Father Biryukov Valentin - priest and veteran

The pious elder priest Biryukov Valentin in the Novosibirsk diocese refers to those long-livers who can adequately convey to the whole generation their valuable life experience and faith in God's Providence. Having passed grievous afflictions, he always substituted a pastoral shoulder for people desperate, insecure and weak in faith. Having a kind and pure heart, he never doubted the goodness and love of God.

Atheistic environment

When Valya was still a pupil of the third grade of the usual Tomsk high school, and this was 1931, he first felt the power of God. It happened just before Easter. Children, like direct and simple-minded creatures at school, shared their impressions and talked to each other about God. However, this was heard by the teacher, who immediately became enraged, and held with the students an atheistic conversation about the fact that there is no God, and all this is prejudice. In the next lesson, the teacher was so convulsed that she needed urgent medical help. After that, she left, and no one else saw her. Parents Valentine explained to his son that the militant atheist so God punished ...

Biography

Archpriest Biryukov Valentin Yakovlevich was born in with. Kolyvan of the Altai Territory in the summer of July 4, 1922. When collectivization came, the Biriukovs, like many other peasants from their village, were dekulakized and sent to the Narym region.

Valentin Biryukov grew up in a pious and faithful family. His father, like his grandfather, was singing in the church choir. My uncle also served in the temple, but then he was shot. His godfather in the 37th was arrested as an enemy of the people. Then they took up their father. After several warnings, he was sent to Barnaul prison, and then the whole family, where there were four children, was exiled to the taiga.

War and hardening

There, Father Valentin Biryukov received a good temper. Need and hunger prevailed over him, he had to eat one grass, but there were always forces to resist adversity, and with this only faith in God grew stronger. All this hard experience of survival he again had to endure in the war and in besieged Leningrad.

At the very beginning of the 1941 war, Valentina, along with thousands of other young children, was put in a car and sent to artillery courses in Omsk. Well, then the road of death on the Leningrad front began, where Biryukov Valentin took part in fierce battles and distinguished himself as a well-aimed Siberian gunner and gunner, for which he received awards.

He could not even imagine that he would be buried almost alive. From his body surgeons removed fragments from a bullet, an artillery shell and a bomb, simultaneously trapped in it. Biryukov Valentin knew that only the Most High helped him to get out of this hell.

Now the archpriest recalls all this with a shudder of heart. After all. When he woke up on the field among the huge number of killed comrades, immediately felt an unbearable burning pain. But, seeing the sky and swallowing salty 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 cadaverous odor, worms, flies, a loaf of bread from grass for four soldiers and deadly fatigue. In such a situation a person will involuntarily clutch at a straw. People in such conditions increasingly turned to God.

There was no one to bury people. For those who felt a little easier, they had to help others, but there were so many corpses that the soldiers had to burn whole dead bodies of peaceful people and their comrades-in-arms. Fetid smoke was everywhere, there was nowhere to go, hearts and souls were dyed and gradually got used to death. The Germans bombed 12 warehouses with provisions, the survivors had to collect land on which the remains of products were scattered. Fat on its surface was poured with water, so that it was possible to take at least something to eat, and if the land was sweet, then it went to tea.

Father Biryukov Valentin: priest and veteran

When the private Biryukov had a free minute, he tried to spend it on a campaign to the library of the theological seminary of Leningrad. He wanted to serve God, he wanted to know everything that was connected with Him, then to tell it to his fellow workers. He even managed to unite a kind of brotherhood from believing soldiers, who had nothing for themselves but their own conscience and hope for Christ and the Mother of God.

Biryukov Valentin - a veteran of the war, which killed millions of people. But he survived, no matter what, is this not a miracle of God ?! During his life he had several signs of fate that he would be a priest, maybe, therefore, God and protect him for future generations. Valentin felt this support even at the most unthinkable moments of his life.

Peaceful life

When they declared victory, the soldier Biryukov cried with all and fell on his knees and prayed. But he did not have to return home at once, he had to stay in Prussia, near Koenigsberg, to prevent possible enemy sabotage.

He returned a year later to the Narym region of the village of Kolpashevo and became a parishioner of the Sunday church of the village of Togur. His first profession is a salesman, but a blockage of veins made him take up photography. However, he still dreamed of becoming a priest, and first was a chorister in the local church. Not all his acquaintances approved this occupation. Some laughed, others dismissed all sorts of ridiculous rumors, others tried to prevent and even excommunicate.

In 1975, Archbishop Gideon of Novosibirsk and Barnaul ordained him to deacons. Then he had to move to the Central Asian diocese, and there, in Tashkent, in 1976, he was ordained a priest by the archbishop of Tashkent and Central Asia Bartholomew. Then he again returned to his native Siberia and began to serve in the St. Nicholas Church. Novolugovoy, in the Alexander Nevsky Church in Kolyvan (Novosibirsk region).

Modernity

All three of his sons became priests, and the husband of his daughter is also a priest. Berdsk Valentin Yakovlevich arrived immediately after the rector of the Sretenskaya Church of his son Vasily was appointed here after the Leningrad Theological Academy.

Now Father Valentine is her freelance priest. He became the spiritual instructor of many priests and laity, often met with youth and conducted educational talks with her about his fate, and about how faith helped him to survive.

In 2008, the publishing house of the Holy Danilov Monastery published a book by Protopriest Valentin Biryukov titled "We Only Learn to Live on the Earth", which is filled with completely untrodden, touching and impressive life stories.

Conclusion

Until 1917, Russia was called Holy Russia, but after the revolution, separating the church from the state, it was deprived of its heart. Thank God that now access to the Church is free, although not everyone is in a hurry to get there, the bustle of everyday life and worries ...