The pious elder priest Valentin Biryukov in the Novosibirsk diocese is one of those centenarians who can worthily pass on to a whole generation their valuable life experience and faith in the Providence of God. Having gone through severe sorrows, he always offered a pastoral shoulder to people who were desperate, insecure and weak in faith. With a kind and pure heart, he never doubted the goodness and love of God.
Atheist environment
When Valya was still a student of the 3rd grade of an ordinary Tomsk secondary school, and it was 1931, he first felt the power of God. It happened just before Easter. Children, like direct and simple-hearted creatures at school, shared their impressions and talked among themselves about God. However, this was heard by the teacher, who instantly became furious, and held an atheistic conversation with the students that there is no God, and all this is prejudice. At the next lesson, the teacher was so convulsed with a cramp that she needed urgent medical attention. AfterShe left, and no one saw her again. Valentin's parents explained to their son that God had punished the militant atheist so…
Biography
Archpriest Biryukov Valentin Yakovlevich was born in the village. Kolyvan Altai Territory in the summer of July 4, 1922. When collectivization came, the Biryukov family, like many other peasants from their village, was dispossessed and sent to the Narym Territory.
Valentin Biryukov grew up in a pious and believing family. His father, like his grandfather, were singers in the church choir. My uncle also served in the church, but then he was shot. His godfather was arrested in 1937 as an enemy of the people. Then they took on the father. After several warnings, he was imprisoned in the Barnaul prison, and then the whole family, which had four children, was exiled to the taiga.
War and hardening
There, Father Valentin Biryukov received a good hardening. Need and hunger overcame him, he had to eat only grass, but there was always strength to withstand adversity, and with this, faith in God only increased. He again had to go through all this hard experience of survival during the war and in besieged Leningrad.
At the very beginning of the war in 1941, Valentin, along with thousands of other young guys, was put in a wagon and sent to artillery courses in Omsk. Well, then the road of death began on the Leningrad front, where Valentin Biryukov took part in fierce battles and distinguished himself as a well-aimed Siberian shooter and gunner, for which he received awards.
He could not even imagine that he would be buried almost alive. From his bodysurgeons took out fragments from a bullet, an artillery shell and a bomb that had hit him at the same time. Biryukov Valentin knew that only the Almighty helped him get out of this hell.
Now the archpriest remembers all this with a shudder of the heart. After all. when he woke up on the field among a huge number of killed comrades, he immediately felt an unbearable burning pain. But, seeing the sky and swallowing s alty and dirty tears, he began to pray.
Hospital
The hospital was no different from the trenches of the front line, where there were lice, dirt and putrid sickening smell, worms, flies, a loaf of grass bread for four soldiers and deadly fatigue. In such a situation, a person will involuntarily grasp at straws. People in such conditions increasingly turned to God.
There was no one to bury people. Those who felt at least a little better had to help others, but there were so many corpses that the soldiers had to burn the dead bodies of civilians and their comrades whole. The fetid smoke was everywhere, there was nowhere to go, hearts and souls became stiff and gradually got used to death. The Germans bombed 12 warehouses with provisions, the survivors had to collect the land on which the remnants of food were scattered. The fat on its surface was poured with water so that at least something could be removed for food, and if the earth was sweet, then it was for tea.
Father Biryukov Valentin: a priest and a veteran
When private Biryukov had a free minute, he tried to spendher trip to the library of the Leningrad Theological Seminary. He wanted to serve God, he wanted to know everything connected with Him, so that later he could tell it to his comrades-in-arms. He even managed to rally a kind of brotherhood from believing soldiers, who had nothing behind their souls except their own conscience and hope in Christ and the Mother of God.
Biryukov Valentin is a veteran of the war that killed millions of people. But he survived despite everything, isn't that a miracle of God?! During his life, he had several signs of fate that he would be a priest, maybe that's why God protected him for future generations. Valentine felt this support even in the most unthinkable moments of his life.
Peaceful life
When the victory was announced, the fighter Biryukov cried along with everyone else and, falling to his knees, prayed. But he did not manage to return home immediately, he had to linger in Prussia, near Koenigsberg, in order to prevent possible enemy sabotage.
He returned a year later to the Narym Territory of the village of Kolpashevo and became a parishioner of the Sunday Church in the village of Togur. His first profession was a salesman, but a clogged vein forced him to take up photography. However, he still dreamed of becoming a priest, and at first he was a chorister in a local church. Not all of his acquaintances approved of this activity. Some laughed, others spread all sorts of ridiculous rumors, others tried to interfere and even excommunicate.
In 1975 he was ordained a deacon by Archbishop Gideon of Novosibirsk and Barnaul. Then he had to move to the Central Asian diocese, and there, in Tashkent, in 1976, he was already ordained to the priesthoodArchbishop of Tashkent and Central Asia Bartholomew. Then he again returned to his native Siberia and began to serve in St. Nicholas Church with. Novolugovoi, in the Alexander Nevsky Church in Kolyvan (Novosibirsk region).
Modernity
All three of his sons became priests, and the daughter's husband is also a priest. Valentin Yakovlevich arrived in Berdsk immediately after his son Vasily was appointed rector of the Sretensky Church after graduating from the Leningrad Theological Academy.
Now Father Valentine is her regular priest. He became the spiritual mentor of many priests and laity, often met with young people and had enlightening conversations with them about his fate and how faith helped him survive.
In 2008, the publishing house of the St. Danilov Monastery published a book by Archpriest Valentin Biryukov en titled “On Earth, we are only learning to live”, which is filled with life stories that are not at all invented, touching and impressive.
Conclusion
Until 1917, Russia was called Holy Russia, but after the revolution, separating the church from the state, she was deprived of her heart. Thank God that now access to the Church is free, although not everyone is in a hurry to go there, worldly fuss and worries interfere …
