October: Day 14: Teaching 3: Venerable Nicholas Sviatosha

October: Day 14: Teaching 3:*
Venerable Nicholas Sviatosha
 
(Without Humility or Spiritual Poverty There Is No Salvation)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Venerable One, now glorified, Nicholas Sviatosha, Prince of Chernigov, was the son of David and the grandson of Sviatoslav. He thought how deceptive everything is in this vain life, and that everything earthly flows by, passes by, but future blessings are imperishable and eternal, and the kingdom of heaven, prepared by God for those who love Him, is endless. And, leaving the princedom, and honor, and glory, and power, and counting all this as nothing, he came to the Kiev Caves Monastery and became a monk. This was in the year 1106. He spent three years in the kitchen, working for the brethren; with his own hands he chopped wood for cooking, often even carrying it from the shore on his shoulders, and with great difficulty his brothers, Izyaslav and Vsevolod, kept him from such a thing. However, this true novice asked and prayed that he might work for at least another year in the kitchen for the brethren; after that, they assigned him to the monastery gates, since he was skilled in everything. And he stayed there for three years, never leaving anywhere except the church. From there he was ordered to go and serve at the refectory. Finally, by the will of the abbot and all the brethren, he was forced to have his own cell, which he built himself. And to this day this cell is called Sviatosha, as is the vegetable garden, which he dug with his own hands. Blessed Prince Sviatosha was never idle: he always had needlework in his hands, which he used to earn money for his clothes. On his lips was constantly the Jesus Prayer: "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" He always ate the monastery food, and what his brother princes and boyars brought him, he distributed to the poor and the strangers. Thus, the Saint spent more than thirty years in labor and deprivation, without leaving the monastery. When he died, almost all the inhabitants of Kiev flocked to the Kiev Caves Monastery to pay their last respects to the Saint. For the deep humility of the holy prince, the Lord endowed him with the gift of miracles: even the clothes left behind by him exuded healing. Thus, when the brother of the blessed one, Prince Izyaslav, became seriously ill, they put the hair shirt of the Venerable Nicholas on him, and the sick man immediately recovered. There were many other miraculous signs from the relics of the blessed one, which to this day rest in the Kiev Caves.

II. a) Blessed Prince Sviatosha, my brethren, chose a great feat for himself, deciding for the sake of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven to self-willed poverty and humiliation! His high position promised him many earthly blessings and comforts, which we so often chase after, but he disdained all this in order to acquire higher and invaluable blessings. Several times his brothers and acquaintances tried to turn the blessed one away from the path he had chosen - humiliation and severe exploits - but it was difficult to shake the firmness of Sviatosha's soul. The best example of the convictions of the Venerable Nicholas is his conversation with a doctor, which has survived to us.

Even during his reign, Sviatosha had a very skilled physician named Peter. This physician came with him to the monastery, but seeing his voluntary poverty in the kitchen and at the gate, parted with him and began to live in Kiev, practicing medicine. He often came to the blessed one and, seeing him in much suffering and immeasurable fasting, admonished him, saying: “Prince! You should take care of your health and not ruin your flesh so much with immeasurable labor and abstinence: you will someday become so exhausted that you will not be able to bear the burden that lies upon you, which you were pleased to take upon yourself, for the Lord’s sake. God does not want fasting or unbearable labor, but only a pure and contrite heart; but you are not accustomed to such need as you now endure; and your pious brothers, Vsevolod and Izyaslav, are greatly reproached by your poverty. How can you go from such glory and honor to the last wretchedness, to the point of exhausting your body with such food! I marvel at your stomach, how it endures! It used to weigh you down with sweet food, and now you take harsh herbs and dry bread. Beware, prince, lest you die prematurely ... And what prince did as you did? Or which of the boyars did this or even had the desire to follow this path? ... If you do not listen to me, then you will accept death before your time." So, he often spoke to him, sitting with him in the kitchen or at the gate. The blessed one answered him: "Brother Peter! I have thought much and decided not to spare my flesh, lest a struggle arise within me again: let it be humbled under the yoke of much labor ... The present temporary sufferings are worth nothing in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us (Rom. 8:18). I thank the Lord that He has freed me from slavery to the world... Let my brothers look to themselves: each must bear his own burden. I have left everything for Christ's sake: wife and children, house and power, brothers and friends, slaves and villages, so that I might thereby become an heir of eternal life. I became poor for Christ's sake, so that I might gain Him. And when you heal others, do you not command to abstain from food? But for me, to die for Christ is gain, and to sit on dung, like Job, is a kingdom. If the princes have not done this before me, then let me appear as their leader: perhaps one of them will be jealous of me and follow in my footsteps. As for the rest, you and those who taught you have no concern."

These words of the blessed prince contain all the greatness of his humble soul. “Do you want to be great? Be less than everyone else,” says Saint Ephraim the Syrian. “The best measure of humility is to consider yourself the worst of all creatures,” teaches Saint Dimitri of Rostov.

b) How far from this high example of humility we sinners are! How many vices nest in our hearts, and yet we do not like to humiliate ourselves before others! As soon as someone is richer and more famous, he sometimes boasts in front of a poor, ignoble person, as if completely forgetting that wealth, power, nobility are gifts of God, they are not acquired by us, but are given by the Lord, for the benefit of us and our neighbors. Try to insult us - we are ready to drag such a person through the mud, glad to repay tenfold. And yet, we are disciples, followers of the Savior, meek, humble, loving. After all, He, the Merciful One, says to us: "Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart!"

Remember, Christians, that the Lord resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble, that without humility there is no salvation.

c) Know, brethren, that there is no virtue better or more pleasing to God than humility, or spiritual poverty. Humility makes a person like the Lord Himself, Who says: “Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). The Savior promises the humble or poor in spirit the first reward: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Humility,” teaches Saint John Climacus, “is the door to the kingdom of heaven.” Humility, says another Church Father, “is the fullness of all virtues.” Where there is humility, there is love: only a humble heart is capable of loving in a Christian way, therefore humility is the mother not only of all virtues, but also of love itself.

III. May God, through the prayers of our Venerable Father Nicholas Sviatosha, once a glorious Russian prince, and then a humble monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra, remove from our hearts the spirit of pride and self-exaltation and grant us the saving spirit of humility and self-condemnation.

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

* In the original text, this is listed under October 13th as Teaching 2, but since the feast these days is October 14th, the dates have been switched by the translator.