to heal the interlocutor with the life-giving power of his word. Everyone who talked with the priest, who listened to his stories, recalls with one voice that they left Father Pavel “as if on wings”, they were so joyfully transformed inner world. We hope that readers of Batiushka's stories will also feel that joyful spiritual strength in communion with the Yaroslavl elder. As Father Paul said: "I will die - I will not leave you."

PEDIGREE OF PAVEL GRUZDEV

The genealogy of Pavel Gruzdev is rooted in the ancient land of Mologa. “Once upon a time, the peasant Terenty (Terekha) lived in the village of Bolshoy Borok,” Father Pavel writes in his diary notebooks. “This Terenty had a son Alexei, who had a crooked wife Fekla Karpovna.” Among the six children of Terenty (the Gruzdevs in the old days were called Terekhins) there was a son Alexei Terentyich, and he had a second son named Ivan Alekseevich Gruzdev - this is the grandfather of Fr. Paul. "An old man of medium height, a small blond beard, shrewd Brown eyes and the invariable tube-nose warmer, hair cut under a pot, old Russian boots, a poor jacket and an old cap, and work and care from morning till night, "recalls father Pavel. The family is ten people, and" one put on the land, there is a cow, horses in the yard Fr. Pavel his grandmother. - Summer in the field, winter - spinning, weaving, grandchildren raised<...>. These workers had six children. "The first daughter of the Gruzdevs, Olga, after graduating from one grade of elementary school, went to the Mologa Afanasyevsky convent, where her paternal grandmother's sister, nun Evstoliya, lived and one aunt, nun Elena, also lived. Son Alexander was born in 1888 "After finishing three classes of the parochial school," writes Fr. Pavel, - was sent by his parents to Rybinsk to a shop to a certain Adreyanov, but the unbearable child labor and the inhumane brutal treatment of the owners forced him to flee on foot to Mologa and, without going home, begged to be a boy to Ievlev Alexander Pavlych, who had a butcher's shop, where he worked before the revolution, or rather, until 1914. Through the thickness of time, the ancient Mologa flickers, like the mysterious Kitezh through the waters of Svetloyar. Where is your holy fool Leshinka, who came to the Ievlevs' shop and asked the hostess: "Masha, Masha, give me a piglet," having received which, he immediately gave it to someone or stuffed it into some slot? Apparently, from his father - Alexander Ivanovich - survived Pavel Gruzdev has a memory of one case: “Tatya and the owner liked to go hunting for ducks to the Holy Lake in the fall, there were already darkness and darkness there. Once on a rainy autumn day with a lot of killed game, our hunters got lost. It was getting dark, and the rain was like a bucket. Where to go? Which side of Mologa? No orientation. But suddenly they saw in the distance, as it were, a column of fire rising from the earth, stretching into the sky; and they, rejoiced, went to this landmark. After two or three hours, Alexander Pavlych (Ievlev) and his aunt ran into the cemetery fence in the city of Mologa. Having climbed over the fence, they saw a fresh grave, on which Leshinka was praying on his knees with his hands raised to the sky, this wondrous radiance emanated from him. Alexander Pavlych fell on his knees in front of him with the words: "Lyosha, pray for us," to which he replied: "Pray yourself and don't tell anyone that you saw me here." Full name Leshinki - Alexei Klyukin, he was buried in the Mologa Afanasyevsky Monastery near the summer cathedral, at the altar on the right side.

In 1910, Alexander Ivanovich married a girl from the village of Novoselki, Solntseva Alexandra Nikolaevna. The firstborn was the son Pavel, in 1912. daughter Olga was born, in 1914 - daughter Maria, and on July 19, 1914 the war began. - we read in the diaries of Father Paul. - I remember that the dues were not good and the fine for firewood that they carried from the forest on their shoulders. So they sentenced my grandmother and mother to a week in Boronishino, in the volost government, in the cold, of course, the grandmother and "She took me with her, and there were a lot of non-payers from Borka, about 15-20 people. They locked everyone in a dark room, sit down, criminals. And among us were deep old people Taras Mikheich and Anna Kuzina, both short-sighted. So they went to the restroom to recover ", and there was a kerosene lamp burning, they somehow broke it. The kerosene flared up, a little and they did not burn out. And in the morning the foreman Sorokoumov came and kicked us all out. It was August 29, 1915-16".

My father fought at the front, and the family was in poverty, they went around the world. Mother Pavlusha, as the eldest, sent to beg, collect pieces in the village. And he was four years old. And he fled to the Afanasevsky monastery to his aunt.

MONASTERY HONEY

Here they came to bow to the abbess. “Bang at your feet!” the priest said. “Abbess says: “So what to do, Pavelko! There are a lot of chickens, hens, let him watch so that the crows do not steal it.

This is how it began for Fr. Paul's monastic obedience.

“Grazed chickens, then grazed cows, horses,” he recalled. “Five hundred acres of land! Oh, how they lived ...

Then - there is nothing for him, that is, for me, Pavelka, - you have to accustom yourself to the altar! He began to walk to the altar, serve the censer, fan the censer ... "

“They worked very hard in the monastery,” the priest recalled. In the field, in the garden, in the barnyard, they sowed, harvested, mowed, dug - constantly in the fresh air. And the people are mostly young, they always wanted to eat. So Pavelka figured out how to feed the novice sisters with honey:

“At that time I was five or seven years old, no more. We had just begun pumping honey in the monastery apiary, and right there I was gathering honey on the monastery horse. Only the abbess disposed of honey in the monastery, she kept records of honey. Okay!

But the honey wants something, and the sisters want something, but there is no blessing.

We are not ordered to eat honey.

Mother abbess, bless the honey!

Not allowed, Pavlusha, she replies.

Okay, - I agree, - as you wish, your will.

And I myself run to the barnyard, a plan is ripening in my head, how to get some honey. I grab a rat from a trap, which is bigger, and carry it to the glacier, where honey is stored. Wait, infection, and instantly with her there.

I smeared the rat with honey with a rag, I carry:

Mother! Mother! - and honey flows from the rat, I hold it by the tail:

Here she drowned in a barrel!

And cry, what are you! A rat has never seen honey even a barrel of that. And for everyone, honey is defiled, everyone is horrified - the rat drowned!

Bring that barrel, Pavelka, and get it out! - the abbess orders. - Only just so that he was not close to the monastery!

Good! That's what I need. Come on, take it! He took it away, hid it somewhere ...

Sunday came, go to confession... And the archpriest Fr. Nikolai (Rozin), he died a long time ago and is buried in Mologa.

Father Nikolai, father! I start with tears in my eyes. - Ashamed! So, they say, and so, I stole a barrel of honey. But he didn’t think about himself, he felt sorry for his sisters, he wanted to treat him ...

Yes, Pavlusha, your sin is great, but the fact that you had care not only about yourself, but also about your sisters, softens your guilt ... - And then he quietly whispers in my very ear: "But if I, son , one can, you pour another ... The Lord, seeing your kindness and repentance, will forgive your sin! Only, look, not a word about it to anyone, but I will pray for you, my child.

Yes Lord, yes Merciful, Glory to Thee! How easy! I run, I bring a can of honey to the archpriest. He took it to his house, gave it to the priest. Glory to Thee, Lord! A great weight off one's mind".

This story with monastery honey has already become a folk legend, and therefore it is told in different ways. Some say that it was not a rat, but a mouse. Others add that this mouse was caught by the monastery cat Zephyr, and colloquially, by Zifa. Still others claim that Pavelka promised the abbess to pray "for the foul-eaters" when he becomes a priest... But we are telling this story the way the priest himself told it, and not a word more!

"...TO THE STAR OF THE CHILD AND THE KING OF KINGS"

Pavelka was very fond of going to carols at Christmas and Christmas time. They went around the monastery like this - first to the abbess, then to the treasurer, then to the deanery and to everyone in order. And he also comes to the abbess: "Can I carol?"

Mother abbess! - shouts the attendant. - Then Pavelko came, he will praise.

“It’s me Pavelko, at that time about six years old,” said the priest. “They don’t let her into her cell, so I’m standing in the hallway. I hear the voice of the abbess from the cell: “Okay, let her praise!” Then I begin:

Praise, praise

you yourself know about it.

I'm little Pavelko,

I can't praise

but I dare not ask.

mother abbess,

give me a pin!

If you don't give me a nickel, I'll leave anyway.

Wow! And tsolkovy, you know what? Do not you know! Silver and two heads on it - the sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich and Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, were then such jubilee silver rubles. Thank God! And then I go to the treasurer - the whole procedure is like this ... Poplia's mother was the treasurer. He will give me a fifty dollars, and some sweets to boot.

Oh, and you were cunning, father Pavel, - his cell-attendant Marya Petrovna interrupts the father. - No, go to a simple nun! And all to the abbess, treasurer!

The simple themselves have that .., you yourself know, Marusya, what! You can’t beg for the Tsolkovy, even though you scream all day long, - Father Pavel laughs off and continues his story:

"From the treasurer to the dean. He sits at the table in a white apostle, drinks tea.

Mother Sebastian! - the cell attendant screams at her. - Pavelko came, he wants to glorify Christ.

She, without turning her head, says: "There is a piglet on the table, give it to him, and let him go."

Go away, - the cell attendant was alarmed. - The mother dean is dissatisfied.

And already more for the dean than for me, he is indignant: "Look, how much dirt you applied, slandered! How clean and washed rugs! Go away!"

He turned around, did not even take a patch from her. Okay, I think ... If you die, I won’t grieve for you! And I won’t go to ring the bell, know that, mother Sebastiana! And the tears are running down my cheeks like a river ... Offended.

To ring the bell was also the obedience of little Pavelka. As the priest said: "My labor income is in the monastery." “For example, a mantle nun dies,” says Father Pavel. thunderstorm: "Pavelko, let's go." We climb the bell tower, at night the stars and the moon are close, and during the day the earth is far, far away, Mologa lies like on the palm of your hand, all, like necklaces, entwined with rivers around. In the summer - barge haulers along the Mologa from the Volga drag barges , in winter - everything is white and white, in the spring in the flood you can’t see the river beds, only the boundless sea ... The grave Faina ties the tongue of the bell with a manteika, the one that is 390 pounds. and I'm with her - boo-m-m! According to the monastic custom, no matter what obedience anyone is, everyone should bow three times for the newly deceased. You milk a cow or ride a horse, you are a prince or a priest - lay three earthly bows! All Russia So she lived - in fear of God ...

And this manteika hangs on the tongue of the bell until the fortieth day, there already from rain, snow or wind, only shreds will remain. On the fortieth day, these shreds will be collected - and at the grave. A memorial service will be served and that manteika will be buried in the ground. This concerned only the mantle nuns, and everyone else was buried as usual. And for that - Pavelko sits on the bell tower all night and day - they will pay me a ruble. Thank God they didn't die often."

"AND I TO PATRIARCH TIKHON SPINKO TER, AND HE TO ME!"

In the summer of 1913 they celebrated the royal anniversary in Mologa - although without the personal presence of the Sovereign, but very solemnly. Archbishop Tikhon of Yaroslavl and Rostov, the future Patriarch, sailed on a steamboat along the Volga to Mologa. Of course, the main celebrations took place in the Afanasievsk monastery. Pavlusha Gruzdev was three years old, but he already knew the path to the monastery well, more than once his godmother, the nun Evstoli, took him with him.

His first meeting with St. Tikhon, Fr. Paul remembered for the rest of his life. Vladyka was kind, he blessed everyone in the monastery without exception, and with his own hand distributed commemorative coins and medals issued in honor of the tsar's jubilee. Pavlusha Gruzdev also got a coin.

I knew St. Tikhon, I knew Archbishop Agafangel and many, many others, - said the priest. - The kingdom of heaven to them all. Every time on January 18 old style / January 31 AD. v. /, on the day of St. Athanasius the Great and Cyril, Archbishops of Alexandria, people from everywhere came to our holy monastery, including the priesthood: Father Gregory - a hieromonk from Tolga, Archimandrite Jerome from Yuga, the rector of the Adrian Monastery, Hieromonk Sylvester from Church of the Archangel Michael, five - six priests more. Yes, how did they go to lithium, Lord! Joy, beauty and tenderness!

During the Yaroslavl uprising of 1918, according to stories, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the Tolgsky monastery, but was forced to leave it, moving to the relatively quiet Mologa monastery at that time. bathe with His Holiness

They drown the bathhouse, and the abbess calls “Pavelko” - that means me, - says the priest - Go and wash with Vladyka, in the bathhouse. And Patriarch Tikhon washed my back, and I him!

Vladyka blessed the novice Pavelka to wear a cassock, with his own hands he put a belt and a skullcap on Pavlusha, thereby, as it were, giving him his hierarchal blessing for monasticism. And although Fr. Pavel took monastic vows only in 1962, all his life he considered himself a monk, a monk. And the cassock, skullcap and rosary given to him by St. Tikhon, he kept through all the trials.

For more than two weeks, according to Pavel, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the hospitable Mologa monastery. The abbess with him, the Rybinsk dean about Alexander, everyone called him Yursha for some reason, perhaps because he was from the village of Yurshino. I run next to the saint, I carry his staff. Soon we left the gate and found ourselves in a cucumber field:

Mother abbess! - His Holiness Tikhon addresses the abbess - Look how many cucumbers you have!

And then the dean about Alexander was nearby, put in a word:

How many cucumbers are in the monastery, so many fools, then:

Of these, you will be the first! - noted the saint

Everyone laughed, including Father Alexander and His Holiness himself.

Send the cucumbers to Tolga, - he then ordered.

Father Pavel told how they pickled cucumbers in barrels right in the river, how they drove mushrooms. Each case had its own custom, its own special ritual. They go mushroom picking - they sit on a cart, they take a samovar and provisions with them. Old nuns and they, young people, come to the forest, set up camp, tie a bell in the center, or rather, such a bell. Young people go into the forest to pick mushrooms, then a fire is burning, food is being prepared, and someone bangs into the bell so that they do not get lost, do not go far. They pick mushrooms, bring them back to the Old Woman's forest and pick the mushrooms, boil them right there.

And since childhood, Father Pavel was such that he loved to feed people, loved to run the household - in a monastic, systematic way.

HOW PAVEL GRUZDEV WAS A JUDICIARY

After the revolution and the civil war, the Mologa Afanasievsky Monastery turned from a monastery of monastics into the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. But monastic life went on as usual, despite all the upheavals.

“It was very fashionable then to gather meetings,” recalled Fr. Pavel 20s in Mologa. - An inspector comes from the city, or someone else, authorized, immediately to us:

Where are the members of the labor artel?

So no, they answer him.

Where are they? - asks.

Yes, all night.

What are they doing there?

Pray...

So the meeting is scheduled!

We don't know that.

Well, you will pray for me! he threatens.

Accused of evading “participation in public construction,” the sisters of the convent did their best to participate in the new Soviet life, to comply with all orders.

Father Pavel said: “One day they come and tell us:

There is a decision! It is necessary to select judges from among the members of the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. From the monastery, that is.

Okay, we agree. - And who to choose as assessors?

And whoever you want, choose

They chose me, Pavel Aleksandrovich Gruzdev. Need someone else. Whom? Olga, the chairman, she alone had high-heeled shoes. Without that, do not go to the assessors. I'm fine, except for the cassock and bast shoes, nothing. But as an elected assessor, they bought a good shirt, a crazy shirt with a turn-down collar. Ow! infection, and a tie! I tried on for a week, how to tie the court?

In a word, I became a court assessor. Let's go, the city of Mologa, the People's Court. At the trial they announce: "Judges Samoilova and Gruzdev, take your seats." I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilova pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear:

You, infection, at least do not be baptized, because the assessor!

So it's not a demon, - I answered her.

Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember, they were tried for what - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “No,” I say, “listen, you guy is a judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe his kids are hungry!”

Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone looks at me and it became so quiet ...

They write an attitude to the monastery: “Don’t send more fools as assessors.” Me, that means, ”the priest clarified and laughed.

"I WAS HUNGRY AND YOU FEED ME"

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Alexandrovich Gruzdev was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev.

The camp where Father Pavel served his term for six years was located at the following address: Kirov region, Kaisky district, p / o Volosnitsa. Vyatka corrective labor camps were engaged in the preparation of firewood for the Perm railway, and prisoner No. 513 - this number called himself Fr. Pavel - it was instructed to serve the railway line, along which timber was taken out of the taiga from the logging site. As a narrow-gauge lineman, he was allowed to move around the taiga on his own, without a guard behind his back, he could at any time go into the zone and leave it, turn on the way to a free village. Convoylessness is an advantage that was greatly valued in the zone. And the time was military, the very one about which they say that of the seven camp eras, the most terrible is the war: "Whoever did not sit in the war did not even taste the camp." From the beginning of the war, the already impossibly meager camp rations were cut, and the products themselves worsened every year: bread - raw black clay, "chernyashka"; vegetables were replaced by fodder turnips, beet tops, and all sorts of rubbish; instead of cereals - vetch, bran.

Many people were saved by Fr. Pavel in the camp from starvation. While the brigade of prisoners was led to the place of work by two shooters, in the morning and in the evening - the names of the shooters were Zhemchugov and Pukhtyaev, Fr. Pavel remembered that convict No. 513 had a pass for free exit and entrance to the zone: “I want to go to the forest, but I want to go along the forest ... But more often I take a pestle woven from twigs into my hands and - for berries. First I took strawberries , then cloudberries and lingonberries, and mushrooms! Okay. Guys, the forest is nearby! Merciful Lord, glory to Thee!"

What could be carried through the entrance to the camp, Fr. Pavel changed in the medical unit for bread, fed his comrades in the barracks who were weakened from hunger. And they had a barrack - entirely Article 58: monks, Germans from the Volga region were sitting, the intelligentsia. Met about. Pavel in the camps as a headman from the Tutaev Cathedral, he died in his arms.

Stocked up for the winter. Chopped mountain ash and stacked in haystacks. Then they will be covered with snow and take all winter. He salted mushrooms in makeshift pits: he would dig them out, cover them with clay from the inside, throw brushwood in there, light a fire. The pit becomes like an earthenware jug or a large bowl. He will pile a full pit of mushrooms, get salt somewhere on the tracks, sprinkle the mushrooms with salt, then crush them with boughs. "And so," he says, "I'm carrying a bucket to the guards through the checkpoint, two buckets to the camp."

Once in the taiga I met Fr. Pavel bear: "I'm eating raspberries, and someone is pushing. I looked - a bear. I don't remember how I ran to the camp." Another time, they almost shot him while he was sleeping, mistaking him for a runaway convict. “Somehow I picked up a whole bunch of berries,” the father said. “Then there were a lot of strawberries, so I picked them up with a mountain. And at the same time, I was tired - either I walked from the night, or something else - I don’t remember now. I walked and walked to the camp, and lay down on the grass. My documents, as it should be, are with me, and what documents? this strawberry is in my head. Suddenly I hear someone throwing cones at me - right in my face. I crossed myself, opened my eyes, I looked - the shooter!

Ah! Escaped?..

Citizen chief, no, he didn’t run away, - I answer.

Do you have a document? - asks.

I have, citizen chief, - I tell him and take out the document. He always lay in my shirt in a sewn pocket, right here - on my chest near the heart. He looked, he looked at the document this way and that way.

Okay, - says - free!

Citizen chief, eat some strawberries, - I suggest to him.

Okay, let's go, - agreed the shooter.

He put the rifle on the grass... My dear ones, it was with difficulty that strawberries were recruited for the sick in the camp, and he ate half of me. Well, God bless him!"

"I WAS SICK, AND YOU VISITED ME"

In the medical unit, where Pavel Gruzdev exchanged berries for bread, two doctors worked, both from the Baltic States - Dr. Berne, a Latvian, and Dr. Chamans. They will give them instructions, orders to the medical unit: "Tomorrow is a shock working day in the camp" - Christmas, for example, or Easter. On these bright Christian holidays, prisoners were forced to work even harder - they were "re-educated" by hard work. And they warn the doctors, the same prisoners: "To not release more than fifteen people throughout the camp!" And if the doctor does not fulfill the order, he will be punished - they can add a term. And Dr. Berne will release thirty people from work and he carries the list on watch ...

"You can hear:" Who?

They call him, our doctor, bent for what it should be:

"Tomorrow you will go to give three norms for your arbitrariness!"

Okay! Good!

So I will tell you, my dear children. I don’t understand in the beauty of the human body, in the spiritual I understand, but then I understood! He went out to watch with the workers, went out with everyone ... Oh, handsome, crazy handsome and without a hat! He is standing without a headdress and with a saw ... I think to myself: "Mother of God, yes to the Lady, Quick to Hearing! Send him everything for his simplicity and patience!" Of course, we took care of him and took him away from work that day. They built a fire for him, they planted him next to him. The arrow was bribed: "Here you are! Be silent, you infection!"

So the doctor sat by the fire, warmed himself and did not work. If he is alive, give him, Lord, good health, and if he died - Lord! Send him the Kingdom of Heaven, according to your covenant: "I was sick, and you visited Me!"

HOW FATHER PAUL TOOK A MAN FROM THE LOOP

All prisoners under Article 58 in the zone were called "fascists" - this apt stigma was invented by thieves and approved by the camp authorities. What could be more shameful when there is a war against the Nazi invaders? "Fascist muzzle, fascist bastard" - the most common camp appeal.

Once about. Pavel pulled a German out of the noose - the same prisoner - a "fascist" like himself. Since the beginning of the war, many of them, Russified Germans from the Volga region and other regions, fell behind barbed wire - their whole fault was that they were of German nationality. This story is told from beginning to end by Father Paul himself.

“It’s autumn in the yard! The rain is crazy, the night. And my responsibility is eight kilometers of the railway track along the camp trails. I was a tracker, therefore I had a free pass, they trusted me. I will advise you, and I will prostrate, just listen.

The head of our road was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl. How he loved me! Do you know why? I brought him the best mushrooms, and all kinds of berries - in a word, he received from me in abundance the gifts of the forest.

Okay! Autumn and night and the rain is crazy.

Pavlo! How is the road on the site? - And there was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl, also a prisoner, like me, but the boss.

Citizen chief, - I answer him, - the road is in perfect order, I looked and checked everything. Sealed, - a joke, of course.

Okay, Pavluha, get in the car with me.

The car is an old reserve engine, you all know what a reserve engine is, it went between the camps. When to clear the blockage, when to urgently deliver a brigade of stackers, - an auxiliary locomotive. Okay! Go!

Look, Pavlo, you are responsible for the road with your head! Kopyl warned as the train started moving.

I answer, citizen chief, - I agree. Steam engine, crazy, you can't tighten your jaw with a bridle, maybe! Let's go. Good! We drove a little, suddenly a push! What kind of push is that? At the same time, the steam locomotive will quit ...

Ah! So are you walking me? On the way lining dispersed!

The overlays are fastened, where the rails are connected at the junction.

Yes, Grigory Vasilyevich, I checked the road!

Well, I believe you, - muttered a disgruntled Kopyl. We go further. We drove another three hundred meters, well, five hundred ... another blow! Again the locomotive abandoned!

From tomorrow, for two weeks, you will have not eight hundred rations, as before, of grams, but three hundred of bread, - Kopyl said sternly.

Well, it's up to you, you're the boss...

We drove eight kilometers to the camp. Everyone leaves, goes to the camp, to rest after work. What about me? No, my dears, I'll go there to see what's the matter. Did not follow the road, infection! And to run eight kilometers in the rain, and the night to that. But well - it's given to you, your responsibility ...

I'm running... Good! Here I feel, now is the place where the push was.

Look - mothers! - the horse is lying in a ditch, both legs were cut off ... Oh! What will you do? By the tail - and away from the mound of swine. I run further. And I roar, I scream! Night! I'm soaked to the bone, but spit. I call on the help of all the saints, but most of all: "Reverend Father Barlaamie! I lived with you for four years, the saint of God! I always wiped your shrine, near the relics! Help me, Father Barlaamie, and wipe my sins, wash with your prayers to our Lord, Savior Jesus Christ!

But at the same time, I keep running along the road ... I see - the horse is still lying, Lord! Also stabbed to death - by the locomotive on which we rode. Ow! To do what? But the Lord had mercy, I did not lose my head and pulled this one away from the road. Suddenly I hear - some kind of snoring, a groan like a human. And next to that place there was a sleeper-cutting - when they made the road, they put the motor there, they built the roof. Something like a barn like this, logs were cut into sleepers in it.

I run there. I ran mechanically into this trellis cutter... My dear ones! I look, and the peasant, the camp shepherd, is hanging! Hanged, infection! He pastured those horses, German. What were the Germans then? He was arrested, maybe from the Volga region, I don’t know ...

Yes, Mother of God! Yes, I call all the saints and Michael of Klopsky, Lord! He called everyone, to the last drop. What should I do? We weren't allowed to wear knives, so I didn't. If found, they could be shot. They were shot for nothing. I could untie a knot on a rope with my teeth, so my teeth were all knocked out then. Investigator Spassky left me the only one as a memento in the Yaroslavl prison.

Once I tangled and tangled this rope with my fingers, in a word, unraveled it. He collapsed to the floor, Lord! I went to him, turned him over on his back, stretched his arms and legs. I feel the pulse - no. Nothing in it gurgles, nothing squishes. Yes, what to do? Yes, the Mother of God! Again, all the Saints to the rescue, and Elijah the Prophet. You are in heaven, I don’t know how to ask, how to please you? Help us!

No, my dears, I was already crazy. Died. Dead lies! Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom... whoever he called!

Suddenly I hear! God! Then, right in his throat, he choked. Oh, mothers, it worked ... So far, so occasionally: koh-koh-koh. Then more often. He overlaid it with moera grass, it was already in August-September, and he himself ran to the zone, again eight miles. The rain has passed, and I'm dry, steam pours out of me. I ran to the watch: "Come on, come on quickly! Railcar, now I have a railcar! It's bad for a man in the forest, on the stretch!"

The arrows on the watch, looking at me, say: "Well, he prayed, holy man! He has that head!" They think I've gone crazy. Did I look like this or something? Do not know. They do not say my last name, but as they call my number, they immediately say "holy man." For example: "513th completely prayed, saint!"

Let them talk, I think. - Okay.

I ran, found the head of the medical unit, we had such Feriy Pavel Eduardovich. I don’t know what nation he was, but his last name was Feriy. He respected me - no, not for handouts - but for just that he respected me. I address him:

Citizen chief, so, they say, and so!

Okay, let's run to the trolley, let's go, - he tells me. We arrived at the sleeper, and this one is lying there without memory, but his pulse is functioning. He was immediately stabbed with something, given something and brought to the zone. Him to the medical unit, and I went to the barracks.

A month or a half later, a summons comes to me: "The number is such and such, we ask you to immediately appear in court at the eighth camp." I arrived at the eighth camp, as indicated in the agenda. There is a trial, and I am a witness in court. They don't judge me, but that boy, the shepherd from the sleeper, whose horses were slaughtered by a steam locomotive at night.

As it turned out later, it turned out during the investigation, he simply overslept them. He walked and walked, passed, passed, and fell asleep, and they themselves wandered under the engine. And now the court is assembled, and it is judged.

Well you, 513th! - that means me. - Witness! How will you answer us? After all, you know, you understand, probably. The country is in a critical situation. The Germans are torn, and he undermines our defenses. Agree with that, yes, 513th? "He" is the shepherd who hanged himself.

I get up, they ask me, as a witness, I answer:

Citizens of the judge, I will only tell the truth. So, they say, and so I took him out of the noose. Not for joy, he climbed into it, a noose. He apparently has a wife, "frau", which means that he probably also has children. Think for yourself, what was it like for him to climb into the noose? But fear has big eyes. Therefore, citizens of the judge, I will not sign and do not support the accusation you brought against him. Well, he was scared, I agree. Fell asleep - so night and rain. Maybe he's tired, and then there's a steam locomotive... No, I don't agree

So you are a fascist!

So, perhaps your will.

And you know, my relatives, they gave him only conditionally. I don't really know what conditionality is. But he was given the opportunity. And then, sometimes, I still sleep on a bunk, and he will receive his ration of eight hundred grams of bread, and he will shove three hundred under my pillow

This is how my family lived."

Different streams of people poured into the camps in different years - either dispossessed, then cosmopolitans, then the party elite cut down by another blow of an ax, then the scientific and creative intelligentsia, ideologically not pleasing the Master - but always and in any years there was a single common stream of believers - "some kind of then silent procession with invisible candles. As from a machine gun they fall among them - and the next step in, and go again. Hardness not seen in the 20th century!" These are lines from The Gulag Archipelago.

As if in the first Christian centuries, when worship was often performed in the open air, the Orthodox now pray in the forest, in the mountains, in the desert and by the sea.

In the Ural taiga, the Liturgy was also served by the prisoners of the Vyatka corrective labor camps.

There were two bishops, several archimandrites, abbots, hieromonks and just monks. And how many believing women were in the camp, who were all dubbed "nuns", mixing in one heap both illiterate peasant women and abbesses of various monasteries. According to Father Pavel, "there was a whole diocese there!" When it was possible to come to an agreement with the head of the second part, which was in charge of passes, the "camp diocese" went out into the forest and began worship in a forest clearing. For the sacrament cup, juice was prepared from various berries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, lingonberries - that God would send, a stump was a throne, a towel served as a sakos, a censer was made from a tin can. And the bishop, dressed in prison rags, - "Divide my garmentsfor myself and about my clothes, metasha lots ..."-was standing on the forest throne as the Lord's, he was helped by all the worshipers.

"Take the body of Christ, taste the source of the immortal" - the choir of prisoners sang in the forest clearing... How everyone prayed, how they wept - not from grief, but from prayerful joy...

At the last divine service (something happened in the camp, someone was being transferred somewhere), lightning struck the stump that served as the throne - so that they would not desecrate it later. He disappeared, and in his place appeared a funnel full of clean, clear water. The guard, who saw everything with his own eyes, turned white with fear, said: "Well, you are all saints here!"

There were cases when, together with the prisoners, some of the guards-shooters took communion in the forest.

The Great Patriotic War was going on, which began on Sunday, June 22, 1941 - on the Day of All Saints, who shone in the Russian land, and prevented the implementation of the state plan of the "godless five-year plan", according to which not a single church should have remained in Russia. What helped Russia to survive and preserve the Orthodox faith - weren't it the prayers and the righteous blood of millions of prisoners - the best Christians in Russia?

Tall pines, grass in the clearing, the throne of the Cherubim, the sky ... The communion cup with juice from wild berries:

"... I believe, Lord, that this is Your most pure Body and this is Your precious blood... which is shed for us and for many for the remission of sins..."

THE HAPPIEST DAY

Much has been written in the 20th century about the horrors and sufferings of the camps. Archimandrite Pavel, not long before his death, in the 90s of our (already past) century, admitted:

“My relatives, I had the happiest day in my life. Listen.

Somehow they brought girls to our camps. All of them are young, young, probably, and they were not twenty. They called them "benders". Among them is one beauty - she has a braid up to her toes and she is sixteen years old at the most. And now she is crying so much, crying so much ... "How bitter it is for her, - I think, - this girl, that she is so killed, she cries so much."

I came closer, I asked ... And there were about two hundred prisoners gathered here, both our campers and those who were with the escort. "And why does the girl revit so?" Someone answers me, from their own, newly arrived: “We drove for three days, they didn’t give us expensive bread, they had some kind of overspending. ate - a day, or something, what a fast she had. And this ration, which for three days - was stolen, somehow snatched from her. For three days she did not eat, now they would share it with her, but also We don't have any bread, we've already eaten everything."

And I had a stash in the barracks - not a stash, but a ration for today - a loaf of bread! I ran to the barracks ... And I received eight hundred grams of bread as a worker. What kind of bread, you know, but still bread. I take this bread and run back. I bring this bread to the girl and give it to me, and she says to me: "Hi, don't need it! I don't sell my honor for bread!" And I didn’t take bread, fathers! My dear relatives! Yes Lord! I don’t know what kind of honor is such that a person is ready to die for it? Before that, I didn’t know, but on that day I found out that this is called a girl’s honor!

I put this piece under her arm and ran out of the zone, into the forest! I climbed into the bushes, knelt down ... and such were my tears of joy, no, not bitter. And I think the Lord will say:

I was hungry, and you, Pavlukha, fed me.

When, Lord?

Yes, that girl is a Benderovka. You fed me! That was and is the happiest day of my life, and I have lived a lot."

"LORD, AND FORGIVE US THAT WE ARE PRISONERS!"

In the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev, who was the successor of Metropolitan Agafangel of Yaroslavl, Pavel Gruzdev was arrested twice. He received a second term in 1949, as they said then - he became a "repeater". From Yaroslavl, the prisoners were taken to Moscow, to Butyrki, and from there to Samara, to a transit prison.

In the Samara prison, Father Pavel, along with other prisoners, celebrated Easter 1950. On this day - Sunday - they were driven out for a walk in the prison yard, lined up and led in a circle. It occurred to someone from the prison authorities: "Hey, priests, sing something!"

“And Vladyka—Lord, remember him!” said the priest, “says to us: “Fathers and brothers! Today Christ is risen!" And he sang: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and bestowing life on those in the tombs..." Yes, remember, Lord, that righteous shooter - he didn’t shoot at anyone. Let's go, let's eat "It's the day of the Resurrection, let's enlighten people! Pascha, the Lord's Pascha! From death to life and from earth to heaven, Christ God will bring us ..."

The prisoners were taken from Samara to no one knows where. There were bars in the wagons, they didn’t give bread for the road. "Oh, yes, the Solovetsky wonderworkers! But where are you, the righteous, sending us?" They go for a day, two, three .. You can see the mountains from the far window. And again - "with things!" Everyone came out, gathered, became in fact. Shout out the new arrivals alphabetically

BUT! Antonov Ivan Vasilievich Come in.

Number 1 is in.

Augustow... Enters.

B!.. C!.. G!.. Come in! To the zone, to the zone! Grivnev, Godunov, Gribov... Donskoy, Danilov...

What about Gruzdev? - asks about. Paul.

No, they answer him.

"How not? - he thinks. - I'm their worst fascist. They don't call me! Apparently, now it will be even worse."

Everyone was named, no one was left, only two old men and him, Pavel Gruzdev.

Boy, are you a prisoner?

Prisoner.

And we are prisoners. Are you a fascist?

And we are fascists.

“Glory to Thee, Lord!” Father Pavel sighed with relief and explained.

Duck boy, - the old people ask him, - you go to this, which boss, say that you forgot three!

Citizen boss! We are also three prisoners from this party.

We don't know! Back off!

The old men are sitting with Pavlusha, waiting. Suddenly, a guard comes out of the checkpoint booth, carries a package:

Well, which one of you will be smarter? The old people say:

So give the guy the documents.

Take this. There, you see, three kilometers away, a house on a mountain and a flag? Go there, they will tell you what to do.

“Let’s go,” Father Pavel recalled. “Lord, we look: “monshases and shandases” - everything around is not in Russian. I say: “Guys, we were not brought to Russia!” They came to this house - the commandant's office, it is written in three languages.

Hello.

What do you want?

Don't yell at us! Here are the real documents.

E! - writhed all. - Let's go! And then we'll call the police, shoot! Oh, you infection, they will still kill you!

Tomorrow at 9-10 o'clock we come, work will begin!

Went. Where are you going, father? Kutsy go something? We ask the prison. Yes, dirty ones! There were no lice. Shorn ones! Lord, yes Mother of God, yes Solovetsky wonderworkers! Where did we get? What is this city? Everywhere is not written in Russian. "Out the prison," they say. We approach the prison, I press the bell:

We don't send transmissions, it's too late!

Honey, take us! We are prisoners!

Run away?

Here are the documents for you.

It's in transit. Do not accept. Aliens.

We are back in transit. It's already evening. The sun has set, we need to look for a lodging for the night. And who will let us?

Guys, they don't take us anywhere!

And our shift has passed, let's leave, otherwise we will shoot!

"Well, grandfathers, let's go." What to do? We are afraid to go to the city, I don’t remember where we went straight through the countryside. The river is making noise. I would like to drink some water, but I have no strength from hunger. I found some kind of hole, weeds - thump in the weeds. Here he fell, and here he fell asleep. And I put this piece of paper, documents, under my head, somehow saved it. I wake up in the morning. The first thing that seemed strange to me was the sky above me, blue sky. Prison is everything, transfer ... And here is the sky! I think I'm nuts. I gnaw my hand - no, I haven’t gone crazy yet. God! Make this day a day of Thy mercy!

I get out of the hole. One old man is praying, and the other is washing his shirt in the river. "Oh, son, alive!" "Alive, fathers, alive."

We washed ourselves in the river - the Ishim River. The sun has just risen. Prayers began to read:

“Awake from sleep, we fall down to Thee, Blessed, and we cry out to thee, stronger than the angelic song. Holy, Holy, Holy ecu God, have mercy on us with the Mother of God.

From the couch and sleep raised me ecu Lord, enlighten my mind and heart ... " We read those prayers, we hear: boom! .. boom! .. boom! .. The church is somewhere! There is a service! One old man says. "Duck out, see, on the horizon?" A kilometer and a half from our lodging for the night. "Let's go to church!"

And it’s not that we were beggars, but what is the last step of the beggars - here we were on this step. And what to do - if only we would take communion! Judas would have repented, the Lord would have forgiven him. Lord, forgive us that we are prisoners! And the batiushka is eager to give a confession. I didn't have a dime. Some old man saw us, gives us three rubles: "Go and change!" Everyone got a fifty-kopeck piece, and they put candles on the rest for the Savior and the Queen of Heaven. They confessed, took communion - yes, no matter where you take us, even shoot us, no one is scary! Glory to Thee, Lord!"

CASE AT ZUEVKA STATE FARM

Thus began the exile life of Pavel Gruzdev in the city of Petropavlovsk, where on the very first day he and the old monks took communion in the cathedral church of Peter and Paul. In Kazakhstan, the prisoner Gruzdev was sent "to an eternal settlement." In the regional construction office, Gruzdev was put on a stone crusher. "They gave me a sledgehammer," the father recalled. Once they sent them, administrative exiles, to the village of Zuevka for harvesting. The state farm Zuevka was located thirty forty versts from Petropavlovsk, and as if something had happened there - cattle, poultry were left unattended, the harvest was not harvested. But no one tells the truth.

“They brought us by car to Zuevka,” Father Pavel said. “And what is happening there! My relatives! The cows are roaring, the camels are yelling, but there is no one in the village, as if the whole village had died out. We don’t know who to shout, who to look for. We thought, we thought, we decided to go to the chairman in the department. We come to him., oh-oh-oh! There is a bench in the middle of the room, and there is a coffin on the bench. Matushki! And in it the chairman lies, turns his head and looks askance at us I say to my own : "Stop!" - and then to him: "Hey, what are you doing?" And he answered me from the coffin: "I am the newly-departed servant of God Vasily"

And they had such a father Athanasius there in Zuevka - he got there a long time ago, almost before the revolution. And it was this Athanasius who brought them all to their senses: "Tomorrow there will be an advent, the end of the world!" And he tonsured everyone into monks and laid them in coffins ... The whole village! They sewed some kind of cassock out of gauze and whatever. And Athanasius himself climbed the bell tower and waited for the coming. Ouch! The kids are small, the women - and all have tonsured, all lie in coffins in the huts. The cows need to be milked, the cows' udders have been stolen. “Why should the cattle suffer?” I ask one woman. “Who are you?” "Nun Evnikia" - answers me. God! Well, what will you do?

We spent the night there, worked a day or two as expected, then they took us home. Athanasius was sent to the hospital. They wrote to the bishop in Alma-Ata - Joseph was, it seems - he recognized this Athanasian tonsure as illegal and all the "monks" were cut. They put on their dresses and skirts and they worked as they should.

But the seeds were thrown into the ground and gave their shoots. Little kids run around: "Mother, mother! And Father Luka broke my face!" Father Luka is not five years old. Or else: "Mother, mother, mother Faina took the roll from me!" That was the case at the Zuevka state farm.

DIED "EVERLIVE"

So day after day, month after month, the 53rd year came. “I come home from work,” Father Pavel recalled, “Grandpa says to me:

Son, Stalin is dead!

Grandpa, be quiet. He is forever alive. Both you and me will be jailed.

Tomorrow morning I have to go to work again, and they say on the radio that when Stalin's funeral is over, "the horns will hum like everyone! Stop work - stand and freeze where the horn found you, for a minute or two ..." Ivan from Vetluga was in exile, his surname was Lebedev. Oh, what a good man, a master of all trades! Well, whatever he takes in his hands, he will do everything with these hands. Ivan and I worked on camels then. He has a camel, I have a camel. And on these camels, we are going through the steppe with him. Suddenly the horns went off! The camel must be stopped, but Ivan beats him harder and scolds him. And the camel runs across the steppe, and does not know that Stalin is dead!

This is how the cassock Pavel Gruzdev from the flooded Mologa and the jack-of-all-trades from the ancient town of Vetluga Ivan Lebedev saw off Stalin on his last journey. "And after Stalin's funeral we are silent - we didn't see anyone, we didn't hear anything."

And here again the night, about one o'clock in the morning. Knocking on the gate:

Is Gruzdev here?

Well, night visitors are a common thing. Father Pavel always has a bag of crackers ready. It turns out:

Get it together, buddy! Come with us!

"Grandfather revit, grandmother revit ... - Son! They have already got used to me for so many years," said Father Pavel. "I took crackers, took a rosary - in a word, I took everything. Lord! Let's go. I look, no, they're not being taken to the station, but to the commandant's office. I go in. We are not allowed to greet, they greet only real people, and we are prisoners," a fascist muzzle ". What can you do? Okay. I went in, hands like this, behind my back, as expected - for eleven years I got used to it, I gained experience. You stand in front of them, not to speak - breathe, blink your eyes and then you are afraid.

Comrade Gruzdev!

Well, I guess it's the end of the world. Everything is a "fascist muzzle", and here is a comrade.

Sit down, freely, - it means that they invite me.

Okay, thanks, but I'll stand it, Citizen Chief.

No, sit down!

My pants are dirty, I'll get dirty.

Sit down!

Still, I sat down, as they said.

Comrade Gruzdev, why are you serving your sentence?

So he's a fascist, isn't he? - I answer.

No, you don't shirk, you're being serious.

I do not know. Here you have documents lying on me, you know better.

By mistake, he says.

Glory to Thee Lord! Now they will probably be taken to Solovki, when by mistake ... I really wanted to go to Solovki, to bow to the holy places. But I keep listening.

Comrade Gruzdev, here's a note for you, you suffered innocently. Cult of personality. Go to the police tomorrow with a certificate. Based on this paper, you will be issued a passport. And we secretly warn you... If someone calls you a fascist or something like that, report to us, comrade Gruzdev! We will attract that citizen for this. Here is our address.

Oh oh oh! - waved his hands. - I won't, I won't, citizen chief, God forbid, I won't. I can't, dear...

God! And as I began to speak, the light bulb above me was white-white, then green, blue, and finally turned pink ... I woke up after a while, with cotton wool on my nose. I feel that they hold my hand and someone says: "I came to my senses!"

They did something to me, some kind of injection, something else ... Thank God, he got up and began to apologize. "Oh, I'm sorry, oh, I'm sorry." Just let me think. After all, a prisoner, it’s embarrassing for me ...

All right, all right, - the chief reassured. - Now go!

• What about eleven years old?
• No, Comrade Gruzdev, no!

"Only an injection was thrust into my memory below the waist ... I stomped." It took two days to issue a passport - "he is still alive with me," as Fr. Paul. On the third day, Gruzdev went to work. And their foreman was such a comrade Mironets - he did not take the Orthodox into the spirit and in itself was of a very vicious disposition. The girls from the brigade sang about him: "Don't go to the other end, Mironets will beat you!"

Aha! shouts Comrade Mironets, just seeing Gruzdev. - Wandered, prayed with the nuns!

Yes, a mat on what the light covers.

Popovskaya your muzzle! You go again! There, in the Yaroslavl region, you harmed, you bastard, arranged sabotage, and here you harm, damned fascist! You're ruining our plan, you saboteur!

No, citizen chief, he didn’t wander around, ”Gruzdev answers calmly. - Here is a document of justification, but I need to go to the director of the Regional Construction Office, sorry.

What for to you, the fool, the director? - Comrade Mironets was surprised.

• It's all there on the paper.
• The brigadier read the paper:

- Pavlusha!..

So much for Pavlusha, thinks Gruzdev.

The conversation in the director's office turned out to be completely discouraging.

BUT! Comrade Gruzdev, dear! Sit down, don't stand, here's a chair prepared for you - how best guest met the director of "comrade Gruzdev", who was already aware of his affairs. - I know, Pavel Aleksandrovich, I know everything. We got an error.

While the director crumbles into small beads, Gruzdev is silent, says nothing. What do you say?

We are handing over a residential building in a day or two, - continues the director of the Regional Construction Bureau, - there is also a contribution of your Stakhanov work. The house is new, multi-apartment. In it and for you, dear Pavel Aleksandrovich, there is an apartment. We have looked closely at you over the years, we see that you are an honest and decent citizen. The only trouble is that he is a believer, but you can close your eyes to this.

What am I going to do in your house? - Gruzdev is surprised at the strange words of the director, and he himself thinks: "What is all this leading to?"

You need to get married, comrade Gruzdev, get a family, children, and work! - Satisfied with his proposal, the director happily concludes.

How to get married? Pavel snapped. - I'm a monk!

So what! Start a family, children, and remain a monk... Who is against that? Just live and work!

No, citizen chief, thank you for your father's participation, but I can't, - Pavel Gruzdev thanked the director and, frustrated, returned to his place on Krupskaya Street. Do not let him out of production! No matter how you say it, you want to go home... Tya and mom, sisters - Olka with punks, Tanya, Lyoshka, Sanka Fokan... Pavlusha writes a letter home: "Tatya! Mom! I am no longer a prisoner. It was by mistake. I not a fascist, but a Russian man."

"Son! - Alexander Ivanovich Gruzdev answers him. - We never had a thief in our family, there was no robber either. And you are neither a thief nor a robber. Come, son, bury our bones."

Again Pavel Gruzdev goes to the director of the Regional Construction Office:

Citizen boss, I would like to go to my aunt with my mother, because the old ones can already die without waiting!

Pavlusha, to go, you need a challenge! - the boss answers. - And without a call, I have no right to let you go.

Pavel Gruzdev writes to Tutaev relatives - so, they say, and so, without a call they are not allowed. And his sister Tatyana, in the marriage of Yudina, worked all her life as an obstetrician. She was on duty one night in the hospital. The Lord inspired her: she mechanically opened the drawer of the desk, and there was a seal and hospital forms. Sends a telegram: "Northern Kazakhstan, city of Petropavlovsk, Oblpromstroykontor, to the head. Please urgently send Pavel Gruzdev, his mother, who died after a difficult birth, gave birth to twins."

And the mother is already seventy years old! Pavlusha, as he found out, thinks: "I've gone crazy! Or Tanya is being smart about something!" But they call him to the authorities:

Comrade Gruzdev, get ready to hit the road! We all know about you. On the one hand, we are glad, and on the other hand, we grieve. Maybe something to help you? Maybe you need a babysitter?

No, the citizen is the boss, - Pavel answers. - Thank you very much, but I will go without a nanny.

As you wish, the director agreed.

“Now you can even joke,” the priest recalled this incident. “And then I was not laughing.

"AND THE COLORADO BEETLE CREEPS IN THE GROUND"

Father Pavel saw so many people and events during the years of his camp wanderings that he became, as it were, an inexhaustible fount - sometimes you wonder what happened to him! Batiushka himself said that all his spiritual experience came from the camps: "I saved up for eleven years!" And when Archimandrite Pavel became a glorified elder, many noticed that his spiritual guidance, his prayers are something special, which has no example in the lives of bygone times, this is our life, modern Holy Russia ...

And miracles happened - sometimes so casually, by the garden bed. One such case was told by an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an official representative of the law.

"Once we went to see Father Pavel - a bright sunny day, August. The village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye is located 1.5 km from the highway, and we went along the road that the locals call BAM, it is more or less dry there, and you leave through the potato fields, bypassing store, to the gatehouse of Father Paul, i.e. you make a circle, as it were. While driving, I paid attention to the quality of the road, to what was around - i.e. I remembered more than my passengers. through the so-called BAM, I noticed that the potato fields are showered with the Colorado potato beetle - everything is red like grapes. So much so that I even thought that it was possible to grow Colorado potato beetles and cook kharcho soup from them. And with such a playful mood I came to Father Pavel. We were received as dear guests. And at a feast, in a conversation - like potatoes? like onions? in the village they always talk about agriculture - they started talking about the dominance of the Colorado potato beetle. And father Pavel says: "But I don't have a Colorado beetle beetle". He had two potato plots - between the gatehouse and the cemetery, 10x10, and already in the church fence - like a mini-monastery. But I saw perfectly well that there were Colorado beetles all around - even at the neighbor's opposite. And suddenly: "I have no." I'm like a detective - ha ha! - doubted. Everyone at the table had already eaten, no one listened to the other, I think: "No, now I will find the Colorado potato beetles. This cannot be! Of course, he is lying!" And I went out - it was light, the August twilight - to look between the gatehouse and the cemetery of the Colorado beetles, I will find a few and catch them! He came, began to crawl between the rows of potatoes on all fours. I look - not a single larva, not a single beetle! Can not be! It's red all around, but here ... Even if there were Colorado beetles on the site before our arrival, there should be eaten holes on the tops. I've looked all over - there's nothing! Well, it can't be, it's unnatural! I think there is everything in the second section. I, being an opera, i.e. a man who always doubts everything, is looking for enemies and knows that there are enemies - I think I will find! Nothing!

I came and said: "Father, I was just now at that potato plot, I was at this one - indeed, not a single Colorado potato beetle or larvae, but in general signs that they were." Father Paul, as a matter of course, says: "Yes, you went in vain. I know the prayer." And again I think to myself: "Hmm, a prayer! Why is he saying such a thing! You never know what a prayer is!" Yes, that’s how I was Thomas the Unbeliever, although I didn’t even find a hole from that midge on a single potato leaf. I was put to shame. But the Colorado beetles directly migrated, they crawled ... "

Father Pavel loved poetry and songs so much that he had a poetic parable or a comic rhyme in store for any occasion, and if not, he composed it himself. About a month after the "police check", Father Pavel composed a song about the Colorado potato beetle:

Potatoes are blooming, onions are greening.

And the Colorado potato beetle crawls into the garden.

He crawls without knowing nothing about

That Volodya the agronomist will catch him.

He will catch him, take him to the village council.

He will plant in a jar, fill it with alcohol.

The potatoes have faded, the onions have turned yellow.

There is a Colorado potato beetle in a jar.

"LET YOUR DASHKA RECOVERY!"

“Great was his prayer,” they say about Father Paul. “Great is his blessing. True miracles.”

“At the service itself, he stood like some kind of spiritual pillar,” they recall about the priest. “He prayed with all his heart, like a giant, this small man, and everyone was present as if on wings at his prayer. It was like that - from the very heart. Voice loud, strong. Sometimes, when he performed the sacrament of communion, he asked the Lord in a simple way, like his father: "Lord, help Serezha there, something with the family ..." Right at the throne - help this, and this .. During prayer, he listed everyone as a keepsake, and his memory, of course, was excellent.”

“Dashenka, my granddaughter, was born with us,” says one woman. “And my daughter, when she was pregnant, celebrated her birthday on the Assumption Fast - with drinking, with partying. I tell her: “Fear God, because you are pregnant.” And when the child was born, they determined that he had a heart murmur, very seriously - there was a hole on the breathing valve. And the girl was choking. Even during the day, back and forth, she cries, and at night she suffocates altogether. The doctors said that if she lives to two and a half years , we will do an operation in Moscow at the institute. Previously, it’s impossible. And so I kept running to Father Pavel: “Father, pray!” But he didn’t say anything. They send us a call for an operation. I run to the priest. "Father, what should I do? The call for the operation came, to go or not to go? And he says: "Communion and go." Here they go. They are there in the hospital, and I cry, but I keep running to the priest: "Father, pray!" And then he says to me so angrily: "May your Dasha get well!" And thank God, now - Dasha recovered with his prayers.

“The Lord heard Father Paul’s prayer faster than others,” recalls one priest. “Whoever comes to him, who has something that hurts, the priest will knock so easily on the back or pat his ear: “Well, that’s all, you will be healthy, don’t worry “And he himself will go to the altar and pray for a person. The Lord will hear his prayer and help this person. mourned, but prayed to Paul, confessed, took communion, talked, asked for his prayers, so everything gradually and eased. A week will pass, and he is already healthy. "Prayer works everywhere, although it does not always work miraculously,"- written in the notebooks of Fr. Paul. "One must get up to prayer hastily, as if on fire, and especially for monks." "Lord! Through the prayers of the righteous, have mercy on sinners."

IS IT EASY TO BE A LIKE

A lot of clergy took care of Fr. Pavel, and over the years more and more, so that Verkhne-Nikulsky formed its own "forge of personnel", or "Academy of Fools", as Fr. Paul. And it was a real spiritual academy, in comparison with which the metropolitan academies paled. The spiritual lessons of Archimandrite Pavel were simple and remembered for a lifetime

“Once I thought, could I be such a novice that I could unquestioningly fulfill all obediences,” says the father’s pupil, the priest. “Well, what, I probably could! What the father says, I would do. to him - and, as you know, he often responded to his thoughts with an action or some kind of story. As usual, he sits me down at the table, immediately Marya starts to warm something up. He brings cabbage soup, pours it. The cabbage soup was surprisingly tasteless From some concentrate - and I just took communion - and lard floats on top. And a huge plate. I ate it with great difficulty. "Come on, come on again!" , eat up! I I thought I would be sick now. And I confessed with my own lips: "Such an obedience, father, I cannot fulfill!" So he rebuked me.

Father Pavel knew how to make a person feel a spiritual state - joy, humility... this riza is the most beautiful, put it on, and you will give it to others. "And, probably, I still had some kind of vanity:" Look, what a beautiful riza!" And just a few minutes later - Father Pavel was at home, and I Church, he somehow felt my condition - he was flying - “Come on, take off the robe!” And father Arkady came from Moscow, “Give it to father Arkady!” It hit me like lightning from head to toe - I was so resigned. And in this state I felt like in heaven - in some kind of reverence, in the joyful presence of something important, i.e. he made me understand what humility is. I put on the oldest robe, but I was the happiest in this service ".

Archimandrite Pavel (in the world Pavel Alexandrovich Gruzdev) was born on January 10, 1910 in the village of Barok, Mologa district, Yaroslavl province.
When his father Alexander Alexandrovich Gruzdev was drafted into the army during the war of 1914, the little six-year-old Pavelka was taken to the Afanasyevsky Mologa convent by aunts - the nun Evstoliia and the nun Elena and Olga. Since then, his whole life has been connected with monasticism and monasteries. With short breaks, he lived in or with the monastery until its closure in 1929. He constantly returned to memories of life in the monastery, especially in last years. His stories about monastic life, colored with indescribable humor, will remain in the memory of the listeners forever.
Father Pavel also spoke about the arrival at the monastery of Archbishop Tikhon, the future Patriarch of All Russia. In these stories, his sublime, tender, loving soul shone. In 1929, after the closure of the Afanasevsky Monastery, he moved to Novgorod, to the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Varlaamo-Khutynsky Monastery. Living in a monastery, he worked at a shipyard. In 1932 he had to leave the monastery, and for several years he lived in home. In 1938, he and his father dismantled their native hut, since their village was located on the site of the future Rybinsk reservoir, and floated it down the Volga to Romanov-Borisoglebsk (Tutaev). Here, on the left bank of the Volga, stands the house that he and his father assembled, equipped and lived in together until 1941.
On May 13, 1941, Pavel Gruzdev was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev of Yaroslavl. During interrogations, he was beaten and his eyes were blinded, he lost his teeth and began to lose his sight. For his loyalty to the Church, he received six years in the camps and three years in exile. From 1941 to 1947 he was in Vyatlag. Faith, prayer and love for work saved him during these years. In the terrible camp life, Father Pavel turned to God with a prayer, and the Lord helped him, and through him the faint-hearted and desperate, whom Father Pavel comforted and supported.
For a conscientious attitude to work, he had the right to leave the zone. In the fall, Father Pavel gathered mushrooms, berries, mountain ash at the logging site. He salted mushrooms in pits in the ground, berries, and mountain ash he also closed in pits in the ground, and in winter the prisoners ate these stocks. According to Father Pavel, many hundreds of people were thereby saved from starvation.
In 1947, he returned home from the camp to Tutaev, but soon, in December 1949, he was arrested again and exiled to Kazakhstan, to Petropavlovsk, to a free settlement. Until August 1954, he worked as a laborer in the regional construction office and in free time Acted as an usher and reader in the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. Upon returning home to Tutaev, he lived with his parents, and on January 21, 1958 he was rehabilitated, which gave him the opportunity to apply for ordination to the priesthood.
On March 9, 1958, in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Yaroslavl, he was ordained a deacon by Bishop Isaiah of Uglich, and on March 16, a presbyter.
First, Father Pavel was appointed rector of the church in the village of Borzova, Rybinsk region, then, in March 1960, he was transferred to the rector of the Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye, Nekouzsky region.
In August 1961, Priest Pavel Gruzdev was tonsured a monk by Archbishop Nikodim of Yaroslavl and Rostov, which he had long striven for.
For many years of diligent service, Father Pavel was awarded a pectoral cross by Patriarch Alexy I in 1963, elevated to the rank of abbot in 1966, and in 1983 to the rank of archimandrite.
For many years of sacrificial service in a distant village in the Yaroslavl region, he won not only respect and gratitude, but also reverence. He was known in the surrounding villages, in the nearby academic campus, from where ordinary workers, professors, and academicians came to him. People traveled to him from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl and many other cities for grace-filled consolation and solutions to life's issues. Especially many clergy, spiritual children and admirers gathered on his Angel Day, on the feast of the revered icon of the Mother of God "It is worthy to eat" in the last years of his ministry in Verkhne-Nikulsky.
In the late 1980s, Father Pavel began to rapidly lose his sight and became almost blind. He could no longer serve alone, without assistants, and in 1992 he was forced to leave the state for health reasons. He settled in Tutaev, at the Resurrection Cathedral, continuing to serve and preach, to receive the people, despite a serious illness and poor eyesight. Priests and laity found answers to life's questions from him and received consolation.
Spiritual vision did not leave the elder. His simple, childishly pure faith, bold, constant prayer reached God and brought grace-filled consolation, a sense of the close presence of God, and healing to those for whom he asked. There are numerous testimonies of his foresight. Father Pavel hid these grace-filled gifts under the cover of foolishness.
On January 13, 1996, Father Pavel died quietly as a Christian.
The funeral took place on January 15, the day of the memory of St. Seraphim of Sarov, whom he especially revered, living according to his commandment: "Acquire the Spirit of Peace - and thousands will be saved around you."
The funeral service and burial was performed by Archbishop Mikhei of Yaroslavl and Rostov, concelebrated by 38 priests and seven deacons, with a large gathering of people from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl and other places.
Archimandrite Pavel was buried, as he bequeathed at the Leontief cemetery in the left-bank part of the city of Romanov-Borisoglebsk.

Conversation 2
Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov:
Hello dear brothers and sisters! We continue our conversation about the life path and ministry of one of the outstanding pastors of the Russian Orthodox Church XX century Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev). At the microphone, I am Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov, and my wife Marina Alexandrovna is with me in the studio. Due to the fact that Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) played a very important role in the life of our family, we decided to tell about him, about his life path, about our little experience of communicating with him.
In the last program, we tried to present a story about how the first stage of the life of Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) went through, when he, having gone through all the trials that our country, our Church, went through in the terrible 1920-40s and 1950s , took holy orders in 1958. From that time on, the cassock monk Pavel (Gruzdev), who once dreamed from childhood about monastic life, but never tasted it, becomes a priest, who was to enter in the future, I will not be afraid of these pathos words, although any pathos was alien to Archimandrite Pavel himself (Gruzdev), enter the history of the Russian Orthodox Church of the twentieth century.
So, what kind of parish ministry did Fr. Pavel carry out after he received the priesthood in 1958?
Marina Aleksandrovna Mitrofanova:
“Help me, Lord, to pass the field and the path of the priesthood without blemish. Priest Pavel (Gruzdev),” the priest wrote in his diary on a significant day, Holy Cross Sunday, March 16, 1958, when he was ordained a priest. Soon, Father Pavel was appointed rector of the Resurrection Church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region. He arrived there two days before Easter 1958 and then recalled: “Women saw him in church: the priest was walking along the road barefoot, carrying boots on a stick over his shoulder. “Oh, who did they send us!” - almost immediately wailed. Father Pavel enters the Resurrection Church, and dirt is everywhere, unwashed. He says: “Women, when is Easter?” "Well, pop! Doesn't know when Easter will be! The women became indignant. But it wasn’t smart enough to understand that the priest had denounced them with these words - why didn’t you women clean the church, because Easter is in two days!
In 1946, a joyful event took place in the life of the Church - monastic life was resumed in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. And when Father Pavel returned from the camps, the news of the opening of the Lavra was an incredible event for him. And his father said to him: “Pavel, it looks like they opened a laurel. For some money, go, visit the Lavra. Father Pavel says: “I went. I come, I look - the vigil is going on, and it seems like the monks go. A monk came out to read the Six Psalms. Well, I think it's a robot! All the monks were imprisoned, exterminated. I went up to him to touch - I will feel, iron or not iron? And he says: "Be careful, do not push." And I started reading.”
This monk was Father Alexei (Kazakov), one of the first inhabitants of the Lavra after its opening, and then he was transferred to Samara. In the monastery of St. Sergius, their acquaintance with Father Paul took place, which grew into a strong friendship. In 1986, shortly before his death, Fr. Alexei wrote to Fr. Pavel: “Dear elder, most honorable and most venerable Father, Archimandrite Pavel, bless! I am glad and comforted by your letter and congratulations. Save the Lord and save the Lord again. I live by the grace of God. The hut is covered and the clothes are sewn. I have not been to the Lavra for a long time and I will say frankly - there is no hunting. All new people and orders, and everything is strained, puffed up, stiff. So slowly I live, I serve. Pray for me. Kisses brotherly. Unworthy Archimandrite Alexy.
Father Pavel often said that he was the last, that not only did he have to commemorate all the deceased friends and relatives, but also to be a witness to the whole century that had passed. And he really gradually remained almost the only bearer of the old Orthodox spirit. And so, when he served in the temple of the village of Borzovo, he tried to make life in this temple such that it was dear to him, which seemed to him the only natural one. But soon after his return from a pilgrimage trip to the Pskov-Caves Monastery, he heard the sad news that the Resurrection Church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region, was to be closed. And he was very sorry to part with this temple, because he hoped to find a permanent place in it, having been persecuted all his life and moved against his will to different parts of our homeland. It was no coincidence that at that time he very often recalled the famous song “Vetka”, which he himself loved to sing very much and which is known to everyone who went to him and many in the Yaroslavl diocese: “You are a poor branch, where are you swimming? Beware, unfortunate, you will fall into the sea. There you cannot cope with a strong wave, Like a poor orphan with human malice ... ”And so on. And it was a pity for Father Pavel to part with the parishioners who had managed to fall in love with him. He even wanted to take away, as he himself later admitted, an ancient icon of the Mother of God, and together with it, insert a copy painted by brother Alexy, a talented artist, into the icon case. But he did not succumb to this temptation: "I will not be the first to destroy the temple." And left everything as it is, to the will of God.
“On February 15/28, 1960, he served the Liturgy for the last time in the village of Borzovo,” an entry was made in the father’s notebooks. And on March 7/20, 1960, he began service in the Holy Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye. After the closure of the temple in Borzov, Father Pavel was offered a choice of three parishes in the Nekouzsky district: Voskresenskoye, Verkhne-Nikulskoye, and the regional center Nekouz. He didn’t like Nekouz, and the elder didn’t like him in Voskresensky: “Small, shaggy, we don’t need this,” said the elder, “we need a respectable, prominent, red-faced priest” (that is, handsome). And he came to Verkhne-Nikulskoye, there was a headman there since the war. She opened a temple for him, and Father Pavel served a prayer service in front of the icon “It is worthy to eat”. “So he sang, so he sang,” the parishioners recalled, “that the headman said: come, we will take you.” Then the registration of the priest in the parish by the Commissioner for Religious Affairs largely depended on the headman. In Verkhne-Nikulsky, this issue was successfully resolved, and on March 7, 1960, the head of the Yaroslavl diocese, Bishop Isaiah, issued a decree: “By my decision of March 7, 1960, the rector of the Resurrection Church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region, priest Gruzdev Pavel Alexandrovich is transferred, according to the request, by the rector of the Trinity Church of the village Verkhne-Nikulskoe Nekouzsky district of the Yaroslavl diocese.
And from that day begins the thirty-two-year ministry of Father Paul in the Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulskoe.
Prot. Georgy Mitrofanov:
I would like to note one more expressive historical detail. Indeed, the year 1960 was a time when temples in our country were intensively closed. But nevertheless, it happened, of course, by the grace of God, that it was this year, having lost one church, to which his soul had already become so attached, Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) finds himself in the very parish, which, in fact, will become a place of all his further ministry and which many Orthodox Christians - and those who were converted to the Orthodox faith in the 1960-80s and even in the early 90s, will become a place of genuine pilgrimage.
But then it was one of the remote temples, which could hardly attract the attention of even the inhabitants of nearby villages. It was, indeed, a temple in which for Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) the most important stage of his life began, the stage of serving as a parish priest.
M.A. Mitrofanova:
“On November 12, new style, on Monday in Yaroslavl, at the Feodorovsky Cathedral, Hieromonk Pavel (Gruzdev) was tonsured into the mantle by the hands of His Eminence Nikodim, Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov.” So it is written in the diaries of Father Pavel in the late autumn of 1962. When Fr. Paul was tonsured, Vladyka Nikodim left him his name, that is, he practically preserved his entire life path and spiritual biography. This was also the will of God, as if signifying that Pavel Gruzdev always followed the monastic path and nothing needs to be changed in his fate. Only Saint Paul, Patriarch of Constantinople, a confessor, now became Father Paul's Guardian Angel, and the new name day of Hieromonk Paul coincided with the feast day of St. Varlaam of Khutynsky, the miracle worker whom Pavel Gruzdev had served for so many years. On the day of his tonsure into the mantle, the novice monk writes verses in his diary:

Father Pavel, November 12, 1962
You have given the holy word
A holy vow has been made.
You have become under the banner of Jehovah,
He swore to forget people and light.
You said: I will give all my will,
I will sacrifice my peace
I will take it to my share
Works and fasting, beauty of the soul.
I stand before the Lord in prayer
Not tired day and night
I will be in constant battle
With passions, driving them away.
And here comes the desired Bridegroom,
A Friend will appear and call.
Have an answer to the unexpected call -
And He will lead you into hell.
Be a true monk, and the Lord will not leave you.
This saying in the notebooks of Father Paul coincides with others: "Live simply, and the Father himself will not leave you."
The whole life path of Father Pavel was so very simple, but his simplicity was very difficult for many people, including those who lived in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky. Therefore, in the temple, especially at first, there were not so many people. It was later, when Father Pavel became famous, and the Yaroslavl, Tver, Moscow and St. Petersburg priests came to him, he became so popular that even the bus stop from Shestikhino, where everyone got off, was called not “Verkhne-Nikulskoye”, but “Father Pavel » in the vernacular.
But this was all later, but for now it all began with the fact that Father Pavel had to live in a cold stone gatehouse. When he got there, he saw that everything that could be destroyed in that gatehouse had been destroyed. And even raised doubts about the reliability of the ceiling. Therefore, on the first night of his stay in Verkhne-Nikulsky, he pushed the table to the window and lay down with his head on the windowsill, and his body on the table, thinking that if the ceiling collapsed, then at least he would not be killed, would not crush his head. His whole ministry began with the simplest things - that is, with work on arranging not only his everyday life, but first of all with arranging the temple, because the waters of the Rybinsk reservoir raised groundwater very much, and there was a lot of destruction in the temple, despite that it was open. The temple was poor, so he did not have the opportunity to do what we now call restoration and restoration. And so Father Pavel was engaged in the most simple things: he put in order in the temple what he was able to do himself, and at the same time gradually, as it always happens, imperceptibly, if the priest serves very earnestly and conscientiously, then people always begin to flow into the temple. And Father Pavel was famous for the fact that he served devoutly, for a very long time commemorating the dead, because he had a lot of the dead in his memory, and he considered it his duty to commemorate all of them. And gradually the temple in Verkhne-Nikulskoye became a refuge for so many people who were looking for salvation or just consolation, understanding and love, which was so lacking in the surrounding life.
And then his path seems very simple, because when you sort through the dates, only his awards go here: 1963 - awarded a pectoral cross, 1966 - awarded the rank of abbot, 1971 - awarded a club, 1976 - a cross with decorations. These are all external signs of the life of Father Pavel, which was very simple and continued in this very church in Verkhne-Nikulsky. It continued until, by the end of his life, Father Pavel was practically blind - this was affected by the interrogations of this very investigator Spassky, who during interrogations directed a very strong electric lamp into his eyes, and Father Pavel's eyesight had been failing for a long time, but already somewhere In 1991, he saw practically nothing. And at the end of June 1992, he was transferred to Tutaev, where he lived in a gatehouse at the Resurrection Church. Despite the fact that he was surrounded by people who loved him, understood him, looked after him, all the same, I think, life in the church gatehouse was hard enough. There, for example, there was not even a washbasin, water, and so on. Such conditions of provincial life are quite difficult, although despite all this, he sometimes came to the Resurrection Church to Father Nikolai Likhomanov and always asked him humbly if he could be served. To which Father Nikolai, now Archimandrite Veniamin, was very embarrassed, amazed why Father Pavel asked him for blessings, because he was always glad to see him at the service. And it’s easier to get to Tutaev than to Verkhne-Nikulsky, and even more people began to come there. But on January 13, 1996, at the 86th year of his life in the hospital, after his severe illnesses, having communed the Holy Mysteries of Christ, Archimandrite Pavel died. He was buried at the Leontief cemetery in the city of Tutaev.
Prot. Georgy Mitrofanov:
We talked a lot about the fact that, indeed, having gone through such a difficult life path, having carried through all these trials our faith gained in childhood, faith, which, of course, in all these trials, presumably, grew stronger, led him in the end Precisely for the pastoral service in the parish, which lasted a little less than forty years, Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) really turned out to be a pastor, whose name became widely known.
How then can one explain the fact that this provincial priest, who had no theological education, and experienced severe trials for a significant part of his life, nevertheless stood out against the background of other clergymen with his spiritual and human originality? And what was this originality of Archimandrite Paul? Indeed, in the circle of his spiritual children there were very different people: from venerable Moscow archpriests and academicians to simple peasant women, unsophisticated parishioners of his own church. To what could one connect the peculiarities of his ministry, what were these peculiarities of his spiritual appearance, which attracted to him so many different spiritual children? Indeed, very many people, even only occasionally, who periodically came to him, became his spiritual children, and in many respects their life path was determined by his advice, his blessings.
M.A. Mitrofanova:
For myself, I would define it this way: Father Pavel was the most a free man in a world that I could imagine. But he was not free with the freedom that we see today - the freedom of the neon jungle - he was free as people who know the truth are free. Thus were the first Christians free. But this freedom of his was in some surprising way combined with some kind of touching, touching, common folk tradition. And this combination of things, completely, at first glance, difficult to combine, distinguished, for example, for me his spiritual appearance.
For example, the absolutely wonderful sermons of Father Paul, very simple. He went out to the kliros and said - since the parishioners were mostly old women: "My dear old women!" And then he turned to his cell attendant: “Really, Marya?” She nods from the corner: "That's right, father, that's right." And this simplicity of treatment made people immediately open and trusting. But at the same time, this simplicity always amazed him.
Here he tells about himself: “My relatives, not very long ago they called me to Borok ...” And Borok was a place not far from Verkhne-Nikulsky, where there was a research institute for the protection of inland waters of the USSR, and scientists lived and worked there, which Father Pavel, it must be said, was very loved and revered, and there he was a frequent visitor. And now he recalls: “Not very long ago they called me to Borok. “Father Pavel, come, take communion with your mother!” Came. Intelligent house, what are you, pies - wax: eat and get dirty. Live - passion! You can't put down the stick. The rich for their labors. He communed the woman, admonished. And this man says: “Father Pavel, you know what? You will never visit us like this. And so I, taking this opportunity, invited you to my mother, so you look at how we live. How he opened the door, and on the table, robyata! Roasted, baked. "Father Pavel, to any place!" I say: "Boy, it's a post!" And he hung his little head, saying: "Unworthy, unworthy of your visit." And the wife sighs. I think: “Lord, there will be fasting!” "Boy, cut the pie, get the fish, get the stack!" Lord, robyata, got drunk, ate for two weeks, and came home with joy - and did good to the guy. Give him, Lord, good health! And a post! Fast and pray when people don't see. Right? Right. That's it." Such was his sermon, for example.
And he also had a wonderful sermon, he often liked to repeat it: 1947, Tutaev. Line for bread. The queue is long, and it is clear that there is not enough bread for everyone. A saleswoman comes out of the store and says that let fifty people stand, and the rest can leave, because they will not have enough bread. And somewhere in about a hundred is a woman who has three children, a little less. And she understands that she won’t have enough bread, but she doesn’t have the strength to leave right away. It's an understandable feeling. And the children, of course, ask her if they get bread. And then one man comes out of the crowd, who was standing in this happy part of the line of the first fifty people, and says to her: "Stand in my place." And the woman is frightened at first, refuses, but then she takes his place and asks him: “What about you?” And he says: “Yes, somehow,” waves his hand and leaves. And when Father Pavel, when he cited this story, which he saw in the life of the post-war Tutaev, he always spoke about one thing, that this person will be saved, because he lives in accordance with what the Lord commanded us. And Father Pavel for himself for the rest of his life faithfully remembered the words of one Archimandrite Innokenty. This Archimandrite Innokenty was in the Holy Rostov Monastery and he lived in the first half of the 19th century. I don’t know how Father Paul knew him, but he very often recalled his words: “I dare not not accept Christ, and in whose person He will come, I don’t know.” And this is the commandment that Father Pavel put down somewhere in his heart and always fulfilled it. And for him, a person who could pass his turn for bread in a famine year to a person who needed more than he did, it was clear to him that this person was worthy of salvation and would be saved.
And all his sermons were very simple. He was a wonderful storyteller, and he had an absolutely wonderful, expressive language. When he delivered his sermons, sometimes one could laugh a lot, and it is even incomprehensible how, among such stories, some kind of tales, small parables, one could immediately see something that we call “spiritual”. Here, for example, is such a sermon: “Priests have divorced like bedbugs, and everyone bites. One got greedy, the other has a wife like Satan, and we, what, Lord, do we believe, help our unbelief! Here is a sermon. And in this, for me, for example, the combination of amazing freedom, which cannot be imitated, cannot be imitated, is quite obvious, because this is the only way to live. Probably, it was God's gift to him for this freedom, which allowed him to pass without looking back, without being distracted by anything in such a clear, direct way with three years of age in the Mologa Monastery to its very earthly end. Here is such a very clear, bright, simple and free - and at the same time a man who managed to please the people who crossed paths and encountered him with this very real Easter joy. Because despite his difficult life path, he was a very joyful person. When you talk about people, distant, saints, great, it sounds very ordinary and familiar. But when you see a real person, you know his real life difficulties and at the same time you see that he is very bright and joyful, it always makes a very strong impression.
Prot. Georgy Mitrofanov:
I would like to draw your attention to one feature, which, as it seems to me, has not yet come through very clearly in today's program about Father Pavel (Gruzdev). I mean the trait of a certain kind of foolishness. Indeed, in the history of the Church we know examples of how the ascetics who were fools in Christ actually manifested in this way their kind of very broad, boundless freedom. If we talk about the elements of foolishness that were in the ministry, in pastoral activity, in general in the whole way of life of Father Paul, what could be mentioned?
M.A. Mitrofanova:
There was no foolishness in the ministry of Father Paul. He was a very consistent, competent, experienced priest, and there was no foolishness in the service itself. Everything else - I would never call it the word "foolishness". I would call it a pure, open heart. We read the Beatitudes in the Gospel: “Blessed are the pure in heart” and have a rather poor idea of ​​what it is. We seem to understand something with the mind, but we do not represent it with the heart. Only looking at people like Father Pavel, one can understand what a person with a pure heart is.
He was not a fool. I think he was very brave. Since he stood at the lowest rung, lower than in the village, he already had nowhere to be, this also determined his outward freedom of behavior. In addition, he was an amazingly loving person. And so his instructions were always special in nature. For example, one of his favorite sayings: "Do not be afraid of a strong thunderstorm, but be afraid of a beggar's tears." If you think about it properly, then you can think of a lot of things. And everything was very simple for him for one simple reason: he was not a holy fool, but he saw the spiritual reality as clearly as the physical one. Over the years, because with age a person somehow changes, he saw this more and more clearly. And for me, these features of foolishness - if we talk about the fact that someone is frightened by his language, on the one hand, common people, and, on the other hand, he allowed what we call "unprintable expressions", but this never turned into everyday speech. He could say something, telling regular stories, parables, he was very fond of children's fairy tales. I think that he himself did not understand that sometimes his rough vocabulary slipped through. And this vocabulary slipped through for one simple reason: firstly, he was the simplest person, born in a certain environment, who went through camps - and this naturally determined this vocabulary. But at the same time, there is, I think, a very important indication for us that we should never try to make him what he never was and did not want to be. He was real, alive, spiritual man, and if we now see in all his conversations, sermons, memories that have been preserved about him, eccentricities and foolishness, we will thus distort not only his spiritual appearance, we will distort the path by which he went to God, and us at the same time tried to lead. Therefore, if we talk about me, I categorically disagree with the fact that he was a holy fool. I never thought, when it comes to profanity, that it bothers someone, it never bothered me. And now I understand that this is so that he cannot be "produced" into any "honorable" and "dishonorable" "great spiritual people." I now understand that it was from God that we were given such an indication that we would not dare to approach him with the desire to immediately reward him with some kind of regalia, put him in a red corner and thus distort everything that he carried in life.
Because when he said that he was the last, he meant the simplest things. Indeed, he remained one of the last priests who remembered that good Russian old life when, as he himself said, "there were still Russian people." And he called himself an elder not in the sense that we put into the word “old man” and how many of his guests began to call him, but he put a very simple meaning into the word “old man”: he is just an old, old man. And there was so much spirit in it, so much freedom, so much God, and not in the fact that you can try to present everything as foolishness, and foolishness is a necessary sign of some spiritual substance that will allow us to see something in this person. This is not about Father Paul. He was a completely living person in that high sense of the word "alive" that one can put into this word when one speaks of a Christian.
Prot. Georgy Mitrofanov:
I still dare to insist on the elements of foolishness in his ministry. Precisely because by service, of course, I do not mean the celebration of divine services, but I mean precisely his pastoral activity, communication with people. His foolishness, of course, was due, on the one hand, to his very typical, I would say, real Great Russian character. His self-irony was manifested in his foolishness. With his foolishness, he knocked down the very pathos that, of course, filled many who came to him as a "holy elder", as a "seer" and "healer". After all, there were many such people. And, of course, with his "non-standard" behavior, sometimes even with profanity, he in every possible way knocked down this very false pathos.
On the other hand, his foolishness consisted in the fact that, indeed, having lived a very difficult life together with the persecuted Church, having in fact experienced all their trials with the generations of persecuted Russian Christians, he was really aware of what a terrible tragedy the Church had endured. , survived the Russian Orthodox people in the twentieth century. Having experienced such a tragedy and realizing the experience of this tragedy, it was very difficult to speak seriously and straightforwardly, pathos about some important spiritual truths, which, of course, as a priest, he constantly thought about and which he tried to convey to the people around him. And here his so-called "foolishness", to which many were touched, not understanding its true nature, was essentially a challenge to those, largely scooped up from, so to speak, "reprint" Orthodox publications (although at that time there were no such "reprints", according to at least in such numbers as now) to ideas that have distorted and still distort for many the image of a true shepherd - even when they meet him.
And here I would like to tell about the experience of my meeting with Father Pavel, which was really very important in my life and which, in my opinion, very expressively revealed it to me, and through me to those of my loved ones who, after this meeting, turned out to be addressed to Archimandrite Paul.
In 1983, I met Father Pavel at his parish in the Yaroslavl diocese. I practically knew nothing about him before this meeting and in general in those years, as, by the way, in subsequent years I did not differ in my craving for visiting some elders. And yet, realizing that in my church life, which I then had to combine with my professional, social, family life, I felt the need to receive specific advice on a very specific issue. It so happened that in 1983, when I got married, when my son was born, and I was working as a junior researcher in the Department of Manuscripts of the State Public Library, I had to write a Ph.D. thesis as a young historian engaged in scientific activities. For many years my whole being had been drawn to the Theological Seminary, and even then I myself was thinking about the future priestly service, but those few priests with whom I consulted then, in our Leningrad churches, about my future path, convinced me that that I needed to continue my dissertation, to continue my scientific work, which inwardly seemed completely alien to me at that time. Moreover, in those days, the topic of my thesis was ideologically quite complex "Economic views of the Cadets during the Third and Fourth State Dumas." When writing such a dissertation, it was really impossible not to slander against my views, against my convictions, which for me, as a Christian, seemed already unacceptable. Moreover, my supervisor constantly insisted that I join the Communist Party, which was a very important help for historians in those years. It would seem an obvious thing: you need to leave what is internally alien to you, not to make any compromises. But, unfortunately, none of the priests with whom I spoke then, for some reason, did not tell me this directly. Inwardly, I was very burdened by my ambivalent position, I wanted to hear from the lips of the priest a word that would strengthen and support me.
Of course, paying tribute to the usual ideas that for such a blessing on some important episode of one’s own life, one should go to a priest, “to an elder,” I began to think about who should I go to? And he heard from the godmother of his son, the daughter of a priest of the Tver diocese, about Father Pavel, about whom he had known nothing before. I went to him, and I went by train from Leningrad to Vesyegonsk, I went with a very revealing set of books: I had the writings of Simeon the New Theologian and a thick volume of short stories American writer William Faulkner. And so, armed with these two books, I set off on a long journey to Archimandrite Pavel, having absolutely no idea who I would meet in this parish.
I drove to Vesyegonsk, got to one of the rural parishes in the Tver, then Kalinin, diocese, where I received such a letter of recommendation, a note even, I would say, for Archimandrite Pavel from one of the church women, a pack of buckwheat, which I had to hand over father Paul. And then I moved by bus to the Breitovsky district of the Yaroslavl region from the Vesyegonsky district of the Tver region, and then I got, even by hitchhiking, which was completely unusual for me, to the village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye, where Father Pavel served.
Of course, for me this was a completely unusual, non-standard situation, and when I was already walking to the temple, I expected to see such a patriarchal elder, who had descended from the pages of the hagiographic literature that I knew then, by the temple. And I really saw a middle-aged man, an old man, dressed in some kind of strange coat, although it was summer heat, and a woman's coat; in some strange galoshes. He walked across the field, and only people's indications that this was Father Pavel prompted me to approach him. Of course, it was an amazing disappointment. I didn't know how to react to the person I saw. And most importantly, I did not know how to convey my problems to him. Everything that tormented me then in our city, my dissertation, my work in the Department of Manuscripts, seemed like a phenomenon from a completely different world. And what could I learn here, from this old man living some completely different life?
But nevertheless, I ended up at my goal, a trip that was quite difficult psychologically and morally for me, and I had to go to the end. I approached Fr. Pavel and took the blessing with difficulty—I couldn’t even fold my hands under the blessing of this strange man, who didn’t look like a priest at all. And I heard very strange words from him: “Why are you walking around here? Look, they will take you to the collective farm to work.” It was hard for me to imagine that I could be taken to work on a collective farm, but already in this phrase I felt an even greater incommensurability of what I came with and this person. And then, taking a bag of buckwheat, he said: "Go to the temple, I'll be right there."
And I entered the temple, waiting for his appearance, now not knowing how I would talk to him and what I would talk to him about. I just wanted to leave. And suddenly I saw him transformed. He entered in a cassock, already clearly appearing before me in the form of a real priest, a real old man. And, wrinkling my hands, worrying, I tried to convey my problems to him. I can’t reproduce our conversation verbatim now, but his main remarks were characteristic. When I began to tell him about my dissertation, I realized that you just need to say what is on your mind, without trying to somehow adapt it for such a strange country priest. He listened attentively, and as soon as I mentioned my dissertation, he said, “Write a dissertation, of course a Christian can write a dissertation. Academicians come to me (he gave the name of the academician), scientists come - they write all their dissertations. Write." I was somewhat disappointed, in the depths of my soul I wanted to hear something else. Then I began to talk about the fact that the work on the dissertation presupposes the writing of other works in the future, in which I will be insincere. “It doesn't matter,” Father Paul said, “one must remain a Christian. You can also be insincere." I did not understand anything and then resorted to the last argument: “Then I will have to join the Communist Party if I am going to do scientific work as a historian. This is a requirement of the scientific institutions in which I will work.” “You can also join the Communist Party. A Christian can do anything if he is a true Christian. Let's go,” he said to me, led me to the fresco, on which the Savior talks with Nicodemus, and said: “Here is the secret disciple of Christ. There were many such secret disciples of Christ at all times. Whatever they were doing. And they could be in the party. Yet they remained Christians. And the Lord saved them all, of course. So you can write your dissertation, you can join the party - if you remain a Christian.” And at this very moment, when I felt completely crushed by the fact that this freedom of his so unexpectedly appeared in him, he told me his expressive “but”: “But think about it - if you really need all this.” Here, in fact, one phrase was said: do you need all this? A Christian, if he feels the need, can do a lot. He can do a lot, perhaps the most unexpected actions to carry out - if he spiritually needs it. And he did not even ask me a question, but simply set this condition. And I suddenly felt that, of course, I didn’t need any of this. There was a pause, after which he said: “Well, that’s it, go back to your family, otherwise you’ll be taken to the collective farm to work.” What this phrase meant, I still cannot understand, but one thing was obvious to me: he revealed to me the great secret of spiritual life, which is based on spiritual freedom. And that means responsibility for all your actions. I have no doubt that when people who compromised in Soviet reality came to this past Stalinist camps and exiles, crippled in them physically, but spiritually inflexible pastor, he found words for them and understanding, and sympathy, and empathy, being completely different from them. And this was his deep inner freedom.
I then went out onto the road from this temple, stopped the car in order to hitchhike to the regional center of Breitovo. And here is the feeling of amazing inner freedom, which opened up for me within the walls of this temple. Freedom from any inconsistency, from any craftiness, doublethink, double-mindedness. It was the most important experience. Yes, only two years later I entered the Theological Seminary, working on my diploma after graduating from the university. But even then it became clear to me that my path, of course, lies in the direction of serving the Church and precisely as a clergyman.
Actually, my personal communication with Father Pavel was limited to this meeting, and this meeting predetermined my entire subsequent life, predetermined in many respects the life of my family, into which Father Pavel then entered, uttering, in fact, just a few phrases for this restless, perfectly understanding , what is the truth, but not finding the strength to follow this truth, a young Leningrad intellectual. And, of course, this lesson of spiritual freedom, spiritual responsibility largely determined my own decisions later.
In the future, I did not have any regular communication with Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev). Moreover, it was a pleasant surprise for me that now books about him began to appear. But the memory of him, so unlike many clergymen and pastors known to me, a pastor who embodied the ideal of a simple Russian man who passed through the terrible twentieth century with a high, elevating his soul in all scary situations a feeling of closeness to Christ - this image, of course, imprinted on me as an image of a shepherd and a Christian, which is the presence of the Church in this world.
Years passed, and for me the importance in our church life of both Metropolitan Agafangel and Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashentsev) became known. Now, indeed, only now I can fully imagine under what difficult conditions, in communion with what outstanding people, the formation of the great, spirit-bearing personality of Archimandrite Paul took place, from a simple peasant boy who became a real Orthodox pastor. But its main significance, it seems to me, lies precisely in the fact that it embodied the best that was in our simple Russian people - in that people who have long ceased to be like themselves. This is an amazing desire in your life, no matter how difficult it may be, to be more sublime, more spiritual, to open directly, childishly simple and at the same time wisely your heart for Christ. To live with Christ, in Christ and Christ, experiencing the most difficult life trials. Indeed, Archimandrite Pavel was not burdened by anything in his life - neither education, nor profession, nor family, nor wealth. He had nothing but Christ, who left him nowhere. I even remember that during our conversation, when he mentioned his stay in the camp, thereby, as it were, indicating his position in relation to the world in which we all lived, he said to me: “How did I save myself in the camp? Yes, I knew very well which herbs helped with what. He treated himself, he treated others. I remember that this disappointed me too - after all, I was waiting for a story about how he, so to speak, spiritually instructed his fellow campers. But even here they sounded simple words, behind which stood again his service to his neighbors as such a healer traditional medicine helping people in conditions where there was no medical care.
A lively, kind peasant who has risen to the true heights of the Orthodox pastor. It is noteworthy that for many years he was bound by bonds, I will not be afraid of this word, spiritual friendship with such our hierarch as Metropolitan Nikodim. And I really understand the relationship of these completely different people. Bearing the heaviest burden of church politics in conditions where any politics was a dirty business, Metropolitan Nicodemus more than once acted as he did not want to, more than once stepped over himself. And it was all the more gratifying for him to see Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) occasionally visiting him, who not only reminded him of his native Yaroslavl land, with which Metropolitan Nikodim had many bright memories - he began his pastoral service there - but also showed him the image that genuine Christian who, having nothing but Christ in his heart, went through his life consistently, honestly, without bending. So, perhaps, in order to make life a little easier for such Christians in this world, Metropolitan Nikodim went to those numerous political compromises that circumstances demanded of him. And he certainly needed to communicate with Archimandrite Pavel in order not to lose the feeling of genuine Christianity, which was so easy to lose in the corridors of high church politics. Of course, seemingly so connected with the history of our 20th century and so free from the historical costs of the 20th century, Archimandrite Pavel manifested himself, of course, as first of all a pastor. And I think that very many people, who even irregularly, and occasionally visited him, received from him something that, perhaps, is more important than all the blessings and insights of the elders - a feeling of that true life in Christ, which, alas, is very often difficult to meet. even in our church life.
I think that our story about Archimandrite Paul (Gruzdev) cannot, of course, claim to exhaustively show his life path, his spiritual appearance. But, thank God, books are currently being published, not all of them are of the same level, of the same quality. In some books, there is already a desire to create such a leafy image of the classic "old man of the last times." And the memories of people who met him sometimes turn out to be very different in their quality, in their ability to perceive this amazing shepherd. But the fact that the memory of him lives on in the Church, that people continue to remain in the Church, to whom Archimandrite Paul has rendered his spiritual, pastoral, and simply human help, is a very important element of our Church life, in which, perhaps, already there are no more elders, but in which there are still such genuine pastors as Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) was, whose name, of course, is on a par with the most prominent pastors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the twentieth century.
Thank you, Marina Alexandrovna, for participating in our program. I hope that our radio listeners managed to point out that pastor, whose memories, stories about which, now published in various book editions, can help to choose the right spiritual guidelines in our very difficult modern church life.
Goodbye!
M.A. Mitrofanova:
Goodbye!