Our first trip to venerate the relics of Holy Hierarch Nicholas was nothing short of a miracle. It took place in 2002 on a winter St. Nicholas Day. By sheer luck, we happened to join the first-ever Russian group of pilgrims flying to Bari on a plane organized by the St. Andrew The First-Called Foundation. My husband and I were invited (but sadly he was unable to fly with me) by our long-time friends, Fr. Vladimir and his matushka Natalia. They often visited us while studying at the Moscow State University, but at the time of the trip, Father Vladimir served in Bari in the Russian Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. He suggested that we invite a few more people to go with us:
Batiushka declared: “Invite the low-income families, and this trip will be free for them”
“Invite the low-income folks, and this trip will be free for them.”
“Low-income? But what if everyone in our country is low-income! So, what now? We can’t take all of them!”
“Alright, make a list.”
The first people we added to our list were the clergymen from Tver Region. It is hardly possible that anyone from that part of the country would ever be able to make a trip on their own—they had been assigned to serve in dilapidated churches, had large families, and could barely make ends meet. Then, we invited the abbesses from Tver; it would be good for them to go, plus they could take some of their nuns along. We made hasty travel arrangements but the trouble was that none of them had foreign passports yet. No one among our low-income families ever planned to travel abroad, so we ended up overcoming, in our typical fashion, these annoying setbacks. Someone couldn’t receive their passport on time before the trip and another one had several documents missing from an application. The pilgrim travel agency voiced their condolences to us:
“Do you know how many V.I.P. guests are going with you? Someone on your list will stay home but the VIPs will fly for sure!”
One of the priests responded to that:
“Maybe they are the VIPs today, but who knows, how about saints tomorrow! It’s not so easy to get there if the holy hierarch doesn’t want you to.”
The pilgrim agency workers sounded surprised:
“What a peculiar way of looking at things!”
But how else? If you are thinking otherwise, you shouldn’t even try to go. Two old ladies were seated next to me on the plane: Euphrosinia Nikitichna, aged 84, the mother of Mikhail who organized the pilgrimage, and her friend Antonina Nikolaevna, aged 80. Antonina Nikolaevna walked with a cane because she recently had a cast removed after breaking a leg. They have never been to church before, but during our trip they went to all the church services, never missing one.
“Will you take Communion?” I asked Antonina Nikolaevna.
“Should I? I’ve never had communion before.”
“But you came to St. Nicholas himself! Maybe your grandfather is praying for you right now.”
“That’s true, my grandfather was a man of faith, and my father’s name was Nikolai.”
Upon our return to the hotel, I gave them a booklet “How to prepare for confession." They spent the whole evening recollecting their sins and went to confession with the rest of us. But when I was waiting in line to approach the Chalice, I couldn’t see my old ladies among the communicants. I went to find them, walked around the whole church but didn’t see them anywhere. “Well, that’s enough,” I thought to myself. “It’s time for me to come to Communion instead of running around.” But after partaking in the Holy Mysteries of Christ I was finally able to locate Antonina Nikolaevna. She was standing next to one of the church pillars, blissfully happy, her eyes sparkling with joy.
“May I congratulate you? Did you take Communion?”
“Of course, I did!” and she showed a prosphora bread. “Batiushka gave it to me, I am going to take it to Moscow.”
It suddenly dawned on me:
“Did you approach the Chalice?”
“I didn’t, no one told me to, so I was just sitting here.”
I had to act quickly and find Mikhail, the head of the Fund:
“Did your mother receive Communion?”
“She did.”
“But Antonina Nikolaevna didn’t. She was preparing herself, though.”
“I’m going to ask someone, don’t worry!”
Mikhail helped Antonina Nikolaevna to the tomb with the relics of St. Nicholas where one of the bishops administered Communion to her. It was as if she had received the Holy Communion from the hands of St. Nicholas himself.
Well, did other pilgrims happen to be at the feast by chance? For example, take Mother Barbara from a monastery in Tver, who has been the abbess for years and remained under the prayerful protection of the saint since birth. She was baptized in a church bearing his name, her first-ever monastery visit was on St. Nicholas the Wonderworker’s feast day, and then again, it was his feast day when she was tonsured as a nun together with Mother Elizabeth who was also here with us at his relics.
Or, how about Matushka Nadezhda, the mother of our future son-in-law, who was pregnant with him, her firstborn, at the time of the trip; she also attended that festive service. The crowd was so thick on that day at the church that when she approached the Chalice, she even panicked that her baby could be crushed in the crowd.
“Father Nicholas!” she begged the saint. “Help! If I have a son, I will name him Nicholas!”
And then she thought with sadness, “But he will never have a chance to come and venerate your relics…”
But her son, Fr. Nikolai, not only came to venerate the relics but he even had the honor, as a Name Day celebrant, of carrying the large, main icon of the saint during the procession with the cross.
Fr. Dimitry (who was also in Bari at the time) serves at a St. Nicholas Church. He could also share a story about receiving help from St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. It was fifteen years ago, when his church’s restoration work, or, rather, the stress that it wasn’t going anywhere, was in full swing—his church had no money to continue the restoration and there was no hope of getting anything they needed anytime soon. Then one day Fr. Dimitry met a friend, also a priest, who happened to locate wealthy donors for his church. This meant that he was able to add new roofing, new windows, plus he was about to have the crosses gilded.
“How are things going with you, father? Any progress with the construction?” the lucky priest asked Fr. Dimitry.
“I wish, father! I don’t even have the money to buy bricks—and you know, there can’t be any construction without bricks!”
“You should pray, father. Why don’t you pray more about it!” the priest empathized with Fr. Dimitry and lightly patted him on his shoulder.
“But he is right, I should pray more! In all this hustle and bustle I forgot about the most important thing; I should resume our readings of the Akathist to St. Nicholas!” And from that moment, Fr. Dimitry and his parishioners set themselves to pray to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker every Thursday.
A month later, he received a notice that certain unidentified benefactors transferred a significant amount of money to his church’s bank account. Fr. Dimitry was so overjoyed at this news that he immediately, without any delay, spent everything to buy the construction materials, including bricks. The construction workers resumed the construction process. A few days later, that same priest who advised him to keep praying called him:
“Father, did you receive any money?”
“I did.”
“You have to return them. The money was meant for my church, but somehow and for no obvious reason, they were forwarded to you. My church is also dedicated to St. Nicholas, you know. It was a glitch, so please return them.”
“But how will I return what I no longer have?! All I have now are the rows of bricks, and even that grows thinner with every passing day. So, I am very sorry, father, but I can’t return anything!”
Our Fr. Nikolai’s friend, Fr. Alexiy, who also joined us on this pilgrimage, finished painting an icon to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker just before our trip to Italy. He brought it there to bless it on the relics of the saint before placing it in his church consecrated in honor of Holy Hierarch Nicholas. Before our departure flight from Russia, Fr. Alexiy asked me:
“What do you think, will I be able to take the icon through customs?”
“How big is it?”
“Not too big,” he said showing that its approximate size wasn’t more than twelve inches.
“I think this size will pass.”
But when Fr. Alexiy unwrapped his icon, I gasped:
“It’s at least two feet long! Nope, this one won’t pass.”
Still, it did. It seemed as if the customs officers at each border crossing never even noticed the icon. Then I remembered that Fr. Alexiy shared a story about how St. Nicholas saved his life. It was Christmas Eve and batiushka was driving home. His old “clunker” suddenly quit running. He pulled the car to the side of the road and watched it get slowly buried under the falling snow. Few cars whizzed by and no one stopped to help him. The freezing temperatures were perfect, just like they should be on Christmas Eve, and low enough for anyone to fall asleep forever in the roadside snowdrifts.
“That’s it,” he thought, “I am going to freeze to death.” “Father Nicholas, I am dying!”
The next moment, he watches a car slowing down, its headlights illuminating the wintry scene around him, and then pulling next to his car.
“Would you help me?”
“Sure,” says the driver.
“I need to get to Rameshki. Is it on your way?”
“Yep.”
He attached the cable and towed him straight up to his house.
“What’s your name?” Fr. Alexiy asked the driver.
“Nikolai.”
“Wait here a second, Nikolai, I’ll be back!”
When Fr. Alexiy ran outside again, not only the car was gone—not even its tracks could be seen in the snow
Fr. Alexiy rushed inside his house (he had to thank that driver somehow!), but when he ran back outside, his Good Samaritan and his car were gone. But what shocked him most was that not only was the car gone, there were no tire tracks leading up to his house and back on the main road. All he could see was his own car’s tire tracks imprinted in the snow.
That’s who our pilgrim group’s V.I.P. guests were—the ones St. Nicholas the Wonderworker himself had advocated…
