Dear Matushka M.!
God’s blessing to you. Well, the time has come for us to live not as we want, but as God commands. This is God’s blessing for us. Just think, dear Matushka, about how just a half-step is left of our earthly trek, and now we are nearing the end. God’s mercy will cover our infirmities. The One Whom you served and loved all your life will receive you into eternal joy and rest. So forgive and have pity on the one who is attacking you, for she knows not what she does. The Lord is infinite Love, and only the loving can be joined to Him.
Pray for the past and present
Dear Matushka!
I will say only one word to you — pray. Pray, Matushka, pray for the past, and for the present, while the future is in God’s hands.
That you have come to an awareness of the precipice yawning under your feet is already God’s mercy. So thank the Lord for His mercy and pray, without forgetting from what ruination the Lord has called you, and upon what path He has placed you. May the Lord give you strength! Read the Canon of Repentance for forty days, and afterwards, receive Unction. Let this be the end of it all. Give yourself over into God’s hands—your past and your future.
Experience is the most important thing
Dear L.!
I received your letter and pray for you. Get medical treatment, my child, and gather your strength; after the hospital you can decide everything with your spiritual father. You need to endure much in order to learn to live according to God’s will. Your inner state is good — everything for God and for God’s sake. So, get treatment, rest, and then write Matushka Abbess a letter, asking her blessing for you. Do not worry about anything; not everyone in the world is perishing, and not all in the monasteries are saving themselves. We will pray and save ourselves.
Do not lose contact with your batiushka. You have lived through much, received much experience, and this is the most important thing for a monastic. Our monastery’s elder used to say of himself, “I am not learned, but I am crushed.”[1] The Lord builds the people of God out of such crushed ones.
May the Lord be with you!
[1] In Russian this rhymes: “Ya ne uchony, ya tolchony” [trans.].
