Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, February 8, 2016
The book will be available in electronic format on the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Kurily Diocese's official website.
The long-awaited book Drops of Love was launched at the assembly hall of the spiritual and educational center on the territory of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Cathedral of Holy Resurrection. It is a collection of the biographies of Nun Lyudmila (Pryashnikova) and Vladimir Zaporozhets who were murdered in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinck cathedral on February 9, 2014.
The book’s author, Igumen Philaret – son of Mother Lyudmila – is on the left
The book comprises letters of Nun Lyudmila to her son as well as reminiscences of the people who knew her in her lifetime, the memoirs of the February 9 events, and rare photographs from both the archives of the nun and of the Zaporozhets family.
Presenting the book, Archbishop Tikhon of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Kurily addressed the large audience with a speech:
“Each of us comes to the Lord in his or her unique way. Some come to the Church in their young days, from infancy, some come later, others come early, then leave, but with time return. Each has his or her own path to God and to Heaven.
The path of Mother Lyudmila was firm, conscious and churched. And Vladimir Zaporozhets, I would say, had a way full of sorrows.
Looking at them, we realize that these two ways seem very different, but in reality they led to the same point: to the Heavenly Kingdom. Looking at Vladimir, we understand that the way one or another person behaved in this life is not so important. But the ability to repent is far more essential. Vladimir’s genuine repentance for his life helped him look in the same direction as the nun; they began to look towards the Lord”.
According to Father Philaret (Pryashnikov), the book’s author, the book took a year and a half to write and was based on the reminiscences that people began to contribute after the tragic death of Mother Lyudmila and Vladimir. Stricken with grief, the people tried to express on paper what they had once experienced together with Nun Lyudmila and Vladimir, reminiscences of the residents of Tomari (a town in the Sakhalin region) where the nun had lived for eleven years, the recollections of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Resurrection Cathedral parishioners who were in contact with Mother Lyudmila in the icon shop and in everyday life, and memoirs of her close friends.
“Surely we plan to make a new edition of the book in the future,” Fr. Philaret relates. “Because new reminiscences will appear, some new facts from the lives of Nun Lyudmila and Vladimir will emerge. New photographs associated with the event will be added. The book will contain photographs of the graves and memorial exposition which has opened this morning in the lower church of the Resurrection Cathedral”.
