Back to our great Saint, here is an edifying story of how disobedience to the Starets lead to an unpleasant awakening from a narcissistic slumber in one of his supplicants. Note how the young woman doesn't even consider that St Feofil could warn her of difficulty ahead. But in her self-aggrandizing dreams, the pilgrim only imagines he would give her something to feed her illusions of how good and deserving she was.
When she discovers she did not receive the expected pat on the back, she gives herself away as a phony disciple of the Starets, for she lashes out violently at what suddenly became "That old man" for not fulfilling her narcissistic demand for praise and attention.
"In the city of Tula there lived two wanderers, Katrina S. and her brother Ivan. They were without family or relations. Each spring they would set out for the holy places, he to the north --
The Moscow Embankment - Palekh style art
-- and she to the south. With the coming of the cold, they would return home for the winter.
Thus one year Katrina came to Kiev
and, as usual, stopped to see Starets Feofil. The Blessed One gave her his blessing and handed her a little clay pot tied up with paper as a souvenir.
"Here, take it. But make sure that you don't untie it before you get home."
Katrina left but on the way her curiosity began to work on her. "What could be in the pot? Probably the Starets foresaw something nice for me and put butter into the pot." Finally, she could no longer contain herself and she decided to open it in spite of the Starets' admonition not to. She untied the paper and peered into the little pot. Much to her shock, there lay a dead sparrow.
"Oh, what kind of a joker are you? Why just see what that old man has thought up. A dead sparrow," she thought.
In anger she spat and then smashed the pot against a tree.
About a month later Katrina returned home from the pilgrimage.
"What, my dear brother hasn't been home yet?"
"No, not yet," the neighbors replied, "but there is a packet here with your name on it."
It turned out to be nothing less than news that her brother had been robbed and killed on the road. Katrina then understood the significance of the dead sparrow and she broke down into bitter tears.
http://livingorthodoxfaith.blogspot.com ... art-6.html
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But notice that the bitter tears are due only to the bad news of the sad death of Katrina's brother, rather than tears of self-recrimination for not trusting St Feofil and speaking so angrily against him. Surely there is a much bigger penalty given to souls who speak and act so rebelliously toward their True Elders. Katrina should have confessed her disobedience and fury to the Starets either by letter or on her next trip to Kiev. She should have resolved to obey him implicitly from then on -- obedience to a true Elder being one of the best remedies for narcissistic personality disorder. Though not called that in the early 1800s, the condition is as old as time.