oxbow lakes
Blessed Alipia (Agapia Tikhonovna Avdeeva) was born presumably in 1910 in the Penza region into the pious family of Tikhon and Vassa Avdeev. The blessed old woman said that her father was strict, and her mother was very kind, a great hard worker and very neat. Sometimes she would put all sorts of treats in her apron and order her to take them to the poor in their village; my mother gave out especially many treats on holidays. When it was time to study, Agapia was sent to school. The smart girl gave advice to everyone, she was transferred to another class, and among the children a year older than her, Agapia was distinguished by her intelligence and intelligence. In 1918, Agapia’s parents were shot. All night the eight-year-old girl herself read the Psalter for the dead. For some time Agapia lived with her uncle, after studying at school for only two years, she went to “wander” to holy places...
During the years of unbelief - she spent 10 years in prison, despite the difficult conditions of detention, she tried to observe fasting and prayed incessantly.
From Maria's memoirs:
– Mother went through a lot during the period of persecution of the Orthodox: she was arrested and put in a common cell... There were many priests in the prison where she was kept. Every night 5-6 people were taken away forever. Finally, only three remained in the cell: one priest, his son and Mother. The priest said to his son: “Let’s serve a memorial service for ourselves, today they will take us away by dawn”... And he said to Matushka: “And today you will leave here alive.” They served a memorial service, father and son buried themselves, and at night they were taken away forever. Mother was left alone: the door in the cell silently opened, the Apostle Peter entered and through the back door led Mother out to the sea. She walked without food or water for 11 days. She climbed steep rocks, broke off, fell, rose, crawled again, tearing her elbows to the bone. But the Lord preserved her. She had deep scars on her arms, which she showed me. Perhaps then Mother visited the Great Elder of Jerusalem, Hieroschemamonk Theodosius 71, who lived near Novorossiysk in the village of Gorny (formerly the village of Krymskaya). Mother herself said about this: “I visited Theodosius, I saw Theodosius, I know Theodosius.” It is possible that the elder blessed Mother for the great feat of foolishness...
The old woman often recalled her miraculous deliverance, honored the day of remembrance of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and often prayed at the icon of the Apostles...
During the war, Agapia ended up doing forced labor in Germany...
From Martha's memoirs:
“Mother told me that when she was at work in Germany, at night she read the Psalter for women who had children or sick old people at home and led them beyond the barbed wire and they went home safely. Mother herself left even before the end of the war, crossed the front line and went on foot to Kyiv... One day several men caught up with her on the road... She began to earnestly pray to the Mother of God to protect her. Not far away I saw a stack of straw and ran to it to hide from the bandits... She ran to the stack, pressed her back to it, and the Mother of God with tears asked not to leave her.
The bandits ran around the stack, cursing: “Where did she go, she has nowhere to hide!” They stood and left, and Mother looked at herself and saw that she was all light, all her clothes were white, her hands were white... The Mother of God protected, hid from the bandits, dressed her in heavenly light, that’s why they didn’t see her.
Mother was literate, read and wrote well, and knew the entire Psalter by heart.
She once asked me: “What year were you born?”
“1916,” I answered.
- And I’m 6 years older than you.
By the providence of God, for the sake of Christ, the holy fool Agapia was accepted into the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where she lived until its closure. Archimandrite Kronid, when tonsured into monasticism, gave Agapia a new name - Alypia, and blessed her for the feat of stylite monasticism. The ascetic spent three years in the hollow of an old tree.
“When it was very cold, I went into the corridor to the monks to warm up. Some will pass by, give bread, and others will drive them away... But I was not offended by them,” the blessed old woman later recalled.
Voluntarily bearing the cross of foolishness for Christ's sake, humbly accepting humiliation and insults, courageously enduring hardships, the ascetic acquired humility and meekness, and for this she was awarded great gifts from the Lord: insight and the gift of healing through prayer.
From the memoirs of Inna Alexandrovna:
– My mother and I returned from evacuation to Kyiv. This was in 1947, and they began to go to Father Damian at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra for advice and instructions... Then my mother pointed out to me a thin, slender woman, neatly combed... Mom said that her name was Lipa, she lived in the ravine behind the Lavra fence right under the open sky, spends his nights without sleep in unceasing prayer... Lipa had an unusually deep, pure, warm, affectionate, loving look from his light gray eyes... Lipa's spiritual father was the governor of the Lavra, Archimandrite Kronid. According to the recollections of Mother Alipia herself: when the service in the church ended, he approached her, gave her crackers and said: “Well, it’s warmed up, eat and go save yourself.” She, obedient to her spiritual father, obediently retreated to a large tree and climbed into the hollow, in which it was only possible to stand half-bent over. When in winter the snow was so thick that it was impossible to get out of the hollow and she did not go to church, Father Kronid himself made his way to her, brought crackers in his robes, and called out: “Aren’t you cold?” He left the offering and his invariable word “save yourself” and went to the Lavra, leaving the ascetic in the care of a long, winter night. It was eerie in the deep ravine, hungry, stray dogs came and howled right under the hollow, the frost shackled the half-bent, motionless body. And only the unceasing Jesus Prayer consoled, strengthened and warmed.
This continued until 1954, when Lipa’s spiritual father and mentor, Archimandrite Kronid, died...
She loved everyone, pitied her, and was not offended by anyone, although many offended her with their lack of understanding of the heavy cross that she took on her fragile shoulders.
In simple, modest clothes, she was always neat and clean... It still remains a mystery to me: how Lipa managed to maintain her external cleanliness, beauty and attractiveness, without having a roof over her head... For three years, spending nights in the hollow of a large tree, without having food, she never complained, did not ask for alms, eating what people themselves gave her...
Father Damian also saw her: “Well, why are you sitting here under the steps, you’re cold, go sleep under Father Andrei’s door”... Both elders lived in the same corridor and the doors of their cells were never closed from visitors... Father Andrei received everyone: he reprimanded the possessed , healed the sick, helped the poor, fed everyone from the Lavra meal... It was to this threshold that Father Damian sent the orphaned child of Father Kronid...
Many years later, I understood the meaning of this blessing: Lipa should have already approached the threshold of the miraculous old man. Everything was still ahead: the revival of a child who had died from intoxication, healing from fatal diseases, the expulsion of demons, extraordinary insight, the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit such that the forces of nature obeyed it, boundless, all-encompassing love for people, both good and evil, selfless generosity...
What else I noticed is that Father Damian treated Lipa very warmly and caringly, talked to her as an equal, as his employee, apparently, he saw in her a servant of God and his follower.
Time passed, human sins multiplied, black clouds gathered over the Lavra: rumors spread about its closure. Lipa’s behavior became strange - she raised her hands to the sky, screamed loudly in her Mordovian language, fell to her knees and cried... (Mother grieved, foreseeing the imminent closure of the shrine)
A thunderstorm broke out in March 1961: the brightly shining star of the great shrine set immediately. The bells fell silent. The wonderful choir of monks fell silent, prayers were no longer heard in the churches, the doors of the cells were closed, the corridors were empty, the lamps went out. The elders dispersed - some to eternity, others persecuted by the authorities...
After the closure of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Blessed Alypia settled in a small house near the Goloseevskaya Hermitage. Local residents, who knew about the miracles of healing through the prayers of the righteous woman, came to her in an endless stream for prayerful help, advice, and healing.
From Martha's memoirs:
– Mother Alypia observed the fasts very strictly – she did not eat anything during the First and Holy Week of Great Lent, Wednesday and Friday of each week. I didn’t go to bed, I prayed all night. She wore a large bunch of keys on a cord around her neck - a kind of chains.
Their story is interesting: they said that during the war, while in a German camp, she worked at some kind. And for every person she saved, a small and a large, white and yellow key was added to his neck. Mother wore this heavy bundle around her neck until her death. A thin, strong cord dug into the body, leaving a deep blue scar.
From all sides of our great Motherland, people traveled to this fragile, blessed lamp: archimandrites and abbots of monasteries, monks and laymen, high officials and simple workers, elderly and young, young and children, the sick, the sorrowful and the persecuted. Every day, 50–60 people would come to see my mother. And Mother Alipia received everyone with love, although she saw everyone perfectly well what he brought in himself: faith, love, curiosity or evil. But everyone fit into her heart, she knew what to say and how to tell everyone, who to heal with compote or porridge, and who with ointment or wine. She did not bless her spiritual children to undergo operations, especially abdominal ones.
Mother began to tell me a parable: “Two people are going to church, and towards them a poor man is carrying firewood on a cart. After the rain, the road was washed out, the holes were filled with mud, the donkey stumbled and fell, and the cart with firewood overturned and fell into the mud. The poor man works hard, but cannot do anything himself. One says: “Let’s help him,” and the other replies: “We’ll get our clothes and shoes dirty, and we’ll come to church in dirty clothes, and we’ll be late for the service,” and walked past. And the first one went into the mud, helped the donkey get up, lifted the cart with firewood, helped pull it out of the mud, got all dirty himself, and when he had finished, he followed his friend. He arrives at the church just in time for the service to begin. A friend saw him and asked: “Did you help?”
- Yes, I helped.
- Why are your clothes clean?
The helper looked at his clothes and shoes, and they were clean.
My mother says to me: “Come tomorrow morning, we’ll prepare firewood for the winter.” It rained heavily at night, it was cold, I began to get ready to visit my mother, put on clean clothes and new suede boots. I thought that I would find something to change clothes and shoes from her for work. I came early, but my mother was not at home, the hut and shed were locked... And in the forest it was wet, dirty, I, in my new boots and clean clothes, was carrying branches, stacking them near the hut... And only at 5 o’clock in the evening she walked, tired, carrying on her shoulders basket and bag over your shoulders. Mother asks me: “And did you go to the forest?”
- Yes.
– Why are your boots and clothes clean?
I looked at my feet; my boots and clothes were completely clean. As if I hadn’t walked through mud all day and carried big wet tree branches on my shoulders...
From the memoirs of Anna K.:
“It was an inexhaustible source of miracles and healings that neither life, nor years, nor death could destroy. In the bent, glorious, wonderful creation of God, inexhaustible miraculous power was manifested, poured out on all who came to her with their sorrows and illnesses. No one was inconsolable, did not leave her, and also received spiritual healing. For the first time, a terrible illness brought me to my mother’s house. I couldn’t eat anything... I was completely dry and black, and there were two other small children in my arms at the time. Having no strength, I still, with great difficulty, got to my mother’s house, knocked, she immediately opened the door for me, saying with a smile: “Oh, come in, come in, now you’ll eat”... I remember how shrewdly she looked inside me... She put a frying pan in front of Maria and me, crossed the food and made us eat... I ate with Maria. And this was the first miracle my mother performed on me. I ate everything and didn’t feel like I was full. Since then, the blackness from my face began to disappear, I began to eat and gained weight... Mommy invited me to come to her more often and, thank God, I had somewhere to come. You go to the great old lady sick, broken, barely alive, and you run back like a newborn person. Both sorrows and troubles - everything passed by. Truly, God is marvelous in His saints! Many times, with her prayers, Mother prevented the misfortune that was looming over me and my family... Everyone knows that Mommy treated me with an ointment that she herself prepared. Before cooking, she fasted and prayed a lot. I cooked the ointment all night and prayed the rosary. Leaning towards me, she once said in my ear: “You know, the ointment eats up all the cancer cells.” This was said in a whisper and seriously. I thought: “So this has already been tested, you won’t be lost with the ointment.”
How great was the power of the action not of the ointment itself, but of mother’s prayer acting through the ointment. Out of her modesty, she did not want people to elevate her actions in miraculous healings, and transferred all her power to the action of the ointment, and with a blessing from above, of course, the ointment was healing. When people complained of any pain, she said: “Apply ointment and it will go away.” And it passed... Those who often visited mother said that she predicted Chernobyl 5 years ago. I visited her 2 weeks before the accident, she looked at the icons and said: “Look how they shine, what a fire!” But what could I see? Two weeks later there was an accident. On this day, mother was dressed all in black and repeated several times: “We live by the pain of others!”
One day I brought Mommy two icons of the Most Holy Trinity and St. Nicholas of Japan and she said: “I know him, help me, honey, don’t, help the ELEVENTH, no, don’t.” Tears flooded mommy's face. My premonition predicted something bad was awaiting me on the 11th. She prayed for a long time, asked him and added: “This is a great saint.” And then she added the number 8... The 11th - winter was coming to an end, a thaw had set in, and huge blocks of heavy ice lay on the roofs. My husband was going to work, suddenly, a huge block breaks off from the roof of a huge house and falls in front of my husband at a distance of one step. Just one moment separated him from terrible death.
I visited my sick father in the hospital, and it was already late when I returned home. Right next to my house, someone from the top floor dropped an empty bottle, and it shattered to pieces in front of my very nose, a few centimeters away - in just a moment, it’s hard to imagine what would have happened - it happened on the 8th.
From the memoirs of the spiritual daughter of the blessed old woman Alipia Nina:
“A tumor the size of a chicken egg has formed on my chest. I went to the doctor, they did all the necessary tests, which showed that the tumor needed to be urgently removed... Maria and I are going to see my mother. We just went to see her, and my mother shouts: “Don’t give her up to death!” And she didn’t bless me to go to the hospital... Mother prepared an ointment for me. I applied this ointment to my tumor 2 or 3 times and the tumor completely disappeared. More than 10 years have passed since then. I still have certificates and tests confirming that the tumor was malignant.
When I happened to be alone with my mother, especially in the morning, my soul melted from the warmth, caring, affection, love with which she warmed us. How much tenderness and kindness there was in her is difficult to convey in words; only those who felt it themselves can understand it. Mother said: “The Lord will not abandon my people; somewhere there will be a piece of bread for them.”
One day my mother was sitting next to me. An old wise cat, Okhrim, came out into the garden and walked around the edge of the garden, stopping and sniffing the ground. Mother turned to me: “Do you understand what the cat is saying?”
- No, I don’t understand, it’s not given to me.
- And I understand the cat, and the chicken, and all kinds of birds and animals, so Okhrim came and said that the garden was planted well.
This year my mother had a good potato harvest.
Valentina S.E. - the spiritual daughter of Blessed Alipia, more than once witnessed miracles revealed by the Lord through the prayers of the old woman:
“Mother understood the language of birds, chickens, and cats. Several of us were sitting in the garden, and many birds gathered in the trees and on the roof. They chirped, whistled and chirped. Mother spoke to them in a Mordovian language I did not understand. It was clear from the behavior of the birds that they understood their mother’s words. Sitting nearby was the cat Okhrim. Mother addressed the birds in Russian: “Here he sits, but I don’t answer, if you fall into his clutches, fly away.” The birds rose and flew away... Mother did not eat meat for 47 years...
Mother cooked borscht. People came, I sat on the edge. Mother tells me: “Pour some borscht.” I filled 11 plates. 4 more people came, Mother again said to me: “Pour borscht,” and I thought to myself: “Is there enough borscht?” I looked into the cast iron pot, and there was half a pot of borscht. I thought that I hadn’t noticed how Mother got up and topped up the borscht. I poured 4 plates and I think that if more people come, there won’t be enough borscht. Three people came again, and again my mother addressed me: “Pour some borscht.” This time I definitely saw that mother did not get up from her seat and did not top up the borscht. I go over to pour it, open the cauldron, and there is exactly half of the borscht, as if I hadn’t poured from it - it’s all half. Then I realized that by the grace of God, my mother’s food increased.
I once asked her: “How can I be saved?” She replied: “Lord, have mercy!”
From the memoirs of nun F.:
– I met Matushka in 1981. I came to enter the Florovsky Monastery.
For 21 weeks, throughout the fall and winter, my mother was seriously ill. She did not take food, but only drank a little water. After Easter I ate some milk porridge. Before her illness, mother fed people with what the people themselves brought. And after her illness, until her death, she began to cook and feed people herself. While preparing food, she was not allowed to talk, so as not to defile the food. I cooked borscht and porridge every day. She always prepared food with prayer.
On my next visit, mother looked at the icons and asked: “A finger on a hand or a toe? Is it whole or not? Then he says: “Intact.” And when my brother arrived, it turned out that he was sawing wood and touched his finger, but did not touch the bone.
Mother could hear who was calling her from a distance. I became very ill and began to call Mother for help. Mother said to those gathered: “The doctor in Podil is dying,” and she began to pray for me and prayed all night. In the morning I felt better.
She understood the language of animals and birds. A calf came to her and she fed it. One day he came and stood there, and his mother said: “Your head hurts, come on, eat some bread and the pain will stop.” The elk calf ate the bread and went into the forest.
According to eyewitnesses, in the dry summer of 1986, the righteous woman fasted and prayed for eleven days, and then told her spiritual children that she “begged for rain.” After this conversation, on the same day it began to rain heavily.
For her kindness, many loved the blessed old woman, but there were also ill-wishers whom she and her many visitors irritated. A man who lived next door more than once threatened to destroy the home of Elder Alipia. One day he persuaded a tractor driver to come and use a bucket to pick up the logs supporting the wall of a dilapidated house. The old woman prayed with her hands raised to heaven, asking for intercession from St. Nicholas and help. Here is what the spiritual daughter of Blessed Alipia told about this event:
“The tractor driver hooked the cable to a log under the roof and began to drag the tractor to destroy the roof. Mother began to pray, everyone present began to shout at the tractor driver, exhorting him not to harm mother. At this time it started to rain, so hard that it became dark (the surprising thing is that there was not a cloud in the sky that day). The tractor driver was sitting in the tractor cab, waiting out the rain. But the rain did not stop. So, without destroying anything, the tractor driver drove away. But the house remained standing unharmed. Then people, together, repaired what had collapsed due to disrepair, and mother continued to live in her cell. “As long as I’m alive, the house will not be destroyed, the monks of Pechersk will not allow it, but after death they will demolish it, and nothing will remain,” mother said (and this is what happened).
She amazed everyone who knew Mother with her gift of healing, the effective power of prayer and obvious insight... I suffered from severe headaches. Mother gave me compote to drink and said: “It will pass after the Ascension.” And so it was. After the Ascension, I stopped suffering from headaches... My father suffered from kidney stone disease, was in the hospital, they wanted to have an operation on him, but he did not agree and left the hospital. When my father and I came to my mother, she saw him and said: “Well done for leaving, otherwise they would have killed him.” I gave him compote to drink, and his pain stopped...
Archpriest Vitaly Medved recalls:
– Before the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus' in the Demievskaya Church, my mother comes up to me and says loudly: “Christ is Risen! Now they won’t torture you.”
Then they didn’t register me in Kyiv, I went to her. She looked at me and said: “Don’t be afraid, go, they’ll register you.” And indeed, I was soon registered.
Mother helped a lot in court cases: through her prayers, the terms of imprisonment were reduced; those wrongly convicted were released. Mother helped a lot with various of the most confusing and incorrectly executed financial accounts. Through her prayers, everything was arranged, settled and resolved successfully.
She treated people with food she herself prepared and strawberries, from which she prepared an ointment. Before the explosion in Chernobyl, she predicted: “People will be gassed.”
From the memoirs of Archpriest Anatoly Gorodinsky:
– We first met Mother Alipia in 1974 in the Church of the Ascension on Demievka. It was impossible not to notice her. On the way to church, she always stopped at the store and bought a lot of bread and rolls. She put all this on the funeral table. And she taught us: “Always have a piece of bread with you.” She lived in a small house, which had one room and a small corridor where her chickens and cats, which she always kept, were placed... People came to mother for prayer, advice, and blessings. We needed all this too. She often blessed us and gave us a lot of sweets. We objected why we needed so many candies, but she insisted: “This is for the kids.” But we didn’t have children for 10 long years. We believed mother’s words, now we are a large family. The Lord sent us joy through mother’s prayers and our requests. Before Chernobyl, Mother was very restless; when she sent everyone home, she said: “Close the doors and windows tightly, there will be a lot of gas.” Many asked what to do: leave or stay in Kyiv. Mother did not bless anyone to leave, and those who did not listen later regretted it, it was even worse there. When asked what to do with food, she said: “Wash it, read the Our Father and the Virgin Mary, cross yourself and eat and be healthy.”
From Maria's memoirs:
– The last Sunday before Easter – The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem for His suffering. Early in the morning, Chernobyl, which my mother had seen back in the winter, broke out. From that day on, she began to give Cahors to everyone who came, but warned: “So that after my death they do not take wine into their mouth.”
Two months before her death, she no longer blessed anyone to stay overnight...
On Saturday (October 29) she sent for me. She told me: “Go to our church, light the candles, but don’t light them, let them be there in the morning. Take the memorial service and run to the Lavra, don’t come to me again.”
On Sunday, October 30, after mass, I came. Mother was very weak. She blessed everyone to go together to Kitaevo: “Pray to the saints and pray for me,” predicting the canonization of 5 saints of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
Before her death, the old woman asked everyone who came to her for forgiveness, asked them to come to her grave and talk about their troubles and illnesses.
From the memoirs of the elder’s spiritual daughter:
“Shortly before her death, mother had a lot of people. Suddenly she ordered everyone to kneel down and be silent. The doors opened silently and, turning to those who entered, mother asked: “Why did you come to see me?” Everyone knelt in reverent silence while mother had a quiet conversation with those who came. Who they were and what news they brought her remained a mystery. She did not open it, but after this visit she began to talk more often about death: “I will die when the first frost comes and the first snow falls. They will take me in a car and bury me in the forest.” On October 29, I was at my mother’s and cried a lot: “Don’t stand and cry, but go and give to all the churches.” And letters flew to all the monasteries asking them to pray for our mother. The spiritual children even went to Elder N. far away in Russia: “... The apple is ripe, it can no longer remain on the tree and must fall,” answered the perspicacious old man, who knew his mother only in spirit.
On October 30 there was the first severe frost, and in the evening large fluffy snow began to fall. When they handed out mother’s things, they gave me a pillow. And now, when I get a headache, I lie down on this pillow, and the pain stops.
The kingdom of heaven and eternal memory, our dear mother Alipia, for all your labors that you endured in your earthly life for all of us sinners.
From the memoirs of Ermolenko Ekaterina Ivanovna:
“During the funeral service, a strong fragrance emanated from mother’s body, the hands were warm, and when they were touched, a pleasant fragrance remained on the lips for a long time.
Quite a few testimonies have already been collected about the healing of believers through the prayers of the old woman.
Lyudmila testifies:
“I was baking a biscuit to take to the grave and burned my hand. A large blister formed and my hand hurt badly. At the grave we prayed, had a snack, and when I arrived home, there was nothing on my hand: not a blister, not a trace of burns, and I didn’t feel any pain. I didn’t notice when the healing happened, but only saw the result.
A year later, already in the 2000s, a dense growth the size of a bean formed on the first phalanx of the index finger. This growth made it very difficult to bend my finger. Having already experienced healing from a burn, while kissing the cross on the grave, I asked: “Mother, my finger hurts!” and with this growth she touched the cross.
We prayed... Half an hour later I saw that the growth was no longer there. All that was left was a reddened mark – as a keepsake!”
From the story of R. B. Nina: “A lump the size of a hazelnut has formed on the bridge of my nose. It constantly grew and hardened, making it difficult to wear glasses. When Mother Dionisia left, she gave me a flower from the grave of Mother Alipia. I began to pray to her and apply this flower. Soon the lump quietly disappeared. God bless."
Blessed Elder Alipia, pray to God for us!
VARVARA SKVORCHIKHINSKAYA
Blzh. Varvara Skvorchikhinskaya. Icon. Con. XX - beginning XXI century
Blzh. Varvara Skvorchikhinskaya. Icon. Con. XX - beginning XXI century (Arkhangelskaya Varvara Vasilievna; November 20, 1890, the village of Karaulovka, Ufa district and province - 02/27/1966, the village of Skvorchikha, Ishimbay district, Bashkiria), blessed, locally revered in the Ufa diocese (memorial February 14). From the family of a priest, she lost her parents in early childhood, was raised by her grandmother, and served at the church as a bread maker. In Aug. 1902 entered the Ufa Diocesan Women. school, which she graduated from in 1909 with the title of home teacher. She refused to get married, left her loved ones, and from the fall of 1909 she worked as a primary school teacher in rural schools. Graduated from the Teachers' Institute in Ufa, later she taught in the villages: Ira, Kuyurgazinsky district (1919), Bogorodskoye near the city of Meleuz (early 20s), Kandaurovka, Sterlitamak canton (1924), ca. 1925-1926 was sent to the village. Skvorchikha (and at the same time in the village of Budenya) of the same canton. Despite the decree of the Soviet government “On the separation of church from state and school from church” and the ban on teaching Orthodoxy in schools. doctrine, V.S. taught children the Law of God at all places of her ministry. OK. 1928-1929 She stopped working at the school and took upon herself the feat of foolishness.
V.S. began to lead a reclusive life: she curtained the windows of her house, rarely went out into the street, only at dusk or at night, and tried not to show herself to people. Maintained communication with several. pious families, gave them books of spiritual content, talked about faith. OK. 1930 V.S. settled in an abandoned sheepfold, gave away her belongings, abandoned all everyday cares, living only on what they brought her. From the very first years of her stay in seclusion, the Lord entrusted her with the feat of elderhood - serving people with spiritual instructions; The blessed one often spoke in parables, sometimes giving direct advice. Hundreds of people came to V.S., the blessed one did not go out to visitors, she spoke through the door. She gave away almost everything that was brought to her: she helped children, supported families whose breadwinners fought at the front. In the 20-30s. several She was briefly arrested several times. During the Cold War, the blessed one was accused of spying for the United States, since she “lives closed, but knows everything” (official, evidence of V.S.’s foresight given by the authorities). In the winter of 1952/53, the old woman was forcibly settled with people and was forbidden to live in seclusion, but after a short time she was allowed to live separately. The test allowed by God served as a reason to worsen the feat - the blessed one stopped lighting the stove, enduring the harsh Ural winters in the darkness and cold. They knew about it not only in Ufa, but also in the neighboring Chelyabinsk and Orenburg dioceses. The authorities tried to counteract the spiritual influence of the ascetic; people who visited her were observed and reported to work “to take action.” OK. In 1957-1958, the authorities tried to place V.S. in a nursing home, but neither the prosecutor nor the police could carry out the decision. In the fall of 1962, the blessed woman’s house burned down. Despite the attempts of V.S.’s admirers and even local authorities to provide the old woman with normal housing, the ascetic settled in a dilapidated barn where cattle had previously been kept, lived there for 3 years without heat or light, slept on the ground in the summer, in the snow on straw in the winter, or sitting on a chest, leaning his back against the wall of the barn. For years the blessed one wore a hair shirt on her body - a shirt into which she inserted pins with the points towards the body, and never ate meat.
The main content of her spiritual life was inner prayer. During all the years of her retreat, V.S. was never in church (in Skvorchikha it was closed in the late 20s - early 30s), but she never left the Church, she was given communion by the priests who visited the recluse. V.S. ordered the people who came to her to go to church more often, to especially honor the day of remembrance of their heavenly patron (she said: “Honor your angel’s day like Easter”). V.S. became famous for her gift of insight; events and human thoughts were equally open to her; The blessed one also possessed the gift of healing and prayer assistance. V.S. knew in advance about the time and circumstances of her death, which she secretly informed the believers about. 26 Feb. In 1966, a fire broke out in the barn where she lived, and the old woman was pulled out of the fire. Despite the fact that the burns were not severe, V.S. died the next day and was buried in the cemetery in Skvorchikha.
Popular veneration of the blessed one has not weakened over the years. On Dec. In 2000, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus', the relics of V.S. were found; now they are located in the Church of the Mother of God of Kazan in the city of Meleuz (the courtyard of the Enatsky monastery in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos). In 2001, Patriarch Alexy II gave his blessing to glorify the ascetic among the locally revered saints of the Ufa diocese, the rite of glorification was performed by the Archbishop of Ufa and Sterlitamak. Nikon (Vasyukov). In 2002, the governor of the Pokrovsky Enat Monastery, abbot. Simeon (Kuvaitsev) composed an akathist to the blessed one, read in the churches of the Ufa diocese; icons were painted by V.S.
Lit.: Zimina N.P., Vasilyeva I.L. Varvara Arkhangelskaya // Ufa EV. 1996. No. 8-9; Mokhov V.V., Archpriest, Zimina N.P., Vasilyeva I.L. The Pleasant of God Varvara the Recluse - the righteous woman of the Ufa land of the godless time (1890-1966) // Ezheg. Theologian conf. PSTBI: Mat-ly, 1998. M., 1998. P. 238-245; they are. Blessed Varvara the recluse - the righteous woman of the Ufa land of godless times // Cultural and spiritual traditions of Rus. Bashkortostan: history and modernity: Sat. tr. rep. scientific-practical Conf.: In 3 hours. Ufa, 1998. Part 2. P. 32-38; Zimina N.P. Blessed Elder Varvara, recluse Skvorchikhinskaya (Varvara Vasilievna Arkhangelskaya, 1890-1966) // Ufa EV. 2001. No. 7-8; she is the same. Blessed Varvara Skvorchikhinskaya // Ibid. 2003. No. 3.
N. P. Zimina
