All of life is a search for God and an encounter with Him: in prayer, in repentance, in love, in others. For me, the decisive moment was an encounter I had been journeying toward for a very long time by a difficult path. And yet this meeting took place. We usually speak of the two births of a Christian—in the flesh and in the Sacrament of Baptism. But I had a third birth—an encounter with God after returning from a “far country.”
I was baptized as a teenager. My mother secretly took my sister and I to the cathedral, grabbed the first people she could find to be the Godparents, and sent us after the priest to the baptismal church. I didn’t really understand what was happening. I was only vaguely aware something important was happening in my life. When the priest unexpectedly took me by the hand and led me to the altar, it simply took my breath away. I was certain the path to the Holy of Holies was forbidden to mere mortals.
After my Baptism, everything returned to normal. No one spoke about God at home; there were no prayers. The only thing was that colored eggs would appear on our table one spring Sunday—a tradition… In spite of all this, my soul was seeking God. Since there was no one to ask for advice or guidance, the Lord Himself apparently put it in my soul that I needed to pray. Having found a prayer to the Lord somewhere, I tried to say it every day, and on the way to school I would silently call out: “Lord, have mercy!”
Much later, we started going to church for Sunday evening services. I didn’t understand much. I just followed everyone else when they made bows; I looked around, tried to understand what the choir was singing, and forced myself to stand until the end of the service. These trips to church didn’t last long. One day, during a service, I saw the priests, standing before the altar table, joking around and laughing. After that, I stopped going to church. Then I stopped praying. At that time, I hadn’t even heard anything about the existence of the Sacraments of Confession and Communion. So I gradually became a model communist youth again, although out of inertia I continued to think of myself as a Christian and wear a cross.
Just a few days after my sixteenth birthday, my father died unexpectedly and in agony within a matter of hours. It was like I woke up and I started fervently praying out loud in front of everyone, asking God not to take my father, who was also unbaptized. But he died. His last words were: “Lord, why?”
My childhood faith also died with my father. I began to see in the Church, in Orthodoxy, just some monstrous deception, hypocrisy. I began to look for “another” god, “another” church. Baptist sing-alongs, Mormon gatherings, Moonie seminars, Disciples of Christ Sunday get-togethers—in all of this I saw an even more sophisticated mockery of a soul hungry for Truth. Then I simply stopped running around in search of the true Church and shut up within myself. I didn’t need friendly groups where you could drink tea together, sing songs about God, and work for “salvation.” I didn’t need the “Kingdom of Heaven.” I needed to understand how to comfort all who suffer and are innocently oppressed.
I didn’t understand how you could sing “spiritual songs” and shout “alleluia” when hundreds and thousands of people were suffering and dying all around you. That’s why I decided to leave God to those who want to have fun and ignore life—that’s how I saw the Orthodox and everyone who believed in anything.
When I was a university student, I enrolled in evening medical courses and began studying to become a nurse. I wanted to truly alleviate the suffering of those who had it bad in this world. I saw what a nurse’s work really meant, what it meant to constantly feel pain for others. A protest grew in my soul: “What for? Why?” The elderly, exhausted by illnesses, crying helplessly like children in hospital beds; children slowly fading away with an unchildlike seriousness… I wanted to at least do something so that, despite the cruelty of God (as I thought at that time), these sufferers wouldn’t be so afraid, so lonely and hopeless.
But I saw that as I was, I couldn’t approach and offer anything to either loved ones or strangers whom I wanted to comfort. I realized that I myself needed to change. While denying God, openly preaching atheism and blaspheming the Church, I nonetheless found support in Biblical commandments and decided to live “in a godly way but without God.” If God exists, let Him be—He doesn’t both me, and I don’t need His admission ticket to Paradise. I’d rather stay here—with those who grieve and suffer.
It’s strange, but I continued wearing a cross this whole time. Something stopped me from taking it off.
Over time, I started reading the Bible. “Every philologist should read this book,” I thought at the time. As I read, I was struck by some things and sneered at others. I spent several summer days sitting on the banks of the Svisloch1 with this Book in my hands. Sitting there until evening, I noticed that at the same time—around six o’clock—the bells would ring out. The old Russian name for the largest bell, “blagovest,” is very similar to the term for “glad tidings,” which is the literal translation of the Greek term for “Gospel.” But at that time, I only saw the church bells as a pleasant melody that vaguely reminded me of something. In fact, I saw the Gospel in the same way back then.
So the summer passed. Then, having decided to look at what the Orthodox say about the Bible, I got hold of the Law of God. With a smile, I read the explanations of Holy Scripture, prayer, and the saints written “for children and adults.” Everything within me resisted such “fairy tales” and elicited skeptical remarks from me.
Then suddenly something happened. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. Imagine a man standing before an infinitely huge wall, reasoning that the wall is impenetrable, with nothing behind it. And suddenly, in an instant, in some unimaginable way, the man finds himself on the other side of the wall, in a wonderful garden instead of the expected emptiness. And he turns around and can see thousands of people through the wall—eccentrics like himself who remained on the other side. He doesn’t know how he got through the wall or how to call out, how to bring the others through. Something like this happened to me. As they say, out of the blue, in a matter of moments, all my beliefs crumbled before the face of Beauty. I felt a kind of love that no one in my life could have given me; my soul became dazzlingly bright—I was experiencing a feeling of fullness. I couldn’t comprehend what had happened; I only felt reverence for everything and extraordinary peace...
I got up then and wandered into church, where I hadn’t been for many years. Vespers was underway. There were a lot of people. I had barely crossed the threshold when I froze in the narthex, not daring to go further—Christ was looking at me from the altar icon, through the open Royal Doors. I can’t convey what was happening within me at that moment, because human words simply aren’t sufficient. I can only utter: God.
Not daring to desecrate the holy place with my presence (that’s how I thought at the time), I left the church. The next morning, I heard Vladyka Philaret2 on TV wishing the people a joyous feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord and talking about how our journey in life is a path to transfiguration…
This encounter is still incomprehensible to my family. They want to know who “influenced” or “worked on” me. It’s hard to accept a miracle.
One thing I can say for sure: To encounter God, you have to look for Him—falling, stumbling, losing your way, but persistently striving to reach Home. And God Himself, like the merciful father from the Gospel parable, comes out to meet and embrace the returning son.
