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| Fr. Alexis Kozyaev |
"Fr. Alexis Kozyaev lived in the stanitsa Staro-Nizhe-Stebleyevskaya, Krasnodar region. The niece of my sister A. married in that region, and her husband prayed with Fr. Alexis and introduced us to him in 1953. We were often at batyushka’s, although he lived 60 kilometres from us. He was married, had a matushka and daughters, but did not live with them, since matushka went to the open church.
But he built a little hut in the courtyard and served there. Fr. Alexis was a great man of prayer, a faster, but he was also strict. He had the gift of clairvoyance. One young woman came to him, but he said: ‘Tell your sin without sparing. You have brought such a stench into my cell that I can hardly breathe.’ She fell at his feet and asked him to pray for her.
There were times when you would be leaving Fr. Alexis and some drunkard would pass by and shout: ‘She’s coming from the priest, she’s stinking of the priest, she’s bringing stinking water from the priest’.
In the 1930s Fr. Alexis had been condemned for 25 years, and then was sentenced to be shot. [He was arrested several times for belonging to the True Orthodox Church.] When they were taking him to the place of execution, he heard a voice: ‘Run!’ And he ran into the wood, with the soldiers after him. He hadn’t run very far, when he sat under a tree and began to pray to the Mother of God. He saw
four soldiers coming next to him, looking for him. One passed a metre away from him but did not see him. He was hidden from them, invisible, and he saw them leaving without finding him. Fr. Alexis hid for a long time, I write this from his words.
Once he came to the village, and we had a little shop on the street near the yard, where the neighbours came together with us on Soviet feastdays to chatter and judge others. There was no way he could have known about this. But he looked at us and said strictly: ‘Is this your shop?’… How he looked right through my sister and me! We escorted Fr. Alexis and immediately broke down the shop, so as no longer to bring a sin upon our souls.
Once my brother Demetrius had an operation, but the wound would not heal. I tearfully went to serve a moleben, but batyushka said: ‘Don’t cry, your brother will get better.’ I brought some holy water from batyushka and gave it to my brother, and his wound quickly healed and he got better.
I want to tell you about the miracles of God of which I was a witness. We had a church in the village which they closed and made into a club. Once they said that they were going to show films in it, this was the first opening of the ‘club’. Everything was still as it always had been in the church, even the iconostasis and the icons were still there. They installed benches, hung up a screen and the film-show began. About half an hour had passed, when suddenly people began to shout that there was somebody behind – they jumped up and hurled themselves towards the exit, the ones in front fell on the floor or crawled under the benches. What happened? As many people said later, the holy Great Martyr George the Victory-bearer came out of his icon on the iconostasis on a horse. He put his spear in a horizontal position and galloped towards the people, who began to run away out of fear.
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| St. George |
But that was not the end of it. They got together some of the people, if not all, and continued the showing of the film. It was being shown by a mechanic and his assistant. And suddenly in the choir above they began to sing the Cherubic hymn, and so loudly that the film was barely audible. They all immediately decided that it was believers who had crept in and wanted to interrupt the showing of the film. So about seven members of the komsomol climbed the stairs to catch them all and bring them down. Then, as they themselves recounted, when they had gone up the stairs into the choir, they saw that there was nobody there. They stood in bewilderment and could not understand how the singers could have run away. Suddenly right in the middle of them invisible singers began singing the Cherubic hymn. Haunted by an unknown fear, they rushed down, but, not knowing the way, they pushed and trampled on each other. And the assistant of the mechanic, who was running in front, suddenly fell, and all the others ran over him since there was no other way out because of the
confined space. Having run down, they rushed out into the street. Now the showing of the film was finally stopped. The assistant of the mechanic was ill for a month and then died. The mechanic left, and nobody could be induced to work as a mechanic in the club for any money. So from that time they stopped showing films in it.
Batyushka died on December 16, 1968 and was buried in the stanitsa. His daughter V. is living in the city of Krasnodar, and we are still corresponding.”
(Reminiscences of P.M.)
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| Fr. Alexis Kozyaev (full picture) |