Introduction. The short story "Christ visiting a peasant" by N. S. Leskov demonstrates the effectiveness of contextual analysis, which allows the researcher to characterize its content and poetics with sufficient completeness. The uniqueness of this text lies in its semantic layering, due to the “ability” of the work to open up new and new contextual horizons to the reader. Discussion. The Christian semantics of the story is centered around the theme of spiritual rebirth and growth of man (the plot-forming motif is the universal Christian motif of “descending in order to ascend”). This motivates the choice of the main research directions: 1) the story of the hero in the context of the Christian teaching about the spiritual structure, 2) the formation of the motive complex of the story, 3) the symbolization of the main images and motives, 4) the use of Christian symbols by the author. Artistic methods, means and techniques of forming the Christian context of the story are revealed (a system of Christian motifs, a complex of biblical plots, images, symbols, mentions of icons, quotations, allusions, color symbols, etc.). The mechanisms of symbolization of everyday motifs and images (family, friendship, reading, generations, home, etc.) are investigated. Conclusion. Leskov’s story has a significant contextual potential, which allows the reader to form individual contexts. The movement from the text to the context and back leads to an almost inexhaustible generation of meaning, generates reader’s interest and creates conditions for reading the story not only by young readers, but also by adult readers.