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Thanks to his prayer the brethren avoided different temptations and sorrows. The Father Superior of the monastery Archimandrite Innocent (+ 1888) himself believed in the prayers of Father Hieronymus. He often consulted his sacristan, asked for his prayers and when he was to go to brothers’ work of penance outside the cloister, he took Father Hieronymus with him and talked to him on the way about his private appeal to God in prayer.
Having zeal of constant prayer, Father Hieronymus was always taciturn and that is why he avoided receiving brothers in his cell and did not go anywhere except he went to his work of penance. His silence was most vividly shown when he visited his sister. The latter asked her brother about many things and he seldom answered her in two or three words. During an hour of their meeting he did not say more than 10 words. It offended his sister, but Starets soothed her by saying: “Silence does good for a monk.” Having experienced great use of silence, which is praised by all Fathers of the Church, Father Hieronymus made others be also taciturn. He often stopped idle talk in his presence by exhortation, which taught brothers to be more diligent in prayer and work of penance. In 1893, being very sick, Father Hieronymus took the vows of great schema with the name of Iliodor for his long and fruitful service for the cloister and humble ascetic life, and only then he was released from the duties of the sacristan. From that moment his strength began to fail and he was approaching the transition to the other better life. His heart disease, from which he had been suffering for 20 years, made him gasp for breath. He could not lie down to sleep and had a short rest in his arm-chair sitting with his clothes on. With the first midnight stroke of the bell he hurried to the Matins. When the disease began to develop, Father Iliodor went to bed for a short time, but half a year before his death he passed to the arm-chair and died in it. Several weeks before his death in the period of Lent 1895 Starets, who was sick, was offered some fish to eat to get some strength. He smiled and asked: “ What do I need strength for?” Someone answered: “Dear Father, you are weak, you may die.” Starets said: “It is good even to die, if it is God’s will, but I don’t need fish. What a hieromonk in schema shall I be after it?” So he didn’t want to make use of the allowance for the sick to have fish during the fast. Before the death Father Iliodor got dropsy with all the hard circumstances, which complicated this disease. |
