"Gifts of the Magi" erase the human appearance

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The high spiritual qualities with which people come to the end of the line disappear closer to the entrance to the Temple.

“In the early hours of January 14, when the monastery had just opened, there was a crazy crush. When the gate was opened, a line of people with children aged 2 to 4 was standing with the others. At this moment, the guards experienced a real shock. People started pushing so hard that someone was already shouting. The children had to be literally pulled out to save them,”says the guard.

According to him, believers were losing their human appearance before our very eyes. In the evening, when the parishioners began to worry that they would not have time to see Dara, the situation became critical.

Because of the crush, people started screaming and crying. They tried to calm the crowd over the speakerphone and asked not to push, but it hardly helped. The ambulance took away several people with broken arms. Someone fainted, the crowd silently walked around them and did not even try to help. As the guard says, at each of these moments, curses fell on the riot police and the monastery's guards, as if from a cornucopia.

The next day, January 15, the situation changed: it was time for the VIP queue, taxi drivers and simulators.

“You will not see famous people in the general queue. They have a separate entrance. People in cars with cool numbers park nearby and then enter through the main gate of the monastery. The main queue stops periodically. I think it is clear who is allowed to enter the church at this time …”, says the guard.

Meanwhile, the queue, which had already stretched for two kilometers, attracted the attention of taxi drivers. Prices for a trip in the area of the queue soared to at least 1 thousand rubles. Someone is trying to make money in a more original way. Orphanages work in the crowd, offering to take small children to the shrine for money. Beggars appeared. Believers who are trying to portray injury are adding fuel to the fire.

“Anyone who tries to squeeze forward gets insulted. Some act in an original way - they start limping. They come up to us and ask us to let them in, they say that they have forgotten their certificate of a disabled person. And as soon as we refuse them, they leave with a normal gait. It’s just a miracle,”says the security officer.

According to the person, the situation in the crowd is tense. People prefer to freeze on the street and are afraid to get on buses so as not to lose their turn. The guards are tensely waiting for the evening.

As Telegraf previously reported, 25 people asked for medical help per day, three of them were hospitalized. There are 100 volunteers in the queue. As the number of pilgrims increases, the organizers are ready to attract more volunteers.

Let us recall that the Gifts of the Magi arrived in St. Petersburg on January 14. They were met at the Pulkovo airport. After meeting at the airport, the relic was taken to the temple of the icon of the Kazan Mother of God of the Novodevichy Convent, where it will stay until January 17 inclusive.

Nikolay Borisov

Faith Healing

Artifacts called Gifts of the Magi left Petersburg. According to the Russian Orthodox Church, 400 thousand people came to worship in Moscow, and 160 thousand in St. Petersburg. It is significant that most of the believers went to the Gifts of the Magi for health - they themselves told reporters about this.

So, in St. Petersburg, one of the believers explained to me that he was sick with a severe form of tuberculosis and hoped to be cured by kissing the chest. Other believers said that they did not trust doctors in their medical institutions, but believed only in otherworldly forces, so they came to worship the holy relics. It is noteworthy that the procedure itself was organized in such a way that it created a real danger of transmitting a wide variety of infections - from common colds to the same tuberculosis. For a long time, people stood in the crowd, pressed tightly to each other, and then took turns kissing the plastic case of the casket where the artifacts lay. This is how almost any type of infection spreads - flu, herpes, and more. However, not a single medical official involved in the control of the infectious situation in Russia dared to speak out about this situation.

The health committees of Moscow and St. Petersburg were silent, the former chief sanitary doctor of the country, who had previously spoken out on any, the most absurd, reason also kept silent. Moreover, even ordinary infectious disease specialists did not dare to speak publicly, under their own names and indicating their positions.

“I understand the danger of this situation and I can say that such rituals are very dangerous from an epidemiological point of view. People stand for hours in a dense crowd, they can't even wash their hands, but they go to the toilet, eat there, sneeze at each other. they kiss the same place right after each other. I have no doubt that there is a total infection of a huge mass of people, including children, who also have to kiss this casket. But I cannot officially tell you this - I will immediately lose my job, and even will be accused of offending religious feelings , - told me the largest infectious disease doctor in Russia, whose name and position I promised not to publish.

“I have no doubts that during the kissing action on artifacts from Greece, thousands of Russians did not improve their health, but contracted a variety of infections. - said the chief doctor of one of the Russian hospitals, whose name I also have no right to name.

Out of a dozen doctors I interviewed, only two agreed to comment on the situation officially and publicly. So, the head of the Bureau of Medical Statistics of the Botkin Hospital, Oleg Parkov, who previously headed the department of epidemiological surveillance in St. Petersburg, spoke very, very carefully.

"In theory and potentially, there is some relative danger of infection. But in my 42 years of medical experience, I have not known a single case of infection of believers in the course of religious rituals like kissing shrines or swimming in an ice hole. Perhaps because such studies have never been carried out.", - said Oleg Vladimirovich by phone.

Another doctor agreed to comment on the silence of medical officials. “Today, unlike in the Middle Ages, there are no completely illiterate people, every person knows that if he does not wash his hands before eating or kisses a dirty surface, he runs the risk of contracting anything. But if doctors or officials do not speak about it aloud in the context of Orthodox rituals, the reason is clear. Today in Russia no official can criticize Orthodox rituals for the same reason that in the Soviet Union it was impossible to criticize the CPSU. Nobody wants to risk their career, and officials from medicine are no exception. In general, as practice shows, the genetic memory of generations in our country is unusually developed , - explained the well-known popularizer of medical science, doctor, doctor of medical sciences Lev Shcheglov.

Already armed with this knowledge, today I filmed a story about how a casket with artifacts leaves Petersburg. Farewell to the Gifts of the Magi took place in the Pulkovo-3 business aviation center. Unprecedented security measures in this case led to the fact that I had to abandon my car on Pulkovskoe highway, since it was not on the list of allowed to park near the terminal.

The center itself was packed with law enforcement officers to the utmost, and many of them, as long as the situation allowed, kissed the casket.

Whole families from among the citizens who were in the departure lounge of private planes also approached the relics.

The Governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko and Vice Governor Vasily Kichedzhi, as well as dozens of officials, priests and journalists, arrived to see the relics at the business center.

The jet plane took the Gifts of the Magi to Minsk. After that, the artifacts will be exhibited in Kiev, and then finally return to Greece.

But this is not the end of the mass religious events in Russia - in the spring we are expecting new actions of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the transportation of other objects of religious worship through the cities of the country, helping hundreds of thousands of Russians to recover.

The question of why the Russian Ministry of Health is in such a situation will be considered rhetorical.