The young man embraced the Orthodox faith with all his heart and followed him to the Church with his wife and daughter. With great zeal he pursued his spiritual life and learned the truths of Orthodoxy. However, after several years of pious life, his faith began to noticeably weaken. He began to have doubts about many church traditions and even the basic tenets of Christianity. At the same time, an interest in Eastern cults, which he was interested in even before his conversion to Christ, awoke in his soul.
Despite the departure from church life, the heads of the family, wife and daughter, remained faithful children of the Church. They were very concerned about their closest relatives, although sometimes they had to suffer jokes about their faith.
One day, when the family settled in a newly built house, a familiar priest was invited to consecrate it. The priest read the prescribed prayers and went around the spacious two-story house to sprinkle the premises with holy water. As he walked to the stairs leading to the second floor, the head of the family, who perceived the consecration of the house with almost unconcealed irony, said mockingly:
- Father, sprinkle the stairs better, otherwise someone will fall from it!
These words offended his wife and daughter: they knew that there was mockery behind them. The priest, not feeling the subtext of the man’s request, sprinkled the stairs and climbed it to the second floor. The whole family rushed there. When the second floor was dedicated, everyone headed down. The last to go was the head of the family. The wife, daughter and priest safely descended to the first floor. The man stumbled on one of the upper steps of the high staircase and, performing incredible acrobatic figures, flew down. The daughter’s heart sank with fear, and she, as she later recalled, thought that dad was going to break his spine. However, in some incredible way he managed to catch his hand on the railing and avoid the inevitable painful fall.
The wife and daughter stood frozen with fear. Nevertheless, when they saw the face of the father of the family, who, after a fall, was petrified on the bottom step of the stairs, they laughed loudly and unanimously. Although there seemed to be nothing to laugh about: the man’s whitened face revealed unnaturally wide eyes filled with fear.
“Well, dad,” said the daughter, “do you understand what would have happened to you now if the priest had not sprinkled the stairs with holy water?”
The man expressed insult to his wife and daughter about their laughter and explained his fall by saying that he slipped on holy water. However, his explanation did not satisfy his daughter, and she said:
— The three of us went down the stairs and didn’t slip. Think about it, dad, why it was you who fell!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru