And Optina, like a ladder, led

This book is a wreath of memory of Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Pavlovich (1895-1980), an amazing person, a Russian poet and publicist, spiritual writer and memoirist, faithful daughter of the Orthodox Church. In a difficult year of tests and persecution of the church from the godless authorities, N. A. Pavlovich managed not only to maintain the firmness of the spirit and sincere faith, but also, being creative, to make her full contribution to Orthodox theology and hagiography, church history and spiritual poetry. The reader will be convinced of this, reading our memories of the inhabitants and elders of Optina Desert, about the role of the holy monastery in the spiritual life of Russia XIX - beginning. XX centuries, the only detailed biography of St. Japan, Archbishop Nikolai (Kasatkina), as well as the “winner of the death”, is a subtle reading of the Holy Scripture, in an atheistic terror, when it was impossible to buy, and its storage Icitation guaranteed a real camp The term, the manuscript of Nadezhda Aleksandrovna “from hand to hand” was distributed in typewritten copies among believers, many clergymen often used it in their sermons. We hope that the book will be very useful for students of spiritual schools, teachers of Sunday schools and catechists, as well as to everyone who is interested in church history and Orthodox theology of the twentieth century