Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com strictest rule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over
his body by monks in holy orders. The reading was begun
by Father Iosif immediately after the requiem service. Fa-
ther Paissy desired later on to read the Gospel all day and
night over his dead friend, but for the present he, as well as
the Father Superintendent of the Hermitage, was very busy
and occupied, for something extraordinary, an unheard-of,
even ‘unseemly’ excitement and impatient expectation be-
gan to be apparent in the monks, and the visitors from the
monastery hostels, and the crowds of people flocking from
the town. And as time went on, this grew more and more
marked. Both the Superintendent and Father Paissy did
their utmost to calm the general bustle and agitation.
When it was fully daylight, some people began bring-
ing their sick, in most cases children, with them from the
town — as though they had been waiting expressly for this
moment to do so, evidently persuaded that the dead elder’s
remains had a power of healing, which would be immedi-
ately made manifest in accordance with their faith. It was
only then apparent how unquestionably everyone in our
town had accepted Father Zossima during his lifetime as a
great saint. And those who came were far from being all of
the humbler classes.
This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed
with such haste, such openness, even with impatience and
almost insistence, impressed Father Paissy as unseemly.
Though he had long foreseen something of the sort, the ac-
tual manifestation of the feeling was beyond anything he
had looked for. When he came across any of the monks who