Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 February 2006 11:31:13
I've just completed reading this book. Wow. And wow again. It was recommended to me by a few people at church, and I'm glad I took their advice and bought it.
The book is a collection of narratives, brought together under three main sections: Fr Arseny's life in a labour camp in Stalinist Russia; various people's recollections of Fr Arseny; and a series of recollections on people's finding God and Christ through others, and their meeting of Fr Arseny.
The first part was the most moving for me. I knew very little about the labour camps, and I still only know a little, but the recollections from Fr Arseny and those there made me physically shake and shudder. Humans can truly be so cruel to others: a terrible thing. However, the love, the joy and the peace brought by God through Fr Arseny and others to those interned there brought light and peace to me as I read. Fr Arseny truly did live Paul's injunction in Galatians 6:2, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." As the blurb on the back of the book says, Fr Arseny "shone with the light of Christ's peace and compassion."
The recollections from others of Fr Arseny in Part II was also very moving. Truly these people were blessed to have known Fr Arseny personally, and all thanks to God for providing him to those in such need. People who were lost, struggling, in crisis...all found peace and joy in Christ through Fr Arseny's ministry.
Part III was a delight to read: I always find it a joy to read people's personal accounts of their lives, and to so clearly see the joy and comfort they found in God was a great encouragement. The recollections of someone who discovered Christianity triggered memories of my first few weeks visiting the Orthodox Church:
I would hear prayers: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace...," "O Gladsome Light of the Holy Glory...," "Bless the Lord, O my soul..." I would remember the words ... and think about them. Gradually, like an ancient inscription, I began to decipher these words and phrases. ... When people sang in church I sang with them: it lifted my spirits and appealed to me.
Now I don't just listen to the prayers, I let their meaning enter into me, and sometimes I catch myself praying. After church, the words of the prayers and hymns and readings stay in my soul for a long time.
...
It is Pascha; Great Lent has ended. The Matins are sung, all, those attending are joyous. People are singing "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death ..." Of course I sing with them. I am full of an unexplainable joy, I am enraptured by this joy, my soul is uplifted, I want to embrace everybody and everything. There is neither tiredness, or hurt feelings, nor concerns.