.
Translator’s Introduction – ix
Preface – 1
In the Beginning – 5
Pechory – 12
Ten Days: My First Tasks – 14
In Moscow – 22
Father John – 25
Archimandrite Seraphim – 51
Difficult Father Nathaniel – 57
Father Melchisedek – 73
Father Antippus – 81
The Caves – 87
Being a Novice – 93
How We Joined the Monastery – 107
A Story about People Like Us — Only 1,500 Years Ago – 113
Father Gabriel – 117
The Great Abbot Archimandrite Alipius – 141
Augustine – 163
What Was Happening in the Spiritual Realm at These Moments? – 191
The Theologians – 199
A Sermon Given on the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, November 19, 1995 – 203
The Tale of the Prayer and the Little Fox – 209
Guardian Angels – 211
About One Holy Monastery – 215
The Most Beautiful Service of My Life – 217
Mother Frosya – 223
The True Story of Mother Frosya – 227
While Visiting Mother Frosya – 247
The Candle – 249
On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, All the Water in the World Becomes Holy – 253
Father Awakum and the Religious Affairs Commissioner from Pskov – 257
The Black Poodle – 263
A Christian Death – 271
Marshal Zhukov’s Mother-in-Law – 281
Archimandrite Claudian – 287
Death of a «Stool Pigeon» – 291
Stories Like This Happen in Moscow Today – 295
Lyubov Timofeyevna Cheredova – 299
The Metropolitan’s Daughter – 303
How Bulat Became Ivan – 307
Father Nicholas’s Prediction about My Monasticism – 309
A Chapter that May Be Skipped by Readers Who Don’t Know Church History – 313
Exorcism – 317
A Sermon Given During a Service for the Taking of Monastic Vows in the Sretensky Monastery – 327
The Tale of the Prodigal Bishop – 331
The Relics of Patriarch Tikhon – 335
How Prince Zurab Chavchavadze and I Broke the Lenten Fast – 347
You Cannot Serve God and Mammon Both – 353
Yet Another Breaking of the Rules – 359
The Story of the Egyptian Cat – 363
Andrei Bitov – 367
His Eminence the Novice – 371
The Foolish Townsfolk – 401
Liturgy Is Served No More than Once Each Day on Any One Altar Table – 403
How We Bought Our Combines – 407
Vasily and Vasily Vasilyevich – 417
The Life, Amazing Adventures, and Death of Father Raphael, the Shouting Stone – 421
The Parish House in Lositsy and Its Inhabitants – 433
An Incident on the Road – 449
On Humility – 453
How Father Raphael Drank Tea – 461
Everyday Saints – 483
