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| St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (left) and St. Nicholas Prozorov (right) |
The glorious miracle of St. Nicholas which saved St. Nicholas and the faithful ones:
Fr. (and now Saint) Nicholas Prozorov finding himself in a common cell with a group of condemned officers, proposed to the believers that they read aloud the akathist to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the defender of the unjustly condemned. By chance he had a copy of the akathist with him. Some of the officers agreed and went aside and quietly sang the akathist. Another group, evidently those officers who were unbelievers or were not devout, took no part in this prayer. And an extraordinary miracle occurred that shook the soul of the young officer Prozorov to its foundations: in the morning, all who had read the akathist were saved from execution and given instead various terms of imprisonment, while the other officers were all shot.
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After being saved by St. Nicholas, Fr. Nicholas gave a vow to become a priest as soon as he should get out of prison, and finding himself freed before too long, he fulfilled his vow. He was ordained by Archbishop John (Pommer), who was later bestially murdered by Bolshevik terrorists in Riga on October 12, 1934.
The GPU, however, forbade Fr. Nicholas to remain in Voronezh, and he went to Petrograd, where he served in the small church of St. Alexander Oshenevsky on the outskirts of the city near the Piskareva railway station.
Once one of the leading communists of Leningrad came to him and asked him to marry him and a girl who refused to live with him without a Church marriage. "Your church is in the forest, no one will find out," he said, since as a communist he would be excluded from the Party for having a Church marriage. Fr. Nicholas agreed and told him to prepare for Holy Communion in advance. The communist became angry and said: "I'll indulge a girl's whim, but I don't recognize any confession. Marry us right away! I'll pay whatever you want, more than you earn in a year. While I am alive, no one will arrest you. After all, I'm a member of the Central Committee of the Party!" Thus did the Party member, whose name was known throughout Russia, threaten Fr. Nicholas. But the latter refused and thus remained in need with his family, depriving himself of an opportunity to obtain a powerful defender with weight in the Kremlin.
In the morning of August 4, many in our cell were called out, as ever to the corridor, and we were told to sign that we had read our sentences: some received five years, some ten. Only Fr. Nicholas was not called out to hear his sentence. The next morning during the exercise period we found out by a complicated set of signs that Archbishop Dimitry, at the age of 75, had received ten years in the isolation prison. I never saw him again.
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| St. Dimitry, bishop of Gdov |
The next day all those who had been sentenced were summoned to the station and bade farewell to us. Fr. Nicholas did not know whether to rejoice or be sad. If he had been acquitted, most likely he would have been freed. But everything soon became clearer: there was another reason why he had been as it were forgotten until his friends had been sent off.
The whole day of August 5/18, the eve of the Transfiguration, I tried not to leave Fr. Nicholas, who immediately felt himself alone with the departure of his friends.
Out of the hundreds of prisoners, most of them did not know what it was all about, and others thought that it was an indication that he was to be freed. He alone read, from memory, the All-night Vigil for the Transfiguration, and I listened; other laymen who usually listened had already been sent off to concentration camps—the people in a cell are always being changed. He took out of the pocket of his cassock a photograph of his three daughters, aged 6, 4, and 2; and, fondly looking at them, he said to me: "I believe that the Lord will not forsake these orphans in the terrible Bolshevik world."
The usual preparations for the night began about 9 p.m. The eldest in time spent in the cell lay down on cots, the rest on tables and on benches formed of stools, and newcomers under the tables and cots. My cot was by the window, and Fr. Nicholas' was by the grating which separated us from the corridor. When all had lain down, the officer on duty appeared and stood in the corridor at the door of the grating: "Prozorov—here?"
"Yes—that's me;" Fr. Nicholas jumped up from his bed.
"Name and patronymic?" the officer asked, checking with his list.
"Nicholas Kiriakovich," Batiushka answered, getting dressed.
"Get ready with your things."
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| St. Nicholas Prozorov |
Fr. Nicholas understood everything. Many times we had observed together how the officer on duty would summon people for execution.
Fr. Nicholas began to get dressed quickly and to pack a straw box with his prison "property." I lay at the other end of the cell and could not get to him through the room, which was blocked with tables, benches, cots, and with bodies lying everywhere. But from the lighted corner where he was packing, I could clearly see his courageous, black-bearded face, which was shining from some unearthly joy. He was 33 years old, like the Saviour when he mounted Golgotha. The whole room became quiet and everyone watched Fr. Nicholas. On the other side of the grating the officer did not take his eyes off him. Fr. Nicholas with a joyful smile looked at all of us and quickly went to the grating, which the officer opened for him. On the threshold he turned to us and said loudly: "The Lord is calling me to Him, and now I will be with Him."
In silence, shaken by the greatness of soul of this modest pastor, we all looked and saw how the grating shut after him, and how with a quick gait he went in front of the officer, who followed him. We all began to speak of Fr. Nicholas in a whisper, with great feeling. Not only believers, but atheists as well—Trotskyites, Mensheviks, bandits, and just plain Soviet rogues—were inspired with reverence and deep feeling by his firm faith.
On the next visiting day, the prisoners who returned from meeting their relatives told us that the priests' wives had been informed of the sentences against their husbands. And then we found out that Fr. Nicholas had been shot on that eve of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1930.