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PILGRIMAGE TO DIVEYEVO
For many years Fr. Seraphim and I have both felt very close to St. Seraphim, and recently, to our surprise, what seemed an unobtainable dream suddenly became a reality, and as part of our pilgrimage to Russia we were able to spend two days in Diveyevo.
The great thing about a successful pilgrimage is that it feels like the beginning of a journey, and not the end of one. Our experience of St. Seraphim and the living tradition he left behind him has left us with a fresh impetus for our spiritual lives and a desire to dig deeply into this tradition and learn from it.
Diveyevo is a large village dominated by the large recently rebuilt churches in the centre. The streets are thronged with pilgrims, the vast majority of whom are Russian; we saw only a very few foreigners there during our stay. There is a very intense feeling of a living spiritual tradition, built on memories and traditions painstakingly preserved during the long and difficult period of Soviet oppression. The role of the New Martyrs is incredibly important; some local ones are commemorated in frescoes on the walls of the refectory. It is well known that St. Seraphim predicted many of the events of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the troubles which beset Diveyevo after his death, the martyrdom of the Imperial Family and countless others, and his own canonisation. One is left with the certainty that the persecution of the church during the seventy years of Soviet rule was all part of God’s plan, and that in some mysterious way God revealed many of these events and their meaning to St. Seraphim within the context of eternity.
The focal point of the pilgrimage is to venerate the relics of St. Seraphim, miraculously preserved in a Museum of Atheism and just as miraculously found and restored to Diveyevo about fifteen years ago. Local people have kept many of his possessions, including his bast shoes, a linen shirt, his large copper cross and chain, his gloves and the mattock he used when he dug the ditch around the monastery known as the “kanavka”. All of his effects, and the icon of the Mother of God which he was praying before when he died, are there to be venerated.
We attended both a Vigil and a Liturgy in the main church, and were overwhelmed by the powerfully prayerful atmosphere, particularly at the end of each service when the nuns sang Magnifications to St. Seraphim, three of the nuns and the three “Blessed Ones” (or Holy Fools) of Diveyevo. Many of the characters one reads about in the life of St. Seraphim are buried there, such as Motovilov and Manturov, and we were introduced to some new characters, including the three most famous “Holy Fools”.
St. Seraphim had trouble with difficult people during his lifetime, and he knew that there would be difficulties ahead, and so he entrusted the spiritual direction of Diveyevo to a series of women, now known as the “Blessed Ones”. We first became aware of their presence when we visited the house of Pasha, opposite the main entrance to the monastery. Pasha was the daughter of a serf who lived in the forest, praying, for about thirty years before settling at Diveyevo at the ago of ninety. Her house is a small and simple wooden house painted bright blue, and the room in which she lived is preserved more or less as it was when she died in 1915 at the age of one hundred and twenty.
One of the first things we noticed when we entered the room was a number of old dolls scattered about on the furniture. Our guide explained that, although these dolls are not the ones which belonged to Pasha, she had similar ones which she used to play with while talking to her visitors and with which she would reveal the future in a symbolic way. On the floor near the day bed was the low bench before which St. Seraphim was kneeling when he died. You can see clearly the blackened wood from the fire which was started by his candle when he died. On the wall was a large portrait of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the guide told us that when he and the Tsarina came to Diveyevo in 1903 for the canonisation of St. Seraphim they asked to see Pasha, having heard about her great holiness and wisdom. Pasha was told that they would be coming, and she made her preparations in her own way, having a new carpet unrolled on the floor for the Imperial couple to sit on. They spent several hours there, and during that time Pasha told them of the events of 1917. When the Tsarina refused to believe her, she gave her a piece of red cloth, saying, “next year when your son is born you will believe me”. The Tsar left very shaken but very impressed with Pasha, saying that of all his subjects she was the only one to treat him as a human being and not as a Tsar. We were also shown a small wardrobe with Pasha’s dresses, including a blue one which she wore for feast days which we were allowed to touch. A mother with a severely disabled son rubbed the sleeve on her son’s face with great reverence.
A photo on the wall showed Metropolitan Seraphim Chichigoff with Pasha. He was in the army at the time, and she predicted his future priesthood by grabbing his uniformed sleeve and saying, “This is not the sleeve of a solder; this is the sleeve of a priest”. Later he compiled the Chronicles of St. Seraphim, writing down the memories of St. Seraphim from people at Diveyevo who had known him or known of him. In the 1930s, he was massacred at Butovo along with many other priests, and has now been canonised.
We were also told about several other “Holy Fools” to whom St. Seraphim had entrusted the spiritual direction of the monastery. The first, Pelagia, was the daughter of a rich merchant who was forced to marry a widower at age 18. After some years of begging to live as a nun, she was allowed to leave her family, partly because her behaviour had been so very odd. St. Seraphim guided her and told her that there would be holy women guiding the monastery. After Pasha, the third “Blessed One” was called Elena, and was also the daughter of a serf, orphaned at the age of 13. She lived in the forest, praying, and called herself “Elena Ivanovna”, saying that in a spiritual sense St. John the Baptist was her father. She took a vow never to sleep in the same place twice in a row.
We were fortunate enough to join in the procession around the “kanavka”, which takes place every evening. St. Seraphim said that the Mother of God was the real abbess of Diveyevo, and that it was she who marked out the boundaries of the monastery which he caused to be built. He himself began the task of digging the ditch and dyke and the nuns continued it. When our friend Alison first visited Diveyevo about 10 years ago, she helped to dig it out along with many other pilgrims, so that the ancient tradition of praying around the kanavka every evening could be revived. A procession of nuns and priests lead the way walking slowly along the path in total silence, each person silently praying the prayer “Virgin Mother of God rejoice…” It took about 45 minutes to walk right round the kanavka, and the sky was darkening when we reached the end. We guessed that there might have been about one thousand pilgrims walking and praying in silence.
Some of the Russian teachers who accompanied us on the pilgrimage who were not used to going to church must have also felt a strong sense of being in a foreign country. Visiting Diveyevo was in some ways like visiting a foreign country, but one which we felt at home in and familiar with. This is because it is like a bubble of Orthodoxy and Biblical tradition, in some ways outside of secular time, despite the mobile phones and cars in the streets, not having changed in essence since the time of St. Seraphim. But in other ways it is well embedded in the 21st century, with pilgrims bringing their contemporary needs and problems to lay at the feet of St. Seraphim. We came to understand at Diveyevo that the essential point of a pilgrimage is to step outside of one’s daily preoccupations and habits, and enter into a deeper experience of prayer which transcends time and place.
Ann Johnson
November, 2006
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