|
|
SOON AFTER completing his studies he married Elisabeth, daughter of the
Archpriest K. P. Nevitzki, and he was ordained priest on the 12th of
December 1855. Appointed as assistant priest at Saint Andrew's Cathedral,
Kronstadt, when he entered it for the first time he recognized it as the church
he had seen in his dream; and there, first as curate, and afterwards as rector,
he served throughout the fifty-three years of his ministry. Cherishing a lofty
ideal of the priestly vocation, he continued nightly to study and pray that he
might perfect himself in it, while during the day he devoted himself to the
many poor of his parish.
The inhabitants of Kronstadt, a naval base situated on an island at the
mouth of the Neva, not far from Saint Petersburg, were in 1855 drawn largely
from the very worst elements of the population of the capital, and much of the
place was a festering sore of sin and filth, of poverty and misery, of disease
and starvation.
|
