"As we celebrate the memory of Thy Prophets, O Lord, through them we beseech Thee to save our souls."
Tbilisi, Georgia. May 1953
The central square was teaming with demonstrators, coming to hear the words of their leaders. In front of them stood the speakers rostrum, on the steps of the Executive Committee building, where the government officials would deliever their propaganda to the people.
Flanking the speaker’s platform were the full figure portraits of the Party leaders, hanging two storeys high upon the front of the building. At the peak of the demonstration, while a government member delivered his speech to the packed square, the portrait of Stalin suddenly burst into flames. Lenin’s portrait burned too, immediately engulfed in flames from head to toe. Horror came over the square, they all froze and from fear and everything became still.
While the pictures of the leaders were in flames, Fr. Gabriel - a young hieromonk - appeared in the second-floor window and gave a sermon:
"The Lord said, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee idols, or any graven images… Thou shalt not bow down before them nor serve them for I am the Lord your God, Thou shalt have no other Gods! People, come to your senses! The Georgians have always been Christians! So why are you bowing down before Idols? Jesus Christ died and rose again… But your cast idols will never be resurrected. Even during their life they were dead…"
It is impossible to imagine… How could they let him utter another phrase!? But Fr. Gabriel did say more. The doors of the Executive Committee building had been locked and barricaded; he had entered the attic earlier, with enough kerosene to burn those idols, and sat there until the demonstration had began. They brought him down, it is true, quick enough: they brought in some fire engines and raised ladders…
And just like the prophet Jeremiah, stoned by his own people in 583 B.C., when Fr. Gabriel came down the crowd fell upon him. Like the Holy Prophet, the censure of Fr. Gabriel could not be tolerated by the people as they kicked him, hit him with rifle butts, and flailed him with hoses.
"O blessed Jeremias, being chosen of God from thy mother’s womb, in thy compassion, thou sorely didst mourn for the falling away of Israel. And in Egypt, O Prophet, thou wast murdered by stoning for thy most just rebukes by them that understood not to cry with thee: Alleluia."
But Fr. Gabriel did not die that day; the firemen dragged him away. Already looking like a corpse, with fractured skull and seventeen broken bones, the authorities looked to heal this man so they could put on a show trial. However, Fr. Gabriel would not respond to the treatment, almost dead but never dieing, and as weeks dragged into months the zeal of the authorities dimmed.
Whether it was because of embarrasment or because of the Khrushchev amnesties, Fr. Gabriel was eventually released and declared a lunatic, he and his mother being given a meagre State pension to live on. The people of Tbilisi would not speak to the mad hieromonk, too scared of the man who had burned Stalin. At first he wondered among the villages and was hired to guard vineyards or attend to the fire in Churches. Then his mother became paralyzed from all the trauma and he could no longer go anywhere. For several years he could be found sitting at the portico of some Church with an outstretched hand. Only the people who did not know him would give him anything—his acquaintances turned away from him or derided him.
+ Dedicated to Monk Gabriel, and all other living martyrs, on this day the 1st of May, feast day of Jeremiah the Prophet. +
