2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Outstanding spiritual writer and thinker Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus is known as the author of essays on the followers of the faith and Orthodox shrines. Thanks to his selfless service to God, we now have the historical truth about the past spiritual life of Russia.
Biography
Nilus Sergey Aleksandrovich (1962-25-08-1929-01-14) was born in Moscow into a family of landowners. Father, Alexander Petrovich, is a large Oryol landowner, titular adviser. Mother, Natalya Dmitrievna, comes from a noble family of princes Skuratovs. Sergey Aleksandrovich studied in Moscow, in the first and third progymnasiums.
In 1882 he entered Moscow University. Having received a law degree in 1886, he goes to serve in the Erivan District Court. Two years later, he returns to the estate in the Oryol region, where he runs his own household. Once, after confession, he had the idea to devote his life to spiritual creativity.
Conversion
During the youth of Sergei Nilus, alienation from the church grew in society. His family also did not manage to escape the grippingrevolutionary spirit. Rarely in what noble house then the ideas of freedom of speech, thought and action were not discussed. Sergey Nilus grew up in estrangement from the church. Thanks to his nanny and mother, the spark of faith did not go out in his soul.
Nanny, a true Christian, talked about the mercy and love of God. Mother, an infinitely kind and sympathetic person, helped her neighbors with modesty, which is characteristic only of Christians. However, he rarely went to church and did not know prayers. In those days, he was only Orthodox by name and testimony.
The final conversion to Orthodoxy took place at the feet of John of Kronstadt, where Nilus, exhausted by illness, arrived. Sergei Nilus sincerely repented. Falling down at the comforter's feet, he opened his soul and repented of everything that lay like a stone on his heart. Nilus writes that for the first time then he realized the sweetness of repentance.
I realized not with my mind, but with my whole being that God sent him forgiveness. His faith, after a heartfelt confession, took on a bright flame, his soul was filled with sacred awe, and he realized himself as a true believer. From that moment on, Nilus embarked on the path of spiritual writing.
Sarov desert
In 1900 Sergei Nilus visits the Sarov Desert. He was sure that he would be cured of the old diseases that tormented him unbearably. The operation made ten years ago did not help either. In Sarov, he visited the cell of Father Seraphim and the spring, which was given the healing power of the saint. Nilus expected healing from him.
A visit to the Sarov desert really brought him relief. But in the soul of SergeiTo Alexandrovich this miracle seemed too obvious. There was doubt in my heart. In 1901, after a cold, his illness resumed with such force that "the soul parted from the body."
He saw God's punishment in this. Because he finished the manuscript "The Great in the Small", but keeps it for more than a year. Giving no room for doubt, he decided to submit the manuscript for publication, as Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus himself writes. Quotes from this book can give living reinforcements to those who are weakened in faith, comfort, fill with hope and bring many benefits for salvation.
The book is filled with life philosophy and practical wisdom. Nilus Sergei Alexandrovich described his difficult path in the formation and strengthening of faith in it. Whose biography developed in such a way that true faith and the invisible help of the Lord helped him on this difficult path.
The book contains not just dry facts, but the emotional experiences of the author. He describes in great detail his travels to Orthodox shrines. The lives of many followers of the faith became known only thanks to the book Great in Little.
Optinsky Pustyn
In 1901, Nilus twice visited the Optina Hermitage. When he was collecting materials to describe the life of Elder Ambrose, his eyes were very sore. Soon he was healed and his heart was "cleft to the holy place."
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, included in the second edition of the book Great in Little, fall into Nilus's hands. After that, the book gained great popularity.
To holy places
In 1906Sergei Nilus marries Elena Alexandrovna Ozerova, the beloved maid of honor of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Ozerova was an outstanding woman. Sensitive and receptive to everything good, she never shied away from the Orthodox faith and steadfastly held on to it.
At this time, Nilus, the author of books “before that unseen”, was erected a terrible slander by the opponents of Orthodoxy. The couple leave St. Petersburg and go wandering around the Russian hinterland. They spent several years in the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery, where the famous mentor of monasticism Ignatius Brianchaninov lived out his last days.
Then the Niluses move to the Optina Hermitage, where they spent five years. Nilus analyzes the richest archive of Optina, extracts from it evidence of wanderers and elders of the Optina Hermitage. These materials served as the basis for the creation of two books: The Power of God and On the Bank of God's River.
Persecution and persecution
In 1912, the couple went to Valdai. Here Nilus continues the theme of apocalyptic events. His first prophetic book, The Coming Antichrist Is Near, was published in 1911 and went through four editions. In 1917, the last edition was almost completely destroyed.
"There is near, at the door" - the second prophetic book written by Sergei Nilus. The biography of his persecution, arrests and persecution begins precisely with these books, the titles of which have become prophetic for the author himself.
After the revolution, life in Valdai became much more complicated - the Reds literally betrayed the townspeople to terror. Acquaintance of Nilus, PrinceZhevakhov, offers him to move to the Poltava region - to the estate of Linovitsa. It was an unsettling but tolerable life. And Nilus continues to work. After being evicted from the estate by the Bolsheviks, Nilus was severely persecuted.
They were shot for reading his books, which the author himself miraculously escaped. Nevertheless, he spent several months in prison almost every year. But Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus, despite searches and persecution, continued to write about the power of repentance, about the miracles of God. These materials became the basis of the second part of "On the Bank of God's River".
Since 1926, Nilus lives in Chernihiv, then moves to the Vladimir province, the village of Krutets, where he spent the last years of his life.
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