The Black-and-White
Sisters
By Ekaterina Stepanova
Jun 26, 2010, 10:00
Translated by Natalia
Tsyguleva
Edited by Hierodeacon Samuel (Nedelsky)
The Community of St. Elizabeth
in Minsk spiritually ministers to the patients of Europe’s largest
hospital for the insane, rehabilitates alcoholics in its metochion,
and at the same time earns money by its own independent activity. Our
report from Minsk is about this unique Sisterhood, where black and white
sisters of charity , nuns and the laywomen , work.
A Sermon with a Donation Box
Any middle-aged resident of Moscow, who
has visited the capital of Belarus, will say that modern Minsk is the
Moscow of his childhood. The clean avenues, friendly people, and shops
with signs – the grocery, the haberdashery. The difference from Soviet
Moscow is only that the golden crosses of the Orthodox churches twinkle
among the buildings on Stalin’s times. And the first person who a
visitor meets at the Minsk station is an Orthodox Sister of Charity.
She stands in a white headscarf with an embroidered golden cross, a
skarbonka (donation box) in her hands, a small board under her feet
– so as not to freeze on the cold asphalt. The sister collects money
for the convent and acts of mercy, accepting money. There are ten “posts”
like this in the city, and there are also sixty church shops where the
sisters sell monastic goods.
“Of course, the Sisters of Charity
are those who first of all who work in the hospitals,” the senior
sister, Zinaida Lobosova, tells. “But, after all, we should support
them somehow. That is why we also equate with the sisters those who,
for the common cause, stand with donation boxes in the street. By the
way, they do not just accept money and gifts, they also talk to the
people, preach – reminding those who pass by about the Church, answer
questions, invite them church. There are known cases when a man in despair
was going to commit suicide, but met our sister in his way, and their
conversation stopped him.”
“First of all those who approach
are those who have family concerns,” one of the sisters relates.
“A sick child in the family, a son went to prison. Families go through
difficult spells now, there are many divorces, lawsuits happen. Once
a woman came up to me – she has three sons, and she is suing them
for alimony in order to support her. Of course we pray. Standing, I
pray the Our Father for somebody, and if one is for some reason in a
shop, then one starts praying for those who serve behind the counter.”
Novinki
The Convent of Holy Elizabeth, for which
the sisters collect money, is located on the outskirts of the city,
in Novinki. This district is for the residents of Minsk like Kashchenko
is for the residents of Moscow. If during conversation you are suddenly
told to go for a drive in bus number 18, which has linked the city to
Novinki for more then half a century, it means that your sanity is being
questioned. The fact of the matter is that Europe’s largest republican
hospital for the insane is located in Novinki – 1782 beds, thirty-two
treatment sections, a drug abuse department, and a department for anorexia
nervosa among them; there is a building where very dangerous criminals,
murderers, and repeat offenders are held in custody.
Everything began with Novinki. One
of the parishioners of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Minsk
(now Nun Evpraxia), who had worked as a nurse in the hospital, started
asking a priest to visit the patients on her own initiative
– making her rounds in the wards and talking to the patients, asked
if anybody wanted to receive the Mysteries. Soon other young girls joined
her. They visited the patients, told them about God, and said their
prayers. Thus, in 1994 the Sisterhood was formed, which was named for
the Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna.
“At
the beginning we tried to nurse the sick: wash and fed them, clean the
wards,” Nun Anfisa (Ostapchuk), one of the first sisters, relates.
“But then we understood that there was no need for such work. There
was no lack of medical staff – one health-care worker for two patients.
But because of our zeal, the nurses just stopped working: ‘Since you
came, then work, well and good,’ they said and went into the smoking-room.
The Liturgy in a Hypnotarium
“Vladyka
Philaret (Vakhromeev) blessed us to celebrate the Liturgy in the hospital,”
the spiritual father of the Sisterhood, Archpriest Andrei Lemeshonok
says. “The church had not been built then, and the hypnotarium (a
room for performing of hypnosis) was the only suitable place, so we
held our first divine service there! It was the day of Exaltation of
the Cross in 1996. And at Pascha we were assigned the entrance hall
for the divine service. Just imagine, people are going to their relatives,
and we are celebrating the Liturgy, receiving the Mysteries in their
path, practically in the passage!”
The hospital administration encouraged
the beginning of the sisters and even offered to build a small hospital
chapel. By that time obedience in the hospital and prayer had become
the breath of life for some sisters, and they thought about the monastic
life.
“I
remember, we had a meeting of sisters, and Father Andrew asked those
sisters who would like to be tonsured to stand up,” one of the nuns
tells. “To my surprise more than ten women stood up! Then they were
all young student girls, and now most of them have been tonsured. And
even me sinner am a nun, though I did not confess to my wish then.”
“For
twenty years Father Nicholas Guryanov from the Zalit Island was my spiritual
father,” Father Andrew relates. “Once I came to him together with
the sisters. They were wearing white headscarves and sisters’ aprons.
When Father Nicholas saw us he said: “Look, the white nuns have come!”
That day he blessed us to establish a convent. We said to him: “Father,
but we have no money,” and he gave us a piece of money and said: “Here
is money, and people will add the rest.” Indeed, people have added
up till now. And what we are just building now – we are building a
great deal - it is all the same ‘addition.’”
In 1999 the first tonsure took place.
“At once we asked ourselves if it
was necessary for the nuns – the black sisters
– to continue serving the hospital” Nun Tavifa, the rural dean of
the convent, relates. “Father Andrew went with this question to Zalit
Island, and Father Nicholas answered him:
‘You will be saved by the prayers of the sick.’ That is why the
white and black sisters carry their obedience in the hospital together
beyond any doubts.”
“The
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna believed that nuns should not carry
out social work. We have another point of view,” Father Andrew says.
“A cell seems to be inside a human being. Shall we run away from this
world in order to win an inner connection with God? There are many such
monasteries. But I do not consider the monastic life in the cell to
be the only true way for a monk. It is possible by obedience to deal
with the outside world, work. and at the same time to grow spiritually.
“Hello,
We are Looking for Talents”
There are eighty black sisters in the
community – nuns and lay sisters living in the convent’s territory
– and there are about 300 white ones, who live in their own houses,
have families, but work in the community – in the hospital or at other
obedience. The original project of the hospital chapel grew grew into
a whole monastic complex with two wonderful churches, a belfry, a tower,
cells, and a refectory.
“We needed money for building,”
Father Andrew relates. “I went to a bank and tried to ask. But I couldn’t
do it well enough. I had to get ready to earn money with our own hands.
Thus, our workshops were created. There are more than twenty today:
an icon-painting workshop, a sewing workshop, an icon setting workshop,
a ceramics workshop, a stone workshop, a joiner’s workshop, and others.
We even have the idea of organizing home workshops for the disabled.
Do you remember there was a program
‘Hello, we are looking for talents’? So we are also looking for
people capable of laboring and to offer them worthy creative work!”
What is not produced here! Even movies
are shot and audio fairy tales are recorded. More than 500 people labour
in the workshops. Some of them are former patients of the RCHI who can
hardly find work in the city for health reasons. All employees get a
salary quite comparable with the salaries of city enterprises. Monastic
goods are in great demand all across Belarus.
“When
the crisis began, we not only did not discharge the employees, but even
took new ones on,” tells Nun Anfisa (Ostapchuk), the senior sister
of the house of diligence, where works are located. “This summer fifteen
girls were sent to us – they had graduated from Minsk clothing college.
And now there is a record in their work-books that they were placed
in a job ‘in the monastery.’ It is a great joy for me that the city
admits us as a serious enterprise and assigns young professionals to
us, but it is also a great responsibility. Not all our employees belong
to the Church, many of those who come to the workshops meet with the
nuns for the first time. They judge the whole Church by us.”
“A
monastery is usually thought of as something quiet, closed, but our
sisters go to America, Australia – offering our goods” Father Andrew
tells. “The Churches had not been united yet, when we were making
a shrine for the Relics of St. John in San-Francisco.”
The sisters take part in exhibitions
and organize Orthodox fairs in small towns themselves. They not only
sell goods there, but also hold missionary talks, show Orthodox movies,
and give concerts (there are two wonderful, professional choirs, such
is the custom here – a white one and a black one).
To See God Through Circumstances
“We
do not want to depend on sponsors,” Father Andrew says. “Because
their intensions can change for some reason or other. What are we supposed
to do then? But selling our goods we can develop further. Now there
are five sisters in one cell. It is very difficult psychologically;
that is why we have to build more. But we need money for it. Some condemn
us, saying that a monastery should not be like that. But how do I know
what it should be like? God made it like that. Shall we argue with God?
One can not restrict God to our intelligence, our vision.
“Once
a monk from the St. Panteleimon’s Monastery on the Holy Mount Athos,
Father Kirion, came to us,” Nun Tavifa, the rural dean of the convent
tells. “He said that social service is very important for a monk,
because modern people tend to be unsociable, hardhearted, but contacts
with the help for the sick not to retreat into oneself. Generally, the
Sisterhood does not have any clear plan; life itself dictates how we
should develop. Our entity is complex, someone from the outside can
not understand it at once. But this entity is not artificial – it
just happened this way. It is important to see God through circumstances.
He sends us such conditions that enable our convent and Sisterhood to
develop.”
“God
enables us to do what we do,” Father Andrew says. “And we have to
not waste this time, because we do not know what will happen tomorrow.
I expect nothing will be easy. It is impossible to live always on a
high level. Quantity has to be transformed into quality. And quality
is possible if persecutions begin, in my opinion. When in 1987 I came
to the church, the quality of people’s faith was quite another, because
then one had to endure a great deal to be a believer.”
The Brethren
“It
used to be this way. A man from prison comes to the monastery and says
‘Feed me!’ and – we feed. Then he asks for money – we give him
some. But he will immediately spend it on drink! The idea to organize
a settlement started up,” Father Andrew relates.
In 2000, one kolkhoz donated land to
the community thirty kilometers from the convent, in Bald Mountain village.
It had not been ploughed for ten years; it was just clay and stones.
There was also a dilapidated cowshed where accommodation was arranged.
Two fragile nuns – “mothers superior of the metochion” – settled
in the attic of the cowshed.
“The
brothers’ obedience probably will always be a riddle, a miracle both
for me and for the other sisters,” Nun Thamar says, who directed the
metochion for three years. “But anything could happen here – murders,
arsons, and skirmishes between inhabitants. This is no joke – a hundred
alcoholics, drug addicts, murderers, and only two nuns to control them?
We are still scared. But nothing bad has happened, by God’s grace.”
The brothers take part in building, work
in the cowshed, in the garden, in the piggery, and assist in the kennel
of the central Asian sheepdogs. All employees are paid a small salary
for work. Though there are those who do not conceal their intention
of passing the winter at somebody else’s expense.
Recently a new cottage, a refectory,
and a church had been completed. Once a week at the Liturgy there is
Confession and Communion, and a general meeting and a talk with the
spiritual father takes place. The brothers incessantly read the Psalter
by turn. And at the end of the day, in all weathers the inhabitants
make a sacred procession around the metochion, saying the Jesus Prayer
by turn, and then ask for each others’ forgiveness, as on Forgiveness
Sunday.
An important condition of living in the
metochion is abstinence from alcohol and drugs. At first the spiritual
“therapy” was of little service: if one of the wards failed and
began drinking, then very soon the majority of inhabitants of the metochion
drank.
“Of
course, failures happen; anything may happen,” Father Andrew admits.
“One can not expect that people who spent their lives drinking or
being behind bars will suddenly reform and start creative work. They
will fall, will fail. The most terrible and painful thing for me is
when there is suspiciousness and mistrust in my heart to those who lie
again and again. But do we not do the same – come to repent, but then
fall again and again? God forgive us, so do we.”
In the Ambulatory
Every Sunday, after the moleben to the
Martyr Elizabeth, all the sisters gather for spiritual talks in the
ambulatory of the convent. The meeting lasts about three hours. Black
and white sisters, the deacons and priests – all equal to one other
- step up if they wish and tell what has happened during the week, what
they have been thinking of, ask for prayer for somebody or to pay a
visit to a sick person.
“I want to read you a parable, which
amazed me and which I have been thinking of this week,” one of the
white sisters began. “Once upon a time there was a little bird. She
wanted to become devout and decided to that end to pick her favorite
forest berries and present them to somebody. She brought them to a horse,
but the horse ate them and died. The moral of this parable is as follows:
thank God, nobody has died from my sham devoutness yet. Forgive me,
sisters!”
Outsiders are not allowed into the sisters’
meetings. The sisters share with each other their inner worries, for
which an atmosphere of trust is needed.
“At
the beginning we listened to the talks of Father Sophrony (Sakharov),”
Father Andrew relates. “Just listened, because it is very difficult
to begin at once a dialogue in which the sisters would believe one other,
confide to one another. But it is important, because we are tied up
together, we depend on one other. We have to know that we will be understood,
supported, and not laughed at. A good monastery is a family where people
love, trust, help, and feel compassion for one other. There must be
integrity in the family; there is no family without integrity. This
is how matters stand in the monastery. A stranger comes and he has to
adhere to the family. It does not happen at once. But this is probably
the way of our whole life – to see God through our neighbour and to
accept His will.”
Source:
http://www.pravmir.com/article_1017.html
