{"id":3240,"date":"2023-09-14T03:28:12","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T09:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2023-09-14T03:29:50","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T09:29:50","slug":"my-father-saw-heaven-and-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/?p=3240","title":{"rendered":"My Father Saw Heaven and hell"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For a child, there\u2019s no such thing as bad parents, and for parents\u2014bad children. Our father and mother had nine of us, but the Lord took one of us away from this life during infancy. We had a Christian upbringing and had a very religious mother and grandmother on my mother\u2019s side. However, our father was a Protestant. Although we were born in such a family, all of us were baptized in the Orthodox Church eight days after our birth. Our father never forbade us to go to church, although he himself only prayed the \u201cOur Father\u201d and never made the sign of the cross. He was strict in our upbringing and always said, \u201cOne that\u2019s been caned is worth two that haven\u2019t\u201d. We would also remember the following words that he used to say: \u201cI\u2019d rather endure pain once than be ashamed of my children for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was about sixteen or seventeen years old and was in high school, then, out of interest, I visited some Protestant congregations a few times. I wanted to understand their perception of the faith, what kind of spiritual state they were in, and what they do during their so-called services. But there I saw the absurdity and emptiness of these people. Truly: This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me (Mt. 15:8). If a person pulls out the bricks holding together his house, it will surely fall. The same happens when people abolish the dogmas of the Church, the structure of the services, the Holy Tradition of the Church and the Apostles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In 1985, when I was a student at the Moscow Theological Academy, I asked my father to disown me. My father looked at me with pity and said, \u201cYou\u2019re a foolish person. I really wanted children, but the Lord wouldn\u2019t give me any\u2014your mother was sick at that time. But I prayed and asked, and the Lord gave me you. How can I disown you? And the rest of you too? You\u2019re my flesh and blood, my life and my joy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said these things because I really wanted my father to get baptized. I didn\u2019t have the right to pray for him in the altar or commemorate him during Liturgy, and that was very painful for me. I loved my father with all my heart, as he did me. Dad always helped mom, never offended us, and never punished us without good cause. When we were little, he would win us over with candy and cookies, took us sledding, played hide and seek, and went skiing with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it shortly, back then, in 1985, we talked on the Nativity of Christ, and, having achieved nothing again, I was heading back to my \u201calma mater\u201d, Trinity Sergius Lavra, where my spiritual birth would begin. Two days after the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, I received a telegram inviting me to have a conversation over the phone with my parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat joy!\u201d said my mother. \u201cOn the eve of the Presentation your father was baptized. All of the children and grandchildren were there with lighted candles. He arranged everything with the priest himself, chose who his godparents would be, got ready, and it happened\u2014it\u2019s a miracle\u201d. I think that first and foremost this was a miracle for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then on the next day my father went to church for the feast to participate in the Eucharist. However, he just couldn\u2019t understand: how can one receive the Body and Blood of Christ? This seems to have disquieted his soul a little bit. Something like this can happen with one whose heart the Lord has not yet touched. After \u201cthe Holy Gifts are for the Holy\u201d was chanted, my father started coming up to the Chalice with the other people. And lo, what a wondrous miracle! The Lord works out the salvation of people in different ways. Instead of seeing bread in the spoon, my father saw the Risen Christ standing and looking at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father later on told us: \u201cI wasn\u2019t just afraid\u2014I didn\u2019t even know if I was standing on the ground, or if it had disappeared from under my feet. And a thought scorched my mind: \u2018How can I receive Him inside myself?!\u2019 So I stood frozen for about a minute, but the people behind me started nudging me, saying: \u2018Lebed (they were used to calling us by our surname in the village), go on!\u2019 And at that point the Risen Christ had changed back into the form of a piece of bread, and I received Communion\u201d. The priest would later recall: \u201cI saw that in an instant he became covered with sweat, which was pouring off of him like raindrops, and I couldn\u2019t understand what had happened\u201d. When my father walked away from the chalice and went to partake of the antidoron and wine, he again saw the small radiant figure of the Risen Christ. This was how the Lord had strengthened him and dispelled his doubts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t say that my father was very diligent in going to church\u2014he didn\u2019t attend every Sunday service, but he always did attend services on the twelve Great Feast days, and later on he kept the fasts together with my mother. After this the question of completing the third sacrament arose\u2014the sacrament of Holy Matrimony (marriage). But the enemy of the human race kept diverting him away from the truth, and when I would talk about the wedding, my father would either say that he doesn\u2019t have dress shoes, or a shirt, or a suit. At one point I went to the store and bought everything that was needed, carried it home, and said: \u201cHere\u2019s everything you need for the wedding\u201d. And it was as if the devil had taken precautions after perceiving my father\u2019s good intention and my perseverance! My father got into a quarrel with my mother and stopped talking with her right before the day he planned to visit me in Novovolynsk in 1988 on the eve of his name day. But my sisters Natasha, Nina and Valya started telling them that they have to go: \u201cBatushka is waiting\u201d. And so in the morning they left for Lutsk, still not having reconciled with each other; but after getting on the bus from Lutsk to Novovolynsk, my father started saying: \u201cDo you want your wish to be fulfilled? It will be, because I gave a promise to God and batushka\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father and mother had arrived, and I completed the Sacrament of Matrimony for my parents\u2014Dmitry and Nadezhda; and also for the parents of Fr. Victor\u2014Alexei and Sophia, with whom I had lived for some time. My father was fifty-five years old at the time and my mother was fifty-three. The Sacrament was fulfilled in a very festive manner; it was a great joy for me, because I had wedded them myself. The choir sang beautifully, and our relatives were there. After the wedding we gathered together and had a modest celebration. And afterwards with the help of God they continued living together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years passed, the children grew up and went away, and my parents were alone again. One morning my father woke up and told my mother about a dream he had. He saw all of our loved ones who had passed away, and they were all sitting at a table in our garden and asking him for a drink of cognac. It\u2019s worth mentioning that my father helped many people out. Our parents were looking after two women, and also after an elderly family\u2014our neighbors old man Sidor and his wife Maria, whose daughter had refused to support them\u2014and my father would bring them food. Sidor had taught me a lot about the historical understanding of the Holy Scriptures, and, thanks to his knowledge, when I entered seminary, I didn\u2019t have to open up any books on this topic for two years, because I already knew all of the material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, after that dream (though I don\u2019t believe in dreams), my father said to my mother, \u201cNadya, my time has come; I\u2019m going to die soon\u201d. But she didn\u2019t take his words seriously: \u201cWhat are you going on about again?! Stop cluttering up your mind with that\u201d. But he remained firm and said: \u201cYou\u2019ll see\u201d. This was in September. Before father would sometimes say that if he were to get cancer, then might kill himself, because he was afraid of suffering and didn\u2019t want to burden anyone. He was never sick and was so strong that he could lift more than 100 kilograms using his teeth. But I prayed to the Lord that if He were to send such a spiritual trial, that He would not allow anything to happen that would not be in accordance with His will, even if it meant that my father would have to pay with his arms and legs for it. And the Lord heard my prayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father had lung cancer, which he had since 1972, and everyone knew about it. But the disease was sort of \u201clocked up\u201d and was not spreading. But then, having received a rib fracture that punctured his lungs to a certain depth, even though they healed afterwards, the injury caused the cancer to progress. He underwent an MRI scan in Lutsk which discovered two brain tumors that had already metastasized. Then, when Alexander Yurievich Usenko, the professor and director of the Shalimov Institute, who, when it came to diseases, was the savior of me and my family, did another MRI scan, the number of metastatic tumors shown was now twenty-two. My father and I decided not to have the surgery done. He said: \u201cMy time has come\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll never forget this one time back in 2000, when we were struggling for our newly built Dormition cathedral. My father couldn\u2019t walk at that time, but moved around by hopping and leaning on his hands. Having reached the car this way, he sat down in the front seat, and we drove up to the church. I can\u2019t remember this without crying. I asked him: \u201cDad, do you need help?\u201d But he didn\u2019t let me help him, and said: \u201cNo, son, I\u2019m alright\u201d. He entered the church by crawling up the steps of the side-chapel of St. Stephan the Protomartyr and got up close to the central altar of the Dormition cathedral and prayed for a long time. I don\u2019t know what he was praying for, but afterwards he turned to me and said, \u201cSon, if there be something you have to die for, then let it be this church. I give you my blessing as your father, even though you\u2019re a bishop\u201d. He would always speak to me in a formal manner and would kiss my hand, but this time he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning we did as my mother had requested and left for home a bit early, and along the entire way there my father sang, \u201cOh soon, soon, I shall not be; far away the train will take me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the next day came, my father couldn\u2019t get up anymore. He practically did not take any painkillers, except during his last few days, although it seemed like he was experiencing much pain. He received Communion every day. May God grant me the same feeling of repentance and humility that he had then. When people would come and say: \u201cMitya, you\u2019ll get better!\u201d he would answer: \u201cYesterday I was drooling on my chest, but now\u2014on my beard; and you\u2019re saying I\u2019ll get better? What are you troubling me for?! I\u2019m going to live eternally, I won\u2019t die. But there comes a time for all of us when we have to leave this life\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then something extraordinary happened. I had come home early from Jerusalem then, and my father was even angry at my mother because of that and said, \u201cWhy did you call Vladyka over? It\u2019s not time yet!\u201d He seemed to be sleeping, but then he started yelling so loudly that it was as if the Last Judgment had started! My blood ran cold\u2014he was lying there and shouting in a way that\u2019s impossible to put into words! I began reading the Canon for the Departure of the Soul and prayed to the Mother of God. About twenty minutes later my father came to his senses. He couldn\u2019t make the sign of the cross over himself, but nervously uttered: \u201cSon! Vladyka! Thank you for taking me back!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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A fresco by the entrance of the Near Caves in the Kiev Caves Lavra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I leaned over him and asked: \u201cWhat happened?\u201d He looked at me with eyes full of inexpressible fear. \u201cI was in hell! If only you\u2019d have seen what it\u2019s like there! Everything depicted on the wall at the entrance of the Near Caves is real! (A fresco by the entrance of the Near Caves in the Kiev Caves Lavra depicts the twenty Toll Houses that the soul passes through after death.\u2014Ed.) It\u2019s all true! I went through everything. There was only one Toll House that I wasn\u2019t taken through\u2014the one where the unwedded are taken, because I was married.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to note that those twenty minutes lasted an eternity for the suffering one. Having come to his senses a little, he told me that for breaking the fast on Wednesdays and Fridays our adversaries (i.e. the demons.\u2014Ed.) forced him to eat disgusting worms. For using foul language he was terribly smacked on the mouth. It\u2019s impossible to put into words the horror and suffering that the soul undergoes there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t even know what to think about what I had heard. I mean, it was amazing. On the second day my father lay motionless again, as if he were asleep, but this time he had a pleasant appearance, a rosy face, and was smiling. So together with my friend Fr. Anatoly we started reading the Canon for the Departure of the Soul again. My father came to his senses in half an hour, and said: \u201cSon, why did you take me back? Today I was in Heaven. The Lord showed me everything that I was allowed to see. I can\u2019t say I saw too many familiar people there, but there were some. If only you knew what joy and blessedness is there! I didn\u2019t want to leave, but I heard you praying and reading, and was let go\u201d. This all happened three times: one time he was in hell (perhaps for his past in which he was a Protestant) and two times in Heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the fifth of November I got ready to go to Kiev where His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir was waiting for me. I had to consecrate the crosses on the dome of a church which was located at the birth place of Leonid Danilovich Kuchma, who was the president of the country at that time. I took my father by his hand and said: \u201cDad, I\u2019ll come on the eighth to greet you on your name day, and then we\u2019ll spend more time together, but right now I have to go\u2014I got a call from our Primate\u201d. (I thank God that I was able to stand at the feet of His Beatitude, for he was a holy person who opened the world up to me in a different perspective and had influenced my view of the world.) My father answered: \u201cDon\u2019t rush yourself, son; we\u2019ll be having my funeral on that day. Or, at best, I\u2019ll die on that day.\u201d And I replied, \u201cWait for me to return.\u201d He nodded: \u201cI will, but we won\u2019t be able to talk then.\u201d I asked him to forgive me and kissed him, as was appropriate in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning on November 7 together with His Beatitude we consecrated the crosses on the church of the Great Martyr Paraskeva in Chaikino village, where Kuchma was born. At ten minutes to ten o\u2019clock the Litany for the Departed was being served. There are no coincidences in life, but only the Providence of God; and as the parents of Leonid Kuchma were being commemorated, at that moment I began commemorating the newly-reposed Dmitry. Such a thing has happened to me twice in my life. In 1986, when metropolitan Anthony had died, we were serving a Litany for the Reposed in the evening, during which I commemorated the newly-reposed Alexandra; however, I didn\u2019t know who that was, and thought: who could have died? Then after that I came to my cell and received a telegram saying that my grandmother Alexandra had died. And now the same thing had happened with Dmitry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began feeling a bit sunken-hearted. We came and took a seat at the table, and Leonid Danilovich asked to sing something relevant about his mother from one of His Beatitude\u2019s poems. But I couldn\u2019t sing anything\u2014my throat had become stiff, and I was thinking: \u201cWho is that Dmitry? Who did I commemorate? My father is still alive\u201d. And His Beatitude says to me, \u201cVladyka, you\u2019re not yourself today.\u201d I agreed. \u201cI myself don\u2019t understand why,\u201d I said. \u201cWell, don\u2019t pay attention to it\u201d. But then, ten minutes later, the president\u2019s bodyguard came in and said: \u201cLeonid Danilovich, Vladyka Paul is being asked to come to the phone\u201d. My heart automatically skipped a beat! I picked up the phone and could hear shouting and weeping, \u201cVladyka, dad is gone! He died twenty minutes ago.\u201d So, that\u2019s how things happened. He received Communion in the morning on Monday, fell asleep, and didn\u2019t wake up afterwards. Only when he was about to die did he open his eyes, look around at everyone, and then he smiled, closed his eyes, sighed, and he was gone. That\u2019s the short story of the blessed repose of my father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember when I went to receive the blessing to become a monk, my mother strictly objected and said: \u201cNever! Over my dead body!\u201d But my wise father said: \u201cThis is what I\u2019ll say to you: Don\u2019t disgrace what it is that you\u2019re striving for, so that I won\u2019t Have to be ashamed of you.\u201d I remembered these words for the rest of my life. My father didn\u2019t talk a lot, but if you deserved to be punished, you\u2019d get it from him. He had a caring attitude towards everyone; he would never pass by a single beggar. Sometimes someone would come to us and my mother would hold something back, like some women might sometimes do, and then he\u2019d rebuke her and say: \u201cDo you think you can lead a double life? Why didn\u2019t you share? Other people are needier than we are!\u201d My mother is also a kind-hearted person, but my father\u2019s kindness and wisdom was always a higher example for all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my father was gone, I immediately told Fr. Vasily to ask my friends to pray for my newly-reposed parent. Matushka Stephania read the entire Psalter during the night, praying for the repose of his soul. But having become tired after service, I laid down a bit to rest and had a dream in which I saw an extraordinary white house. And my father was there and was joyous, and said: \u201cThey built a house for me. Do you see how beautiful it is? And I received seventy-two gifts for my name day. I\u2019m so thankful to you. This is such a wonderful day for me!\u201d I woke up and told everyone about the dream. Matushka Stefania proposed: \u201cPerhaps it\u2019s because I read the entire Psalter?\u201d But when I came home, Fr. Vasily met me and said: \u201cVladyka, I ordered commemorations at seventy-two Divine Liturgies and seventy-two Panikhidas for November 8\u201d. Seventy-two! Now there\u2019s proof for you of how powerful and grace-bearing the Orthodox Liturgy is, and also that our reposed loved ones are ever close to us. The funeral was held on the eighth of November, on the Feast Day of the Holy Great Martyr Demetrios of Thessaloniki, my father\u2019s patron saint, just as he said it would be before he had departed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was very kind, and his funeral was attended by a large number of people, about 700 in total. Four bishops took part in the service. What was amazing was that when the coffin was placed on the wagon, the horses refused to go, they wouldn\u2019t move off of the yard, so we waited for the car to come. At nighttime a snowstorm broke out, but in the morning everything was calm and the sun was shining. After we had buried my father, everyone came over for the memorial lunch. The people ate and sat for forty minutes. Then, suddenly, lightning struck and rain came pouring down; everything was soaked within three minutes, and everyone ran to their homes. And that\u2019s it. Explain it all however you want. The \u201cland of the living\u201d is ever near us, and our souls sometimes come into close proximity with it even while we\u2019re still living here in this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following story, which happened with old man Sidor, whom I\u2019ve already mentioned, can also serve as an example of this. Back when I was still studying at a trade and economics college, we had agreed with him once that if I die before he does, then I\u2019ll visit him in a dream; but if he dies first, then he\u2019ll come to me in a dream and tell me how it all happened. Time went on and I had forgotten about what was said and didn\u2019t know anything about the old man. Then, one time in the winter, the snow had covered everything up so much that I couldn\u2019t come home for the weekend. I came the next Saturday and asked my mom about old man Sidor, but she replied, \u201cIt\u2019s been a week since he died\u201d. And I had a dream Tuesday night, on the eve of Wednesday. \u201cOn that day your father went to bring him some food\u201d, mother continued as she sat down on a chair. And in my dream Sidor had also told me me: \u201cWe talked with each other, and I said to him: if I die, don\u2019t wash me. And your father left. I sat for a little while longer and was mending a pair of mittens. When I started feeling sick, I took seventeen rubles and sixty-two kopeks out of my pocket, put them on the windowsill and opened the door. As soon as I lay down, I died. And so that you know that this is the truth, I\u2019ll tell you that on such and such a day a girl from our village will die (and he called her by her name)\u201d. My mother and I talked about what had happened, and I left for college again. After I came the next time and asked my mother about that girl, she said: \u201cShe died\u201d. So, that\u2019s another thing that happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I read about our elders in books, I read about their blessed repose and have the opportunity, thanks be to God, the Mother of God, and the saints, to experience the phenomenon of the death of our brethren. Here\u2019s an example that happened without my intention. We were talking with Fr. Makary, the archimandrite of the Lavra, two days before his death, and I said to him: \u201cYou\u2019re going to go soon\u201d. And in two days he died. I remember also how I had talked with Fr. Aleksy. He was an old monk of holy life who not long before his repose had heard beautiful voices singing the Cherubic hymn, and he asked me to pray for him. During the course of our conversation we began talking about death, and he said: \u201cThere is no death, Vladyka! There is eternal life\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such people, who in this life had a deep understanding of the spiritual life, give us also an example of a blessed repose. God glorifies those who labor in His name in due time, but also gives us the chance to reflect on our own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A written account by Valentina Serikova
Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl
Translated by Feodor Nemets
Pravoslavie.ru<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a child, there\u2019s no such thing as bad parents, and for parents\u2014bad children. Our father and mother had nine of us, but the Lord took one of us away from this life during infancy. We had a Christian upbringing and had a very religious mother and grandmother on my mother\u2019s side. However, our father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encyclicals"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3245,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions\/3245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svetisimeon.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}