Christmas in 1902

 Christmas in 1902

Alexei, Matryona, and Natalia, along with their parents, Anya and Nikolai Petrov, had just settled down for a special December Shabbat dinner.  It was a very cold, snowy, and blustery Siberian night.  The Petrov's lived just six miles outside of the city of Tyumen, and though they were practicing Jews, they each had a special love for the Savior, Jesus Christ, in their hearts.  On this particular Shabbat meal, as on all Shabbat meals they had celebrated in the past, they sought to honor their Hebrew customs, as well as invite the presence of the glorious Christ into their home.  The Petrovs, though they had weathered many a fiery trial and grueling tribulation, were always made better by such things, more joyful, and more loving.  They were not at all hesitant to welcome the most uncomely of strangers into their home, and their hospitality surpassed that of even that of the greatest saints of old. 

So they lit the candles, broke bread, whispered the common Shabbat blessing over their meal, and sat down to feast.  This Shabbat dinner was a very special one because they were hosting a guest whom they all adored.  His name was Matvei Sokolov.  Throughout the year 1902, Matvei and the Petrovs went on many exciting excursions in which they participated in very risky behaviors - things like scaling steep rocky mountain slopes without ropes, chasing wild animals that wouldn't mind eating them up for lunch, and jogging down steep hills with rocks and leaves that could easily trip them up.  But they always managed to cheat any sort of physical harm that usually accompanies such exploits.  Returning to their homes with not even so much as a scratch, they would talk, philosophize, and simply cherish each other the way kindred souls do.  They certainly were kindred souls if there ever was such a thing.  The Petrovs were honored beyond all delight to have Matvei as their guest of honor on this special Shabbat evening. 

Christmas was fast approaching.  Though the holiday inspired great joy in Matvei Sokolov, it also opened up a great void in his soul.  He would often think about life in a very complex way - his own life, the lives of people he cared about, and the lives of the people he once cared for but who had abandoned him because they were inadvertently offended by him.  It gave him great grief to think about the friends whom he lost over the years.  He would often have a most troublesome muse: "Only God's love is for sure.  Human love, though it promises the world and sometimes even all of heaven, will anathematize you in its very next breath."  He began to feel disillusioned by life and by the people who had deserted him because they couldn't understand his wild nature.  He, himself, was the furthest away of all from being able to comprehend his own nature.  He saw himself as an extremely complicated individual whose intellectual strivings knew no limits.  He would reason and reason until reasoning completely obliterated itself and him.  Reason would either turn into total chaos, confusion, a painful emptiness, or an amalgamation of conflicting and harmonizing concepts - ad infinitum.  Whatever it was, it was not the meaning of life he so desperately longed for.  For 37 years, his search for hope and meaning had gone on and on with no final conclusion.  He simply could not reach the bottom of himself.  Every time he thought he got to the bottom, the bottom dropped out and he would fall further and further down.

Until he met a certain holy fool - a woman by the name of Elena Ivanovna.  The process was slow-going, though.  She did not rehabilitate him all at once.  There was often a bit of tension between him and her, between him and her message, and between him and the greater community of saints to whom she belonged.  At night he would sometimes be tormented by nightmares.  She’d appear to him as his judge, condemning him for having a soul incongruent with reality, or for not fully embracing her message, or for placing his other interests ahead of her God.  She would consign him to the burden of always having to sink deeper and deeper into his own morbid abyss.  An infinite pit with no bottom, just increasing degrees of pain, suffering, and helplessness… with no relief in sight.  This was all ridiculous in the light of her true thoughts regarding him.  In reality, she adored him in every possible way one could adore another, and would anathematize herself before even thinking one unkind thought about him.  In Matvei's waking hours, he was perfectly assured of this.  She gave him every indication that she loved him unhypocritically and entirely without the admixture of evil thoughts.  Though his dreams took on a life of their own, dreams are only dreams.  The truth we perceive while conscious invalidates all the so-called half-truths of dream world.  Matvei would often go visit her at the little shack where she lived.  There, he would listen to her message and feel as though every corner of his soul was being lit up by the true gospel rays.  He felt perfectly safe, secure, sound, and loved in her presence.  When he left again to be on his own, his doubts would resurface, the philosophical activity in his mind would gain momentum, and he would fall asleep, tormented again by the same nightmares.  The crux of the matter was that there was a rusty old idol in his heart - a desperate search for the so-called philosopher's stone. This happens to be the grand delusion of the ages and the only thing that shrouds the light from fully brightening up people's lives.

Things were slowly beginning to improve for Matvei, however.  Elena's medicine was working.  The two of them had met in August of 1902, and by the time December of that year rolled around, he had surrendered nearly 100% of his soul to the gospel she had been preaching to him.  But the remaining 1.3 percent was enough to throw him into a fit of insanity, the likes of which he had never before experienced.  Outwardly, he remained calm and composed, but inwardly, he was dying. 

Matvei was in one of his better moods while he was eating dinner at the Petrovs on Shabbat.  He was actually always happy to be with them as they were always happy to be with him.  They completed his joy and he completed theirs.  The Petrovs were also good friends of Elena Ivanovna and sometimes the Petrovs, Elena, and Matvei would all go on special outings together.  During these outings Matvei felt very uneasy.  He was perfectly blissful when he was with either of the two separately, but when they were all together, he would begin to feel jealous because he wasn't receiving the same attention.  It caused an inner divide in his soul that was eating him alive.  He felt like he wanted to disappear and never make another hard decision again in his life.  Elena was not at the Petrov’s during this particular Shabbat celebration, to Matvei’s relief. 

“Blessed are you, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the Universe.  You hallow us with your commandments and command us to kindle the lights of Shabbat,”  Nikolai Petrov prayed as he lit the Shabbat candles and sat down to break bread.

“Thank you for inviting me to this dinner and making everything so special for me,”  Matvei said to everyone.

“Oh, of course.  It is our pleasure!” said Matryona.  “You have been such a great friend to us!”

“You have been the only person, since we were just little children, who has taken such an interest in us and has spent the amount of time with us as you have,”  said Alexei.

“And for that, we are truly grateful,” Natalia  said with tears in her eyes.

“You are always welcome in our home,”  Anya and Nikolai said in unison.

“This means all the world to me, friends.  I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart,”  said Matvei.

Right then, there was a knock on the door.

“Who could it be?”  said Matryona.

Alexei went to the door to see who it was.  When the door was opened just a crack, Elena Ivanovna's face was clearly discernible. 

“Elena!”  Matryona cried excitedly.

Matvei gasped, his heart nearly sinking into the pit of his stomach.  When the door was fully opened, it was evident that another person had come in with Elena, a man holding her hand.  After about three glances, it was clear to Matvei and everyone else at the table that this man was none other than the one they invite into their home on every Shabbat celebration -  Jesus Christ.

After one look at Jesus, Matvei was completely assured of everything Elena had tried to convince him of.  He fell flat on his face like Thomas, throwing all of his doubts off the edge where everything meets nothing.  He now believed in Jesus Christ unreservedly, without the slightest hesitation of will.  Every room in his soul was now brightly lit, every trace of darkness forever dispelled, and for the first time in his life, he began to experience the perfection of God's truth and peace.  And oh, how he couldn't have been happier to see Elena, even in the presence of the Petrovs.  He ran to her, embraced her, and thanked her with all of his soul’s gratitude for introducing him to the Savior.

The eight of them then celebrated Shabbat, and never before had they experienced such incredible joy.  A week or so later was Christmas Day.  Jesus never appeared to them again in the flesh, but he remained an abiding presence in their hearts and in their homes.  Matvei never again felt conflicted about his faith, nor about the sincerity of the people he now knew for certain, truly loved him.  The Petrovs, Elena, and Matvei forever remained the very best of friends.