Unlike a worldly life the spiritual one is low-profile and definitely not a front-page material
This kind of life is invisible to a stranger’s eye
As they say: “A stranger’s heart is a deep well”.
However its benefits become quite clear in a person’s appearance
His spiritual order is reflected in his face
This is what Jesus Christ meant by saying “The eye is the lamp of the body“
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light
Austerity and humbleness bring Divine enlightenment which makes one’s face glow
This glow is directly connected to evangelic values blessing a person
And that is what we see in Agafia Lykova, who is now walking to get water from a spring hidden in taiga wilds close to her house
It seems we know a lot about her
We know she has been living in the wilderness for her whole long life since her very birth
we know how hard it is to endure all the hardships accompanying such a lifestyle
We know that there were reasons for her family to choose living in this taiga wilderness – willing to live
their lives by faith, discarding the merits of contemporary godless government
However, we know very little about her inner world – this unique example of harmony in both the spiritual and the material
The harmony, which has become a major point in Lykov family’s hermit experience
How could this world form so far away from – so to say – universities?
And do they (themselves) provide such an opportunity?
The answers might be different
but for Agafia these “universities” were the Holy Bible
patristic literature and her family: her parents Karp and Akulina, her brothers Savin and Dimitriy and her sister Nataliya
And surely – the amazing Siberian nature with its unspoiled beauty and purity
However weird it might sound, all the hardships of living by herself in a desolate taiga mountains
where one can hardly find shops, kindergartens or schools, turned out to be ideal for Agafia’s upbringing
She took in the Holy Book with mother’s milk
She learned to read and write with the Bible and her mentality rose like a bread dough with its influence
And today it helps her to ignore earthy troubles and to keep her spirits high, and moreover
to continue her hermit life without going back to the society, the busy world of men
There have always been hermits since the Birth of Jesus
But every one of them wouldn’t become a hermit until reaching a mature age
A human soul is prone to change and it has to get firmly established in order to resist dark forces always eager to feast upon a new victim
For instance, Anthony the Great, an Epichristian ascetic and the founder of hermit monasticism, found himself in hermitage in his thirties
At first he lived in a cave near his native settlement and then – in ruins of a military fortification on the bank of Nile
It was the place he chose to spend around twenty years in complete isolation
Once, as Anthony had grown weak due to spiritual fight, Jesus Christ appeared in front of him
saying he had been accompanying the hermit for the whole time
Anthony lived in solitude 85 years, although he several times fulfilled bids of fellow believers to come to Alexandria
Hundreds of people would flock afar to see him, waiting for a miracle or blessing
Anthony died in hermitage aged 105
In this regard, how unique is Agafia Lykova’s act of hermitage!
One may call her a modern Anthony the Great, though even greater is her act as she was introduced to hermitage since birth
living in taiga wilderness rather than a hot climate
Moreover, having a model christian nature, she maintains a miraculous link to the Holy Rus, as its direct and sole descendant
As Anthony himself admitted, one who strives daily throughout his whole life, avoiding the devil and being pursued by him, has a great power within
Agafia, actually, rarely appears in public, and our people do not have so much respect towards her as it was in case of Anthony – it’s a diferent age, you know
But millions are aware of her and this is said about her: “Acquire a peaceful spirit and then THOUSANDS of others around you will be saved”
This number can be easily multiplied taking into consideration modern potentialities...
This is what monk Guriy, who spent a couple of months by Agafia’s side, told us
Here I have already lived 6 months. We can already say some small, but the results of our life together.
To know a person ... Agafju ... to know her heart to know her character which is preserved and which carries information from our ancestors.
Who lived then. We unfortunately know very stories, but here we have an example. What was Russia, what were our Russian people.
To understand this you need to understand two very important things.
Here in front of me are two books, the Gospel and the Psalms of the Prophet David.
And in order to understand the soul of man, the Russian man of that time, and this can be attributed to our time.
I'll tell you the truth later. What is the difference between Agafya and other people who live in the world now.
So here. To know the Russian soul you need to know the Gospel and you need to know the Psalter.
Let’s take father Guriy’s advice and turn to the Holy Bible so as to see the richness of hermit Agafia Lykova’s soul through it
. In the Book Mathew the Evangelist tells us stories about several miracles done by Jesus Christ in the sea of Galilee
At first Jesus fed more than five thousand people with five loafs of bread and two fish
People were so astonished by this miracle that they believed many prophecies about arrival of a messiah
were coming true and immediately wanted to pronounce Jesus a Hebrew lord
However such turn of events, as we know, wasn’t part of Christ’s plan
So He soon dismissed the people and sent the disciples to the other side of the sea so that they weren’t able to help people to fulfill their intention
The disciples were reluctant to go, and they wouldn’t have unless their Master had compelled them to
So, Jesus, influenced by the recent news of John the Baptist’s painful death, went upon a mountain to stay there alone and pray
The disciples set off for the journey in a fishing boat. But in the middle of their way the sea suddenly started to run high and a storm soon broke out
Something similar happened to the Lykovs – a family of old believers who escaped the world with its atheist paradigm
At first armed representatives of the theomachist government would show up in the old believers’ settlements which ended up with brother Karp Lykov’s murder
The thick end of the stick is what comes next: living deserted from people and their aid in the middle of Siberian taiga wilderness for three decades
As for Agafia, such a life went on for more than seventy years
More than seventy years is 25 thousand days and nights spent in a struggle for physical survival
Some of these days and nights stretched it thin to the limit – to be or not to be?
For a couple of summer periods the hermits would eat just wild onions or bear’s garlic
Bread – so common in our life – was made of old potato peels mixed with crushed berginia roots and was extremely rare
Although one would be reluctant to eat such bread unless his life depended on it
For thirty years of hermitage their diet lacked salt, which is as vital for our bodies as oxygen
Akulina Karpovna, unable to bear taiga hardships any longer, died when Agafia was just sixteen
And soon after Lykovs reestablished their contacts with the outside world her brothers and her sister passed away
As it is believed, they fell victims to malignant bacteria brought from the outside
The foresters, whose nature was full of pristine purity of the Siberian taiga, had no resistance against these bacteria
Soon after that the elderly Karp Iosifovich passed away
Once, when Vasiliy Peskov – the media discoverer of the hermits – asked him whether he had ever regretted all the hardships
and suffering the Lykovs had to experience, Karp Iosifovich replied in his simple and straightforward manner: “What is it there to regret?We’ve lived the life of Christians”
So Agafia was left alone in the whole world and has since been keeping her spiritual watch in the Taiga corner for more than 30 years
It should be mentioned here: Anthony the Great, we talked about before, and all the other hermits were monks
who have completely cut off any kind of connections with the world, as well as their relatives and close ones
As for laymen like Agafia (though she is as a hermit as Anthony the Great), they have to keep in touch with their relatives and friends in order to help each other out
And these relationships appear to be more beneficial if built upon a spiritual basis
By a twist of fate, or – more likely – a will of God Agafia didn’t become a nun, although she was close to this decision, which would close her off from us
By common, human reckoning, today she is a lot like any of us, though she has such moral qualities of seemingly inordinate scale, attracting colossal interest
Again, it was God’s will for Agafia to repeat mission of Haggai, the old-testament prophet who lived 500 years before Jesus was born
At the time the Israeli people, having returned home from the Babilonian Captivity, turned to establishing their own prosperity while hesitating to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem
Thus constant droughts and poor harvests broke upon the land
In this the people saw the testament relationship with the Lord broken
And when all the religious and moral life of the people was about to stop, the Lord sent Haggai to explain to the people reasons for their troubles
raise their spirits, call for sooner restoration of the Temple and to bring faith into God’s unbreakable promises, which would come true in the temple rebuilt
The prophet was sent to persuade the people that it is this temple, where a Messiah would arrive to lay foundation to the eternal Kingdom
So the Yahudi gave heed to the words of Haggai and started to rebuild the Lord’s temple
This has a lot in common with the situation in current Russia, which experienced seventy years of Orthodox Christianity being persecuted
and for a short period of time was held captive by the West, which fell apart from Christianity
Though the ruined churches are being rebuilt all over the country, what is more important is that a person has to become a house of God within himself
This mission of a person is what Paul the Apostle referred to when saying: “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?”
Agafia Lykova is a modern remake of Haggai from the Old Testament and her prophet-like responsibilities come from what the writer Valentin Rasputin meant when addressing after-Schism fates of Russia:
“We should be grateful to the Old Belief first of all, for prolonging Rus in its customs, beliefs, rituals, songs and characters for three more centuries.This duty might be as important as protecting the Motherland on a battlefield.”
Moreover, it was her whom God led through a life one could call a miracle
And this life can speak louder than words. “Truly wise is not the one who teaches with words, but the one who mentors with deeds”
that’s what Fathers said, and we see the proof of these words in Taiga corner
where a seemingly unremarkable woman shows with her whole life why and how does a person builds a temple within himself
I think prayer is an example of her for all of our Russia, because she prays not only for his soul, she to pray for peace throughout the world.
She is going through of course, and wants people to live right for her is also an important issue.
She's already touched the world. They lived outside of civilization, did not know about this civilization, but they still worried, they still prayed.
When they went to the taiga. They left just at the time when he came to the godless power. When churches closed when it was impossible to say a word about God.
They understood that now it is time to rescue its soul. And today is free time and she understands that not will not have to run, to hide is not necessary.
We need to pray now, and people to communicate with people and of course the show is as it says the lamp delivers hidden.
Let it Shine all over the world. All the people who are in the upper room. So here is and Agafya Karpovna she.
For us it turns out living the gospel. Evangelical man? Yes, she imitates the words of Christ in everything.
In many respects. It is said, "blessed are the pure in heart, and they shall see God. The gospel says.
Until you are like babies, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven, that is, its purity is similar to infant purity.
You see, babies are good-natured. And she has exactly the same. After all, people came and brought not only good, but came and brought her the trouble.
But Agafia Karpovna, she forgave it all and continues to go forward. Continues to pray for these people, continues to worry for these people.
As same, as same they so wrong live. This is her constant compassion and concern for all people
A prayer should come from heart and originate in pain, as Saint Paisos of Mount Athos once put it
They say, if you combine a thousand monks you won’t get one Paisos
His words give us insight about the inner state of mind in which the hermit is now
As the Saint put it, for God it is not the quantity of prayers but their quality that matters
The basis of everything is for someone praying for another person to feel his pain
If you don’t feel the other person’s pain you would pull beads – lestovka in this case – with no particular result
And God listens to hermit Agafia
As the Bible says, He doesn’t listen to sinners, but to those who worship Him and follow His will
By monk Guriy’s judgement, the hermit has reached her peak in keeping the commandment about loving the Lord, as a person’s greatness is measured by Jesus opening Himself to the person
Jesus stayed long in his solitude, and the disciples spent this whole time in the sea the Master had sent them to, where a storm began
It happens: at the beginning of a journey the weather is calm, but then a storm breaks out and the destination is yet far to reach
It means that you shouldn’t be surprised when encountering difficulties while fulfilling your duty
As you shouldn’t be surprised when the Master sends you to a sea, knowing in advance about impending storms
This is has no goal to create a cavil: in this very minute the disciples don’t know it yet, but He intended to show Himself to them through this challenge in a special miraculous way
However, the disciples lost their hearts
Thus Jesus leads His disciples through lesser and then larger hardships, teaching them to live by faith rather than vision
And so the disciples, fulfilling the Master’s orders, continued to move to the other shore of the sea of Galilee
Despite head winds and waves smashing onto the boat, they didn’t change their course and didn’t turn back
Thus they persuade us: you shouldn’t avoid hardships and sorrows that will accompany you along the way of fulfilling your duty
You should move on, believing that Jesus will come to help
But when they saw their Master walking on the waves they got scared
And this also happens
In the time of a storm we can get scared by some insignificant things
Fears from the outside make fears grow inside a person
So the disciples imagined presumably that the storm has brought some kind of an evil spirit to them and they didn’t know what to do
And when fear gripped their souls, which was even more dangerous than any natural disaster, Jesus rushed to them to calm them down with His words:
“Cheer up, it is Me, do not be afraid”
The disciples knew His voice and they immediately understood Who was the One they were seeing
This means that right knowledge and moreover, knowledge of Jesus opens a way to true consolation
This is why it was so important in Agafia’s hermit life, that she – as a nurseling baby – was put on evangelic foundation, learning literacy by texts from the Holy Book
It turns out that she took the most important vaccine in her life – the vaccine against infidelity
From the father's half, like Vladimir baptized the Russian land from generation to generation, so were Christians.
There were priests, in Yalutorovsk, tortured them. At that time they were still herdsmen.
With my mother's half-perekhozhi. My mother's grandmother, from Mordov, was in the Irgiz monastery, we had communion from there.
My grandfather's grandfather went to the Nikonian church, he prayed a cross. And then pop him for that — I'll put you in a dungeon.
He will answer: Sadi, Saint Nicholas was in prison. again, I will send you. Answer: Refer, you will not send further the land.
Then he left that church, joined the Christians. Mother's parents were born in Christianity. Large families were. Well, and so faith has not intersected.
And we were raised. Dmitry was born on the counter. And here I am. Dmitry and me, tyatya baptized babies. I am baptized in Erinat
What does the hermit pray about? She prays about herself and every one of us, as father Vladimir said before
. People of such spiritual purity as Agafia cannot think only about their own salvation – level of their spiritual work is too high
An example of this height is Father Isidore – one of the first monks and presbyters of an ancient Egyptian skete – who would always cry while praying
. Once a disciple saw him in his cell crying
“What are you crying about, Father?” - he asked
“I’m mourning my sins” - Isidore answered. “But you have no sins” - the disciple was surprised
The elder responded: “Oh, my son! If God made my sins evident for everybody, neither two, nor three or many assistants would be enough to mourn them”
What kind of sins does Agafia have that alienate her soul from God, if she was born and raised in morally sterile atmosphere she is living in now?!
No one is supposed to know this, and Agafia learned from a very young age, that a person can’t trust himself while is is in his body
Since he is unable to stay unchangeable and has to constantly refine himself
This instability of human nature, by the way, is expertly exploited by the dark forces
These forces wait patiently for a man to show weakness, and as soon as it happens they start to torment him and lead him astray from God
And they fight with men of faith with ten-fold anger
The formation of Agafya Karpovna in the spiritual life was due to tradition.
There is a written tradition, there is a verbal tradition and this tradition is described in books,
in iconography, in traditions, in everyday life, which man preserves.
And of course it is very interesting that they kept that way
Children without the blessing of their parents could not go for water, could not flood the furnace, all the time they were asked: "Dad, bless Christ for""
And it was a law for them, they executed the order of God: "Honor the Father and the Mother and you will be long-lived on earth."
This is the most important thing that was in the upbringing - is obedience to parents.
Parents bore the responsibility - obedience to their creator.
They should have given this basis to their children. Children learn from their parents, as parents love God.
If the parents fast, the children, too, start fasting from childhood. If the parents pray, the children imitate them too and stand up to pray.
Thus, a spiritual formation of a person takes place and subsequently, as they say: “Instill a habit, and when the mind comes the habit will be ready".
And since childhood we inculcate the habit of children, they still don’t understand with reason for what it is
necessary, and later, when the mind comes to them, they accept it with love and they have a completely spiritual world.
They know their parents, they also know their creator.
And already from the parents comes the love of the creator himself, who will never be taken away from them.
A secluded place upstream the Abakan river, where hermit Agafia was born and grew up, has recently become a part of “Khakassky” state natural reserve’s jurisdiction
This place has kept all the signs of wilderness, where ecosystem processes unfold in a manner initially designed by the
That’s why it is called a standard
If today it has such a high rank, we can only image how close it was to God’s design seventy years ago, when Agafia made her first steps in life
All the magnificence of pristine wilderness, all the harmony and splendor of it nourished the young seeking soul
The nature was also a sustainer. We know that the Lykovs had rough times in the years when their garden had poor harvest
We remember that Akulina Karpovna, the hermit’s mother, died in one of those periods
Yet the nature – even in this case – was merciful to the hermits
A spiritual factor plays its part in this: in order for a person to become stronger he needs to live through life challenges
With no hardships he won’t grow in his personality – strong and wise, being able to refine himself
As sufferings are a great challenge for him, the person mobilizes all his powers and eventually changes to the better in order to overcome them
And Agafia is a good example of this
Moreover, the strict mercy of the wilderness towards the Lykovs is similar to the advice of John Chrysostom, a great Christian mentor and saint
There are his books in a small library of Taiga corner
Many centuries ago he said: we are brought to this world and live here not to eat and drink, but rather we eat in order to live
One’s life is proportionate to necessity rather than pleasures
And so the saint suggested rejecting all what is excessive to a person’s nature and contenting just with the necessary
This is the way Agafia lives and her silent life promotes these evangelic truths in a somewhat loud manner
I myself was pleased to see her at prayer. She reads very well. Reads without errors, complies with commas. Everything respects the stress.
The Old Slavonic text is very easy for her. But besides that, she knows what's coming. She knows how the Psalms prays, she knows how to read canons in prayer.
She knows how to bury a person, she knows how to pray in the service, even though she has never been to church.
I was very surprised when I saw that she was well versed in the statute, and for me this again means that no matter what she lived alone, she was spiritually developed.
I do not think that her parents could fully enrich her. The deepest knowledge is the books through which we enrich ourselves.
Of course, Mary of Egypt enlightened the holy spirit. And Agafea Karpovna also thinks that he enlightened the holy spirit, because she reads books,
and it is not always possible to understand what is written there. And her concept of scripture is fully consistent with the Old Believers Church.
Therefore, I see that it was through God that this vision was given to her. This is the concept of spiritual subjects.
Until she turned 33, Agafia was surrounded only by her family members
And as the Savior ascented upon the cross, Agafia showed herself to the world so that the world could learn firm self-identity from her
By the time the young hermit had finished her philosophy courses and this made her interesting for scholars who frequently visited the settlement
As a result of their work a two-volume dictionary of Agafia Lykova’s old-believer lexicon
The dictionary contained 4500 articles explaining the expressions and idioms she would use as well as extracts from many of her letters
It turned out that the hermit’s vocabulary is two third evangelic, which is unsurprising as she studied by the Holy Bible’s texts
She also uses words spoken in the 19th, 18th and even earlier centuries
This proves her genetic link to the former Rus, unspoiled by foreign influence
Agafea Karpovna Lykova is an extraordinary image of a person who of course is sent to all of us for edification,
admonition, and thinking about what the image of a perfect person can be.
After all, it says in the holy gospel "Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect."
Why this woman in the deaf taiga, it would seem so not modern and just dressed nevertheless represents an image of holiness.
Because, perhaps with all its private shortcomings, she understands that life should be given to God.
And she speaks about this to all young people who come to meet her or help her simply enough. Do not moralize or impose.
Life is given to God. It is necessary to live in the understanding of their sins. Repent. And a man through this rushes to the salvation of his soul.
And livability in their lives. That's what's most interesting. Not through some meditations and not through some kind of pseudo wisdom.
Which very often has a modern man engaged in science. But does not possess modesty.
And here is our Old Believers tradition, I would even say our Orthodox tradition.
It teaches us this. She teaches us how to preserve culture. And how well in this culture to exist.
praying
Mom taught literacy, tyatya, and then the godmother. From the age of six I have been assigned to lectern. Tyatya and her mother were fishing in Tishi at that time.
Two alphabets were vintage, and they studied. Well, the psalter ... Learned, then began to read.
The Ephraim book was, Ephraim the Syrian. It is for the hermits. Ephraim the Sirin Hermit taught.
John Goldens book, tyatya with Cygnus carrying, every Sunday teaching, and great fast for every day.
The old gospel ... One prologue winter, written ... Gregory had a vision, but not in faces.
He also had a lemon-keeper, read in him how the holy fathers lived
We are very interested to answer the question, in what language does Agafya Lykova speak? What is language?
Is it the language of the 18th century? Are there any elements of the 19th century language?
Basically her speech is oral, and oral speech has the ability, as it were, not to be preserved, but me to change in a completely natural way.
For example, stress changes in Russian. Because we are Russian people creative - as it is convenient for us, as we say.
What characterizes the Old Believers environment and all conservativeness. Orthodox environment on the positive side.
This is loyalty and willingness to preserve their traditions. While maintaining your traditions, you feel that you have a foothold in life.
But life will always tell you or give you a real situation in which you will need to act in the works.
And we see judging by the stories, and the shots that made the members of many expeditions. In particular, the expedition from the University MIREA.
That Agafi Lykova all the time has to apply creative solutions. And she is successfully engaged in the cultivation of plants and the preparation of firewood.
Of course, if she is engaged in life, then there is no place for sublime book texts. So this person lives and high book spiritual and moral values and thoughts,
and this person is simultaneously no stranger to everyday speech. Household vocabulary.
And life is shaped by high thoughts, and high thoughts do not soar so high as to become pride.
And high thoughts are quite simple and Agafya Karpovna explains it to us in simple words. The meaning of life and the correctness of human actions.
Jesus cheered His disciples up. By saying “It’s Me” he called up for their spirits and stay courageous
It was the disciples’ fault that they let their spirits down during the storm, as the Master didn’t want this to happen
And he also told them “Do not be afraid”
In other words, do not be afraid of Me, since you know I do not mean any harm
These words mean that Jesus does not scare those whom He shows Himself, and if they perceive Him right, fear fades away
Peter is an example of this. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you” - he said
Peter’s devotion to the Master manifested itself in this wish. When he saw Jesus, Peter couldn’t help coming to Him even if it means walking on water
And it becomes clear – in order to reach Jesus true love will make its way over fire and water, if it is ordered to
But Peter didn’t want to go without Christ’s command
The most daring ones should wait for a command before going for a risky endeavor with no haste or self-righteousness
If someone’s desire to serve Jesus and suffer for Him does not correspond to His will, His call and command, it is just arrogant wilfulness rather than self-sacrifice
Daring to walk on water as Jesus told him, Peter manifested his faith and determination
He left the reliable boat, dashed into the jaws of death, ignored storm waves’ threat, which he had feared before
This shows his great hope for Christ’s power and word
Today we cannot expect such orders as Peter received
But there is hermit Agafia, who in fact repeated the same desperate and self-sacrificial act of Peter in present days
In Peter’s case it was an actual sea, for Agafia it was the need to move with her old father, unable to walk, from “the north”, where they lived before their contacts with people, to a more suitable place
This place is Herinat, where Agafia was born and where she was baptized and where she spent her first year of life
As Peter - obeying the word of Jesus- stepped on the surfaсe of the sea which no mortal has ever done before, Agafia started her journey full of pain and difficulties
She repeated the route of old believers, running away from the preseсutions on the anсestor’s faith, that led to Siberia from European north of Russia
The Lykovs had not been on Herinat for a year
During this time their garden was overgrown with weed, young fir and birch
It had to be cleared and that was not an easy task – the garden was big and located on the rock cliff
That job had to be done fast, so that the family would be in time for planting in spring
First of all the potato cellar was built, then – labaz – for food supplies
Labaz is a small hut made of wide thick wood planks 3 meters above the ground fixed together in-between closely standing tree trunks
Bear, chipmunk or squirrel can’t get that high – that means products are safe there
Geologists helped with the foundation of labaz – the rest of the job Agafia did on her own
She processed wood planks and carried them three meters high
She tied a rope to one end of a long heavy block, pulled it higher along the ramp, fixed it with a nail and repeated the whole operation with the other end
That labaz served her for more than 25 years, before it was flooded
After labaz was built she began clearing the garden
Cutting wood with axe, splitting logs into firewood
Agafia had so much to do that day was not enough and she was working at full-moon nights
She would hold a service in “the north” in the morning, сook food for her father, then head to Herinat.She would work there for the rest of the day and return restless to “the north”
After spending the night there, she would hold a service, cook food for the father, then - to Herinat again
Along the way, in fourteen such crossings, 26 buckets of seed potatoes were delivered to a new place of residence, which until spring Agafia hid in a cellar
Sometimes she worked on clearing the garden for two days in a row, including night hours
She ate little, because at the time of her work forty-day fastings fell – the Christmas fast and the Great Lent
In addition there were fastings on Wednesdays and Fridays
And in this self-restriction, all five months passed while the resettlement was being prepared
She turned her weakness into a great power
This is the very inner energy that strong faith gives
“A true Christian is afraid not of a disaster, but of the fact that he does not have to endure any grief and suffering
A true Christian is not afraid of any misfortunes and obstacles, he is happy when they meet,” - bishop Innokenty Usov, an Old-Believer wrote at the beginning of the previous century
He, in his turn, derived this from what Jesus honestly told His disciples about what awaits them if they follow Him
And in our mentality this is not the typical way to find supporters
The world at all times offered a man roses all the way, comfort and convenience, the fulfillment of everyday aspirations
And Jesus offered his disciples deprivation, hardships, and martyrdom
And yet, of the twelve first apostles, only one - John the Evangelist - died his natural death, while all the others died for their faith
But the history of mankind has proved that Jesus is right, and people, someone obviously, like Agafia
and someone in the depths of their hearts - love Him and remain true to this cause in the most critical situations
When it got warmer Agafia began to plant in the garden
That year, she accomplished the impossible, turning an abandoned piece of land into a common plantation in the way it was with the first settlers of the Old Believers
“They made even stone fertile,” said Treskin, the governor of the East Siberian Region, who made the first inspection trip around the region two centuries ago
The same was spotted by Shadurskiy – a docent of Ishimskiy agricultural institute – the following autumn, when Agafya and her father returned to Herinat
A doctor from Krasnoyarsk Igor Pavlovich Nazarov, who has been visiting the Lykov family for many years since1980, also told us about it in his book
Agafia, continued to maintain the highest level self-sufficiency in food, even keeping in mind the restrictions that isolation from the world brings
Old Lykov called this – “living like Christians”. The practical manifestation of his worldview is noticeable in the Taiga corner everywhere
In one of the comments to the Bible, you can see the statement of Jesus, which is not included in any canonical Gospel: "Split wood, I am there. Lift up a rock, you will find me there.”
These words mean that when a person does some work, Jesus is with him
Genuine happiness, genuine satisfaction, a sense of God, the presence of Christ — all this must be sought in day work, which must be performed honestly and, beautifully, as a true professional does
The advice of the elder Paisius is about the same thing: ''Everything must lead a person to God.''
How can this be achieved, they asked him? He replied: “You achieve this by benefiting from everything that you encounter on the path of life.''
Do you know what spiritual benefit and spiritual experience a person acquires by extracting sacred meaning from everything?
For example, by working with cement, you can find God, by touching a brick, you can touch God
You take one, the other, the third and touch God! Yes, touch God in everything!”
Then back-and-forth transitions from the "north" to Herinat began, connected with moving icons and books, property and food supplies
The route was up to ten kilometers in one direction each time... She moved everything alone
She wasn’t able to stand on her feet for two weeks, when the job was done
Karp Iosifovich moved to a new place in the last days of March
This transition was not an easy one for him either
The crippled leg and old age made it difficult for him... He walked, accompanied by his daughter, in snow and mountains, on river ice for four days
Hermits would spent their nights by the fire under some tree
There, below the small river far below the small river, they spent the night the first night, Then there was a lot of things accumulated there,
I just pray the midnight sand, tyat's remains on the machine tool to read the psalms.
And I, on the way, drag kotyms along the road and just Lazarev on the light bearer,
Saturday there they brought books and icons, they walked and did not smog, the light bearer.
Palm Sunday, in the island, far below the fork in the road, on the other side, fir fir was cut down.
They came to the light on the nightingale, Palm Sunday, this is before Easter.
Then Sunday we lived for two nights. I thought we will come in one day.
here the cereal was brought in, and then we only had a dry potato carp, small cereal. Yes, and the knapsacks are left behind, there are books
The rest of the spring they spent together in a tiny hut in which cold winds were blowing through numerous cracks
At that time, Agafia’s sight got really bad - “I could hardly see things under my feet,” she said
Christ orders Peter to walk on water
And when he got out of the boat, Christ carried him, and Peter walked across the surface of the sea as if on his own
Here we see the following: when our souls firmly follow Jesus, His right hand supports us
And then something happened that happens to people all the time
While Peter was looking at Christ, relying on His word and on His power, everything was fine
and he was walking upon the water quite well, but when he turned on worldly logic, as Elder Paisius said, and noticed the danger, he got scared
The nature of such collisions in our life (both social and personal) is the same: we look at difficulties with our worldly eyes rather than with the spiritual ones - with the eyes of faith
Peter, noticing the strong wind, should have remembered, how the winds and seas obeyed jesus, but he was tempted by the picture, and soon after the fear crawled into him
As long as his faith held on - he held on the water, and as soon as his faith was shaken - he began to sink
But nevertheless, Peter managed to do what was necessary in such cases, exclaiming: “Lord, save me!” And it becomes clear that if faith weakens, one should pray harder
And Jesus did not reject him, in spite of the fact that at first arrogance was mixed with his faith, and when he weakened, infidelity joined the faith too. Jesus saved Peter
Peter's faith was sufficient to get out of the boat on the water, and yet it was not enough to walk upon water to the end, this is why Jesus Christ called Peter faith-lacking
But Agafia’s faith, whose roots go back to the Gospel, allows her to walk confidently over the waters of the stormy sea of life
The hand of Christ is stretched upon her, as well as upon all believers, so as to support in the time of need and not to let her drown
When you see Agafia in her windblown booth, or in a super-modest and undecorated hut, you involuntarily ask yourself
why does she live like that, why would not she move to her relatives in the Shor village of Kilinsk or, at least, to Moscow, where Old Believer Metropolia would provide her with comfort?
We have no idea that the hermitage with its silence, poverty and asceticism is a great blessing for a man
Agafia’s long-time predecessor who lived in the fifth century, Isaiah the Solitary, was once asked what was his understanding of the term “world”
“By the world” - he answered, “ we mean those activities alongside the mind and will of a fallen man, when we fulfill the worldly desires
when we hope to stay for a longer time in our mortal bodies, when we care more about the body rather than the spirit.”
Speaking about the essence of hermitage, Isaiah recalled a saying of the ancestors, who believed that it meant fleeing the body and remaining in constant awareness of death
And then he explained his internal logic
According to him, asceticism is born from silence, asceticism gives birth to crying, crying gives birth to fear of God, fear of God – to humbling
humbling – to spiritual enlightenment, and spiritual enlightenment gives birth to love. Love makes the soul sound and passionless
Then man knows how much he has departed from God
Agafya, as we know from the monk Guriy, reached the level of enlightenment impossible for any other person
And this state corresponds to purity, freedom from anger, kindness, meekness, spiritual joy, abstained from all passions
Love for all, holy reasoning, unshakable faith, patience of sorrows, alienation from the world in the feeling of the heart, desire to be separated from the body and connect with Christ
We expect that it may seem to someone that an icon is being made from a hermit
But rest assured, many years of journeys to her home, and most importantly - long communication with her gives a reason to speak about her in such amazed tone
And those people who see a stretch in our conclusions, may follow simple advice - try living like she does...
For our part, we honestly admit that we will not dare to take such a step, because we will not cope with such challenges
Let’s return to the evening prayer of the hermit, which is taking place in the days of the Great Lent
The Holy Book makes it clear that a person won’t be heard by God if his prayer is not an act of courage and his body is not exhausted
The prayer should come from those deprived with their hearts overwhelmed and humble
Listening to this, take a look at the details of the hermit’s environment, at the place where she is praying prays, at her movements, words, at any detail of the praying process
and you will understand a lot
And bear in mind that the Great Lent’s prayer goes on for hours and that Agafia has not touched her food yet and has not even drunk any water
And also the fact that prayer is offered at night makes it even more valuable, because in these hours the soul feels the immortal life
Moreover, in prayer, the most sacred and even more significant than the psalmody, is bowing
When you put all these details together, the meaning of the Christian statement that the feat of prayer is more difficult than all other feats becomes clear
In any other feat, even if it is carried out with determination and consistency, there is an opportunity to get some satisfaction
But prayer to the last gasp is fraught with heavy struggle
Isaiah the Hermit said what sounds true even today
Listen: “The great storm rages on the sea of life
Let us overthrow everything that belongs to the vanity world, and we will cry out to God in prayer so as not to drown in the fierce waves of this storm
If a person does not bare himself from the passions with which his soul is clothed inside, he will not be able to escape from drowning in the exciting sea.”
This is a call through the centuries to pray... And the saints are our Teachers
Persistence of character can also be said to have been carried through the generation of Old Believers, such as Agafya Lykov.
Now it is necessary, now the Lord has preserved this small handful with his providence.
So maybe a small herd today. But the Lord says, "Do not be afraid of the little flock, I am with you."
If only we would be worthy of the Lord. If only we were salt, which salted this earth, because without salt everything decomposes.
ut salt can be much unnecessary, but without it the soul perishes, so to speak, the spiritual component.
To some extent, by his providence, the Lord shows us from the history of Avacoum, the Morozovs, and that’s Agafya Lykov who is closer to us.
What is salt, what is soul preservation and now I think that ... Yes.
Indeed, the moment is now Grozny on the other hand, I think that the Old Believers have always been optimists. And so I am not very scared.
Because when a person is trusted in God, then nothing is scary for him. He says "Why should I be afraid?"
Why should we be afraid of globalization or something else like that?
Here is God with us, if we of course do not betray God with our lives, then we really do not know the bad.
And this is just what a ground for an optimist is that everything will be fine.
So Russia will perk up, It will rise again on its feet and the world will surprise.
If only she again did not turn to the West, thank God we more and more understand that we are not on the path, spiritually anyway.
So this is the history of the Old Believers and this is the program. We have our own way. Its Orthodox way that now retain such as Agafya.
All that will be shown now cannot be explained in a rational way. So, the following happened
The hermit was walking from the fishing shed to the settlement site
She did not even suspect that at that moment a predator was watching her from the depths of the bank bush
It was the bear that had plagued her with its terrible obsession for many years
Once had she already faced him head-on on a path near the huts
She was saved by the Jesus prayer and the sign of the cross
A new meeting with the beast occurred three hundred meters from the place of the previous one
When it appeared on a low cliff, from which there are about twenty-five meters to the edge of the bank the hermit had not yet noticed it
She was walking along the stony bank, looking down
Going down to the shallows, the bear rushed leaping to the human
Only then did Agafia see him
It was an attack
We were told by people familiar with the habits of the predator that, having started an attack, the beast does not stop anymore, even if being shot at
When just about nine meters remained between the bear and Agafia, it suddenly stopped, turned around towards the sun and fled to the taiga
"It rushed away from me ..." - this is how she described its maneuver
The whole incident, when the life of our hermit was hanging in the balance, took just several seconds
And once again she was saved by the Jesus prayer and the sign of the cross
A short prayer, just eight words, but how powerful is its the effect, if the thug-bear, having changed its original intentions, runs away like a chicken
Jesus Christ was close Agafia at the crucial moment of her life, like in the case of Anthony the Great weakened by spiritual fight, He commanded the huge predator to flee
Without panicking and speeding up her pace, she continued to move towards the settlement
And the bear, like a banal street bully, later returned to the hut and scattered the boulders there, as if wanting to show the human what murderous power he possesses
It is not difficult to imagine what would happen to the hermit if she were in his claws... But the Lord wanted to keep her safe for us
Was it just the predator demonstrating its capabilities? Of course not
It was an attack of dark forces, in other words - demons
The devil has an ability to control animals, insects and other creatures, even human beings, but only to a certain extent
So, in this case, he tried to use the bear to deal with the hermit, and thereby put an end to her unique preaching of gospel truths
It did not work
And just because demons flee from the mere mentioning of the Savior’s name
It scorches them like fire. Jesus Christ himself, instructing the disciples, said: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons”
Agafia drove out the demons, who possessed the unfortunate bear, and forced it to ambush a person for no apparent reason
It was about these cases that Isaiah the Hermit noticed whether we were awake or asleep, the enemy of the human race does not cease to attack us, and these attacks are especially strong in the hermitage
As if talking about Agafia, Paisios the Athonite, once said:
“If a person makes a cross over himself and entrusts his life into the hands of God, then God will then decide whether that person has to live or die.”
And for the Lord to provide divine power, a person, as Metropolitan Cornelius noted several minutes earlier, should not leave Him
It's time for a meal. For Agafia, this is the first and only meal for the whole day of household and prayer works
To some extent, this approach to the contentment of the flesh is caused by the Great Lent
which is a recollection of Jesus Christ spending forty days in a desert without water and food after His Epiphany in the Jordan
But it isn’t just this memory that is associated with her asceticism in nutrition
This is the way all the hermits lived before, regardless of whether there is a fast. Isaiah the Solitary - familiar to us - instructed:
once a day, eat food, and when meeting the needs of your body, get up from the table light, so that you could constantly stay in your holy act of faith
Anthony the Great advised to eat the simplest food
Surprising, how Agafia, virtually never leaving the Taiga corner, knows so much about many practical details of Christian asceticism!
Her food, as you can see, is the simplest one - boiled peas
Peas are the signature pride of the Lykov family
In terms of consumer properties and yield, it significantly exceeds the best selection of peas on the mainland
Undemanding to the quality of the soil, it is not afraid of frost, and it can be sown first, and after it other vegetables grow better
Exactly the symbolic portrait of the hermit herself
She drinks - an infusion of burdock
Yes, yes, that burdock, which in our everyday life is considered a weed. According to the hermit, it has healing properties
The meal does not last long, and after it - the act of praying continues
This the hermit intends to carry to her gasp
Anthony the Great, who personally knew the cosmism of hermit life, spoke of such phenomena in this way — all the acts of faith undertaken inadequately to one’s powers are to be left aside
Two assumptions are derived from these words: either the hermit's feat is not so unbearable for Agafya
or her personal strength is enough to continue the ascetic mission begun by her parents
And maybe, as in the case of Anthony the Great himself, Jesus Christ is with her all the time, and He helps to bear the cross that fell to her share?
Yes, there is no doubt here - an episode with the bear is a confirmation of this
When Christ entered the boat, Peter also entered with Him
And this means that those participating with Christ in His patience will be participants in His Kingdom, and who walks with Him will reign with Him
When they entered the boat, the wind ceased, the storm stopped, because it did its job - it tested the disciples
In the same way, Jesus, entering the human soul, commands the wind and storm to cease, and soothes it
All the other disciples who were in the boat approached and bowed to Him, saying, "Truly, You are the Son of God."
They had known before that He was the Son of God, but now they were even more convinced of this
They not only recognized the great truth, but also submitted to it - they bowed to Him
And as soon as Jesus entered the boat, it immediately appeared at the shore, at the very point where the disciples were going
And the fantastic adventure ended in a successful ending
