he and my mother were parting for ever. I was
a little boy at the time, but I remember that, when
he was dead, my mother said to me, ’Boris, pray
for your father every day. He is still alive.’
She said nothing more, but I ran upstairs crying,
fell upon my knees and prayed—trying to
think where my father was and what he could be looking
like. And in that prayer for my father, which
was also an act of obedience to my mother, I think
I took the first step towards the monastic life.
For I remember that then, for the first time, I was
conscious of a great sense of responsibility.
My mother’s command made me say to myself, ’Then
perhaps my prayer can do something in heaven.
Perhaps a prayer from me can make God wish to do something
He had not wished to do before.’ That was
a tremendous thought! It excited me terribly.
I remember my cheeks burned as I prayed, and that I
was hot all over as if I had been running in the sun.
From that day my mother and I seemed to be much nearer
together than we had ever been before. I had
a twin brother to whom I was devoted, and who was devoted
to me. But he took after my father. Religious
things, ceremonies, church music, processions—even
the outside attractions of the Catholic Church, which
please and stimulate emotional people who have little
faith—never meant much to him. All
his attention was firmly fixed upon the life of the
present. He was good to my mother and loved her
devotedly, as he loved me, but he never pretended
to be what he was not. And he was never a Catholic.
He was never anything.
“My father had originally come to Africa for
his health, which needed a warm climate. He had
some money and bought large tracts of land suitable
for vineyards. Indeed, he sunk nearly his whole
fortune in land. I told you, Domini, that the
vines were devoured by the phylloxera. Most of
the money was lost. When my father died we were
left very poor. We lived quietly in a little
village—I told you its name, I told you
that part of my life, all I dared tell, Domini—but
now—why did I enter the monastery?
I was very young when I became a novice, just seventeen.
You are thinking, Domini, I know, that I was too young
to know what I was doing, that I had no vocation,
that I was unfitted for the monastic life. It
seems so. The whole world would think so.
And yet—how am I to tell you? Even
now I feel that then I had the vocation, that I was
fitted to enter the monastery, that I ought to have
made a faithful and devoted monk. My mother wished
the life for me, but it was not only that. I
wished it for myself then. With my whole heart
I wished it. I knew nothing of the world.
My youth had been one of absolute purity. And
I did not feel longings after the unknown. My
mother’s influence upon me was strong; but she
did not force me into anything. Perhaps my love
for her led me more than I knew, brought me to the
monastery door. The passion of her life, the
human passion, had been my father. After he was
dead the passion of her life was prayer for him.
My love for her made me share that passion, and the
sharing of that passion eventually led me to become
a monk. I became as a child, a devotee of prayer.
Oh! Domini—think—I loved
prayer—I loved it——”
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