Thus began the period which every Orthodox neophyte knows by the name of calling grace – God calls the soul and gives her His grace in advance, abundantly. Everything was easy: praying, fasting, reading, getting up well before the sunrise and going to far away monasteries before the lectures at the Institute (every neophyte knows that the Liturgy and the confessors are much better in the monasteries). I also traveled to the small Russian towns: churches and monasteries were opening, rising from ruins. My mother traveled with me; she was very concerned that I would suddenly become a nun. Inside the bus station of old town Jaroslavl I noticed a table with books: immediately one of them, with a laconic black and white cover (very much of the stile of our Institute) depicting St John the Forerunner caught my attention. It was the book ‘The Joyous News’ and I bought it immediately. I already have been readying Orthodox books – the lives of saints, Philokalia, St John of the Ladder, Abba Dorofei, St. Ignatiy Brjanchaninov, St. Theophanous the Hermit, Fr Pavel Florensky, even St Gregory Palamas with his discourses on hesychasm, but this one was very different. It was like a real person was sitting next to me, telling me (in excellent clear modern language) about Jesus Christ, the apostles and the prophets putting them in the context of my life or perhaps my life in their context.
The author was Father Alexander Men. I did not know anything about him. When I bought it, he was already dead, murdered a few years ago on his way to the church.