“St. Gabriel is My Beloved Holy Brother”

On November 2, 1995, St. Gabriel (Urgebadze)

—Julietta Mikhailovna, what was it like to live with such an extraordinary half-brother? What was the future saint like in childhood?

—You know, he was different from all the children. I had two half-brothers: one was Mikhail, whom we called Mishiko. He was very smart, knew mathematics and history well, read a lot, went to school and learned everything perfectly. He was almost the same age as Vasiko (that is, Goderdzi, the future Elder Gabriel—he was called Vasiko at home in honor of his father). They were only a year and a half apart, but I kept telling Vasiko: “Did you really go to school? You haven’t learned how to write properly.” But it turned out that he was getting to know something else. My half-sister, half-brother (St. Gabriel’s siblings), and I believed we were smart, and Vasiko wasn’t smart, but in reality he knew much, incomparably more than all three of us combined. I would tell him, “Listen, you didn’t learn to write at school. Where did you get such knowledge of the world from? Where did you get this from?” I marveled at this all the time. This is what our Vasiko was like.

As for what he was like, and judging by the time of his childhood and his years at school, he was extraordinary and aspired to God alone, probably right from the day he was born. I would say he didn’t have a childhood—he didn’t have toys, he didn’t know them and didn’t want them. He had crosses and little bells (like church bells) and rang them all the time. He used to put a cloth onto a stick and walk around with it. At first we didn’t understand what he was doing. It turned out that for him it was a “cross procession” with “banners”. There was a beautiful church of Great-Martyr Barbara next to our home, and he saw how they served there and imitated it. He did it in a childish manner, probably without fully realizing what he was doing. In this way his soul longed for God. He was so unusual, very unusual. When he got a little older, we couldn’t figure out what was happening to him. He didn’t sit down to eat with us and he always said, “I’ll eat later.” He was fasting all the time, and we didn’t know why he didn’t eat with us. But then we realized that he would eat separately in order to observe the fast.

He was very kind. You know how we say, “I love you”, “I adore you”, we kiss each other, say something kind and good to each other—but these are such superficial, earthly feelings... Our love is earthly, everything we do is earthly, our words are earthly and they do not correspond to our love. I know by myself that it’s even hard for me to say, “I love you”, because I know that I don’t have this love in me. And he loved and accepted everybody without saying these words. How many people flocked to him! Believers found comfort in him, they saw great faith in him, understood him fully and came to us all the time. They came so often—literally day and night—that our mother would stand at the gate and when someone knocked she would say, “What do you want from my son? He’s tired, and he is already having visitors!” But I would tell her, “Mom, don’t forbid people to come.” She pitied him so much, because this stream of believers (after all, there were still true believers in the Soviet era) visited him nonstop, but our mother did not realize what was happening and why they were doing this. And we didn’t realize it either.

—Tell us how old Goderdzi was when people started visiting him?

—It’s hard to say exactly. When he returned after the army visitors began to come to him—approximately after the age of twenty. He became a monk later, at the age of twenty-seven, but even before that he had already received visitors. Of course, after he had become a monk and a hieromonk even more people began to come… He pastored a large number of people. Many of our current priests, who were almost children at that time, came to him and, after communicating with him, chose the path of the priesthood; and there were future metropolitans among them.

Our mother outlived Vasiko by four years. She was eighty-seven when he reposed. And then everybody around started telling her, “Barbara, he so wanted you to be a nun.” And one day she said, “Okay, I I’ll do it.” I asked the convent to let our mother go home after receiving the tonsure, but they replied that she was already a nun and should stay at the convent. She was a physically strong woman, but the death of her beloved son Vasiko was very distressing for her and in her final years she was like a child. I was by her side all the time and tried to help her with everything.

​Fr. Gabriel’s brother Mishiko with their mother Barbara (later Nun Anna)     

She was tonsured on March 6, 1996, and the next day she was injured all over. She went to her beloved son’s grave, which was on a hill, fell and rolled off it, breaking her arm and leg. And for four remaining years of her life she served the Lord in monastic life with this suffering. But she received Communion frequently, almost every day, so she spent her old age worthily and, apparently, pleased God, because she never complained and was always grateful to the Lord and for the end which she had reached.

—Did his communication with you change when it became clear that Elder Gabriel had special grace and that he was a man chosen by God?

—Even before he became a monk I had understood that he was a grace-filled, special person, and he remained so after taking his vows. I was seven years his junior, and my main occupation (like that of many secular people) was studying. Then I went to different churches, but did not attend services, so I couldn’t fully understand my brother. But I felt that he was a genius and possessed very great power, and I admired him. After I had started attending church services, I would come home every Sunday and first of all greet my mother and half-sister, and then Gabriel would open the door of his cell to me and say, “Julia, come in,” And we would talk for a long time. He was a man full of the Spirit. I couldn’t sit in his cell, although he kept saying, “Sit down, Julia, sit down!” But I couldn’t, because there was a strong, extraordinary spiritual atmosphere in his cell. It stunned me, and both church and non-church people sensed it, because it was great holiness.

But he lived his life as a monk, a true monk. He didn’t sleep in that cell with icons that everybody knows. He had another small cell with an ottoman—he slept on planks covered with a thin blanket. He had no gas, only a kerosene stove, which he used to cook and warm himself, so his conditions were poor, but he lived like this and was happy about it.

Whenever there was a celebration in our family, especially our mother’s birthday or her name day on December 17, we would sit around the table greeting our mother, but he would just come in to greet her and leave. We dreamed of him spending time with us, but he never sat down at the table. He would say: “I’m a monk, and I can’t sit with you.” He led a very strict monastic life.

—Did your mother accept Fr. Gabriel’s choice at once?

—He knew for sure who he wanted to be in this life—he just couldn’t be anyone else, so our mother couldn’t influence it. Everyone kept saying, “Barbara, what a happy woman you are!” But she would answer, “Why don’t you understand me? I am a mother; how can I be happy when my son prays day and night?” We looked at it with worldly eyes, and we felt very sorry for him, although over time we realized that he had done well to choose such a life and this thorny path for himself. The Lord suggested all different paths in life to us, while he was God’s chosen one.

—Did you have any relatives who were close to the Church, or was Elder Gabriel the first of you all?

—I am his half-sister, because when our mother was twenty her husband was killed, and she was left with three small children in her arms: Emma (aged five), Mishiko (aged three), and Vasiko (Goderdzi, the future Fr. Gabriel) was one and a half years old. It was in 1931—a time of famine. Our grandmother sold everything she had to support the family, but that wasn’t enough. Our mother was advised to send the children to an orphanage, but she said she would not do it. And so she was advised to marry a man who later became my father, and a father figure to my half-brothers and half-sister, because they loved him dearly. He was with us for thirteen years and took the whole family on himself during such a difficult period.

I think the Lord chose my brother because his father was a Communist and participated in the destruction of one of the churches. He threw icons into a well, and from an early age Fr. Gabriel kept trying to get them from there. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing because I was still a young girl, and only our mother could have related it in detail now. I believe the Lord decided to rectify his father’s mistake through his son. That’s how I see it spiritually. His father had sinned, but Fr. Gabriel did not refuse to pay the price and took this hard life on himself. Alternatively, there may have been saints in the Urgebadze family—no one knows.

—What did your older half-brother and half-sister do?

—Emma was a very good housewife, and Misha was very kind, but it’s hard for me to talk about him because he took a different path. While Fr. Gabriel tried to get everything by prayer, Misha tried to correct everything with his own strength. He could stop a rich man and make him swap clothes with a poor one. When I was about eleven and he was about twenty, I was present at a trial when he was charged with such a crime. It really was violence. Vasiko acted through God, and Misha acted through himself. He spent his whole life in jail, contracted tuberculosis there, and eventually died at the age of thirty-seven. He was very loving, he radiated love for people, but he didn’t live properly.

But, you see, they were so different. When Mishiko was dying, our mother and I were with him, but Vasiko didn’t even come up to us. I thought, “Vasiko, why are Mother and I alone here?” But neither she nor I said anything to him because we knew he was doing his job. And at seven in the morning on March 27, 1964, Mishiko passed away. Once he had passed into eternity, Gabriel came up to us. He must have been in prayer for his brother all night long, because he came up at the very minute of his death. That was the tragedy we had.

—Did Fr. Gabriel tell you anything about your life? Maybe he warned you about something or gave you advice?

—You know, he never told a person what awaited him, but he always prayed for that person and gave him advice. He said a lot of kind words to me, but he didn’t tell me my future. I feel him continuously and feel his prayers. I will turn eighty-eight soon [the interview was conducted in 2024.—Trans.], and he protects me all the time. There are many, many icons in my room, including the ones he gave me. While I am in this cell, once I think about something, that I need something, this thing immediately appears or someone comes knocking on the door and brings me exactly what I need. This care is permanent, and it continues every day. He never leaves me—I can feel it clearly.

There was the following story recently. I had a bottle of oil from an icon lamp from Fr. Gabriel’s grave. There was very little of it left on the bottom. Three women came to me, and I said to one of them, “Maria, there’s just a bit of oil left, and my eyesight is very poor. Please make sure that we can anoint ourselves with it after prayer.” We read the akathist to St. Gabriel on our knees together, and when Maria opened the bottle, it appeared that it was filled with this oil! The oil turned out to be healing, and I give a little to those who are very ill.

—You have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Do they venerate Elder Gabriel as well?

—They venerate him, I pray for them. And St. Gabriel prays for them too.