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If the patient died, though, Arseny died with him. And when he sensed he was alive, he would shed tears and feel ashamed the patient was dead and he was alive. Arseny came to the understanding that blame for a death lay not in the power of the illness but in the weakness of his prayer. He began considering himself a direct culprit in those deaths that occurred and he went to Confession daily, lest the weight of blame become overwhelming for him. And he came to each next patient as if that person were his first, as if he had not examined hundreds of people before this one. So his astonishing power came to the ill as if untouched, for that was all that gave hope for recovery.
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