Sister of mercy Natalia Silantyeva has been with the sisterhood in honour of the Holy Martyr Grand Duchess Elisabeth since it began. In more than twenty-five years of service at the monastery, she has carried out multiple obediences: in the sewing room, a psycho-neurological care home, and the church shop. More than once she has been the senior sister, setting the work in hand for different teams and drawing people together. "Obedience at the convent is nothing like a job in the world. Here we grow in spirit," she says of the service she cannot imagine her life without.
We lived with our family in a village until I was six. Dad was baptised in the Orthodox Church, but he hardly ever went to church. His parents, though, were truly churched: Grandmother went to confession, received Communion, and began each meal with prayer. It must have been down to my grandmother Evdokia's faith that my brother, my sister, and I were all baptised as Orthodox Christians in our early childhood, and brought for Communion right from our first days.
My mother was a Catholic for many years, and she was a woman of deep faith. One day she lost her wedding ring – she was walking in the evening with a child in her arms and did not notice it slip off her finger. The road ran between villages, with a ditch along the way. The next morning, with a broken-hearted prayer, Mum walked the same road to the next village to catch a bus into town. All at once she saw something flash on the path. She bent down and picked up her wedding ring! And that road had seen plenty of feet that morning…
When I was three, my temperature shot up and I began to have fits. There was no medicine, and I could have died at any moment. It was a forty-minute ride to the hospital. On the way, Mum prayed with all her heart, and the fever began to drop. When we got to the city, the doctors did not want to admit me, because the crisis had passed. By my mother's prayers, the Lord spared my life.
When we lived in the village, my mother was often ill. The church was far away, and we were taken to Communion only a few times a year. After we moved to Minsk, our family made friends with faithful Orthodox believers. Since my mother was Catholic, one Sunday she would go to Mass, and the next she would go with our friends to an Orthodox church. She always took me, my brother, and my sister with her.
At seventeen, grace touched me, and God let me see the beauty of the Orthodox faith. Any thought of going anywhere else just fell away – each Sunday I was at the service in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, and I tried to receive Communion every week.
In those years, a group called "Kinoveia" worked at the cathedral. Brothers and sisters cleaned and set the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in order after it was handed back to the Orthodox Church. I joined them.
At that time our sisterhood was only just being set up. Father Andrey Lemeshonok once told me, "You can come and sing." I could not sing at all, so I chose to go and train at the catechists' school. That was where I met Olga Chishchenko – a quiet, wise sister. For nearly twenty years we shared the same obedience at the convent. In Olya's eyes, and in the eyes of other Orthodox believers, I saw light and beauty. It made me want to be a better person, too.
Yet even before the catechists' school, and before I joined the sisterhood, there were two pilgrim trips that mattered a great deal in my life.
In 1996 Father Andrey and the sisters organised a trip to see Fr Nikolai Guryanov on Zalit Island. The "white sisters" went on that pilgrimage – many of them later became nuns. I was not in the sisterhood yet – I simply asked if they would take me along. Father Andrey gave his blessing. The sisters travelled in their church dress, and I went in my headscarf…
On the way there, our bus broke down. We all got out, and at four in the morning we began to chant the akathist to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. We had only just finished the magnification when the engine suddenly rumbled back into life. I still remember that wondrous moment of prayer together, and how the Lord answered…
At last we reached Zalit Island. We came up to the elder's little house and again chanted the akathist to Saint Nicholas. Father Nikolai came out and blessed each one: to some he said they should take a closer look at the monastic life; to others, that they should pray about a future husband. I remember well what he said to me: "If you marry, be crowned in church." I was twenty-one then; it would be another long seventeen years before I met my husband…
In 1996 I saw Father Nikolai Guryanov as bright, glad, and full of the Spirit. I recall him saying to us sisters, "You will go to the boarding home, and by the prayers of the sick you will be saved."
Soon after I got back to Minsk, I heard that the church of Saint Mary Magdalene was arranging a pilgrim trip to Diveyevo, with a visit to the monastery in Bogolyubovo.
We travelled as a big group – forty-five of us. We stayed a short while with Saint Seraphim of Sarov, and on the way back we stopped at the Holy Bogolyubsky Monastery. In the late 1990s its spiritual father was Schema-Archimandrite Peter (Kucher). Everyone wanted to receive the elder's blessing.
We waited for our meeting with Father Peter in a two-storey parish house. The line to him was long. My friends and I read three akathists downstairs. Then we went up, but I decided to head back to the coach, because I remembered I'd left something behind in the cabin.
The parish house had not been finished; the stairway had no handrail. In the dark I started down the steps, missed my footing, and fell from a height of two and a half metres onto the cement floor, right onto the very spot where, not long before, my friends and I had been reading akathists…
A nun ran up, white with fear: "I thought you'd been killed!" They began to help me up, and I begged them, "Please, take me to Father Peter for a blessing."
Father gave each one in our group his blessing, and then we set off back to Minsk. I bore the pain on the bus for a whole day, with tears in my eyes. Once I got home, it turned out there was a crack in my spine.
I spent two months in hospital – one and a half of them stuck flat on my back. I still remember Father Anatoly Soldatov coming in with the Holy Gifts, and our whole ward receiving Communion. We read the morning and evening prayers together, and we sang. What grace it was!
By then I had already worked for five years in the railway ticket offices. A few times I even went as a train attendant on passenger runs to Moscow, Kiev, and Saint Petersburg. People at work made much of me, but after hospital I set myself a clear aim: to leave my worldly job and serve at church instead.
I went to Father Andrey and said, "I want to stand with the collection box and gather gifts for the Convent." Father looked taken aback and asked, "What, are you off to a monastery?" – "No. I just want to work at the monastery."
The bosses did not want to let me go. I remember going in to the station chief and telling him, "I want to leave the ticket office and work at the monastery." He pointed to an icon of the Saviour in his office and said, "He will not let you walk out." I wavered, but after a while I went back again and told him my mind was made up.
Father gave me his blessing to stand with the collection box. Around then, church shops were opening up; I did my obedience there, but before long the shops were closing again. The first six months were very hard. Doubts kept coming at me – had I done the right thing in leaving my worldly work? So I went back to Father Nikolai Guryanov for counsel.
When I reached Zalit Island, I asked Father if I had made a wrong choice. The elder blessed me to work in the sewing room; it was only just opening at our monastery then.
I learnt to sew from scratch at the Saint John the Theologian Monastery in Domoshany and at the Saviour-Euphrosyne Convent in Polotsk. I worked in the sewing room for eleven years; for three of those I was the senior sister. I sewed mitres and klobuks for Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeev), as well as for priests and nuns.
When I finished my studies at the railway college at seventeen, I was sent to work in the military ticket office. That was where I met Alexander – the assistant commandant. At that time he was a lieutenant; later he became a captain, and then a major. He thought of me as his girlfriend and planned to marry me, but he said we first had to get a flat built.
At first everything went well. Alexander was very caring. When my heart began to turn and I wished to work at the convent, he went along with it. Yet it seems my new way of life sat heavy with him. Once he said, "I want you to be happy all the time. I want to see the Natalya I knew before."
Seven years had passed since we met. Alexander had built the flat and asked me to be his wife. I was terrified of making the wrong choice, so I decided to go to Father Nikolai Guryanov to ask his blessing for the marriage.
I stayed on Zalit Island for seven days. I went up to Father once, then a second time, and he would not bless me to marry Alexander. I was crushed; the tears just poured. I kept thinking, "How awful this looks: we have been together seven years, and now I am saying no. What will his parents think of me?"
I went to the elder a third time and asked, "Father, could this be a mistake? Maybe he really is the one for me?" And Father said, "If I bless you for this marriage, you will blame me all your life."
The man I meant to marry was very controlling; he liked giving orders, and he did not go to church. Most likely, Father Nikolai could see that our life together would not have been a happy one.
When I got back to Minsk, I told my friend that Father had not blessed our marriage. I suggested he go to Zalit Island himself and speak with Father Nikolai. Alexander went off with his family on pilgrimage to holy places, but on the way his niece fell ill, and they returned to Minsk without reaching Father Nikolai.
And I began to wait for the one meant for me.
While I was working in the sewing workshop, I went for my obedience to Psychiatric Residential Home No. 3. Father Andrey Lemeshonok spoke a great deal about our service, but it was only on the ward that I came to see what the words "It is more blessed to give than to receive" really mean.
I was blessed to visit the women in the female ward – those who had ended up in the home after harsh turns in life: the loss of a child or a husband, postnatal depression, and other grave wounds of the mind and heart, and tragedies. We prayed together, sang, and talked. People shared their troubles with us and asked for prayer. We sisters anointed them with blessed oil and gave them holy water.
Round the clock, carers were there with the sick – real hard workers. Without sparing themselves, they tried to make life easier for the residents, doing the hardest tasks and looking after those who could not get out of bed. The carers, too, needed help for the soul. We spoke with them, struck a chord in their hearts, and learned a great deal ourselves.
The senior sister at the home was Sister Valentina – the future abbess of the St Xenia Convent, Mother Vasilisa (Medved). I still remember Metropolitan Philaret (Vakhromeev) coming to the home to consecrate the altar in honour of Saint Xenia of Petersburg. We greeted the hierarch with bread and salt.
For three years, the monastery sewing workshop was based on the grounds of the residential home. When the weather was warm, we sisters would sit outside and sew headwear for priests and monks. The residents would come up to us and start talking, not knowing we came to the home to work. Many of them thought we had our own separate unit.
In 2004 Mother Vasilisa left for Baran', and the obedience of senior sister at the home was entrusted to me. I held it for seven years, and I lived for that place. To me, that place became home.
Up to 1997 there were many cases in the home where residents took their own lives. When the priests and sisters came, everything began to change. The sick began to receive Holy Communion, and the sisters read the Akathist to Blessed Xenia of Petersburg. People began to feel joy again, and the dreadful numbers of suicides changed.
Among the residents there were many well-educated people, with two or three university degrees. It does not take much to end up in hospital: the line is thin – a nervous breakdown, and you are already behind the gates.
We set our personal worries aside and rushed over to the home. We went on pilgrimages with the residents, went walking in the woods, and put on picnics.
People who are ill are often very sensitive, and close to God. They gave us their love, and in us spiritual strength would rise up.
I remember working in the sewing workshop and not managing to finish an order on time. Upset and worn out, I came into church for the Akathist to Blessed Xenia and knelt down. A resident of the home, Yura Mitskevich, came over and helped me up from my knees. He sensed it was hard for me – both in mind and in body.
A few times each year we travelled with the residents on pilgrimage trips – to Abbess Vasilissa in Baran', to the grave of Blessed Valentina of Minsk, and to bathe in holy springs – in Logoysk, Vitovka, and Zhirovichi. The residents lived for those journeys.
Years went by. I still worked in the sewing room and carried my obedience at the home. My own life was still up in the air. I could not see myself as a nun, yet I had not met my other half either. I began to sink into gloom and lose heart.
One day I heard that at the Pafnuty-Borovsky Monastery near Moscow there lived Schema-Archimandrite Vlasiy (Peregontsev).
I decided to ask the elder to pray that my own life might be set right, in God's will. And the Lord granted that I could get in to see Father.
It was a snowy winter. I went to the monastery on my own and stayed there for a week. A great many people came to Father Vlasiy. They would join the queue at four in the morning.
I went into the little cell where Father was receiving pilgrims. I had not even managed to ask my question when I heard: "Where is your other half? Why are you not praying?" Father Vlasiy told me off for my slackness and urged me to step up my prayer. He said that for this labour the Lord would send me a husband.
I left the monastery full of joy, with my spirit stirred and warmed. At home I read the Akathist to the holy and right-believing Peter and Fevronia. But still there was no husband. Half a year later I went back to Father Vlasiy. Again Father rebuked me for being lazy in prayer and assured me that all would be well.
Trusting the elder's words, I prayed more. And a few years later, at the home, I met the man who would become my husband.
From the very first days I went to the home with Sister Tamara (Gvozd). At first she was a sister of mercy, and later she became a novice of the monastery. With Sister Tamara, the residents of the home sang, danced, and even travelled abroad to give concerts.
Once Novice Tamara told me about a dream she had had: "In the home church the sisters are reading the Akathist to Blessed Xenia. They bring in a coffin, and I am lying in it, and you are walking beside it in a wedding dress…" And three years later Novice Tamara – still sturdy at eighty-five – fell ill all of a sudden, and on 25 January 2013 she departed to the Lord. In May of that same year my future husband, Dionisy, came to the home.
My husband and I first saw each other during the Akathist to Saint Xenia of Petersburg. For seventeen years I had read the Akathist to Mother Xenia, asking the saint to spare me from a marriage "not pleasing to God" and to send me my other half.
We shared the work at the home with one another. I remember that on the eve of Pascha we carried the obedience of making the church ready for the feast. Dionisy did every task calmly, with a light and glad heart.
At the monastery my future husband made gravestones to order. For the jubilee of the Baptism of Rus' he had to make a memorial slab and set it up near the cathedral. We came to the feast by the cathedral together – Dionisy and me, Alexander and Elena (they too served at the home as a brother and sister of mercy).
During the great Cross Procession Dionisy asked me to marry him. Father gave his blessing, and a few months later, on 4 October 2013, Father Andrei Malakhovsky crowned Dionisy and me, and Alexander and Elena, in the monastery.
In May 2013 one of the residents, Nikolai, came up to me and said, "This year you will have a wedding." For some reason I took his words to heart; it left me warm inside, light and glad. After the Crowning Nikolai came over to me again and added, "You will have a baby soon."
Most newlyweds spend their wedding day driving around the city, stopping in parks, and having photos taken outside the opera house. We chose, on the day of our Crowning, to go to the home. I wanted to share our joy with the residents. They knew I had waited for my other half for many years, and they had prayed that the Lord would send me my man. I also wanted to thank them for their love, their care, and their prayers.
After the Crowning in the monastery church, we set off for the home in our wedding dress and suit, with Father Andrei Malakhovsky and our guests. They met us with flowers and gifts. They opened the church, and Father served a prayer service for the founding and strengthening of a young family.
The joy of those who were ill was so great: "It is funerals and funerals here all the time, and now – a wedding!" And it was true: we would usually come into the home church for an Akathist or a funeral service, and here, at last, there was a feast day. That day each person brought what they could – a little icon, a poem. I will never forget it.
There were times when I no longer believed I would have a family, but through the prayers of the fathers and mothers my life was set in order in such a wondrous way. My husband and I have been married for 12 years; we try to bear with each other's weakness. We are bringing up two daughters – Annushka and Melania. The main thing was to listen for God's will, not to rush anything, and not to get it wrong.
I am glad the Lord gave me the chance to work in the monastery – in the sewing workshop, in the home, and in the church shop. He places each person where they can do good.
It seems that to work in the shop and meet people, I needed to learn to be humble and change my ways. In the sewing workshop, you would do a piece of work, only to have to unpick it all and start over. And with twenty of us all working together, all so different, we knocked the rough edges off each other and we grew. There were times when I would cry, and times when I would laugh.
When I left the ticket office, I was all tight and shut in. In both the sewing workshop and the home I had to carry the obedience of being the senior sister, fighting with myself, pushing past my doubts and fears. Little by little, growth came in me, and a deep joy that comes from knowing you are needed.
In 2010 the sewing workshop moved to Tsna, and I went to work in the church shop. People who come to the sisters need a kind word. Sometimes the Lord helps us to comfort someone in their hour of need.
A sister of mercy must carry love and joy with her. She should never judge, but welcome each person as they come. Just as God sees what we may grow into, so too the sister must trust the person before her. Let there be a spark of light in her eyes – a light that guides others.
Obedience at a monastery is nothing like work out in the world. Here we feel close to God, and we grow in spirit. "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required…"
Interview by Darya Goncharova
Photographs by Igor Klevko and from Natalia Silantyeva's personal archive
