Cont'd ...
A tall and portly priest with long hair, whimsical and gentle, took the service Father Mitrophan ; and he walked to and fro, now with the people, now behind the sacred gates. A score of sisters in black veils and with black crowns on their heads sang in the choir. A sister stood at a counter by the door and sold candles. A congregation of sisters, fashion
able visitors, peasants, working-people, and beggars grouped themselves miscellaneously in the wide, open, light-filled body of the church. Of course there were no seats. It was pleasant to be there ; there was good air, a fragrance occasionally of flowers, and a sense of young women in a certain mood towards God. We sang, assented, crossed ourselves, bowed. The sixty sisters all in white prostrated themselves, and there was a billowy flood
of white linen on the floor. And the black choir sang, gently, pitifully, sweetly, exaltedly, with pale voices. It was their church, their temple. They expressed themselves there as a maid expresses herself in her private room at home. The gentle Nesterof paintings pertained to them specially. They were chosen by them.
In the midst of the service in come the convent waifs, children of the childless, two dozen little boys in green blouses, two dozen little girls in blue frocks and drab pinafores. And they stand in the midst of the church. They are so small, they might be the children of dwarfs.
Father Mitrophan comes out to deliver his sermon, and we all move up closer towards the altar rails so as to hear him. He is higher than we, and looks a shepherd with a flock about him. A gentle sermon : " You have parents in the flesh, you have also parents in the Spirit. There are earthly families, there are also spiritual families ; worldly intercourse
and heavenly intercourse. Our parents bore us and then as soon as convenient brought us to the font to give us back to God. The parents were not present at the baptism because they were only parents of the flesh, but the guardian angels were present because
they were parents of the Spirit. To-day is the day of St. Afanasief and of St. Sergey, spiritual fathers, to whom we must look for guidance and love. What do they teach us ? Why, first of all, to do things, to work. What a worker was St. Paul, for instance,
writing fourteen epistles. We mustn t be lazy ! We shan t get anything without making effort. Fast day comes ; we say it doesn t matter much, we ll eat ordinary fare. It s time to go to church ; you say to yourself, * No, no, don t need to, and you take a stool and a book of church verses and sing to your self pleasantly and comfortably. No, no, it won t
do. The Fathers of the Church didn t go lazy like that, or where should we be. . . ." And so on, in a sententious manner and sing-song tone, nodding his head and pronouncing many of his dicta in a colloquial tone of voice like an old woman saying proverbs. He had an Orthodox voice. There is such a thing in Russia, a voice and manner in which the Church and the Church service are reflected. It communicates itself to the worshipper and is often a superadded grace of personality in a man or woman, a certain Byzantinism in expression, a hold ing oneself like a figure in a fresco.
Amen ! A crossing of ourselves ; the sermon is ended. The crowd about the altar breaks up, and we spread ourselves out in the fresher spaces of the church once more, and the pale singing of the black- robed choir recommences as the conclusion of the liturgy is sung. The sixty sisters prostrate themselves together in a billowy mass once more.
Worshippers cross themselves before the altar and go out. The Communion bread is taken and the service is over. The waifs march out ; we all come out.
It is good to have been at prayers with the sisters, just as if one had spent a few hours in perfect mood in a garden. It took my mind back to a morning in an immense London church when I came in late and was taken up and put in a seat just nderneath
a picture of the Virgin. At the Virgin s feet were armfuls of lilies. I had a sense, I have it now all flowers are flowers at the feet of the Virgin.
The full text:
http://www.archive.org/details/thewayofmarthaan00grahuoftJoanna
