The Secret of the Silent Faith
Description:
No one knows where Vera Silentnitsa came from. It is only known that in 1834 she appeared in Tikhvin as a wanderer, calling herself Vera Alexandrovna, settled with the local landowner Kharlampieva. Since then, believers have seen her praying on the porch before the icon of the Tikhvin mother of God.
One day, a Tikhvin landowner, standing in the altar, saw through the northern gates a participant in a prayer posture, shining with an “extraordinary light”. It was Vera Alexandrovna. He communicated his vision to a friend, and from that moment her fame began. Avoiding popularity, she preferred to leave Tikhvin and, wandering, stopped in the village of Birch near the Valdai county.
The bailiff demanded her passport, and Vera Alexandrovna was sent on stage to Valdai. When the investigator tried unsuccessfully to find out her origin, she said: If I judge from heaven, I am the dust of the earth, and if I judge from earth, I am higher than you. After that, she stopped answering and kept a vow of silence for about 23 years.
From Valdai she was sent to the Novgorod prison, where she stayed for about a year and a half. There she wrote: Weeping at the cross of her son. From prison, she was transferred to a house for the insane in Kolmovo, apparently considered insane. There she spent another year and a half, and later recalled: “I was well there; I was blessed there; thank God that he honored me to live with prisoners and the poor...”
Soon the Countess Anna Orlova-Chesmenskaya learned about Vera Alexandrovna and offered to settle in the Cherykovo Women’s Monastery in a separate cell. The rector of the cheese monastery disliked the new nun and even went to St. Petersburg to ask Metropolitan Seraphim to remove Vera Alexandrovna from the monastery: “because of her, many people flock to the monastery and this disturbs the monastery peace.” According to a contemporary, the metropolitan in response to this cried out: “Oh, you stupid woman!” I'd rather be kicked out with you than her! These words say a lot, but the secrets of the Faith of the Silent One do not reveal. Countess Orlova-Chesmenskaya is believed to have purposely appointed a deaf cellist to stop all gossip around the recluse.
Count M. F. Tolstoy certified that in 1848 it was visited by Emperor Nicholas I. Answering his questions, the Silent Woman wrote several sheets of paper, which Nicholas burned on a lamp, and kissed her hand. After the visit of a military man, Vera Alexandrovna came to the church “like a madman” and said: Oh, what a guest I had today! What epaulets he has; nobody wears them in Russia!