Abortion — the gravest sin!
Science, medicine and the Church testify unanimously that human life begins at conception; scientists of all countries confirm this. At the moment when the female and male sex cells fuse, a unique, unrepeatable cell with 46 chromosomes is formed. It is the most complex cell in the universe. In it are encoded the person's sex, gifts, character, height, eye and hair colour, blood group, fingerprints and so on, which at the various stages of life only develop. Abortion at any stage of pregnancy is the killing of a child and a mortal danger to the woman's body. The number of sick women and children is growing. According to statistics, in Russia, for example, 147 out of every 1,000 newborns suffer from hereditary diseases. Only 3.5% of children are born without psychological and physical abnormalities; 25% of married couples are infertile. In our time more and more women die of cancer of the womb and breast, whereas these diseases used to be rare. Their cause is abortion. Abortion disrupts the natural hormonal process and causes malignant tumours to form. The likelihood of cancer in girls who have had an abortion before the age of 18 increases 80 times. The persistent idea that contraceptives are the way out is completely mistaken. According to American statistics, the use of contraceptives increases the number of abortions still further. More than half of abortions are the result of failed contraception. Most contraceptives do not prevent conception, but cause the death of the foetus at an early stage of pregnancy, which itself becomes the cause of abortion.
Seven to eight million abortions are registered in medical institutions. And who can tell the number of secret, hidden abortions?! A telling fact: the Second World War took a vast number of lives, yet over the same period the average number of abortions exceeded the number of those killed at the front.
The parishioners of Sioni asked Father Gabriel (Urgebadze) to serve a moleben for the increase of the Georgian nation. Father Gabriel agreed and served a moleben to the Mother of God in the Trinity church. When the monk returned home, he had a revelation: two men came, dressed like ancient warriors, said of Father Gabriel, “This is the one,” placed him between them and led him away somewhere. The monk saw nothing, except that the white building they took him into had a large cross on it. The strangers locked Gabriel inside the building. When his eyes grew used to the darkness, the monk saw that the stone floor was strewn with the blood-smeared bodies of children the length of a finger. Countless dead children were also falling through a hole left in the ceiling. Soon there was no place left to set a foot. Standing on tiptoe so as not to step on the infants' bodies, the monk huddled in a corner. At that moment the door opened. “She is coming, she is coming!” — a voice reached Gabriel; first he saw the two men dressed as warriors, and then the Most Holy Mother of God, surrounded by a multitude of angels and saints.
— This is the one who was asking for the nation to increase, — said the two, pointing at Gabriel.
The Mother of God, her face full of wrath, looked at him sternly, showed him the blood-smeared bodies scattered on the floor and said: “Is this what you are praying to Me for? Is this how Georgia will increase?!” She turned and went away.
The two men brought Father Gabriel back out and returned him to his own cell. An illegitimate child
After this the monk went about the streets of Tbilisi preaching: “Mothers, do not have abortions; turn wrath away from Georgia,” he would plead, they say.
St Seraphim of Sarov advises us not to reject so-called “illegitimately” conceived children, but to raise them in the fear of God, for they are not guilty of having come into this world. Nor should we judge their parents, for it has been said: not judging is half of salvation. As an example of this, the holy father cites a case that happened in Byzantium in the time of the Emperor Justinian. In the region of Galatia, near the village of Sykeon, while crossing a river, one of the emperor's personal guards saw a beautiful maiden and burned with desire for her. He learned too that the maiden was a widow's daughter, and, probably emboldened by this, took her by force… After this the girl had a vision, as though a brilliant star had come down into her womb. A holy father interpreted the vision for her thus: “The child conceived in your womb will become a great man; he will be great not only among men but also before God; and the brilliant star signifies the divine grace with which God will reward your son, for God sanctifies His servants before their birth, while still in their mother's womb.”
So a boy was born, to whom the Lord appointed St George as protector from his youth. This was the great father, St Theodore of Sykeon.
“I am your George”
When my mother became pregnant for the third time, my sister and I were 7–10 years old. What greater happiness could there be, it would seem? But one thing frightened us: Mother's heart was troubling her badly at the time, and it was doubtful whether she would survive the birth. So the doctors insistently advised her to have an abortion. In the end Mother agreed. They even fixed the day. But the night before, Mother had this dream: she was standing in the village lane in front of the house; suddenly someone came galloping at her on a red horse. Frightened, Mother pressed herself against the fence and cried out. “Don't be afraid, Mother!” cried the rider. “Kakha, son, is that you?” Mother asked. “No, Mummy, I'm your George,” she heard in reply. “But I haven't got a George?” my mother wondered. The rider, it seems, repeated to her again: “Mummy, I'm your George.”
After this, of course, Mother did not even think of having an abortion.
Twenty-eight years have passed since then. My sister and I moved to the city and started families, and Mother in the village was left with her George — someone to answer when she calls and to bring her water.
Children
The first confession is very hard, all the more so if you feel the weight of your sin. It is as if the sin tugs at your tongue and begs you to hide it. Tamar too found her first confession hard. Especially confessing the sin of abortion. The confessor forgave her sins and advised her to pray there in the church before the icon of the Mother of God, to ask forgiveness of the Mother of God, and then to receive Communion.
Tamar prayed before the icon of the Mother of God. A wondrous grace came down upon her; tears of repentance nearly choked her. With this feeling she received the Blood and Body of the Lord.
Still, she considered that she had received Communion unworthily, and seemed to be waiting for punishment from God…
Soon she had a terrifying dream, which changed her life completely.
She seemed to be lying on the upper floor of her house. Suddenly children came up the inside staircase from the ground floor. There were six of them, of different ages. The eldest boy must have been about 13, and the youngest — twins, a boy and a girl — were five. The boy was fair, and the girl dark and chubby. Among them was another boy too, very beautiful. It was clear that they all obeyed their elder brother. And he looked after them and protected them.
The children stopped some five paces from her bed. Tamar's heart told her that they were her children — only torn away by abortion. For a little while they stood there in silence. At last the little girl could bear it no longer and moved towards her mother, but the elder brother stopped her: “You mustn't,” he said. The children went back down the stairs and vanished.
This dream affected Tamar greatly. Her repentance grew many times over, and to prayer she added strict fasting. So much grief and so many tears shook her health. Her eyesight gradually failed, and in the end she lost it completely.
“I should have eight children now. How rich I would be!” Tamar says with an aching heart. She no longer considers her blindness a punishment from God, but a mercy from God. She does not know whether God will lift this “small penance” from her, whether she will see the light of day again. But one thing she hopes for: perhaps the Lord will have mercy on her and count her worthy to see the invisible world, the Kingdom of Heaven.
Prepared by Kakhaber Kenkishvili. Karibche magazine, June 2004
Shota Nishnianidze
The Cry
How wasted and pale I see you, my tiny, sinful mother; oh, when they cut me away at your heart, did I hurt you, I wonder?
Don't be afraid, I am your child, your tormented blood and flesh; I am a breeze, and I think I am helping you — I kiss you, feverish and grieving, on your curl.
I kiss that childlike forehead shyly too, the pouting lips, childishly lovely… Now I am a soul, and I pray to the Lord — I wish Father joy that you were saved.
Thanks be to the Lord that He did not destroy us, did not orphan my brothers and sisters. And to me, unfledged like a nestling, an angel in heaven gave wings.
How I wanted to live to see you too, to rejoice too in this sunlit world, to call you “Mummy” too, and to throw my arms around Father's neck.
I was woven into thoughts of the future, like a butterfly tucked into a flower; how long I had left until birth, my tiny heart was counting.
Perhaps you think I am a weary ray, perhaps you think I am the breath of a breeze; you bore your own pain, but I, my dear, felt yours as well.
It seems I rejoiced in vain at meeting you, my brothers and sisters… Now the shadow and sorrow of nothingness weep for you from another world.
Why did you disappoint God's hopes, why did you derange and distort the kindly reckoning and design of angels and planets?
O mothers, what answer do you give, what do you say to the past and to tomorrow; who will tend, enduring as a vine, this little land that longs for glory!
Who will tend your vineyards and your alphabet, your voices, carvings, hopes and dreams? What chrism will wash away this sin now — and still I sprinkle it on my parched lips! Chrism, chrism of my land, hope and faith — keep me always; be ever the Aragvi, ever the Rioni, ever the young green wheat, ever the vineyard. “Where else is there another Georgia?” cries the verse and the battlement of the fortress. “In the earth, Mother…” — and who will count the children and the roots killed as I was? Even if we could not have built Svetitskhoveli, even if we could not have written “The Knight in the Panther's Skin,” still not one of us would have been superfluous to you, or fit to be cut away…
May many children be your lot, the cooing of doves and the shade of the oak; rise high with cribs, with cradles and with nests, our hearth and our roof!..
