Both relics and weaknesses

With the blessing of the Pope, the relics of Nikolai the Wonderworker*, who had never left the Italian city of Bari, were brought to Russia with the blessing of the Pope. Never before in Bari have been practiced by a part of particles of relics. Now, through the hole for collecting the world, invited forensic experts with the help of modern equipment seized the left rib. Part of the relics are invested in the ark made by the masters of the Russian Orthodox Church, which will be in Moscow until July 12, after which he will go to St. Petersburg. The shrine has already bowed more than 200 thousand pilgrims. What makes people stand in line for hours in order to touch the ark, and as experts explain this, he recognized The New Times

The line begins from the building of the Ministry of Defense on the Frunze embankment - to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior from here almost 3 km. Here is a group of pilgrims from Volodarsk Nizhny Novgorod region - 49 people arrived at almost the entire parish. This is not their first pilgrimage trip: there were also at the Virgin’s belt, and when the Gifts of the Magi were brought to Moscow, Andrei readily says-a 11-year-old daughter with him, with him.

“There is simply no other opportunity to see all these things, for example, women are not allowed at the same Athos **, so they can only touch the shrines here, to the Gifts of the Magi, for example, with which Jesus Christ himself played in childhood,” says Andrei. - And Nikolai the Wonderworker is one of the great saints revered by all Christians. We do not forget our saints, our parish visited Diveevo, Valaam, and Klyuchevskaya Plain, and we went to Alexander Svirsky *** ... ”

Andrei’s daughter regularly goes to church with dad and admits that the priest in the service told who Nikolai the Wonderworker is, but she only remembered a little. “He helped people, he needs to pray so that everything would work out,” the girl hesitantly lists.

"Almost every Russian Orthodox family has an empirical experience of relations with Nicholas the Minor"

“Have you asked something from him today? - asks Tatyana walking nearby. “We all went to him with some request.” “We hope for the aid of St. Nicholas, who will ask for the fulfillment of our petitions with his prayers, - as Anna echoes her, another pilgrim from the group. - There were such cases in life - insoluble situations when I prayed on the knees of Nicholas the sainty every evening, and then in the morning I got up and went to do what I should. And I did it. ”

Bari - Moscow

Saint Nicholas (aka Nikolai the Militarian, Nikolai the Wonderworker), as you know, was born in the III century on the territory of modern Turkey, and served in the world, now Demre, who is located in Antalya. However, the millennial tradition of veneration of the saint in Rus' taught him to treat him in a similar one. Moreover, as Archpriest Maxim Khizhia from the Vladimir diocese says, "almost every Russian Orthodox family has an empirical experience of relations with Nikolai Yam." “I have been serving for 26 years and heard so many stories - just an endless stream. Probably, this can be compared with the veneration of the Poles of the Virgin, ”Hijiya continues. - In my deanery, 27 temples, and every third has a throne in the name of St. Nicholas. Now a new temple is being built in the Goose-Khrustalny, also in honor of Nikolai. Nikolai is one of the fundamental pillars of the folk faith. As for the fertile fire, people can argue, but about Nicholas the sainty, it would not even occur to anyone, this is an indisputable shrine. ”

The idea to agree on bringing the relics of Nikolai to Russia seems to him one of the most successful steps of the Moscow Patriarchate: “This is a big and important event, firstly, because for the first time a shrine of the universal scale arrived from the Roman Catholic Church. This indicates the good intentions of Catholics and will contribute to the normalization of relations between Catholics and the Orthodox. In addition, the relics of St. Nicholas are what can unite in one line of people with very different religious views - both conservatives, liberals, various political moods, right and left. So this is a big thing. ”

True, Nikolai’s relics are at least in six Moscow churches, they are in other Russian cities. Where then from such a stir about the relics from Bari? Religious scholar Sergei Filatov, head of the Encyclopedia of the Modern Religious Life of Russia, believes that the “foreignity” of those brought by relics gives them “an additional taste of a miracle; Those particles of the relics of the saint who lie nearby, in Moscow temples, are not so attractive. ”

By your faith

Ahead in line is a girl frankly hipster. To the question: "Are you the first time for the relics?" - He answers: "No, I'm just walking." Masha, in the appearance of a student, accompanies her mother. Mom is also not talkative: "No, no, I'm focusing."

Two girlfriends about 20 years old, Muscovites, to the question of whether they believe them, they say: "We are trying to be." Why go to the relics? “It is said, let your faith be for you,” one answers instructively.

Tents with pies and water, toilet boines are placed along the embankment. In the booths relatively clean, only the toilet paper ended everywhere. Along the framework, riot police, the Ministry of Emergencies, and the police are on duty, Orthodox volunteers come across in salad bibs.

Having reached almost to the very Crimean bridge, we rest against the fence. For the most part, the people are about 30–40 years old, men and women are approximately equally, there are elderly women, but men over 40 are almost not visible. A little ahead of two schoolgirls, one in the form of a cadet corps with a magnificent bow on a spit, the other in jeans and a checkered shirt, with light blond hair to the waist. They are classmates, to study for another year. A girl with a bow is going to enter a medical one, the second - to the law faculty at a military university. Is there religious lessons in the cadet corps? No, they say, but here they are exclusively of their own free will.

A woman with a stroller begins to cry. Two years old, he covered his face with his hands and sobs bitterly: "Mom, mother!" “Go ahead, you will be missed,” the voices are heard. - "Woman, you bother us!" - "How?" - “The child is crying, we are worried about you. Go aside and shake it. ”

Among the police, a move begins, and after a few minutes one of them pushes the frame and lets his mother with the child forward. Very soon, having counted everyone over their heads, they miss us. Under the Crimean bridge, the framework of metal detectors are installed, we quickly pass through them, catching up with a woman with a stroller. The boy is no longer crying. “There is no getting away from her,” someone grows.

On the Prechistenskaya embankment, the next fence, in front of which we get stuck for a long time.

Nearby, two women for 30 years old leafing through a prayer book, find an akathist to Nicholas the Wonderworker and plunge into reading. The other woman is a little over 50, with a St. George ribbon on his bag, enthusiastically reads a boulevard newspaper with a header of half a page Hitler forced his girlfriend to sleep with a black boxer? " Men talk to mobile phones - mainly about business. The reader, meanwhile, moves on to the next plot: "Elena Podkaminskaya will give birth from a builder from Samara?" (For some reason, all headlines in this newspaper with a question mark). The old woman is clearly tired in line. “There was no need to go today,” her son reproaches. “Yesterday I drove here at two or three hours, the embankment was generally empty.” “I was not torn,” the old woman makes excuses. “You were all whining, ached,” the son is not inferior.

We have been standing for more than an hour, the queue has become subsided, subsided. The next title of the boulevard sheet is finally affirmative: "You can go to the relics at least every day."

The author was returning home by the subway. On the walls of the car - advertising of the Orthodox radio "Vera": "Blessed are molesty, for they inherit the earth", "Blessed are pure in their hearts, for they will see God." A homeless person enters the car, a young guy, quite decently dressed, but skinny and smelly. He walks along the car, hanging his right leg, and broadcasts in a monotonous mechanical voice: "... a black strip began in life, plus health problems arose ..."

Not a single passenger gives alms ...

Honest the remains

Mass veneration of the relics by Christians began around the 3rd century, when crowds of pilgrims reached for the graves of martyrs for faith. However, the official status of relics was finally fixed only in 787 at the second Nicaean Cathedral, which ordered to read the remains of the saints, to erupt bishops and clergy from the dignity, rejecting the relics of the martyrs, and the laity to excommunicate for this from the church. Gradually, the veneration of the remains acquired an unprecedented scope. Moreover, Elena (250–330), the mother of the Roman emperor Konstantin the Great, and Konstantin himself at one time tried to do everything to transport as many rarities associated with the name of Christ from Jerusalem to Rome: the Cross of the Lord, and spikes from thorny crown, and much more. In addition, the ashes of the two main apostles of Christ - Peter and Paul rest in Rome. The relics, as a valuable product, were digested, stolen and falsified throughout history, which led to the appearance of three heads of John the Baptist, a piece of lace from the wedding dress of the Virgin Mary, who lived to our times, an unprecedented number of fragments of the Cross of the Lord.

By the XIII century, the Vatican built a profitable business on relics, unfolding wide agitation in favor of pilgrimage in Rome instead of Jerusalem. A certain indulgence was relied on by the Roman basilica bypassing the Roman basilica. Since the XIV century, the so -called anniversary years have included in Christian practice, when pilgrims were attracted to the complete release of sins.

Eastern Christians did not reach such organizational heights in the glorification of relics, but relics were read out. The Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, where the remains of 122 saints rest, Pochaevskaya with the miraculous icon of the Mother of God and crayfish with the relics of the Monk Job and Amphilochery, the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery with the total number of burials of almost 10 thousand were the main places for the attraction of believers. And, too, to put it mildly, they did not poor and do not poor.

At the same time, politics often intervened in the canonization process. So, for example, the alleged wife of the Vladimir and Tver Prince Mikhail Yaroslavich Anna Kashinskaya (died in 1338), which was counted by the noble in 1650 for the miraculous guards of the city of Kashin from the Lithuanians, 27 years later excluded from the list of saints. When the tomb of Anna opened the tomb of the Nikonians with the Old Believers in the very peak of the struggle of the Niconians, it turned out that her fingers were folded into biases, which was a strong argument in favor of the historical correctness of the Old Believers. The saint was “restored in rights” only in 1909, after the decree on religious, and the Old Believers were legalized.

The belt of the Virgin brought to Moscow collected more than 800 thousand pilgrims (in total in Russia - about 3 million). Then everyone wondered: where did such a break in the believer come from? Opinions were divided radically: from the conviction that a true faith returned to Rus', to accusations of paganism.

The religious scholar Sergei Filatov believes that the phenomenon of worshiping relics is a natural attribute of the folk faith: “The religious scholars have a conditional, but division into spirituality so -called folk and intelligent. The whole world of miracles, worship of holy icons, relics, strict observance of posts - these are all manifestations of folk religiosity, while for an intellectual environment the main thing is the reading of the Bible, thoughts of morality, attempts to observe Christian commandments. Nowadays, there are rarely people who are firmly at a particular position, nevertheless, these two types of religiosity differ. Some priests-intellectuals completely deny folk religiosity, believing that this is wildness, but among supporters of folk spirituality there are very educated people-it is simply a certain type of consciousness. And by such phenomena as the queue for relics, we can judge how still folk religiosity is still strong. Moreover, Nikolai Minor - quite legendary holy, reliable sources about his life have not been preserved. So, if the relics of Nikolai do not collect millions of pilgrims, this will indicate that folk religiosity is weakening. ”

* Saint Nikolai was born in 270 in the town of Patara, which was located in Likia (the region of Asia Minor), and was a Greek colony. Nikolai was an archbishop in the world, now - Demre, which is now in the province of Antalya in Turkey. Nikolai Ugodnik lived to a very old age and died in about 345–351 years - the exact date is unknown. His relics rested in the Cathedral Church in the world, and in 1087, part of the relics of the saint was stolen and taken to the Italian city of Bari, to the church of St. Stefan. A year later, the basilica was erected there in the name of St. Nicholas.

** The entire peninsula of Athos is considered one large male monastery, and according to the ancient charters, which are adhered to on Athos, women are prohibited to the male monastery.

*** Alexander Svirsky (1448–1553)-Russian Orthodox saint, who founded in the north of Russia the monastery, now known as the Alexander-Svir Monastery.

Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS, Mikhail Japaridze/TASS, screenshot video TVC