St. Nicholas of Serbia. Saint Nicholas of Serbia (Velimirović)
In this section we publish aphorisms of famous people who have made a unique contribution to world culture - about Christianity, history, love, freedom, work, faith, culture and much more. The project “Thoughts of the Great” continues the sayings of St. Nicholas of Serbia, one of the most famous saints of the 20th century.
Biography of St. Nicholas of Serbia
Saint Nicholas (Serb. Bishop Nikolaј, in the world Nikola Velimirović, Serb. Nikola Velimiroviě; December 23, 1880 - March 18, 1956) - bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church,Bishop of Ohrid and Žić.
Saint Nicholas was born on January 5 (December 23, old style) 1881 in the village of Lelic, not far from the Serbian town of Valjevo. He graduated from the local theological school, then in 1904 he continued to study in Switzerland, where he defended his doctoral dissertation.
In 1909 he took monastic vows at the Rakovica monastery near Belgrade. He taught at the Belgrade Theological Academy. He lectured in America and England during the First World War.
In 1919 he was installed as Bishop of Žiča, and a year later he accepted the Ohrid diocese, where he served until 1934, when he again managed to return to Žiča.
At the beginning of World War II he was imprisoned in the Rakovica monastery, then in Wojlica, and finally ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. After his release, he moved to America, where he studied theology and education.
In 2003, at the Council of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, he was canonized.
Saint Nicholas of Serbia: Sayings
God and faith:
What separates us from God is a lie, and only a lie... False thoughts, false words, false feelings, false desires - this is the totality of lies that leads us to non-existence, illusions and renunciation of God
As a person becomes morally cleansed, the truths of faith are revealed to him more and more clearly.
The sun is reflected in clear waters, and the sky is reflected in a pure heart.
People do not believe the faith preached by those of little faith.
The Faith of Christ is an experience, a skill, and not a theory or human wisdom.
The emptiness that remains in the soul when there is no God in it, and the whole world cannot fill it.
Do not rush to execute the atheist: he has found his executioner in himself; the most merciless that can be in this world.
Of all the blessings on earth, people love life most. They love it even more than the truth, although without truth there is no life. Therefore, life is the highest good, and truth is the basis of life.
Death is not natural, but unnatural.
And death comes not from nature, but against nature...
Nature's protest against death overcomes all far-fetched justifications for death.
Even the worst person remembers God three times in his life: when he sees a righteous man suffering through his fault, when he himself suffers sorrows through the fault of others, and when the hour of death comes for him.
Truth reveals itself to love
To seek truth means to seek the object of love. To seek the truth in order to make it a tool means to seek the truth for the sake of adultery. The truth throws a bone to those who seek it for this purpose, but it itself flees from him to distant lands.
If a person opens his eyes and looks at himself, he will see God; if he closes them and looks into himself, he will see God again: both his body and spirit are carried within him and represent two ways of knowing God.
Day and night
If you weave during the day and unravel at night, you will never weave.
If you build during the day and destroy at night, you will never build.
If you pray to God and do evil before Him, you will never weave or build the house of your soul.
Good and evil:
Only the strong decide to do good.
From time immemorial, wolves have killed sheep, but never before has a single sheep killed a wolf, but there are always more sheep in the world than wolves.
When evil throws away the last card, good will hold another one in its hands.
All the evil that people do under Heaven is a confession of weakness and powerlessness.
The Lord is looking for creators, not destroyers. For he who creates good thereby destroys evil. And the one who sets out to destroy evil will quickly forget about creating good and turn into a villain.
Without perseverance in goodness, no one can feel true satisfaction in life. After all, on the path to goodness, first you taste the bitter and only then the sweet.
If an atheist challenges you, or madmen revile you, or embittered people persecute you, consider all this the work of the devil, for man is by nature pious, intelligent and kind.
It is the devil who provokes you into long arguments and fruitless conversations. Do a good deed in the name of Christ - and the devil will run away from you. Then you will deal with real people: pious, smart, kind.
No one under the sun is great except the one who believes in the final victory of good. However, without such faith no one seriously believes in God. These two faiths are related in the same way as sunlight and the sun.
Where there is courage, evil is a submissive subject; where it is not, evil is sovereign.
We bring evil upon ourselves with the help of the same evil living within ourselves.
Sin:
In man, only sin is true evil, and outside of sin, evil does not exist.
One should be afraid not so much of sin itself as of its power over a person.
It is difficult for a person not to sin, but he must make every effort to avoid being captured by sin.
Only those who stand above death can rise above sin.
But the more someone fears death, the less they fear sin.
What a horror if your day is what is external, your night is what is internal!
Desire is the seed of sin.
Doubt and despair are two worms that develop from the larvae of sin.
Against three unhealthy states of the soul, the holy apostle sets out three healthy qualities of the soul: against pride - humility, against anger - meekness, against cowardice - long-suffering.
Hate evil, not the person who does evil because he is sick. If you can, treat this patient, and do not kill him with your contempt.
A sinner understands, tolerates and endures a sinner more easily than a righteous man.
Enmity and resentment:
A person hates the one he sins against. When a person realizes that so-and-so knows about his secret sin, he is initially overcome by fear of this secret witness. Fear quickly turns into hatred, and hatred is completely blinding.
No one is more afraid of torment than the one who tortures others.
Weakness:
Crime is always a weakness. A criminal is a coward, not a hero. Therefore, always look at your offender as weaker; Just as you would not take revenge on a small child, do not take revenge on anyone for any offense. For it is not born from evil, but from weakness. In this way you will retain your strength and be like a calm sea that will never overflow its shores to drown the reckless one who throws a stone at it.
Pride and humility:
Pride is truly the daughter of stupidity...
Pride is akin to an inflated bubble that bursts at the slightest touch of a needle. The slightest prick of fate turns her into despair.
It’s sad not to dare look in the mirror, but it’s dangerous not to take your eyes off it.
Envy:
The first sin to appear in the world of spirits was envy.
Envy never appears under its true name.
Wealth:
Wealth is a blessing when it can be turned into a good deed.
Wealth is evil when, instead of giving a person freedom, it puts its owner into its service.
Those who did not know how to share wealth while they had it will have to learn to ask when it is taken from them.
Selfishness and altruism, love and mercy:
He who learns to be grateful will learn to be merciful. And a merciful person walks more freely through this world.
Living for the sake of others, we do not give up our own life, but, on the contrary, expand its boundaries.
Heroism and selfishness:
Do not believe theories and talk about the law of selfishness. It does not exist. The Lord rules the world, and people are the race of God.
A man who jumps into a stream to save a drowning man instantly destroys all these theories and stops such conversations.
When love fades, people seek justice.
People who do not see the world in themselves will not see their place in the world.
We are not just eyewitnesses of this life, we are all participants in it. And because no matter what happens in the world, it happens to me.
This earth is small, but be great in order to make up for its insignificance with your growth.
Human:
The ignorant say that the legs carry the head, while the experts know the opposite: it is the head that carries the legs.
Good will in a person is a creative, poetic and singing force.
He who has great things also has small things.
No one is great without someone being great.
Through the eyes of every person, millions of his ancestors look at you. - Look and see!
They also speak through his mouth. - Listen!
Every spirit reveals itself in its creation, and every creature expresses itself through its inherent action.
Neither an officer's uniform will make you brave, nor a priest's robe - merciful, nor a judge's robe - just, nor a ministerial chair - strong, if your soul does not abound in courage, compassion, righteousness, or strength.
Man's first hunger is the hunger for truth.
The second hunger of our soul is the hunger for truth.
Her third hunger is the hunger for purity.
Fear of yourself
He who has never been afraid of himself knows no fear. For all the external monsters that a person fears are within himself, and in undiluted essence.
Woman:
If we express the whole truth, then we will have to admit that all evil entered this world through the wife, but the salvation of the world also came from the Woman.
Marriage:
God blessed the marriage first in paradise and then in Cana [Galilee]. In marriage, two fleshes become one flesh, two temples of the Holy Spirit acquire one roof.
Upbringing:
The longer a mother cherishes and rocks her child in her arms, the later it begins to walk.
You shout loudly and angrily that teaching about faith needs to be thrown out of schools. Let the youth be told as much as they can about the bloody Nero and the fanatic Caligula, just so that they do not mention the saving name of Jesus Christ.
Life:
The days of defeat are harder to forget than the days of victory.
Christianity:
There are three main gospel ideas: the idea of brotherhood, the idea of freedom and the idea of love. Like three silk threads, they pass through all four Gospels.
When lamps and candles go out in people’s souls, incense turns into suffocating smoke, and the heart, having become cold and hard like stone, ceases to be an altar of love - then the walls of the temple no longer please God.
State:
Power is a great temptation, and there are few who are able to resist it.
There are no despots without cowardly people, no heroes without mercy.
The law is a clown of power.
The struggle for power and rights is a painful phenomenon in human history.
Who convinces me of the Resurrection of Christ?
Saint Nicholas of Serbia: aphorisms
Project "Thoughts of the Great"
Easter poems
From the legacy of St. Nicholas (Velimirovich)
The Gospel of Him Who Multiplied the Loaves in an Empty Place
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Gospel about the prayer of the Lord and Savior for us
7th Sunday of Easter, St. Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council.
Third Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel of Purity of Mind
Gospel of the Ascension of the Lord
Gospel of the miraculous healing of a man born blind
Gospel of the Miracle at Bethesda
4th week of Easter
The Gospel of the Myrrh-Bearing Women
Sixth week of Lent, vaiy (floriferous)
The Gospel of the Dividing of the Flock in the Presence of the Shepherd
Fifth week of Great Lent. The Gospel about the ministry and suffering of the Son of God
Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Gospel of the Archangel Gabriel
The Gospel about the powerlessness of unbelief and the power of faith
Fourth week of Lent
The Gospel of the Cross and the Salvation of the Soul
Gospel of the Healing of the Paralytic
Second week of Lent
Gospel of the Prodigal Son
Saturday after Epiphany. The Gospel of Victory over Temptation
Gospel of the Baptism of the Lord
Gospel of the Firstborn
The Gospel of Heavenly Bread in Straw
The gospel of multi-care and brazen death
Gospel of the Merciful Samaritan
Seeing the Invisible
The Gospel of Lazarus and the Rich Man
The Gospel of Perfect Mercy
The Gospel of a Rich Catch of Fishes
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Gospel of Forgiveness
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
What would human society be without forgiveness? A menagerie among nature's menagerie. What, besides unbearable chains, would all human laws on earth be if they were not softened by forgiveness? Without forgiveness, could a mother be called a mother, a brother a brother, a friend a friend, a Christian a Christian? No: forgiveness is the main content of all these names. If there were no words “Forgive me!” and “God will forgive, and I forgive!” - human life would be completely unbearable.
Saint Nicholas of Serbia (Nikolaj Velimirović) is the Bishop of Ohrid and Žić, a prominent theologian and religious philosopher.
Saint Nicholas was born in the village of Lelic, near the Serbian town of Valjevo, on January 5, 1881, according to the new style. After graduating from theological and pedagogical school, he taught for some time. In 1904 he left to continue his education in Switzerland and England. He defended his doctorate in philosophy and theology in Bern. In 1909 he took monastic vows at the Rakovica monastery near Belgrade. For several years he taught philosophy, psychology, logic, history and foreign languages at the Belgrade Theological Academy.
During the First World War, he gave lectures in America and England, the proceeds from which went to help his compatriots, thereby supporting his homeland. In 1919 he was consecrated Bishop of Zich, and in 1920 - of Ohrid, where he served until 1934. Then he returned to Zhicha, where he remained until 1941. At the beginning of World War II, together with Patriarch Gabriel, he was imprisoned by the Germans in the Rakovica monastery, then transferred to Vojlica and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Survived terrible torment. But the Lord preserved him and after his release, Nikolai Velimirovich moved to America, where he was engaged in educational and theological activities.
He reposed in the Lord on March 18, 1956 in Pennsylvania. He was buried in Libertsville. In 1991, on May 12, his holy relics were transferred to his native Lelic.
Books (6)
Biblical themes
In the book offered to the reader, Saint Nicholas collected his thoughts and pastoral instructions to Christians, based on those thoughts and images that we find in the Bible, both in its Old and New Testaments.
He conveys the truths of spiritual life to everyone in simple and understandable examples, thereby teaching us to see and hear God in the most ordinary objects around us, the actions of people, and events. It turns out that a Christian can receive spiritual benefits from reading newspapers - if at the same time he constantly turns mentally to the Holy Scriptures and wonders about the meaning of what is described from the point of view of God's Providence.
I believe. Faith of educated people
The title of this small book by the outstanding Serbian archpastor and theologian St. Nicholas (Velimirović; 1881-1956) may surprise some: “The Faith of Educated People.”
However, in reality, by giving such a title to his work, which is a living and patristicly inspired explanation of the Orthodox Creed, the author wanted to convey to the reader one very important idea. A truly educated person, in his opinion, is not one who is rich in knowledge, but who is “educated internally, with all his heart, with all his being, who is conformed to the image of God, who is Christ-like, transformed, renewed, burnt.” Therefore, without a doubt, we can say that the faith of Orthodox Christians is in fact the faith of educated people.
Indian letters
“Indian Letters” of St. Nicholas of Serbia is another pearl from the rich literary heritage left by this wonderful church writer of the last century, with whom the Russian reader is becoming acquainted today.
The genre chosen in this case by the saint is very original. This is an amazingly deep, heartfelt correspondence in which his heroes, very different people, take part: Indian Brahmins and Kshatriyas, Serbian scientists, Muslim Arabs, a Holy Mountain monk. They are united by one thing - love for each other and a sincere desire to find the truth in God, save their soul, and serve the salvation of their neighbors. Both the circumstances of their lives, and the events taking place in it, reflected in the letters, all testify that it is possible to find both the sought-after truth and salvation only in Christ. And the other paths all lead to nowhere, to some kind of terrible dead end, from which it is no longer possible to get out of it on your own.
Prayers on the lake
In the book “Prayers by the Lake,” Bishop Nikolai reveals himself as a theologian, as a poet, and as a preacher.
“Prayers by the Lake” are a hundred psalms sung by a man of the twentieth century - an ideological, technocratic century, disfigured by wars - and how virginally pure these psalms are! The ability of the Slavic soul to feel the corruption of everything worldly and at the same time to discover God in all nature, to see His harmony everywhere, to look at the Creator through His creation - makes St. Nicholas of Serbia similar to many Russian theologians and writers. Researchers rightly liken the poetic language of “Prayers by the Lake”, the ability to express all one’s feelings through prayer, to the works of St. Simeon the New Theologian.
Saint Nicholas of Serbia (Velimirović) is one of the Holy Fathers, who was practically our contemporary. This is a man who, in the godless and cruel 20th century, became like the ancient prophets, his verb burned the hearts of people and for this he was called the New Chrysostom.
His call for Christians to be not bystanders in life, but spiritual warriors-victors, is addressed directly to our hearts:
“Warriors of life, fight hard and never tire of believing in victory. Victory is given to those whose eyes are constantly fixed on it. He who thinks about defeat loses sight of victory and no longer finds it. A small star, far from the gaze of the gaze, grows and approaches!
Life is victory, my children, and the warriors of life are the warriors of victory. Keep your guard vigilant, so that no enemy penetrates through the wall into your city. Just miss one thing - you'll surrender the city. Only one snake crawled into Paradise, and Paradise became hell.
One drop of poison in the blood, and doctors predict death!
Warriors of life, fight hard and never tire of believing in victory!”
Who is he, the person who wrote these inspired lines? Saint, philosopher and poet, spiritual warrior and confessor... A popularly beloved shepherd, who became an exile and died in a foreign land, but returned to his Holy Serbia with his holy relics... A heavenly intercessor and teacher of the faith, lovingly revered not only in his native land, but also throughout to the entire Orthodox world, especially in Russia.
Nikolaj Velimirović was born in 1881 into a large peasant family of Dragomir and Katerina Velimirović in the small Serbian village of Lelić. His mother subsequently took monastic vows.
After graduating from high school, young Nikolai Velimirović entered the Belgrade Theology (seminary), where he immediately showed himself to be a capable student. After graduating from the seminary, he began working as a rural teacher.
Later, thanks to his outstanding abilities and first brilliant publications, he received a scholarship to study in Switzerland and Germany, and then in England. Among other things, he successfully masters several foreign languages. Upon returning to Belgrade, the future Vladyka suffered a serious illness, which became the most important milestone in his life: on his sick bed he made a promise to God to devote his life to Him, the Holy Orthodox Church and his neighbors. This decision was soon followed by Nikolai’s miraculous healing from a serious illness. In the Rakovica monastery, near Belgrade, he takes monastic vows with the name Nicholas, and then ordination.
“Don’t rush to talk about three things:
about God until you are established in faith;
about other people's sins until you remember your own;
and about the coming day until you see the dawn.”
In 1910, Hieromonk Nikolai was already studying in Russia, at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He visits Orthodox shrines of the Russian land and, during this journey, acquires that love for Russia and the Russian people, which accompanies his entire future life.
Upon returning to his homeland, such works by Fr. Nicholas, as “Conversations under the Mountain”, “Over Sin and Death”, “Religion of Njegos”.
In 1912, he arrives in Bosnia, which had recently been annexed by Austria-Hungary. There, in Sarajevo, his performances delighted the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serb youth and the leaders of the Serbian national liberation movement. He utters the famous words that “with their great love and big hearts, the Bosnian Serbs annexed Serbia to Bosnia.”
This aroused the wrath of the Austrian occupation authorities, and Hieromonk Nicholas was removed from the train en route to Belgrade and detained in Zemun for several days. Later, the Austrian authorities did not allow him to travel to Zagreb and speak at the celebration dedicated to Njegos, but the text of the speech was nevertheless transported to Zagreb and made public. On the book of Father Nicholas “Conversations under the Mountain” the Mlada Bosnas (members of the militant patriotic organization of Serbian youth “Mlada Bosna”, which operated in Austria-Hungarian-occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina) took an oath, as in the Holy Gospel.
Even then, the future Bishop begins to become the actual confessor of the liberation Orthodox Chetnik movement. This high mission of his will be continued in the terrible years of the Second World War by spiritual cooperation with such great sons of Orthodox Serbia as the Chetnik governor Draza Mihailovic, the governor-priest Momcilo Djuic, and the outstanding statesman Dimitri Ljotić.
During the First Balkan War, Fr. Nikolai is at the front, with the active army. He conducts services, encourages soldiers, and cares for the wounded.
With the outbreak of the First World War, he was again in combat positions - confessing and giving communion to Serbian soldiers, strengthening their spirit with sermons. Until the very end of the war, he transferred all his salary to the needs of the wounded.
The Serbian army withstood several frontal attacks by the Austro-Hungarian troops, but the blow dealt in the back by Bulgaria turned out to be a disaster for Serbia. In order to avoid shameful capture, the remnants of the Serbian army, together with the elderly King Petar I, retreated, taking refuge on the icy mountain peaks of Albania. Young men of military age who were threatened with forced mobilization into the Austrian army and the terrible prospect of fighting against Russia also went there with them. In order not to shoot at their Orthodox Russian brothers, young Serbs climbed the Ice Golgotha, where hunger and cold claimed the lives of every third of them.
On instructions from his government, Fr. Nikolai goes to England and America. There he, fully using the gift of preaching given to him by God, explains to different layers of society in these countries the meaning of the struggle waged by the Orthodox Serbian people for the Cross and Freedom.
During the Vladyka’s stay in Great Britain, a certain English preacher named Campbell said in a newspaper article that “the Serbs are a small tribe from the Turkish Kingdom, which is engaged in petty trade and is distinguished by sloppiness. Prone to theft." Already in the next issue of the same newspaper there appeared a note written by Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich:
“When I first arrived in London, a sign caught my eye: “Beware of pickpockets!” I decided that this sign was quickly installed specifically in view of my arrival. After all, I am Serbian. From a tribe prone to theft. However, when I took a closer look at the sign, my soul felt better. The sign is already several decades old. But in Serbia we don’t have such signs at all.”.
Once, in one of the great cathedrals of London, a certain Englishman publicly asked Fr. Nicholas:
Is there anything in your land similar to the masterpieces of our European architecture?
The future Lord immediately replied:
In Serbia we have a unique masterpiece of Asian architecture. This masterpiece is called Chele Kula (Tower of Skulls). The history of its creation is as follows: when the Turkish army came to pacify the Serbian uprising, the obstacle to advancing to Niš was the fortress in which about five thousand rebels were defending. In the end, the Turks broke into the fortress, but the Serbs blew themselves up along with tens of thousands of punitive forces. On the site of the blown up bastion, the Turks built a tower and built a thousand Serbian heads into its walls. Which were already cut off from the dead.
An English historian who was present at this dialogue confirmed what was said by Fr. Nicholas, and the arrogant Western European who asked the question was embarrassed.
The performances of Hieromonk Nikolai (Velimirovich), which lasted from 1915 to 1919, took place in churches, universities, colleges, in a variety of halls and meetings, were so brilliant that subsequently one of the high military officials of Great Britain called Fr. Nicholas as the “third army” of fighting Serbia.
It is remarkable that immediately after the end of the First World War, Fr. Nicholas predicted the inevitability of a new tragic global military clash in “civilized Europe.” Knowing European philosophy and culture very well, he literally described in detail the methods that the “cultural West” would use in the next world war. He considered the main reason for the new war to be the departure of European man from God. The Lord called the advancing godless culture and worldview of “secular humanism” the “White Plague.”
In 1920, Hieromonk Nicholas became Bishop of Ohrid, in Macedonia. There, on the shores of the wonderfully beautiful Lake Ohrid, literally in the cradle of Slavic writing, where the holy enlighteners Cyril and Methodius preached, he wrote a number of his wonderful spiritual works, including the collection “Prayers on the Lake,” called by his contemporaries the second Psalter.
Such a case is known from the life of the Lord of that period. One day he addressed those preparing to receive Holy Communion:
Let those worthy of Communion stand on the right, and those unready on the left.
Soon a lot of people were on the left side. And only four stood on the right.
Well, - said the Lord, - now sinners will approach the cup with the Most Pure Body and Blood, but the righteous may not approach. They are already sinless. Why do they need Communion?
Vladyka traveled to the most remote parts of his diocese, met with believers, helped restore churches and monasteries destroyed by the war, and founded orphanages.
To successfully attract people to the temple, Vladyka Nikolai did not shy away from even the feat of foolishness. One day he took a donkey and sat on it “barefoot and headless,” and even backwards. So he drove through the whole of Ohrid. His feet dragged in the dust, and his head, with tousled hair blown by the wind, dangled in all directions. No one dared to approach the Lord with questions. The people immediately began to whisper: “Nicholas has gone mad. I wrote, read, thought a lot - and went crazy.”
On Sunday, all of Ohrid was in the monastery for the Liturgy. It was interesting: what happened to the bishop?
And he served the Liturgy as usual. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen at the sermon. At the end of the service, Vladyka stood before the people and, after a pause, spoke:
What, did you come to see crazy Nikola? Is there no other way to get you into church?! You don't have time for everything. It's no longer interesting. Another thing is to talk about fashion. Or - about politics. Or - about civilization. About the fact that you are Europeans. What has today's Europe inherited?! Europe, which destroyed more people in one last war than all of Asia did in a thousand years!!?
Oh, my brothers, don't you see anything of this? Haven’t you yet felt the darkness and malice of today’s Europe? Who will you follow: Europe or the Lord?
There is a well-known case when, in the presence of the Yugoslav King Alexander I, who arrived in Ohrid, Vladyka Nicholas threw a roast pig served to the royal table out the window with the words:
Do you want the Orthodox sovereign to lighten up on a fast day?
The people in Ohrid fell in love with their primate. Ordinary people nicknamed him Grandfather-Vladyka; they dropped all their affairs and hurried to be blessed as soon as he appeared.
The bishop devoted all his free time to prayer and literary works. He slept very little.
Here, one after another, such of his works as “Thoughts on Good and Evil”, “Omilia”, “Missionary Letters” and other wonderful works appeared.
The Bishop’s love for Russia forced him to correctly assess the personality of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and was the first in the world to speak about the need to honor the memory of the Royal Family. Behind the narrow-minded reasoning of the majority about the “indecisiveness” and “lack of will” of the last Russian Tsar, he discerned the true meaning of the martyrdom of this holy man and his family, the veneration of which has become an integral and wonderful feature of the modern Orthodox world.
The Bishop also pays close attention to the problem of infanticide and abortion, the legalization of which was then possible only in distraught Bolshevik Russia. Only the providence of the Lord can be attributed to the fact that he saw the terrible meaning and scale of this evil, which at that time was not yet acutely facing European society, but has now brought the peoples who were once Christian to the threshold of complete moral degeneration and physical extinction. Here, in particular, is what he writes to a woman who turned to him for spiritual help:
“You write that you are troubled by terrible dreams. As soon as you close your eyes, three youths appear to you, ridicule you, threaten and intimidate you... You write that in search of treatment you have visited all famous doctors and knowledgeable people. They told you: “Nothing, it’s nothing.” You answered: “If this is a trifle, spare me these visions. How can a trifle not give you sleep and peace?
And I’ll tell you this: the three youths who appear to you are three of your children, killed by you in the womb, before the sun touched their faces with its gentle rays. And now they have come to repay you. The retribution of the dead is terrible and menacing. Do you readHoly Bible ? It explains how and why the dead take revenge on the living. Read again about Cain, who, after killing his brother, could never find peace anywhere. Read about how the spirit of the offended Samuel repaid Saul. Read how unfortunate David suffered for a long time and cruelly because of the murder of Uriah. Thousands and thousands of such cases are known - from Cain to you; read about them and you will understand what torments you and why. You will understand that victims are stronger than their executioners and their retribution is terrible...
Start by understanding and realizing... Do everything in your power for your murdered children, do deeds of mercy. And the Lord will forgive you - everyone is alive with Him - and give you peace. Go to church and ask what you should do: the priests know.”
In view of the danger of sectarian propaganda, which was already gaining strength at that time, Vladyka Nikolai headed the popular “Political Movement,” designed to attract simple, often illiterate peasants living in remote mountain villages to the church. The “Bogomoltsy” did not represent any special organization. These were people who were ready not only to regularly attend church, but also to live every day according to the canons of the Holy Orthodox Faith, according to the Christian ways of their native country, drawing others along with them.
Due to centuries-old persecution of Orthodoxy during the Turkish rule, not every Serbian and Macedonian village had an Orthodox church at that time. In such villages, Vladyka Nicholas appointed people’s elders, strong in faith, who united the peasants for joint trips to church, and also gathered them in ordinary houses for peculiar Christian evenings, where they readHoly Bible , divine chants were sung. Many of these songs, set to beautiful folk melodies, were composed by Vladyka Nikolai himself. Their simple, unsophisticated texts contain almost all of Orthodox dogma.
The “pagan movement,” which the Bishop’s works spread throughout Serbia, was a real popular religious awakening.
Many monasteries, including the Hilandar Monastery on Holy Mount Athos, were filled with novices and monks from among the “pagans” who revived the fading monastic life.
“Oh, Holy God, give me as friends those who have Your name engraved in their hearts, and as enemies those who do not even want to know about You. For such friends will remain my friends until death, and such enemies will fall to their knees before me and submit as soon as their swords are broken.”
In those years, events took place in Serbia that for a long time determined the future fate of the Orthodox Serbian people. The transformation of the Serbian state into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SKS), and then into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was a departure from the principle of Orthodox Serbism in favor of the supranational and non-religious, and essentially unspiritual principle of “Yugoslavism”. Subsequently, this ideology, which arose in the minds of people far from both faith and the centuries-old national spirit, did not pass the test of life. In the 20th century, Yugoslavism turned into innumerable sorrows for the long-suffering Serbian people, quite comparable to all the horrors of five centuries of Turkish oppression. And this tragedy is not over, it continues to this day, already in the new millennium.
Vladyka Nikolai later gave a harsh assessment of “Yugoslavism” as a vile betrayal of the shrines, history and interests of Orthodox Serbia. Here is what, in particular, he will write about this:
“Yugoslavia represented for the Serbian people the greatest misunderstanding, the cruellest writhing and the most shameful humiliation that they had ever experienced and experienced in their past.”
Already in those years, the Orthodox people of Serbia, who for centuries had resisted the onslaught of the heresy of “Catholicism” and the bloodyIslam Soviet terror in the name of preserving the purity of Orthodoxy, began to reap the fruits of “Yugoslav” supra-religious internationalism. In 1937, the government of M. Stojadinovic concluded a concordat with the Vatican, which gave enormous advantages to the Catholic Church, which was thus placed in a privileged position compared to other faiths. The Serbian Orthodox Church spoke out against the cynical agreement, which pursued utilitarian, foreign policy goals. Church, which organized a grand religious procession in Belgrade on July 19, which escalated into bloody clashes with the police.
The first of the political figures to openly supportChurch, became Dimitri Ljotić, an outstanding Serbian patriot who was a close friend of Vladyka Nicholas. St. Nicholas later gave his life and work the highest assessment, calling him an example of a Christian nationalist.
At the cost of great sacrifices (the death of Patriarch-Martyr Barnabas, poisoned by supporters of the concordat; bloody repressions against ordinary participants in protests) and thanks to the unity of Serbian society, the anathematized Stojadinovic wavered and backed down; the criminal agreement was never approved...
At this tragic time, we see Bishop Nikolai (Velimirović) in the forefront of active opponents of the concordat.
When presenting the cardinal honors to the nuncio in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Pelegrinetti, in December 1937, Pope Pius XI declared: “The day will come - I would not like to say it, but I am deeply confident of it - the day will come when many will regret that they did not accept with an open heart and in soul such a greatest good as that which the messenger of Jesus Christ offered to their country.” The ominous prophecy was fulfilled 4 years later...
The Vatican took terrible revenge for the failure of that concordat. During World War II, Croatian Catholic Ustasha fighters, with the open support of the Catholic clergy of Croatia and at its direct call, committed atrocities against the Serbs, before whom any atrocities committed by people and demons paled and will fade. The wholesale extermination of the Serbian people, accompanied by atrocities so indescribable that one cannot even imagine reproducing them, led to the destruction of more than two million Serbs who found themselves on the territory of Croatia, which received independence from Hitler’s hands. The Vatican, through the mouth of Pope Pius XI, will subsequently call the Ustashe leaders “good Catholics”, whom it will save from retribution by taking them out of Yugoslavia through secret “rat trails”, sheltering them and providing them with funds in third countries.
But all this awaits long-suffering Serbia in the near, terrible future, but for now, in 1934, Bishop Nikolai (Velimirović) was appointed Bishop of the Žić diocese, where he continues his ascetic labors. Soon, through the works and prayers of the Lord, the ancient churches were filled with the light of Grace, with which they once shone, back in the time of their ancestors.
He did not abandon his concerns for the suffering and disadvantaged. To this day, the home he founded in Bitola for orphans and children from poor families “Bogdai”, or “Grandfather Bogdai”, as it was also called, is well known to this day. For the pupils of Bogday, Vladyka Nikolai wrote the following children’s song:
“We are children from Bito, orphan children,
our house is on the very edge,
as if in heaven, in Bogdai,
like in heaven, in Bogdai.”
Bishop Nicholas opened such charitable homes for children in many Serbian cities; in the pre-war years, about 600 children lived in them.
Vladyka Nikolai always clearly saw the relationship between the spiritual and material worlds. On the eve of the military events, the young king of Yugoslavia, Petar II, arrived in Žiča. They say that when they met, he arrogantly offered the now elderly Saint his gloved hand. Entering the temple, this eighteen-year-old youth never crossed himself, looked absently around, yawning demonstratively.
Six years later, in London, the exiled king Petar Karadjordjevic met with the Lord again. When the latter entered the room, the king jumped up and fell to his knees, falling at the Saint’s feet.
“Ah, Your Majesty,” said the Lord with tears, “it’s too late to kiss your feet.” It's already late. And there’s no point. It used to be necessary to kiss. And not the legs, but the arm. If you had venerated the holy images in time, then now you would not have to venerate your boots.
The attack of Hitler's Germany on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the impetus that released all the demons of hatred of Orthodoxy and Serbism, which had been hidden and matured for centuries in the heterodox tribes that now formed one state with the Serbs.
The ruthless enemy, who invaded the country with all his crushing might, was immediately supported by the internal enemy: Croats, fanatically committed to Roman Catholicism, Bosniac Muslims, Kosovo Albanians-Shiptars. Betrayed by national minorities, the already weak army of the small kingdom collapsed under the blows of the then invincible Wehrmacht. The country was captured by the enemy, and the “brothers of Yugoslavism” began a terror against Orthodox Serbia that was so insane in its scale and demonic cruelty that even the German and Italian generals cried out that what was happening was beyond the bounds of all human understanding.
But Hitler, who immediately recognized his Croats as “belonging to European culture” and always sincerely sympathized with religionIslamand, he literally gave the Serbs he hated to be torn to pieces by his Balkan allies. Hell has descended on the country.
The far-sighted Fuhrer did not forget Vladyka Nikolai (Velimirovich) personally. His directive for Serbia read: “Destroy the Serbian intelligentsia, behead the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and in the first row - Patriarch Dozic, Metropolitan Zimonich and Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich of Zic...”.
“They surrounded us from everywhere and want to drown us in death, because they want us to disappear. They laugh at You, don't you hear? They mock us because of You, don't You see? They are drunk on the smell of human blood and rejoice in the tears of orphans. The cries of the martyrs sound like songs to them, and the squeaks of crushed children are sweet music. When they gouge out people's eyes, the hyenas run away in terror, muttering to themselves: We don't know that. When they skin the living, the wolves howl: we don’t know how to do this. When they tear off mothers' breasts, the dogs bark: we are only now learning this from people. When they trample Your baptized people, the wild boars grunt: We don’t trample anyone’s crops like that. We hide our tears from people so that they do not laugh at us, and we hide our sighs so that they do not mock us. However, we cry and sigh before You, because You see everything and judge righteously.”.
The heroic people of Serbia did not sit idly by and did not expect mercy from those who did not know it. Without despairing from the fall of the state mechanism of royal Yugoslavia, the Orthodox patriots of Serbia began an unequal and tragic struggle with the all-powerful enemy, standing to the death for their trampled shrines and suffering neighbors. In these terrible days, the ancient banner of the Chetnik struggle for the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom was raised, which for centuries inspired the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans in the sacred struggle.
Wanting to completely share the fate of his flock, the Lord himself appeared to the occupiers and said:
You are shooting my children in Kraljevo. Now I have come to you so that you kill me first, and then my children. Those who are your hostages.
The ruler was arrested, but they did not dare to shoot him, since Dimitri Ljotić and Milan Nedic warned the Nazis that if they executed a man whom many Serbs revered as a saint, then nothing would stop the people driven to despair from a general uprising.
It is known that during his stay under German supervision in the monastery, Bishop Nicholas saved a family of Jews, a mother and daughter, from imminent execution, and he even had to transport the girl in a food sack.
In 1941, the envoy of Colonel Draza Mikhailovich from Ravna Gora, who did not surrender to the invaders, made his way to the Lyubostin monastery, where Vladyka Nikolai was initially kept under arrest, Major Palosevic. The Saint gave him a message in which he ordered Voivode Draže to organize the Chetnik movement in Bosnia and save the exterminated Serbian people.
Draza Mihailovic, who soon became one of the greatest and now most revered heroes of Orthodox Serbia, carried this blessing of the Lord with honor through all the war years, waging a heroic, unequal struggle for the faith and people - right up to his martyrdom.
They raised an ancient flag of resistance, a black bariak with the symbol of Death and Resurrection - Adam’s Head and the motto “With faith in God - Freedom or Death!” - and other heroes of the Orthodox people's movement of Serbia. And including the glorious leader of the Chetnik Dinaric division, the governor-priest Momchilo Djuich, who personally knew the Vladyka well.
How can one not recall here the inspired words of the Serbian saint of the past, Metropolitan Petar Njegosh, spoken by him in poetic form about the struggle of Orthodox Christians against the Turks and “Poturchens,” that is, Muslim Slavs:
“World, stand up for the Cross, for the honor of youth,
All who carry light weapons,
Everyone who hears their own heart!
We are the bastards of the name of Christ
Let's christen it with water or blood!
Let us destroy the infection in God's flock!
Let the fatal song rise,
The right altar is on the bloody stone!
In 1944, Bishop Velimirović and Patriarch Gabriel Dozic were thrown into the Dachau concentration camp. Patriarch Gabriel and Bishop Nicholas are the only European church hierarchs held in this death camp.
In his book “The Unattainable Land,” dedicated to prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, Vladyka depicts the image of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself in the artistic image of a fighter of the Orthodox Serbian armed Resistance, martyrically enduring interrogations and torture in Hitler’s extermination camp.
There the Saint makes interesting and important conclusions about the deep similarity of the militantIslamand Hitler's Nazism.
"Gestapo man: You compare the Germans with the Turks and think that by doing this you will humiliate us. Meanwhile, I don’t consider this a humiliation, because the Turks are also a dominant race, just like us Germans. The only difference is that now the Turks, as the dominant race, are retreating, and the Germans, as the dominant race, are advancing.
Saved: That is why some observers pointed out that your National Socialist Party, having rejected Christianity, took up the banner of Mohammed, released from the weakening Turkish hands. Maybe your party will proclaim in Germany Islam state religion?.
On May 1945, the prisoners were freed by the advancing American army.
In the camp, Vladyka writes the book “Through Prison Bars,” in which he calls Christians to repentance and reflects on why God allowed such terrible disasters for people.
Together with his people during the war, Vladyka Nikolai experienced terrible torment, but God preserved him in these sorrows.
At this time (and, unfortunately, with the help of Soviet military power), the godless communists, led by the Serbian-hater Croatian Joseph Tito, came to power in the so-called Yugoslavia. The honor of the anti-fascist struggle launched by the Orthodox Chetniks was appropriated by the communist partisans; One of the leaders of the people's liberation movement, Voivode Draza Mihailovic, was tried by a Tito court and executed on trumped-up charges. Repression fell on the patriots, and a long dark night of atheistic rule, led by the enemies of the Holy Faith and Serbianism, fell on the entire Orthodox people of Serbia. Everything nationally Serbian was persecuted, even the “Srpska Chirilica” - the Orthodox Serbian Cyrillic script - was abolished, and the Croatian Latin alphabet was introduced everywhere.
“When a person turns his face to God, all his paths lead to God. When a person turns away from God, all paths lead him to destruction. When a person finally renounces God both in word and in heart, he is no longer able to create or do anything that would not serve to his complete destruction, both physical and mental. Therefore, do not rush to execute the atheist: he has found his executioner in himself; the most merciless that can be in this world.”
Bishop Nikolai (Velimirović) was declared an enemy by the communists and in such conditions could not return to his homeland; he was simply not allowed there.
After considerable wanderings, Vladyka settled in America, where he continued his church and social activities, wrote, and again reflected on the fate of Serbism and Orthodoxy. He creates such pearls as “The Harvests of the Lord”, “The Unattainable Land”, “The One Lover of Mankind”, “The First Law of God and the Pyramid of Paradise“...
There he continued to communicate with the Chetniks, who, like him, found themselves in a foreign land, and in particular with the most famous of them, the priest voivode Momcilo Djuich.
Saint Nicholas sees the purpose of his native people in Theodulia, serving God. In the constant struggle for the honorable cross and golden freedom.
“Everything is under the sign of the Cross and freedom. Under the sign of the Cross it means dependence on God, under the sign of freedom it means independence from people. And under the sign of the Cross it means to follow Christ and fight for Christ, and under the sign of freedom it means to be freed from passions and all moral rot. We do not simply say the Cross and freedom, but the honest Cross and golden freedom. So, not some crooked or some kind of criminal cross, but an honest cross, which means exclusively the cross of Christ; not some kind of freedom, cheap, dirty, worthless, but golden, in other words, expensive, clean and bright. (...) The cross banner is the Serbian banner. Under him they fell in Kosovo, under him they won freedom in the Uprising.”
The people of Serbia, who find themselves at the junction of Orthodoxy,Islamand Catholicism, carries the highest mission of preserving the purity of Orthodoxy and fierce opposition to militant heterodoxy:
“The Serbs did not finish the fight against the Turks in Kosovo. We didn’t finish either in Smeredeva or Belgrade. They never stopped it anywhere - from Kosovo to Orshanets, from Lazar to Karageorgi, just as they did not stop from Karageorgi to Kumanovo. And after the fall of Smeredev and Belgrade, the struggle continued, terrible and stubborn, for centuries; it was carried out from Montenegro and Dalmatia, from Udobin, from Hungary, from Romania, from Russia. The crusader Serb was everywhere - and to the end, the main champion of the war against the Crescent.
In the last years of his life, the Saint foresaw the tragic events for the Serbian people that would follow the fall of communism and the collapse of the artificial and harmful Yugoslav state formation for Serbia. He said that the West and the papacy would not hesitate to once again support the eternal enemies of his people and Orthodoxy, and now it is necessary to think not about high politics, but about how to arm the Serbs so that they can defend themselves in these coming terrible times.
The Lord writes and preaches until the last hour of his earthly life.
Always distinguished by his great love for the Russian people, he ended his journey in this world in the Russian monastery of St. Tikhon in Pennsylvania. He departed to the Lord during cell prayer on March 18, 1956. The Vladyka’s body was transferred to the Serbian monastery of St. Sava in Libettsville and buried there.
On the day of his death, despite communist persecution, bells were ringing throughout Serbia.
* * *
Popular veneration of him as a saint, which began during his lifetime, continued and intensified after his death.
Church glorification of the SaintNikolai Serbsky took place in the Lelic monastery on March 18, 1987.
After the communist regime in Yugoslavia became a thing of the past, Vladyka returned to his native land. In 1991, his holy relics were transferred from the USA to his native Lelic.
The transfer of the Vladyka’s relics resulted in a nationwide celebration; the day of the transfer was included in the church calendar.Church , where this great shrine is kept, every year becomes a place of increasingly crowded pilgrimage. By the decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of October 6, 2003, the name of the saintNikolai Serbsky was included in the monthly calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, with the celebration of his memory on April 20/May 3 (the day of the transfer of the relics).
Orthodox Christians turn to the Lord for prayer help all over the world, but especially in Serbia and Russia.
Now many lukewarm semi-Christians are imposing on the Church the opinion that it is necessary to fight evil by indulging it, absorbing it into oneself, in order to “assimilate” it, dilute it. Therefore, from the numerous posthumous miracles of the SaintNikolai Serbsky I would like to cite one thing that clearly demonstrates that the Lord, who even during his earthly life, with the sword of righteousness, biblically cut off evil from good, filth from holiness, continues to do this while being with God in the Kingdom of Heaven. Here is what they told about this to the researcher of the life of the Lord, Vladimir Radosavlevich:
“One guy from Valev, who was involved in drug trafficking, once brought a donation to the Lelic monastery. He prayed for a long time at the shrine with the relics of the Holy Bishop, and then took out a substantial sum from his pocket and put it on the shrine.
Once outside the monastery gates, the dealer reached into his pocket to take out cigarettes. And then an icy wind flew through his bones: the money was again in his pocket. He ran back to the empty temple and saw that there was no money on the shrine. The money that the young drug dealer found in his pocket were the same bills.
This meant only one thing: the holy Lord did not accept his dirty, albeit very impressive gift. He does not accept it and clearly says that the saint will not protect and protect the drug dealer.
The guy was shaking all the way home to Valevo. And a month later he returned again to Lelich and confessed. There, in the monastery, he found a spiritual mentor, who, undoubtedly, was sent to the repentant thief by the holy Bishop. Soon the former dealer went to Mount Athos, to the Hilandar monastery.”
Holy Bishop Nicholas of Serbia, about whom his disciple, St. Rev. Father Justin of Cheliy (Popovich) said: “Vladyka Nicholas is the greatest son of the Serbian people after Saint Sava of Serbia! Amen"- is the author of fifteen volumes of works that are extremely beloved in the Orthodox world. Reading them strengthens our holy faith, patrally instructing modern man on the Path of Truth.
I would especially like to highlight here a collection of letters addressed by the Bishop to a variety of people and containing answers to a variety of spiritual questions. This collection, called “Missionary Letters,” is an inexhaustible source of Christian instructions, where the Gospel vision of life is presented in clear, penetrating language and the answer is found to almost any spiritual question that arises in our contemporaries.
Let us finish with the words of Vladyka Nicholas and Christ Himself:
« Do not think that I came to bring peace to earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. This is what the Lord said. Read it like this: “I did not come to reconcile truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, good and evil, truth and violence, morality and bestiality, chastity and debauchery, God and mammon; no, I brought a sword to cut off and separate one from the other, so that there is no confusion.”
How will you cut it off, Lord? The sword of truth. Or by the sword of the word of God, since that is one thing. The Apostle Paul advises us: take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Saint John the Theologian in Revelation saw the Son of Man sitting in the middle of seven lamps, and from His mouth came a sword sharp on both sides. The sword that comes out of the mouth, what else but the word of God, the word of truth? This sword broughtJesus Christ brought to earth for the sake of saving the world, but not for the sake of a world of good and evil. And now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.”
Troparion, tone 8 Chrysostom preacher of the Risen Christ, guide of the Serbian crusader family through the ages, the blessed lyre of the Holy Spirit, the word and love of the monks, the joy and praise of the priests, the teacher of repentance, the leader of the pilgrim army of Christ, Saint Nicholas of Serbia and the pan-Orthodox: with all the saints of Heavenly Serbia, pray May the One Lover of Mankind grant peace and unity to our race.
Nicholas (Velimirović) (1880-1956), Bishop of Ohrid and Žić, saint, organizer of the Orthodox people's movement in interwar Serbia: a prominent theologian and religious philosopher, honorary doctor of several world universities. The largest Serbian spiritual author, through the centuries of Turkish rule over Serbia, built a bridge to the poetics of medieval Serbian stichera, from which young Russian literature learned imagery. A saint who offered many prayers for Russia and dedicated many pages to it.
Nikolaj Velimirović was born on December 23, 1880 in the mountain village of Lelić in western Serbia. One of nine children in a peasant family, he was sent by his devout parents to school at the monastery of Chelie (“Kelia”). Then, after graduating from the gymnasium in the city of Valjevo and the Belgrade Theological Seminary, Nikola Velimirović received a scholarship to study at the Old Catholic Faculty in Bern, where at the age of 28 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Theosophy. The topic of his doctorate was: “Faith in the Resurrection of Christ as the main dogma of the Apostolic Church.” Following this, Nikola Velimirović brilliantly graduates from the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford and defends his second, this time philosophical, doctorate.
Returning to Serbia, the young doctor began teaching at the Belgrade Seminary, and at the same time published his articles in Serbian church magazines, with which he began collaborating as a teenager. As often happens with people chosen by the Lord, Nikola Velimirović unexpectedly falls seriously ill. In the hospital, he promises himself that if he is healed, he will devote himself entirely to God and his native Church. Immediately after this, the illness leaves him, and, without delaying a single extra day, Nikola Velimirovich takes monastic vows at the Rakovica Monastery near Belgrade, becoming Nikolai - Nikolai.
In 1910, Hieromonk Nikolai went to study in Russia, at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. For a long time, the Academy did not even know that by that time he had already graduated from two well-known European universities (when admitted to the Academy, he did not even mention the Western European faculties he had completed, but simply acted like yesterday’s seminarian). The Serbian student’s preaching and literary talent was discovered at one of the academic spiritual evenings, where Fr. Nicholas amazed the entire audience, and especially the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga Anthony (Vadkovsky). After this evening, Metropolitan Anthony obtained a scholarship for him from the government to travel around Russia.
Thus Fr. Nicholas visited all the most famous holy places, got to know the Russian people better and never again parted spiritually with Russia. She became a constant subject of his thoughts. Since then, no country in the world has been perceived by him with such warmth and family love as Russia. In the 1920s, already as a bishop, he was the first in the world to talk about the need to honor the memory of the Royal Family. Behind the “indecisiveness” and “lack of will” of the last Russian Emperor, which was much discussed among Russian emigrants in Serbia at that time, he discerned other character traits of Emperor Nicholas II and a different meaning of the pre-revolutionary years of Russian history.
“The debt that Russia obliged the Serbian people in 1914 is so enormous that neither centuries nor generations can repay it,” Bishop Nicholas wrote in 1932. - This is the duty of love, which blindfolded goes to death, saving its neighbor.... The Russian Tsar and the Russian people, entering the war unprepared for the defense of Serbia, could not help but know that they were going to death. But the love of Russians for their brothers did not retreat in the face of danger and was not afraid of death. Will we ever dare to forget that the Russian Tsar with his children and millions of his brothers went to death for the truth of the Serbian people? Do we dare to remain silent before heaven and earth that our freedom and statehood cost Russia more than us? The morality of the world war, unclear, dubious and contested from different sides, reveals itself in the Russian sacrifice for the Serbs in evangelical clarity, certainty and indisputability...”
Returning from Russia Fr. Nikolai began publishing his serious literary works: “Conversations under the Mountain”, “Over Sin and Death”, “The Religion of Njegos”...
During the First World War, Fr. Nicholas could be seen in combat positions: he confessed and gave communion to Serbian soldiers and strengthened their spirit with sermons. Until the end of the war, he transferred all his salary to the needs of the wounded.
On behalf of the Serbian government, Fr. Nikolai also visited England and America, where in public speeches he explained to the public of these countries what Orthodox Serbia was fighting for. The commander of the British troops subsequently stated that “Father Nicholas was the third army,” fighting for the Serbian and Yugoslav idea.
It is noteworthy that immediately after the end of the First World War, Fr. Nikolai predicted the inevitability of a new global collision. An expert in Western philosophy and culture, he accurately described in detail the methods that “civilized Europe” would use in the next world war. He considered the main cause of the war to be the removal of European man from God. The bishop called the contemporary atheistic culture “White Plague.”
In 1920, Father Nikolai was installed as Bishop of Ohrid, in Macedonia. Here, in the cradle of Slavic writing, where the echoes of the sermons of Cyril and Methodius seemed to still live, Bishop Nicholas, already a mature spiritual writer, created the true pearls of his work: “Prayers by the Lake”, “Omilie”, “Ohrid Prologue” and others.
In general, the collected works of Bishop Nicholas number fifteen volumes - an amazing fact, considering that his ascetic work in the diocese was not interrupted for a day. Vladyka traveled to its most remote ends, met with believers, founded orphanages, and helped restore temples and monasteries destroyed by the war. In 1924-1926 he was also temporary administrator of the nascent American Diocese of the Serbian Patriarchate.
Realizing the danger of sectarian propaganda, which was already gaining strength at that time, Bishop Nicholas led the so-called “pagan movement” among the Serbian people, designed to attract simple, often illiterate peasants living in remote mountain villages to the church. The “Bogomoltsy” did not constitute any special organization. These were people who were ready not only to regularly attend church, but also to live every day according to the canons of their Orthodox faith, according to the Christian ways of their native country, captivating others with their example. The “pagan” movement, which spread through the efforts of the bishop throughout Serbia, can be called a popular religious awakening.
In 1934, Bishop Nicholas was appointed Bishop of the Zhich Diocese. Its spiritual center, the ancient Žiča monastery, required comprehensive renovation, like many other monasteries in this part of central Serbia. And here, as in Ohrid, Bishop Nicholas had to streamline monastic and church life, disrupted by the World War, and, if we look deeper, by five centuries of Turkish rule in the Balkans. Soon, through the labors and prayers of the bishop, many ancient churches were filled with the light with which they shone, perhaps, back in the Middle Ages. The Second World War began, when Serbia, for the umpteenth time in history, shared its fate with Russia. Hitler, who found loyal allies in the Croats, naturally assumed his opponents in the Serbs. Developing a plan for the invasion of Yugoslavia, he ordered his commander of the Southern Front, in particular, the following: “Destroy the Serbian intelligentsia, behead the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and in the first row - Patriarch Dozic, Metropolitan Zimonich and Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich of Zic...”. Soon, the Bishop, together with Patriarch Gabriel of Serbia, found himself in the notorious Dachau concentration camp - the only church officials of this rank in Europe who were taken into custody!
They were liberated on May 8, 1945 by the American 36th Division. Unfortunately, this liberation did not mean for Vladyka Nicholas a return to his homeland. In Yugoslavia, at the end of the war, the atheistic, openly anti-Orthodox regime of Joseph Ambrose (Tito) came to power by force.
While in exile in America, Vladyka continued to serve and worked on new books - “The Harvests of the Lord,” “The Land of Lack of Access,” “The Only Lover of Humanity.” His concern was also sending aid to war-torn Serbia. At this time, all his literary works in his homeland were banned and slandered, and he himself, a prisoner of a fascist concentration camp, was turned by communist propaganda into an “employee of the occupiers.”
The Bishop's last days were spent in the Russian monastery of St. Tikhon in South Canaan (Pennsylvania), where on March 18, 1956, he peacefully reposed in the Lord. Death found him praying.
Reverence
From the Russian monastery, the body of Bishop Nicholas was transferred to the Serbian monastery of St. Sava in Libertyville (Illinois, near Chicago) and buried with honors in the local cemetery. The Bishop's last wish - to be buried in his homeland - at that time, for obvious reasons, could not be fulfilled. But, as you can see, the prayer of the people was strong, who immediately after the death of the bishop, long before his canonization, began to pray to him as a saint.
The glorification of St. Nicholas of Serbia, Zhichski as a locally revered saint of the Shabatsk-Valjevo diocese took place in the Lelic monastery on March 18, 1987, on the day of remembrance of Bishop Nicholas. After the funeral liturgy, which was served by the local bishop of Šabacko-Valjevo John (Velimirović) and Bishop Amfilohije (Radović) of Vršacko-Banat, the troparion was sung to St. Nicholas. For this day, the sisters of the Chelie monastery painted his icon.
On May 3, 1991, freed from the yoke of internationalism and atheism, Serbia returned to itself the relics of St. Nicholas of Serbia as a shrine. The transfer of the relics of the bishop resulted in a nationwide celebration and this day was also included in the church calendar. His relics now rest in his native village of Lelic. The church where they are kept becomes a place of increasingly crowded pilgrimage every year.
By the decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 6, 2003, the name of St. Nicholas was included in the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church with the celebration of his memory on April 20 (the day of the transfer of the relics), as established in the Serbian Orthodox Church.