“With Fr. Kirill, It Was as Though We Lived in Another Life”

Yesterday, October 8, marked the birthday of Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov). Fr. Kirill was born on the feast day of St. Sergius of Radonezh, and later spent more than half a century at the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra under the protection of that great saint, providing spiritual guidance to the brethren, clergy, monastics, and laypeople from all across the country. During that difficult period of the Church’s revival, he sometimes gave his spiritual children challenging obediences.

“Churches are being restored now, so that is what you will do—you will restore churches,” he once told Anna Vasilievna Gerasimova, giving her his blessing. Thirty-three years have passed since then, and she is now working on the construction of her fifth church.

​Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)     

Anna Vasilievna shared her memories of meeting Fr. Kirill and receiving spiritual guidance from the elder.

“Thank the Lord for this”

In 1993, my neighbor, Fr. Georgy Krasnolozhkin—may the Kingdom of Heaven be his—invited me to work at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Konkovo. I was apprehensive, afraid I wouldn’t be able to manage. Churches were only just beginning to reopen, and people were flocking to them. All sorts of people, too. It was a difficult time, but an interesting one.

Then one night I dreamed of an elder standing on a raised platform in a church. There seemed to be candles all around him, or perhaps it was simply light radiating from him. I fell to my knees, wanting to grasp at least the hem of his vestments. But he raised his hand to stop me: “Don’t touch me.” And then I was shown everything, from beginning to end, concerning how I would come to him…

Soon afterward, I found myself in Peredelkino.¹ I looked around and realized that I had seen it all before. It was winter, just as in my dream. There was no one around. I approached the baptistery, exactly as I had done in the dream. Silence. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I knocked, as I had been told to do in the dream, and someone opened it for me. I was the last person admitted. No one else was allowed in after me.

Then Father came in and began talking about something. Afterward, he gave his blessing for Confession and explained where everyone should stand—some on the right, others on the left. We sang the Creed in the Pochaev chant,² and everyone began moving to their places.

Outside Fr. Kirill’s cell in Peredelkino     

And then I realized that this was that very elder I had seen in my dream. I had arrived early that morning and remained there until nine in the evening, occasionally helping to bring things in or take them away. Finally, at nine o’clock, I approached Fr. Kirill on my knees and made my confession. Then I said very quietly:

“Father, I saw you in a dream.”

I thought he would scold me, but instead he looked straight ahead, crossed himself, and replied with such reverence:

“Thank the Lord for this.”

I have remembered those words all my life.

“But how can I come to see you again?” I asked. Even then, everything that was happening seemed like a dream to me.

And he answered quite simply:

“You’ll come, you’ll come.”

From then on, I visited Father almost every month. Sometimes I even felt ashamed; there were people who had not been able to see him even once in their lives, while for me it somehow always worked out. But most of the time, I asked Father about other people’s problems rather than my own.

How Father performed an operation

For example, there was a young woman named Marina who sang in the choir at the Church of St. Symeon the Stylite beyond the Yauza River (in Moscow), where I worked. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She had come to Moscow from another town and had neither a Moscow residence registration nor any money.

I asked Father what we should do. He simply prayed and said nothing. And then things began to happen.

Somehow I found myself at the Burdenko Neurosurgery Center, where I met a doctor in the admissions department and pleaded on her behalf. They helped us get her admitted for surgery.

Marina was terribly worried.

“Please ask Father to pray for me. I’m so frightened. After all, they’re going to operate on my head.”

And suddenly I found myself visiting Father again, because whenever there was a real need, you always managed to get in to see him.

“Father,” I said, “please pray. Marina is going to have a very serious operation.”

And he began asking me questions:

“How are they going to perform it?”

I was amazed, because the doctor in the admissions department had, for some reason, explained to me in great detail exactly what they were going to do and how. Even at the time, I had wondered why he was telling me all this.

So I began repeating what I had heard, “Father, they’re going to do this and that. They’ll go in through her nose, then into her head…”

And he kept saying, “Go on, go on.”

And I realized that at that very moment Father was praying for each stage of the procedure, as though he himself were mentally performing the operation.

The surgeon was quite young. He was a good doctor, but he had only recently begun practicing. Everyone was astonished that he performed such a complicated operation so successfully and with such apparent ease.

Afterward, he himself said, “It was as though someone was helping me.”

“A certain well-known priest was helping you—Fr. Kirill,” we replied. “He was performing the operation together with you.”

Marina recovered, although at first the doctors had said that the prognosis was poor

Marina recovered, although at first the doctors originally said that her prognosis was poor.

Another time, my relative’s son Dmitry was gravely ill—may the Kingdom of Heaven be his. She asked me to take her to Father. She made her confession to him and told him of her sorrow.

“My boy will probably die soon. He’s still so young, and he’s already suffering terribly.”

Father prayed. “Well, then… Be patient, be patient. Everything will be all right. It will all work out. What can you do? It must be this way.”

She returned home, and the boy’s grandmother told her, “Dima is feeling better. In fact, he’s doing wonderfully.”

“When did that happen?”

“An hour and a half ago.”

And that was precisely when Father had prayed.

There were simply countless miracles like these—small, seemingly insignificant miracles.

Father heard her

Anna Gerasimova Fr. Kirill was the embodiment of extraordinary love, given to our times. Whether you were standing beside him or were far away, you could feel that love. It was truly heavenly, filled with grace. It enveloped you, and you felt as though you were immersed in that grace. You needed nothing else but to be with God in that state of joy and love.

Father helped everyone. He heard everyone.

I remember one occasion when several of us who worked at the Church of St. Symeon the Stylite beyond the Yauza River attended a service at Danilov Monastery. It was some feast day. Afterward, we came out and stood at the tram stop.

One of the nuns who also worked at our church began lamenting, “I need to have an operation. How I wish Fr. Kirill would pray for me! Will you be going to see him? Perhaps you could ask him?”

“I don’t even know when I’ll be able to see him again. But just pray to him. Call out to him, really call out: ‘Father! Father!’ He’ll hear you, I’m sure of it.”

“I understand, of course,” she sighed, “but it’s such a serious diagnosis…”

“Mother Vera, just call out to him!”

And suddenly I fell silent. Then I said to her very quietly:

“Look—there’s Father…”

The cars stopped at the traffic light, and Fr. Kirill was sitting in the one nearest to us

There was a traffic light right by the tram stop outside the entrance to Danilov Monastery. The cars had stopped, and Fr. Kirill was sitting in the one nearest to us.

“Mother Vera!” I began tugging at her sleeve. She was standing with her back to the road. “See? Father heard you! He’s right here!”

“Oh, come on! Why are you making fun of me?” she said, turning even farther away.

“Just turn around! Turn around!”

She turned and looked. Sure enough, Father was sitting in the car, smiling. He blessed us and drove away.

“Warm shoes” from Father

Father also helped people in their dreams. For example, whenever you were ill, he would be sure to appear to you in a dream. Sometimes he would tell you what medicine to take, or simply give you his blessing. And then you knew that Father had heard you.

Fr. Kirill also always sensed when someone was coming to see him. Everyone wanted to get in to see him, and sometimes people stood waiting for hours. But Father knew who was waiting.

Sometimes Natalia, his cell attendant—who is now Nun Euthymia—would come out and say, “Father can’t see anyone else today. Please forgive us.”

And then, quite unexpectedly, she would bring out gifts, each one intended for a particular person: this one for so-and-so, that one for someone else, and another for a third person. Sometimes these were people who had come for the very first time.

Whenever you were ill, he would be sure to appear to you in a dream. Sometimes he would tell you what medicine to take, or simply give you his blessing

I remember one occasion when I was terribly cold. We had been standing there for several hours, and I felt miserable—cold and hungry.

Suddenly Natalia called me over and handed me something.

“Oh, my goodness! Is that for me?”

“Yes. Father told me to give you this, and this, and this. And he said you must wear warm shoes.”

And it was true: I had been standing there in the middle of winter wearing practically nothing but ordinary dress shoes.

He had sent me a large bag of dried mushrooms. To this day, I don’t know what kind they were. They looked rather like porcini mushrooms, but they were unusual. Perhaps they had come from somewhere far away, from the North.

I took the bag and started walking away. Suddenly I felt as though my feet were burning—they had become so warm! Before that, they had been so cold that I could no longer feel them.

When I got home, I boiled some of the mushrooms and ate them. They were almost like meat, so rich and filling. After that, I kept eating those mushrooms, and somehow they never seemed to run out.

After all, Father had blessed me to work in the church. I didn’t have much money, and I was raising a child.

Through Father’s prayers, all doors opened

Years later, I remember, my daughter had already gotten married and was expecting a baby. I went to see Father. It was 1998, and there was such turmoil in the country.

“Ira will be giving birth soon,” I told him.

“Where? How were things arranged?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Somehow it will all work out,” he replied.

Of course, he was praying all the while. My daughter was due to give birth in just a week, and we still didn’t know where she would go. People were saying that conditions in the maternity hospitals were terrible.

Then, the very next day after my conversation with Father, my daughter happened to meet an old friend. They had grown up together and later graduated from the same medical college, but hadn’t seen each other for a long time. As it turned out, her friend was working at the V. F. Snegirev Clinic of Obstetrics and Gynecology on Plyushchikha Street. It was a very prestigious institution, and not just anyone was admitted. But the two got to talking, and somehow her friend managed, almost miraculously, to arrange for Ira to be admitted as her “cousin.”

The day before the birth, I went there early in the morning, taking with me prayers to Blessed Matrona of Moscow and Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt. I knew which ward my daughter was in.

I walked through the imposing glass doors and saw an enormous Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God. Father had given me an icon of that very same type when we had spoken about all this. I crossed myself, prayed, and continued on my way.

Now, visitors weren’t allowed in there at all. Absolutely no one. I saw some nurses sitting nearby and thought, “They’re going to stop me now.” But they looked at me and said nothing. So I walked straight into the ward and approached my daughter.

Visitors weren’t allowed in there at all. I saw some nurses sitting nearby and thought, “They’re going to stop me now.” But they looked at me and said nothing

“Mama! How did you get in here?!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The other young women in the ward actually raised themselves up on their beds and stared at me in astonishment. Their husbands were all high-ranking officials, and their mothers were influential people as well. Yet none of them had been able to get inside, no matter how much money they offered or what connections they had.

And the next day, when Ira was actually giving birth, I went in again in exactly the same way. I sat there praying that she would deliver safely, because her labor was long. But once again, no one bothered me. It was almost as though they couldn’t see me.

That was how Father’s prayers protected us.

When she finally gave birth, someone came out carrying the baby, all wrapped up. I caught sight of my granddaughter and suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh, she looks just like me!”

And the nurses laughed.

“Yes, yes!”

“So they can see me after all,” I thought. But no one asked me to leave. Afterward, nobody could understand how that happened.

“How on earth did you manage to get in there? They don’t allow anyone into that clinic!” It was only through Father’s prayers.

“We communicate with children”

Later, my granddaughter Dasha began visiting Father regularly. She had a spiritual connection with him. She could even tell us beforehand what Father was going to say.

When Father foretold something about her, that was understandable. But when Dasha herself began predicting things…

“Dasha,” I would say, “I’m going to see Father now. Do you think he’ll receive me?”

“He will, he will! And he’ll say, ‘Well, here’s my dear Anyutka!’”

Everyone would laugh, but whatever she said would happen exactly as she had predicted.

On one occasion, I was especially doubtful. “He certainly won’t receive me today,” I thought. “There are so many people waiting, and Father is ill.”

But as we approached, they let us through. When my turn came, I opened the door and entered. Father was standing with his back to me, looking out the window, and he said, “Well, here’s my dear Anyutka!”

“Father, do you communicate with our little Dasha?” “We communicate with children,” he confirmed.

Anna Vasilievna is on the far left. Alexandra, who worked as a groundskeeper at the residence and later became Nun Xenia, is second from the right.     

Dasha was still very little then, just three years old. One day we came to see Father, and once again there were crowds of people everywhere. I thought, “Well, we’ll just have a walk around. We probably won’t be able to see Father today.”

Suddenly Alexandra appeared. She worked as a groundskeeper at the residence and later received the monastic tonsure with the name Xenia. “I won’t take you,” she said to me, “but let me have Dasha.”

She tipped her wheelbarrow full of leaves toward Dasha, who climbed in and settled herself on top of that golden autumn foliage. And off she went, riding in the wheelbarrow straight into the Patriarchal residence.

They were inside for some time. Then suddenly the gates opened—the great gates through which cars would pass whenever some bishop or the Patriarch himself arrived. Everyone immediately stepped aside, assuming that someone important was coming.

And what did we see? Alexandra, pushing that same garden wheelbarrow full of leaves, with my Dasha sitting on top! And she had so many presents that they had actually opened the great gates to let her through!

She came rolling out as happy as could be, like the little girl in the fairy tale Morozko. She was covered in chocolate, her mouth all smeared with it, and she was beaming.

Everyone laughed. “Well, look who’s the bishop today!”

She rode out, stopped, and looked around at everyone. Then Natalia, Father’s cell attendant, prompted her, “Tell everyone.”

And Dasha announced very solemnly and carefully, in her little child’s voice, “Don’t wait, Faver’s seepin’. Don’t wait, Faver’s seepin’.”

Everyone exclaimed:

“Well, would you look at that! She’s certainly made quite a haul herself!”

Alexandra explained, “Father is utterly exhausted. He prayed all night, then all morning, and spent the whole day receiving people. He’s become so weak.”

And yet, even in that state, when he saw the child, he hopped about with her on one foot, gathered up chocolates for her, and sent her out with all those presents.

Humble yourself, Matushka, humble yourself

The last time I visited Father while he still had some strength was August 29, 2003. He was undergoing treatment at a sanatorium in Barvikha.³

He spent a very long time with me that day. For some reason, I had a feeling that this would be our last conversation. At one point, I suddenly remembered something.

“Father, what about a photograph?”

“Yes, I’ll give you a photograph now.”

I still have that photograph to remember him by: he is sitting there dressed entirely in white, with a candle burning

And I still have that photograph to remember him by: he is sitting there dressed entirely in white, with a candle burning.

We talked for such a long time that day. And once again, almost everything we discussed concerned other people rather than myself. There was always something that needed to be done for someone else—for this priest, for that priest…

“Anna, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Anatoly Ivanovich, Father’s assistant, would ask, peering through the doorway.

But Fr. Kirill himself was asking me questions, so naturally I answered him.

“Anatoly, go away,” Father told him.

Half an hour would pass, and there was his face in the doorway again.

“Well?”

He came back about three times.

For some reason, Father spent an unusually long time with me that day. He himself seemed reluctant to let me go. We had apparently discussed everything there was to discuss.

Then I noticed a bowl of porridge beside him. “Father, are you eating porridge?”

“I eat porridge, but I’d really love to have a cutlet!” he replied with a laugh.

There was always such humility in him, such an utter absence of pride, self-importance, self-admiration, or vainglory. These are things you can learn only by seeing them embodied in a person so whole and so simple.

I was always amazed by his spiritual strength, despite all his physical weakness. Even then, before his final illness, he suffered from so many ailments—the consequences of wounds and frostbite sustained during the war. We cannot even begin to imagine what he endured.

We would come to him barely dragging ourselves along, groaning, “Father, help me!”

And then I would suddenly catch myself thinking, “But look at him! His whole body has been cut open and operated on so many times! He’s ill all over, and he suffered such terrible cold on the front lines.” Yet the spirit was stronger than the flesh. How powerfully you could feel that when you were near him!

So many people came to him, and through his prayers he received God’s help in such grave and difficult matters. And despite the terrible suffering he himself bore, he manifested such humility—humility to the very end.

When you came to see him, back when he could still speak, he would clear his throat and say, “Humble yourself, Matushka, humble yourself.” He said it with such compassion, because he himself knew how difficult it was to humble oneself.

“If you read the Gospel, you will live by it”

With Fr. Kirill, it was as though we lived in another world. He himself warned us that “different times” were coming. “But you must watch over yourselves,” he would say. Because no matter who is in power or how the world changes, you must always keep watch over yourself. That is the most important thing. As for everything else… “It will be as it is written,” he would remind us.

That former era has passed, and now everything is different. So all we can do is watch over ourselves. There was a reason he kept repeating, “Read the Gospel.”

“Read it,” he would say. “Everything will be revealed to you in time.” “Read, just read. Keep reading, no matter what.”

And really, there is nothing more to be said. Understanding will come of itself. It cannot be explained. When you read the Gospel constantly, the Word of God reveals itself to you in a new way each time. You begin to put it into practice according to your conscience, and then the word of Christ begins to work and live within you.

“If you read the Gospel, you will live by it,” Father explained.

And that is exactly how it is. Then there is no longer anything to fear. Because when you read the Gospel, it sustains you. You understand that although the world is changing, the inner life remains the same.

“Do not lose your spiritual life, and little by little God will give each of you what you need,” Father would instruct us. “After all, we all have different circumstances in life.”

All his own

I remember when Father’s funeral service was held at the Lavra. Everyone wanted to go. But with my spinal problems, getting there was a real difficulty. I couldn’t travel by commuter train. Besides, I was completely worn out and exhausted. In those days, I always had more work than I could manage, from early morning until late at night.

Then suddenly the telephone rang.

“Anya, are you coming with us to see Father? We’re going by car, right now.”

“Of course!” I answered with a sigh of relief.

It was an acquaintance of mine calling. He is now a priest in the town of Vereya, but years ago we had worked together at the Church of St. Symeon the Stylite.

Anna Vasilievna outside the Church of the Great-Martyr Anastasia in Tyoply Stan And so we arrived at the Lavra. I had just managed to venerate Father’s hand and receive his blessing when my phone rang again. The call was from our Church of the Great-Martyr Anastasia the Deliverer from Potions. “Anya, please venerate Father for me, too, and pray for me. I wanted so much to come.”

“All right, all right, I’ll do it now,” I replied.

It was Lena, who was responsible for social outreach at our church.

I went back to Father, prayed, and made my request. Then the phone rang again. It was the same voice, but now full of joy.

“Anya, someone just called me! They’re coming to pick me up!”

Father had heard her.

Someone had called her at that very moment:

“Lena, we’re going! Come with us!”

“What?!” She burst into tears. “I had only just asked Anya to pray that Father would gather all his spiritual children together!”

And that is exactly what he did. He gathered everyone together. All his own. And he continues to gather us to this day.

Here is another story.

We had an altar server at our Church of St. Anastasia the Deliverer from Potions. He serves somewhere else now. His name was Lyosha, and he was originally from Belarus. He was studying at MGIMO, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He was a bright young man, but he couldn’t find a wife.

One day he sat down beside me. “Anna Vasilievna, how am I ever going to find a wife? I just don’t know what to do. I don’t even have anyone in mind.”

“Listen,” I told him, “go to Fr. Kirill’s grave. Pray to him earnestly and ask for his help. Perhaps something will come of it.”

Some time later, we met again.

“I went to Father’s grave and prayed,” he told me.

I think he even stayed there overnight.

And before long, we noticed that our Lyosha had met someone. There was a young woman in our parish, also named Anya. She was a tiny, slender girl. They took such a liking to each other that before long they were married.

Lyosha still says, “Oh, it could only have been Father!”

They have a happy marriage. Fr. Kirill blessed them.