Posted on 07/23/2017 4:53:52 PM PDT by marshmallow
The anxiety had been mounting for weeks, and now over breakfast on the first day of the Velikoretsky pilgrimage there was no escaping the feeling that I may have made a terrible mistake. I had seen a Russia Today short programme about the oldest, longest, and largest walking pilgrimage in Russia, how, although very much suppressed in soviet times, it was not only allowed, but now hugely popular. An inner feeling had developed that I wanted to experience this event and to be a small part of the religious revival in Orthodox Russia.
So, visas obtained, injections endured, and all manner of unaccustomed items bought—a rucksack, sleeping mat and foam-roll, and (I thought they might be useful) many packets of Kendal’s Mint Cake. Anyway, now, on this first morning there was no way out so we went, as arranged to the entrance of the Trifonov Monastery in Kirov where the procession was about to begin. 105 miles to go, in a six-day round trip.
Already the choir was singing the end of the Liturgy, and hundreds and hundreds of people were arriving—every minute more and more until, through the archway colourful banners, priests and the wonderworking icon of St. Nicholas proceeded off down the road. We had been adopted by Anastasia who was the English teacher to students at the seminary “you have a blessing to walk with us at the front” she had told me and then we jumped in to the huge stream on people as the choir continued to sing. In fact, the choir sang all week from three o’clock in the morning until we stopped in the evening—through the streets, the fields and the forests as we walked—all ages, all types of people, men, women, and children, priests and monks.....
(Excerpt) Read more at pravoslavie.ru ...
Wonderful! Also amazing is the news that the MSM never covers. You only watch TV and you are looking at a bare and dismal world indeed. The richness and variety of human life totally escapes them. May they all fall forever silent.
So true! Let’s remind each other to get out of the MSM sludge-stream, even out of digital device land, and into LIFE!
Total propaganda.
“An inner feeling had developed that I wanted to experience this event and to be a small part of the religious revival in Orthodox Russia.”
I don’t think Orthodox Russia can be separated from the reality of Russia today.
Very cool. Blessings to those who made the pilgrimage.
No, it’s not propaganda (if by that you mean exaggerated and untrue). I was in Russia last year and we went to a monastery and shrine about an hour or so from Moscow. It was full of pilgrims, and they were not by any means all elderly nostalgics. There were many families, and it was quite beautiful.
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