The Sanctity of the Elder’s Life,
his Sagacity and Miracles, that Happened Due to his Prayers
The elder’s spiritual life and his feats in prayer were for the most part hidden from the public eye and known to the Lord alone. The few facts that people, who used to know the elder or those for whom the father prayed specifically remember, reach us as stories or legends. Miracles that happen due to people’s belief in the elder’s prayer to the Lord still happen.
Not far from the village of Mikhaylovskoye there is the village of Tolpygino, where when father Leonty was still alive, Archimandrite Ambrosy (now Archbishop of Ivanovo and Kineshma) served. He visited Fr. Leonty often during those years and he remembers the following occasion: “Once I visited Mikhaylovskoye as overseer. I was received by Fr. Leonty. We were sitting at the table, everything was very simple. Fr. Leonty was eating and telling me something. I had liver problems at the time and I wasn’t paying attention to what we had been talking about. But suddenly, without a single question on my part, Fr. Leonty said: ‘Many people now suffer from liver problems, but they will live a long life.’ My memory kept it, and soon, thank God, all my painful symptoms went away.’
For a long time in Mikhaylovskoye Fr. Leonty served together with another priest – father Ioann (John). Fr. John was a bit crude and often acted disrespectfully towards Fr. Leonty. Naturally, people saw that and they asked Fr. Leonty that he go and ask for Fr. John’s dismissal or transfer. Father Leonty answered to that: ‘No one will dismiss him but father Ambrosy.’ ‘I was surprised to hear that’, remembers His Eminence Ambrosy. ‘Why would I have to dismiss him? But when in 1977 I became a bishop by God’s will, I really had to dismiss Fr. Ioann. Thus, Fr. Leonty saw the path of his life thanks to his spiritual sight.’
Many times Fr. Leonty sent priests who had come to visit him to go and get a blessing from Fr. Ambrosy. It caused bewilderment – only bishops give blessings to priests. But much later, when Fr. Ambrosy became a bishop, the true sense of Fr. Leonty’s words became clear.
When the father lived in Vorontsovo, he served there together with deacon Vasily Vasinsky. At the end of the 1960s Fr. Vasily was already a priest and was preparing to take his monastic vows. His Eminence Hilarion blessed father Leonty to perform the rite on Fr. Vasily, who was near Mikhaylovskoye at that time, in the village of Tolpygino. But Fr. Leonty didn’t arrive to perform the ceremony: he said that Vasily would take his monastic vows with the help of Fr. Seraphim from Shuya. It was strange and hard to explain. But some time passed and indeed it was Fr. Seraphim from Shuya who made Vasily a monk. And we can only wonder at the mystery of Divine Providence that was clear to Fr. Leonty.
One woman told us about a similar occasion: ‘I came to visit the father on a weekend and when I was washing the dishes after dinner, standing behind a partition, I was thinking to myself: ‘Why do so many men drink? But true believers don’t’. And suddenly the father, who was lying on his bed, says: ‘True believers don’t drink!’ I was startled at how clearly he expressed my very thought. All the more it was the first time I came across such a thing as a God given ability to hear thoughts.
A young man named Ivan, who worked as an electrician, came to Fr. Leonty and asked whether he would enter the Theological Seminary in Zagorsk (Sergiev Posad), he had taken the exams twice before, but didn’t get in. The elder said to him: ‘You’ll enter it and you’ll take an external degree in two years.’ That’s just how it happened later.
One woman remembers her trip with her 7-year old son to Fr. Leonty. The father asked the boy whether he knows the prayers ‘Our Father’ and ‘Blessed Virgin’. The boy didn’t know them. The mother and son took Holy Communion during Liturgy. After the service, they, like the rest of the people, approached the father, who due to his physical feebleness was sitting on a chair in the middle of the church and was blessing the parishioners with pieces of prosphora. The boy was the last one to approach and there was none left for him. Some woman gave Fr. Leonty two 5 kopek coins a little earlier. So Fr. Leonty gave them to the boy with the words: ‘Here, take them – they’ll help you learn the prayers.’ When the mother and son came back home, the boy read ‘Our Father’ and ‘Blessed Virgin’ and learned them by heart right away.
One woman, due to lack of time, had a habit of praying for health of the living at home and for the dead while commuting. She didn’t tell Fr. Leonty about it. Once, when she came to Mikhaylovskoye, after she had received a blessing from the elder she heard him say: ‘Do just that. Remember them while commuting.’
One woman brought her possessed sister to Fr. Leonty in Mikhaylovskoye. The father talked to her and allowed her to take Holy Communion. After communion, her body started shivering and she fell down and lost consciousness. When she came to she was alright and no longer acted as one possessed.
There exists some sort of connection between people who lead a highly spiritual life and though Fr. Leonty didn’t travel, his name was familiar to many a spiritual struggler (podvizhnik). Once, a few parishioners from Mikhaylovskoye and Furmanov went to get advice from a certain elder in the Lavra in Zagorsk (now Sergiev Posad). When he learned where they had come from, he said: ‘Why go anywhere when you have both Athos and Zion, Kiev and Potchaev. You have your own Lavra, one higher than anything in the world.’ We were also told that a blessed woman from near Leningrad has mentioned Fr. Leonty to people and has said that she knows him, although she has never seen him.
One woman frequently traveled to Zagorsk (now Sergiev Posad) to the Holy Trinity - Saint Sergy’s Lavra. Once she came to Mikhaylovskoye with a task from one of the Lavra’s monks. He wanted to ask Fr. Leonty what to do since he had been plagued by illnesses of all sorts. Fr. Leonty answered: ‘Tell him to drink less.’ When in a short while she came back to the Lavra, she didn’t know how to tell Fr. Leonty’s answer to the monk, ‘because she thought the elder meant alcohol drinking. But there was nothing she could do. She said in a voice full of embarrassment: ‘The father asked to tell you to drink less.’ The monk smiled at her confusion and explained: ‘The father clearly saw that I have been drinking lots of herbal infusions lately. I won’t anymore.’ Soon his ailments went away.
The elder’s spiritual gift of clairvoyance is remembered by nun Angelina who often visited father Leonty with her sister in the second half of the 1960s. ‘Once the three of us were going down the road singing prayers, we were going from Furmanov. We came to the father and he said: ‘The singers have arrived.’ And we answer ‘Father, we are not singers (we didn’t sing in church then, but now we sing at the choir loft). But he says: ‘No you’re singers, singers you are.’ He had such God given grace that he was at times granted to read other people’s thoughts’.
One woman had a brother named Nikolai. Once she started telling Fr. Leonty about him, and he said: ‘A giant cloud is coming, but prayer opens seven locks, seven doors and Nikolai lives oh so well.’ She didn’t understand anything then, but soon after that Nikolai took a mirror from a plant where he had worked. He was arrested and people decided to prosecute him. Following her sister’s advice he confessed to Fr. Leonty and took Holy Communion prior to the trial and ‘he spoke so well during the trial (…) that he was released.’
Another woman waited to get an apartment for a long time. When her chance to get one arrived, the authorities still lingered for some reason and didn’t give her the apartment. When she went to complain, people didn’t listen to her. When she came to church really upset, she told Fr. Leonty everything. The father listened to her and said: ‘Go once again and tell them that Fr. Leonty commands them to give you one.’ So you can imagine her surprise when after repeating those words to the official, she received the keys and the documents to the apartment on the very same day.
Once, a woman came to attend a service in Mikhaylovskoye during Lent. When she was about to enter the church, Fr. Leonty saw her and said loudly: ‘It smells like pig in here!’ She broke down on her knees in front of him and confessed: ‘Father, I ate pork today!’ Nun Elisaveta told us this story.
Here’s one more story about the elder’s spiritual gift of clairvoyance. ‘I had a spiritual father in the Lavra of Saint Sergy at the time. I decided to go there since I had a free day during the week, but they didn’t allow it at work, they didn’t give me an extra day, and just one day wouldn’t be enough. I went to Fr. Leonty feeling sorry for myself. It was some kind of holiday. During the whole Liturgy I was standing thinking about the Lavra and how great it is there. When the service was over, the father was escorted out of church to be taken home and I approached him for a blessing. He smiled to me and said: ‘And we had one (i.e. service) just like in Moscow, not worse than that in Moscow.’
‘My mother who is now deceased visited him with her sister (my aunt). My aunt repeated over and over again during the trip: ‘He won’t receive me, I’m full of sin.’ When they were entering his house, his first words were: “they say I don’t receive just anybody. But I receive everybody. Those who come to me, I don’t force out.’ And my mother says: ‘father, I’m so full of sin.’ And he answers: ‘You were cleansed by fire, you’re cleansed by fire’. (she had lost her house in the village to a fire).
Once a woman came to one of Fr. Leonty’s services and the elder gave her a bandage. She asked him: ‘Why do I need this?’ – “Take it. You’ll need it’. And it happened every time for 10 years – he gave her bandages and she just answered ‘Why do I need these?’ Later this Nadezhda received a monastic obedience: to take care of a sick monk Innokenty. He was sent to help Fr. Leonty by another elder, Schema-monk Evfimy from near Kiev. In Mikhaylovskoye, after an injury, a sore appeared on Fr. Innokenty’s leg and it didn’t heal until his death. That’s when all those bandages proved useful.
Monk Innokenty
Two people from Plios arrived to get a blessing to go and worship in the Lavra in Kiev. The elder didn’t give them a blessing, saying ‘You’re going to hell, better go home!’ They didn’t listen to him and went anyway. One of them got sick on the way and got covered in sores. And he was covered in them until his death, as a punishment for non-approved travel to sacred places.
The husband of a servant of God Z. loved to drink too much and rarely brought his salary home. Once he brought his salary home and gave it to his wife, and she told him ‘I don’t need your salary!’ The husband took all the money and spent in entirely on liquor. When Z. came to the father, he told her: ‘When given some money, don’t say you don’t need it.’
Once Z. came to the father’s home to get a blessing, he approached her himself and made a sign of the cross on her stomach. Z. said: ‘Father, please give me your blessing.’ “I just did.’ Z. was 41 years old at the time. Soon doctors told her she was pregnant and suggested to put an end to it, but her husband and she didn’t agree. When the father saw her again he asked jokingly about her stomach: ‘Where did you find it?’ Soon after, a daughter was born. When they brought her to show to Fr. Leonty, he asked: ‘Whose will she be?’ Z. answered: ‘She’s mine. I’m the mother.’ And Z. went away wondering what it could have meant. But when her daughter grew up and got married, she soon divorced her husband and had to move back in with her mother. So father Leonty was able to predict her fate even then.
Once the father sent a visiting priest to town, to the train station, and those were Soviet times – priests were laughed upon and could be beaten. So Fr. Leonty asked a woman to escort the priest. Fr. Porfiry (that was the priest’s name) was not pleased: ‘What do I need a woman for? I’ll get there myself.’ But at the station they came across a gang of young men with stones. The young lads kicked the priest, threw him on the ground and wanted to beat him up, but the woman started yelling: ‘Don’t you dare! It’s my father!’ The young men were ashamed and ran away, and Fr. Porfiry said: ‘What a man we have in Fr. Leonty that he could predict such a situation.’
A spiritual daughter of the father told us, that in 1970, when she started believing, the faithful were persecuted. Her mother was against the church and used to say: ‘I’ll throw your Gospel through the window!’ Fr. Leonty asked her to bring her mother with her to him, but the woman didn’t even want to tell her mother about it. ‘She’ll never go, all the more so since she’s disposed herself aggressively towards you.’’ To her amazement, the mother said calmly: ‘Alright, I’ll go.’ When they came to the elder he treated the mother of this woman very gently, as if he were her real father. The next day she went to the church with everybody and she was standing there praying with tears in her eyes. Then she went to confession and took Holy Communion from the father’s hands with great reverence. That’s how strong the power of his prayer was.
The elder once convinced a girl to give up her ticket for a plane that later crashed. She works on the Board of the Diocese now.
Two men and one woman went to visit the father in Mikhaylovskoye late one night. They saw a pike swimming in the river and one of them threw a stone at it and knocked it unconscious. ‘Let’s bring her to father Leonty’, he said to the others. And at the same time the father said to his helpers: ‘We’ll have guests tonight.’ “What guests, father, the buses have stopped running for today.’ But he answered: ‘They’ll come and they’ll bring a fish.’
One woman named Eudokia came to the father’s church. He gave her apples and said: ‘Give them to the first person you see with a black face.’ At home her neighbor said to Eudokia: ‘Our matchmaker came by, she just had a fire and asked to give her something.’
After one Liturgy, Fr. Leonty came out to give a sermon as usual, and said that thousands of people died in Tashkent, because the earth is shaking from people’s sins. People who heard the sermon were confused for there had been no news of an earthquake on the radio or in the papers. And only five months after that tragedy and after Fr. Leonty’s sermon information about the earthquake in Tashkent appeared in the mass media.
Once women came to visit father Leonty, who was sitting on his bunk bed and whose face looked very nervous. He would stand up and later sit, saying ‘Where, where will we go? How long till the bus arrives? And the children… how they cry, they’re throwing stones, smashing windows.’ His maid Eudokia tells him: ‘Father, we won’t go anywhere, sit on the bed.’ A year after that radio and television reported on how our embassy workers in China had been thrown out, how they didn’t let small children sleep and threw stones into the bus windows. All these events were seen by Fr. Leonty spiritually in advance and he predicted them.
Not long before his death Fr. Leonty said in a prophetic way: ‘There’ll be great heat and drought. I see a procession around the church. They’ll print a book, then change the words and put others in (This happened during second editing). On the first summer after the elder’s death, there was heat and drought and that’s when the miraculous spring near the father’s grave appeared. And the procession happened in 1995 during All Saints Week when a cross was carried from Ivanovo to the elder Leonty’s grave.
The father talked prophetically about the opening of the ‘Red Church’ in Ivanovo – The Women’s Women’s Monastery in honour of the Presentation of the Holy Virgin to the Temple. ‘When the ‘Red Church’ in Ivanovo opens, the whole earth will shudder.’ In 1989 there was a struggle to open this church, people went on a hunger-strike right on the ground, near the monastery. Mass media from around the world spoke about it.
In his sermons and private conversations, Fr. Leonty spoke many times about the opening of the relics of Saint Seraphim of Sarov and how that would start ‘a new world’, though he wouldn’t see the day. Indeed, after the opening of the relics of Rev. Seraphim in 1991 in St.-Petersburg and their transfer to Diveevo, on the Day of the Transfiguration of the Lord, events happened in Moscow that changed the life of Russia.
Once, during a private conversation, a conversation about cinema was started. Fr. Leonty said that after his death they would film a motion picture in Mikhaylovskoye. In the summer of 1985 in Mikhaylovskoye and its nearby surroundings a famous director N. Gubenko filmed a picture about the consequences of a terrible tornado, that happened in the Ivanovo district, and at that time the body of Fr. Leonty had been resting in the ground for 13 years.
One woman told us about herself: ‘I sinned when I had been young: I coveted somebody else’s man.’ I confessed to the father and he took a candle and brought it to my hand: ‘Hold it over the flame’. I pulled my hand back for I burned myself and he said: “Hold it there! Hold it there! You’re going to burn in the flames of Hell and yet you’re afraid of a candle.’ It really had an effect on me. I stopped seeing somebody else’s man. And I lived the rest of my life with my husband in honesty.’
Nastya, now nun Elisaveta, saw a dream. They were gliding sleighs on the snow together with the father. Nastya was in front, and he was at the back. Nastya told him: ‘Why are you, father, still dragging, lagging behind?’ And he showed her his sleigh: ‘see – it is chock-full! Yours is lighter for you carry only your own sins, but mine - look how many they had thrown on mine!’
The father prayed a lot and prayed very diligently for the peaceful rest of the deceased. Fr. Leonty loved to serve panikhidas on the cemetery in any kind of bad weather - during rainfall, during snowfall, etc. Although the father’s legs were bothering him, he would always go there through snow, and not using a regular road in order to intensify the difficulty of his feat. People say that at night dead people would come to Fr. Leonty, saying things like ‘Pray for us, father!’
Fr. Leonty administered extreme unction to a person, who was sick and dying. When he died, people told father Leonty about it. Father asked: ‘In what color clothing was he been buried – dark or light?’ He asked three times and he got the same answer three times: ‘In dark clothing’. Fr. Leonty then said: ‘This means that the ninth person is him. Eight souls had come to me for prayers, and the ninth – it was him.’
When the father performed burial services for the dead, he knew which of them were so sinful that they deserved to go to hell, so he would burn one of his own fingers on a candle so that they would have it a little easier.
The father would never say no to people, no matter who asked. Men were building a house and were sitting on the roof. The father was passing them bye and told them: ‘May God help you!’ They said in return: ‘Thank you, but it’d be better if you’d given us money.’ Father cried to them: ‘Step down!’ and gave them some money.
The church of St. Michael, Lord’s Chief Captain is decorated with a wonderful white hip-roofed bell tower. Once one of the local tractor operators approached the parishioners and said: ‘I’ll hook your bell tower with a rope and throw it in the river.’ Women scolded him and dispelled him from the church, warning him against making the Lord angry with his threats. On the same day, being drunk, he tried to cross the river Shatcha by ice with his Friends. The ice didn’t take it and the tractor fell under water. His friends survived, but the tractor operator himself died from heart failure. Soon after that the parishioners started to notice that Fr. Leonty was fervently praying for the dead man. He was even criticized for it: ‘Father, why are you still praying for him, he’s got his share of prayers already!’ And Fr. Leonty would answer: ‘How can I not pray for him, if he visits me every day crying, asking for my prayers?’ At the same time the wife of the deceased was at the hospital. When appearing to Fr. Leonty at night, the dead man asked to pray for the sick and warned the father that she would die soon. Soon it came true: the wife of the dead tractor operator died from her illness.
In the early morning of April 16, 1970 the parishioners, who came to the temple in Mikhaylovskoye, saw that Fr. Leonty was performing a panikhida for the newly deceased Patriarch Alexy I. Everyone was shocked and stood quietly. After the panikhida they asked father Leonty why he was performing a panikhida for the much-alive Patriarch. The father answered: ‘His holiness the Patriarch died, but last night we saw each other and we prayed together so that Pimen would be elected the new Patriarch.’ The parish had been ill at ease for a couple of days before the official news broke of the Patriarch’s passing.
People used to sew and give clothes to the father as a thank you. Fr. Leonty would give everything away as charity for the deceased. Once two women came to him and he asked them ‘Have you seen Maria?’ They said: ‘No, Father’. Fr. Leonty then said: ‘She just went out, she came here to thank me, and then you entered.’ And this Maria was already dead.
Here’s another evidence of the elder’s clairvoyance. Once while at the table, Fr. Leonty said: ‘When I die, a lot of water will pour out of me.’ Fr. Ioann (John), the second priest, who was rude to the father, said: ‘Stop saying nonsense.’ After the elder’s death, when Fr. John (Ioann) came to serve a panikhida at the cemetery, he noticed a spring under the hill, went down to it and wept: ‘Oh, Leonty, forgive me that I didn’t believe you.’
That same father Ioann (John) wanted to renovate the church’s gatehouse, but an approval from the officials was needed for it. Father Leonty, being the Father Superior, didn’t let him do it, he said: ‘You can’t renovate – it’ll be worse.’ This happened in 1962. Soon father Leonty was banned from his service. Without him Fr. John submitted an application to the ECDSPD asking for permission to renovate. The answer was: ‘The building has to be torn down before the 20th’. They had to tear the gatehouse down and priests no longer had a place to live.
Once people saw Fr. Leonty going to the river Shatcha. He was pacing around an ice-hole, where women used to rinse their laundry, in circles, making signs of the cross and praying. The next day one woman slipped and fell into the water while washing her laundry. Nobody was around, but somehow she managed to get out of there. The elder’s prayer helped.
According to the memories of people close to him and the elder’s spiritual children, he spoke very little, being constantly busy with mental work. As for his spiritual mood, his spiritual children admit that it was closest to that of Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Saint Ignaty Bryanchaninov. A deep knowledge of the spiritual teachings of the Fathers of the Church could be clearly felt in him. He knew the teaching of the inner Jesus Prayer very well and encouraged those who dared to practice it.
His admonitions were short, but precise and vivid. When people complained to him about their mundane temptations, he would say: ‘Don’t take everything too close to your heart, look at it through your fingers.’
The father served daily and tried to be inside the church up to the very last hour. Sometimes he would say: ‘The hours when we serve are ours, and those when we don’t – aren’t ours. (i.e. not for our salvation)’
When people would pity him, saying ‘Rest a little, father, you’re tired!’, he would answer: ‘You’re not having pity for me, you’re killing me’. And when people said to him: ‘Father, you are very sick’, he would answer: ‘God has no sicknesses, it’s our sins that are ailing.’
As he was great with prayer, the father cried a lot for people, but these tears were hidden and only the Lord himself knew about them. However, people would sometimes see him cry. One of his spiritual daughters remembers: ‘I don’t remember what year it was that I visited him. This was the year they closed our Church for a while because our cattle had the foot-and-mouth disease. The father was lying on his bed crying hard, and I started asking him ‘Father, why are you crying?’ and he told me “Not I alone am crying, even books are crying.’
Being a monk himself and being the father-superior of a monastery, he would pay special attention to obedience in his relationship with his spiritual children and he would be really glad when they followed that precious spiritual rule.
He didn’t like fame. He would walk down the streets of Ivanovo and when people would come up to him for a blessing and ask: ‘Where are you from, father?’, he would answer: ‘I’m from Moscow, I’m from Moscow.’
And he continues to live in the people’s memory – as a humble, bright person, radiating love and mercy to the needy.
Posthumous miracles, the miraculous spring
It’s been more than three decades since father Leonty is no longer with us. But all these years people remember their favorite priest and every day someone comes to his grave to ask for his prayers in their needs and worries. Irrespective of the weather, the pathway to the father’s grave is always fresh; anyone could easily find it – there are either flowers or a candle is lit in front of the cross. The old wooden cross from the grave is right next to the new tombstone. Many people take small slivers from it as a prayer memento and as a remedy for their illnesses. There, right on the fence, is a poem about the elder. This poem is affectionately sung when a crowd gathers together.
During his life, Fr. Leonty heard many complaints about the way people have to carry water from the river to the cemetery in order to water the flowers on the graves. Paraphrasing words from the Gospel, Fr. Leonty used to say: ‘When I die, a lot of water will pour from me.’ The summer of 1972 – the summer after Fr. Leonty’s death – was a period of great drought. The grass shriveled, the river became shallow, forests were burning. And suddenly, a few tens of meters away from the cemetery, at the time of that heat, a powerful spring started spurting and its water turned out to be healing. And now for many years people have been visiting the sacred spring in order to get some healing help from Fr. Leonty’s prayers.
Here’s a letter from N.I. Pleshkova from Ivanovo: ‘In October 1995 my 2-year old daughter started losing her hair on her crown and a bald spot appeared. We went to see a doctor, they did an X-ray, did some tests, said that everything was fine, prescribed some pills. We massaged bur oil into the spot, took the pills – nothing helped, the hair wouldn’t grow back. In November I got some water from the Fr. Leonty’s spring that a woman I worked with had given me, she advised to drizzle it into the girl’s head and also let her drink it. I did just that. After some time, hair started growing back on the bald spot and soon the bold spot disappeared.’
Servant of God is 75 years old now. She used to come to Mikhaylovskoye a lot. Soon after Fr. Leonty’s death she came to his grave and took some sand from the grave and some water from the spring. When she came home, she decided to treat herself with the sand. She took the sand to her eyes while saying a prayer twice. She put glasses on– it didn’t feel right, she could see everything without glasses. She still sings in the choir loft and she doesn’t use any glasses.
‘In 1999 I received a blessing to stay in a monastery during the first week of Lent. I wanted to pray fervently and to listen to the Great Canon of the Rev. Andrei of Crete. I wanted to spend this week in accordance with the monastic statute and I wanted to take Holy Communion. In the morning of the day for which I was preparing to Communion I couldn’t get up because of a shooting pain in my stomach. It was a great pity. For four days straight I had been eating only prosphora and drinking the Holy water. I had been preparing and I had been to confession. I had some sand and water from Fr. Leonty’s grave with me. I sprinkled this water on my stomach and I applied some sand from the grave. I lay like that for 10 minutes. The pain went completely. I went to the service happy and thankful to Fr. Leonty. Servant of God A. Furmanov.’
On February 9, 2000 the holy relics of Rev. Leonty were open for public worship. I was there and I had the opportunity to touch his righteous relics. I had been feeling very well for an entire month after that and I feel great now. I used to suffer from increased blood pressure on such days. But my pressure hasn’t increased once although the pressure differential in the atmosphere had been huge. I thank the father for his prayers to God! Servant of God Valentina, Furmanov.’
‘I happened to damage my arm at work – it got into the transporter, it got all crooked, deformed, the vessels torn, with breaks and bruises. I caught a high fever and I had to take a few days off work. My arm ached for a long time. I massaged it, tried to correct it and I prayed. It was in March. I went to church on Easter. Later, I went to the cemetery with my husband and children. We approached the grave of Fr. Leonty and I was asking him mentally ‘Father Leonty, how long will my hand bother me?’ and I leaned on the fence of his grave. And suddenly – a miracle, some holy powers sort of lifted my arm and I felt such great power and relief and I said to my husband: ‘Sasha, I have just been healed from the father’s fence!’, and then I shared my joy with everybody. My arm is healed. This is how archimandrite Leonty helped me. We are carefully keeping the memory of our saint father alive (a letter from Servant of God Raisa from the village of Lopatino).’
‘Anya, 10 years old, took a dip in the Sacred spring on the Day of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Land of Russia (she had a bad cough). She took some water and drank it at home. She received healing. We thank Rev. Leonty. Father Leonty, pray to God for us. The Karandashevs. Ivanovo.’
‘My son M. was given a diagnosis two years ago: enlargement of the thyroid gland. After two courses of treatment, doctors suggested a surgical operation. My son and I went to Fr. Leonty’s grave to pray and to ask for his prayers, and then we went down to the spring, where we drank some water and we took a dip. We returned to the grave many times after that. The time to show my son to the professor arrived. They gave him a sonogram and the professor concluded that my boy had no tumor at all. My son said that it was the saint elder Leonty who helped him and the professor agreed, saying: ‘Believe and you’ll be rewarded for your faith.’ ‘Thank God, my child is healthy today. I remember Fr. Leonty with gratitude in my prayers. Servant of God Galina, Volgorechensk.’
‘In 1985 I had a tuberculosis tumor on the third segment of the right lung removed… In 1997 – pestholes on my left lung were surgically removed. I also had a number of other illnesses. In one word, I wasn’t meant to live long. Any cold, or some physical impact, intensive smoking or drinking would result in my death. In the summer of 1997 I heard about the healing powers of the father Leonty’s spring and I decided to try it. A woman and a girl (inhabitants of this village) were standing near the bell tower after they had taken a dip in the spring. When I met them I learned that the water was ice-cold. According to the doctors, with my symptoms, a dip in such kind of water would mean a total collapse of my lungs! But I dared to take one… If I hadn’t gone to the sacred spring, I’d be dead by now. Now I feel great! I don’t deny that miracle…I’m healthy! Reverend father Leonty, pray to Christ our Lord for our souls to be saved! Oleg Y., Kostroma.’
In the end of November 1996 my daughter developed bumps on the forearms of both her arms, and in a few days her middle and fourth fingers became crooked… It was really hard for her to clench and unclench her fingers, the girl suffered from pain day and night. We had to go to the doctors. First we went to the local hospital and then to the district orthopedic division and to a military hospital. Every doctor would give his own diagnosis and the doctor at the military hospital offered us to leave the girl at the hospital for further treatment and possible operation. We were confused. The upcoming treatment and operation would ruin all her study plans, so we decided to wait until summer. No particular treatment was suggested, the doctors only prescribed her some painkillers, but now all the girl’s fingers (not only the middle and the fourth) became worse and worse.
That year my relatives lived on the premises of the church in Mikhaylovskoye, it is from them that I learned about Fr. Leonty, about his life and his service, the miracle that happened after his death – the spring that began spurting one dry summer near his grave. To those who believed in God that water started bringing strength and health, healing of the soul as well as the body. We asked for our girl’s health with all our hearts. Everybody who could, relatives as well as acquaintances, who lived in Mikhaylovskoye at that time, brought us some water from the spring. Every morning our daughter drank it, and every evening we wrapped her hands in strips of gauze soaked in the water. Time was passing and it seemed that everything was the same: the bumps, the crooked fingers, pain during the night. In the middle of Lent Natasha took communion and soon after that (we didn’t even notice when it happened) at tea time one evening I asked Natasha to pass me some bread. The girl had to stand up to able to do that and when she did, her palms leaning on the table, she cried, but it wasn’t a cry of pain. It was a cry of surprise: the fingers on both her hands were straight, not crooked or bent. After that we continued with the cold compresses and when the pains stopped completely, we stopped applying them. The girl regained her health due to prayer and that water”. Lydia R., Furmanov.
‘An icon of St. Leonty was being painted in our family in preparation for his glorification. In March 1998, when the icon was ready, I went to Mikhaylovskoye. The typical asking price for that kind of work was about 3000 rubles. Knowing that the parish of Mikhaylovskoye wasn’t wealthy, we didn’t expect any monetary reward. However, thanks to the elder’s prayers, a miraculous thing happened. Suddenly, when I arrived in the parish with our icon, a wealthy man appeared there, who expressed a desire to pay for the icon painters’ work; he gave me the exact sum expected for that type of work. This was the way the Elder thanked us for the work that had been undertaken in his honor’. Ekaterina B., Kozelsk.
‘On June 25, 1995 the parishioners of the Church of the Assumption in the village of Bogorodskoe had a procession all the way to Mikhaylovskoye. They were carrying a big wooden cross that they wanted to install next to the Fr. Leonty’s spring on the feast day of All Russian Saints. Among the participants of this procession there was a woman, who received complete healing of her illness that day. ‘Before the procession I had serious problems with my stomach: I had no appetite, I couldn’t distinguish between the tastes of different foods and after a meal, I often had severe pains and a sensation of heaviness in the stomach area, so that the process of eating was quite excruciating. When we reached the spring, we performed ablutions, and later, during Divine Liturgy, I took Holy Communion. The next day I was glad to be able to acknowledge that all the troubles with my stomach were completely gone. The second healing was related to the ailment of the female organs, the symptoms of which had been obvious before I went to the holy spring. When I arrived home, I found that all the symptoms of the disease had stopped. Every time I pray I mention Fr. Leonty with gratitude.’
A chapel with a bathhouse was built near the Holy spring in 1996 and not a single day passes without people visiting this place.
We’d like to tell you about two more posthumous miracles of Fr. Leonty’s. Soon after the Elder’s passing, a woman came to his maid Eudokia and asked her to give her something that belonged to the Elder as a souvenir. The maid gave her his old shirt, all covered in patches, and an old duvet cover, also old and patched. ‘I brought those items home’, - tells the woman, - and a wonderful fragrance filled the entire house. I didn’t know the source of it. My husband came back from work and said: ‘Seems like you’ve used quite a few cologne bottles. The house smells great’.
And here’s a very recent example. As usual, before Easter 1995, people went to the cemetery to clean up around the graves; they picked up the accumulated litter, painted the fences with some fresh paint. Later, kids started burning old grass. The graves nearby and some of the trees caught on fire. When people came to the cemetery to repaint the fences, they saw that the fire hadn’t touched only four graves: Fr. Leonty’s, monk Innokenty’s, blessed Annushka’s and the church warden Lidya’s, all of whom had been spiritual children of the Elder.
A chapel with a bathhouse
Now that we’re finishing the description of the blessed Elder Archimandrite Leonty’s life, which consists of true facts and events that happened during his difficult, selfless, prayerful and holy life, and even after his passing we come to remember, quite unwittingly, words from the Book of Wisdom of Joshua, Son of Sirach: ‘The government of the earth is in the hands of the Lord and over it he will raise up the right man for the time’ (Sir. 10, 4). Indeed, during one of the most difficult periods in our Motherland’s history, the Lord has given us such beacons of faith and piety, who, emulating their Creator and Savior, ‘shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not’ (Jn. 1,5). Indeed, people came upon this earth, their hearts touched by God, and others who came into contact with those carriers of divine light, received healing of their diseases and rebirth for spiritual life. Archimandrite Leonty was one of those true servants of the Lord, who continue their salutary ministry even posthumously, because now he sees The One to Whom he dedicated his whole life with his own eyes.
We hope that the evidence of his sanctity will find its due place in the Tradition of our Holy Orthodox Church.
The Church Tradition is the continuing, ongoing life of the Church of Christ, which consists of actions and feats of a great number of pious devotees and holy people. That life goes on after their passing, when celebrated by the Church for their holiness, they become our heavenly guards, our solicitors, those who constantly pray for us. One of those people, by the hopes and expectations of all the believers from our region, is the blessed elder, archimandrite Leonty, and we’re calling for him now with all our hearts:
Venerable father Leonty, pray to God for us’!
