Elder Nektary of Optina

Many considered Batiushka Nektary to be clairvoyant; they gave a symbolic interpretation to his every gesture.  At times he found this very burdensome.  Once he told of the following incident: "Sometimes I have presentiments and the man's soul is opened up to me, but sometimes not.  There was an amazing case.  A woman came to me complaining about her nine year-old son, that he was unmanageable.  And I told her, 'Have patience until he reaches the age of 12.'  I said this not because I had any particular feelings, but just from what I had learned -- that at the age of 12 a boy often undergoes changes.  The woman left and I forgot about her.  In three years the mother came weeping: 'My son has died; he just turned 12.'  People, of course, say, 'Look! Batiushka prophesied,' but it was just a simple calculation according to what I have learned. Later I asked myself -- did I have any premonitions or not?  No, I felt nothing.

Sometimes Batiushka would come straight out and say, "To you it is only half~revealed, but I know it." 

He possessed a wonderful simplicity of heart, a penetrating mind, and a gentle sense of humor. Even in old age he could break out into a child's laughter.  He loved animals and birds.  He had a cat who always obeyed him and he loved to say, "Elder Gerasim was a great elder and therefore he had a lion.  But we are small -- we have a cat."  And he told a delightful story about how a cat saved Noah's ark when the devil entered a mouse and tried to gnaw through the hull.  At the last minute the cat caught the wicked mouse and for that all cats go to paradise.  This sense of humor was characteristic of Batiushka. 

source: Orthodox Word magazine #129 (July-August 1986)

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BOOK:  Elder Nektary of Optina, by I.M. Kontzevich

ISBN: 0-938635-59-X

     Having lived through a time of persecution worse than any other in the thousand-year history of the Russian Orthodox Church, God gave Elder Nektary to Russia as a consolation to the suffering souls of the faithful and a voice of prophecy.  Through these eyewitness accounts of his life, the "spiritual grandfather" of Orthodoxy in America inspires us with innocent simplicity, sobriety and humility toward the path to true life in Christ.