WISE ELDER AMBROSE GAVE PROPHETIC ADVICE
[Above: Shamordino. Kazanskaya Amvrosievskaya Pustyn (Monastery) founded by Ambrose of Optina, where also he died. lj-user homaaxel / [CC 3.0] Wikimedia File:Shamordino-01.jpg]
WHEN ALEKSANDR GRENKOV was twenty-three, he became deathly ill. He was nearing graduation from Tambov Theological Seminary (about 150 miles southeast of Moscow). He promised God he would become a monk if he recovered.
When he did recover, he became a teacher, but his vow gave him no peace. In 1839, he met an elder who recommended he enter Optina Monastery. Still he wavered. Unable to bear his conscience any longer, he rose early one morning, afraid family and friends would try to dissuade him, and headed for Optina. Three years later, his training complete, the monastery accepted him as a monk. He took the name Ambrose after the famous fourth-century bishop of Milan. In 1845, traveling to be ordained as a hieromonk (priest), he caught cold and was so weakened he could do little for several years except meditate. He concluded, “God does not expect physical deeds from a sick person, but only patience with humility and gratefulness.”
Recovering from this latest illness, he served at the altar and translated writings of Greek fathers. His spiritual growth was such that Optina chose him as its head Starets (elder) in 1860.
He became famous for his spiritual counsel, often given from bed when he was sick or exhausted. Perhaps he had himself in mind when he wrote, “Sometimes, suffering is sent to an innocent person, so that he, as with the example of Christ, suffers for others.” Multitudes who consulted him found him full of compassion. He also answered tens of thousands of letters.
He recommended turning to God and hating sin with all one’s strength. The lives of many visitors changed after conversations with him. He seemed to have prophetic foresight. A young businessman reported that Ambrose kept him three days beyond the time he was supposed to meet some clients. He became bitter, fearing he would lose the much-needed business. Finally, the Starets sent him away with a blessing and urged him to remember to give thanks later. As it turned out, his clients were also three days late. But that was not the whole story. Years later an employee confessed he had lain in wait to kill the young man for a large sum of money he had been carrying but had been thwarted by his delayed appearance.
A grief-stricken Dostoevsky visited Ambrose in 1878. The novelist had recently lost his beloved son, Alyosha, and asked how he could comfort the boy's mother. Dostoevsky put Ambrose’s counsel into the mouth of Father Zossima in the chapter “Peasant Women Who Have Faith” in The Brothers Karamazov.
“It is Rachel of old,” said the elder, “weeping for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to remember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks down from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin. And I shall pray for the peace of your child’s soul.”
A young man asked what use it was to strive to overcome social ills when the Bible teaches that at Christ’s return terrible wickedness will prevail. Ambrose replied, “Evil has already been vanquished, vanquished not by the efforts and strength of human beings but by the Lord and Savior Himself, Son of God, Jesus Christ.”
In the last decade of his life, Ambrose founded Shamordino Convent and arranged for poor and sick women to become nuns. After its abbess died, Ambrose went to put the convent’s affairs in order. He was struck down by such severe illness he was never able to leave. He died sixteen months later on this day 10 October 1891. The Russian Orthodox Church regards him as a saint.
—Dan Graves
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For more on Russian Christianity, see Christian History #18, The Millennium of “Russian” Christianity
and Christian History #146, Christ and Culture in Russia
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