Father Alexei Mechev: Memoirs (Part Two)

N.A. Struve

Translated from
ОТЕЦ АЛЕКСЕЙ МЕЧЕВ: Воспоминания, Письма, Проповеди.
Редакция, примечания и предисловие Н. А. Струве.
YMCA-PRESS, ПАРИЖ. 1970.

Part One: https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/father-alexei-mechev-memoirs-part

SERGEI DURYLIN: MEMORIES OF FATHER ALEXEI

Sergei Nikolaevich Durylin was widely known for his work in literature and art. Born on September 14/26, 1877 in Moscow, he graduated from the Archaeological Institute in 1914. Before the revolution, he published two Slavophile-minded pamphlets, Richard Wagner and Russia (1913) and The City of Sophia (1915). In 1918, following the example of S. M. Soloviev, V. Sventitsky and S. Bulgakov, he became a priest and served in Father Alexei Mechev’s parish, where he gave lectures. In the late 1920s, Durylin was exiled to the northern region. Subsequently, he renounced his priesthood and married. His return to literary activity was marked by his outstanding work Russian Writers at Goethe’s in Weimar, published in 1932 in volumes 4-6 of Literary Heritage. Also notable is his study Gogol and the Aksakovs (Zvenie, vol. III-14, 1934). After the war in 1945, Durylin became a permanent research fellow at the Institute of Art History of the ASSR and devoted himself mainly to questions of Russian theater (A. N. Ostrovsky, 1949, and M. N. Ermolova, 1951). In 1956, his major monograph about M. I. Nesterov, with whom he was very close, was published. Durylin died on December 14, 1959. His memoirs about Father Alexei Mechev are being published for the first time from a typescript. The exact time of their writing is unknown, but most likely it was in the late 1920s.

About my first meetings with Father Alexei, I will tell you this. When I first crossed paths with him, I felt that he was unlike any other priest I had met before — he was just so friendly and full of light. Back then I was going through a difficult moment in my life. In those years, the end of my doctoral studies were approaching, I found myself in the Alekseevskii monastery working on my dissertation, and it was then that I met Alexei Ivanovich, began attending his church, and my heart was filled with light.

Metropolitan Philaret [Drozdov]¹ and his teachings had a special influence on Father Alexei, and this is reflected in many of his stories and discussions about the Metropolitan. If I could sum up everything I heard from him (though this is but a small part) that was intimate and truly rooted in his soul, it would all revolve around Metropolitan Philaret — everything was permeated by his spirit, both in life and thought. Here is what he recalled about his father, the Metropolitan, and his childhood.

He was seven years old when the Metropolitan died.² He remembered well the [Holy] Trinity [St Sergius Lavra] metochion from Philaret’s time, where he lived with his father, who then held the position of regent of the Metropolitan’s Chudov choir, which was at the height of its glory at that time. (Until the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, strangely enough, there was no city Cathedral. The Dormition Cathedral belonged to the Synod and didn’t even commemorate the Metropolitan unless he served there. The Annunciation Cathedral was the court cathedral. The Chudov Monastery, designated as the cathedral church, took the place of the city cathedral. Therefore the Metropolitan’s choir, following the cathedral monastery, was called Chudovsky).

The singers also lived in the courtyard. Alexei Ivanovich studied at the Moscow Seminary, distinguished by his excellent voice and rare ear for music. The Metropolitan knew everyone and everything in his diocese, and when Alexei Ivanovich, still quite young, was approaching graduation from seminary and thinking about entering the Theological Academy, and perhaps about priesthood in the future, the Metropolitan, who had long kept him in mind, expressed to the rector his intention to eventually place Alexei Ivanovich at the head of his choir. The rector conveyed the Metropolitan’s wish to Alexei Ivanovich, who began to express his reluctance — in this refusal there was also an element of fear — to be constantly under the Metropolitan’s eye and completely dependent on him.

“Think it over,” answered the rector, “about what awaits you. Well, you might become a priest in some rural parish, but here, near the authorities, he won’t abandon you.” Learning that Alexei Ivanovich was wavering and greatly troubled by the proposal, the Metropolitan called him and quietly said: “I won’t force you, decide for yourself.” The Metropolitan’s gentle kindness settled the matter, and Alexei Ivanovich, upon graduating from seminary, fulfilled Philaret’s wish.

Father Alexei always remembered with the liveliest gratitude, sometimes with tears, the Metropolitan’s care and kindness toward his family and toward himself, a little boy. The Metropolitan found time and willingness to attend to all the needs and concerns of the regent’s family and devoutly fulfilled his promise: “I will not abandon you.” Father Alexei revered the Metropolitan as a great holy hierarch, a senior monk, an inspired preacher, and especially a hierarch full of love and compassion for those beneath him, despite his apparent reserve and even severity. In 1920, it was decided to serve a memorial service on Metropolitan Philaret’s commemoration day, and then to read something from his works and biography. Father Alexei was very pleased about this, and himself, somewhat unexpectedly, shared his childhood memories about the great hierarch’s personality: he spoke beautifully, with animation and deep reverence, and managed to convey something most difficult — what even reverent writers usually keep silent about regarding Metropolitan Philaret — that the Metropolitan was full of love, genuine Christian love capable of forgiveness and bearing others’ burdens. This same quality shines through in those stories about Metropolitan Philaret that have survived in my memory.

In Father Alexei’s visage, in the delicate noble beauty of his features, in the shape of his nose and forehead, in the living fire of his wise eyes, especially when he looked out during the liturgy from under the skufia pulled low on his forehead, and finally, even in his stature, there was something refined and beautiful that resembled the great hierarch. This wasn’t just my observation; the same thing was noted to me by a professor of medicine who knew Father Alexei well and who had studied for comparison the well-known portrait of Metropolitan Philaret in his miter.

In Father Alexei’s character there were genuine “Philaretian” traits. I’ll point out some of them. Both men were extraordinarily, even mercilessly, demanding of themselves and conscientious in everything that concerned their ministry and duty. Both were great ascetics. It is known about Metropolitan Philaret that, having been endowed with keen powers of observation, he noticed instantly all mistakes and omissions in his services, but, unlike many worthy church servants, he never made any corrections in church, not wishing to embarrass the altar server. Father Alexei acted the same way. Being a magnificent expert in the typikon and the divine services, he noticed everything — saw all mistakes, errors and omissions in the service, especially with the young people with whom he served in his final years (and he loved serving with them); but he gave the impression that he saw nothing and noticed nothing. After much time had passed, at convenient and most favorable moments, he would sometimes mention it and correct it. As for mistakes that were too glaring or that affected the flow of the service, he would correct them himself, imperceptibly both to the one making the mistake and even more so to the worshippers: he would sing what was needed himself, would perform what ought to have been done by someone else. This is a most rare quality among clergy.

Father Alexei grew up in modest circumstances. (“I never had my own room,” he would often say. “I've lived my whole life among people and dependent on people.”) He never experienced solitude. In his final days, he mentioned to me once or twice that he would like to spend some time alone and that the people were wearing him out. But this was only two or three times, no more. “We’ll all go to a monastery, you and I together,” he would say half-jokingly. About his childhood, he recalled that he never had his own private space. He did his lessons with everyone around. He travelled from the Moscow Samoteka district to the Zaikonospassky school.

He was very diligent in his studies, but was the smallest in his class by height, so small that he seemed like a child among the others. Once, loaded down with all his books in his satchel, having misread the time, he arrived at school so early that it was still locked, so he sat by the locked door in the frost and waited for nearly two hours. Once a teacher asked him to deliver a letter to the other side of Moscow, assuming he would go home first, eat and rest, and then choose an unhurried time to fulfill the errand, but the diligent boy, ready for any service, went straight from school to carry out the task without eating. He returned home only late in the evening, having frightened his mother and barely able to stand on his feet.

“The mind should be nothing but the heart’s workman,” the late Father used to repeat. This was his favorite saying. “Let this workman do his work. It’s good that he works.” As a consequence, he never rejected learning or knowledge, encouraging and blessing people to study, to be intelligent writers and so forth. But he wanted, taught, and required that this workman be employed in service of the sovereign master and artisan of life’s affairs — that is, the heart. I heard this from him dozens of times.

“A shepherd must unburden others of their sorrow and grief.” Just as frequently and persistently, he taught about unburdening others, transferring the burden of others’ grief and misfortune from their shoulders to his own. This he did throughout his entire life. Sometimes you would enter his little room after such an unburdening — when someone would leave him, unburdened — in tears, but with a brightened and touched face, or without tears but just with an open, renewed gaze; they would leave as if having grown taller, having gained in stature. And he, having unburdened them, would sit there utterly drained, his face full of boundless sympathetic sorrow, tears in his eyes, his voice breaking from them, his voice becoming somehow infinitely gentle, quiet and, at the same time, deeply sorrowful. Then he’d say “There was a woman who came to me…” and name a place, where she was from, and tell a harrowing tale of cruel suffering, so common, unnoticed by us — especially the grief of women. It seemed there was no way to help — her husband beat her, the children beat her, the husband was almost a criminal toward his own family, the children were thieves, the husband wouldn’t even let her go to church — she had to sneak away. Everything in her soul was spat upon, beaten, her whole body ached from beatings and unbearable work. She was nearly at the point of hanging herself. Thoughts of the noose or a hole in the ice, or worse yet: “I’ll kill him.” And all this he took upon himself. A new name was added to his prayers, a new, eternally remembered sorrow was added to his heart, a new prayerful concern: one more time to persistently, constantly knock at God’s door for her, for this suffering handmaiden of God, Paraskeva: a new heavy burden was added to his aching heart and love-suffering soul. But to her he said briefly and cheerfully: “God is merciful, everything will work out, I will pray for you,” and along with a prosphora, an icon, and a note, she was given precious joy, accumulated through prayer and labor. She left happy. She would never know that the burden she left behind was infinitely heavy. She was at peace. He would knock on the Lord’s door for her; he would keep vigil for her.

Sometimes during an early liturgy there would suddenly be a note from him: “Remember so-and-so, who is suffering” with a special note to the serving priest. This meant that his heart, aching for others, had remembered someone especially in need at that moment of liturgical prayer and sacrifice — and he asked the serving priest to remember them, to pray, to take out a particle.³

One couldn’t help becoming accustomed, during frequent service with him, to the multitude of names he remembered at the proskomedia, during the Cherubic Hymn, at the consecration of the Holy Gifts, at the augmented litanies, in prayers to the Mother of God and St. Nicholas (these were insertions not prescribed by the prayer text, but prescribed by his loving and caring heart), at the blessing of water. Those serving with him became so accustomed to the multitude of names he remembered that many of them knew them by heart, but always and invariably whole streams of new names were added, and each new name meant for him new tears, a new fervent prayer, a new cry to God for help, mercy, and forgiveness. Sometimes he would perform the proskomedia for an hour and a half or even longer, reading out, with the help of concelebrants and even with the help of laypeople praying in the altar, whole notebooks of names. The augmented litany during his service turned into a whole stream of prayers, weaving together countless names of the sick, the suffering, the imprisoned, and travelers. This river, so broad, almost fathomless, was contained in his aching heart — these names, mere names for most worshippers, lived in him as living beings, filling his heart with sorrow, grief and sadness, and rarely, rarely with joy and gratitude to God for mercy and happiness. But all this — the most intense, unceasing prayer — was only part of his unburdening. “Where's Father?” you might ask. “They took him to Maryina Roshcha”.⁴ They took him when he was barely breathing, half-sick, weak. You’d wait for him. He’d wave his hand, as if laughing at himself. “Where were you, Father?” — “Oh, I wasted the whole day doing nothing, lost the whole day. You were here serving, while I was drinking tea with so-and-so in Maryina Roshcha.”

This “tea” was his entry into some broken family, where everything was lost, and they grabbed onto him like a last straw — that’s why they took him there. The “tea” he drank brought peace to the family, for he brought to the family only love, only all-forgiving understanding of each and everyone; for him there were no guilty ones, and therefore the guilty ones silently and secretly began to feel their guilt; and without blaming them, the guilty ones, he turned them toward love and forgiveness; with a joke, a folk saying, understandable and close to all... He dispersed the clouds that hung low over the family, clouds of spite, of everyday, petty, but most powerful daily evil. And this “tea” cost him dearly: tired, tormented, he would return from some backwater in Moscow or sometimes beyond, and at home a crowd of people who had accumulated during his absence was waiting for him. He immediately began receiving them, a new unburdening, without resting from the one just completed. However, with the Maryina Roshcha people it was perhaps easier. But what labor it took to “unburden” some professor, or contemporary public figure, artist, writer, thrown into his little room only by hopeless despair. The very process of unburdening required several hours and an absolutely exceptional feat and labor of soul, spirit, and mind. The unburdening often lasted for years, because in place of burdens just lifted by Fr. Alexei, life would load a new heaviest burden, and the one bent under it would already habitually and invariably go to Fr. Alexei — and there was never a refusal to anyone, ever. He was a great transferrer of others’ sorrows onto his own weak shoulders.

“Pray for so-and-so,” he would sometimes say, and mention a completely unknown name. “Father, I don’t know how to pray! How should I pray?” In response, he would never cease repeating a story he had heard from Father John of Kronstadt⁵ from the very first years of the ministry of that great man of prayer. Father John, still a very young priest unknown to anyone, was walking early in the morning to serve the liturgy. In the square, he met an unknown woman who said to him:

“Father, I have an important matter being decided today, please pray for me.”

“I don’t know how to pray,” Father John humbly replied.

“Please pray,” the young woman persisted, “I believe the Lord will grant my request through your prayers.”

Father John, seeing that she placed such great hopes in his prayers, became even more troubled, insisting that he didn’t know how to pray, but the woman remarked to him:

“Father, just pray as best you can, I’m begging you, and I believe the Lord will hear.” Almost compelled, Fr. John agreed and began to remember her at the proskomedia and liturgy wherever he could. After some time, he met the woman again and she said to him: “You see, Father, you prayed for me and the Lord granted what I asked for through your prayers.”

This incident so affected Father John that he understood the full power of intercessory prayer. He told this story to the late Father Alexei when the latter came to him in greatest grief, overwhelmed by his wife’s incurable illness, left with small children in his care, in a poor parish, in a crumbling, decrepit house. He complained of his sorrow to Fr. John and asked for guidance on what to do, how to act, and how to help. Fr. John said to him: “You complain and think that there is no greater sorrow in the world than yours; that’s why it feels so heavy to you. But be with the people, enter into their grief. Take others’ grief upon yourself and then you’ll see that your grief is small, light, in comparison with that grief; it will become easy for you.”

Fr. Alexei did just that: he took up the unburdening of others’ grief. Then Fr. John pointed out to him an even more powerful means of healing grief — prayer. Father Alexei often repeated this story and this advice, which he followed his whole life, in which he saw the highest guidance for a pastor and to which he constantly called everyone. This advice from Fr. John is the key to understanding all of Fr. Alexei’s life and work. This advice Fr. Alexei followed to the end, to his last breath.

“I will pray” — this was his unchanging response to everyone and always, to every request, to every grief, sorrow, trouble, perplexity, doubt, hope, and joy — to everything and always: “I will pray.” He believed unshakably, devoutly, deeply in the power, boldness, and omnipotence of prayer — in its universal accessibility, in its ever-present help and closeness. To describe him means to describe how he prayed. He did not like to reason about prayer. “God gave me a firm, childlike faith” — that’s what I heard from him more than once; these are his exact recorded words.

Once he had to hear the confession of a bishop, a rather well-known figure, and the bishop was amazed at the strength, firmness and boldness of Fr. Alexei’s faith and expressed his amazement right there during confession. Telling me about this once, Fr. Alexei, with an apologetic smile, as if not understanding what special thing the bishop had found in him, added: “Well, God simply gave me childlike faith.”

“I’m unlearned,” he would often say when he heard and noticed something cold and intellectual in someone’s thoughts, in a religious text, or in conversation. Sometimes you might get carried away in his presence, rise to lofty abstractions, and he would say with a smile: “But I’m unlearned, I don’t understand,” and with this he would return to something warmer, more practical, more true and essential.

Yet his mind was deep, bright, capable of understanding everything. He was the only person in Moscow with whom one could talk about everything, knowing firmly that he would understand it all. Priests, scholars, writers, artists, doctors, and public figures came to him for advice and shared their thoughts with him, cried with him, and this “unlearned” man understood them all.

Once I invited the famous artist M. V. Nesterov, who had never seen him before, to a service, to the liturgy. He stood through the entire long service, visited Fr. Alexei, had tea with him, and when I asked him: “Well, what do you think?” the answer was: “What can I say! It’s wonderful! Little boys keep popping out from under his cassock everywhere — that’s who he really is, genuinely.”

“Little boys popping out.” Wonderfully said. You couldn’t imagine Fr. Alexei for a minute without people, without the crowd that surrounded him and buzzed around him like bees, and children especially — it’s true that boys seemed to pour out even from his cassock, when upon leaving the church his arm would grow tired from blessing, and from the loving and affectionate pressure of the crowd he would find it hard to breathe, and they had to escort him through the crowd so they wouldn’t smother him with affection.

He deeply loved and revered the late abbot of the Optina Skete, Father Igumen Theodosius, and was in turn deeply revered by this kind-hearted elder. Father Theodosius’ photograph stood on his table. He had visited once at the skete with Fr. Theodosius and would tell how Fr. Theodosius with extraordinary hospitality treated him to some especially large blini “Optina-style.” Often when treating someone to something, Fr. Alexei would say: “Why aren’t you eating? This is Optina-style, after all.”

Fr. Theodosius came to Moscow once and visited Fr. Alexei’s church. He was in the church and saw how the lines of people for confession went, how deeply and long the service proceeded, how detailed the commemorations were, what crowds of people waited for reception, how long this reception lasted, and he said to Father Alexei: “For all this work that you do alone, we in Optina would need several people. It’s beyond one person’s strength. The Lord helps you.”

Father Alexei spoke of Anatoly of Optina⁶ with such love and recognition, and with such reverence, as he spoke of no other living ascetic or spiritual elder. “We are of one spirit,” he said many times. And so it was: one spirit of grace-filled love, the all-forgiving and all-healing power of love. His very face would become especially bright, radiant, when he himself or others in his presence spoke of Fr. Anatoly. He never doubted in the slightest the deep truth and wisdom of all Fr. Anatoly’s ways, deeds, and counsels. The reason is perfectly clear: Fr. Alexei saw in no one else such perfect understanding and embodiment of eldership as a ministry of love, as in Fr. Anatoly.

His connection with Fr. Anatoly was unbreakable and deep. He visited Fr. Anatoly only once. Fr. Anatoly, according to his own words, as relayed by Father, “once drove past the Klennikov church, wanted to stop by, but couldn’t because people had long been waiting for him elsewhere.” But between them there was always communication, which close ones jokingly called “wireless telegraph.” There was a grace-filled closeness, a grace-filled unity of eldership. How many times I was convinced of this. Father Anatoly would always send Muscovites to Father Alexei. Father Nectarius⁷ did the same. Another Optina elder once said to someone: “Why do you travel to us? You have Father Alexei.” This Optina testimony about Father Alexei must be recognized as extremely significant. It expresses the deep unity of Father Alexei’s experiential-spiritual path with that which Optina eldership followed, tracing its lineage back to Elder Paisius Velichkovsky, and through him to Mount Athos and the living Patristic tradition of all Orthodoxy. Father Alexei was an Optina elder who simply lived in Moscow. In this lies the greatest joy and the deepest meaning. Father Alexei maintained living connections with both the spiritual Optina dwellers and the lay disciples of the Optina spirit and teaching. Of all Russian monasteries, in Father Alexei’s eyes, Optina Pustyn was the highest, most perfect center of true asceticism and eldership — this holy monastic pastorship.

Once Father Alexei asked: “Have you thought about why all the holy Apostles, every single one, received the crown of martyrdom, perished on crosses, were beheaded by the sword, while the Apostle John the Theologian lived to deep old age and died peacefully?” When they answered “No,” Father Alexei said: “Because the Apostle John had such boundless and pure Christian love that its power melted away and disarmed even the persecutors, transformed their malice and turned it into love.”

All of Father Alexei’s instructions, all his words, all his sermons were about love. He would sometimes hear confessions during the liturgy while listening to the sermon delivered by one of the concelebrants in place of the communion stikheri. Once one of his concelebrant priests had to read before the liturgy a passage from St. John Chrysostom. He was struck by one thought from the passage, which he then expressed in his sermon. Why didn’t God create everyone equal: wise, beautiful, rich and strong? Because then there would be no place for acts of love on earth: love covers what is lacking — you are rich, another is poor; love him, and through love you will make up what he lacks. You are wise, another has little wisdom; love him, and through love you will make up for his deficiency, your love will compel you to give him knowledge, and so on. With natural inequality, there occurs a circular fulfillment through love: you are rich but sorrowful — another is poor but cheerful — love one another and you will mutually make up what each lacks. Here love is freedom and fullness.

During the liturgy, Father Alexei seized a moment and whispered to the priest: “What a profound word you spoke!” The word actually did not belong to the priest, but it showed how infinitely precious to Father Alexei was every thought that illuminated the one highest thing he served — love. He shone. His eyes poured forth a joyful azure fire. He was happy.

And conversely, how troubled and sorrowful Father Alexei became, with what holy passion he opposed every word of sermons, books, thoughts from whomever they came, if they diminished or did not give sufficient place to love. Everything was then wrong, unnecessary... He became stern, almost formidable (if this word is at all applicable to him, though somehow in a special, elevated sense it is), he knew that one who forgets about love, whatever he might say, speaks falsehood, for God is love, and Father Alexei could not tolerate falsehood in anything at any time; when he himself spoke of love he wept, his heart ached. What such sermons about love cost him — only one who saw him returning from the ambo to the altar to the throne, after preaching, knows: he was pale, tears ran down his face, which he vainly tried to restrain; he clutched his heart with his hand and leaning his chest against the throne in exhaustion, barely audibly said to his concelebrants: “I can’t,” shaking his head, trying to smile, “It’s simply scandalous.” Through force of will he finished the service, making exclamations in a barely audible voice.

“Merciful love” (the words of St. Isaac the Syrian) — this is what made him rich. How much that was unexpected and touching was revealed here. “And you know, I married Vyaltseva.” “Which Vyaltseva, Father?” — one couldn’t help but ask him again, it was so strange to hear from his lips the name of the famous gypsy singer. “Why, the famous one.” ⁸

Something warm and tender passed over the late Father’s face at this memory. “She came to me and said: ‘Father Alexei, you won’t drive me away or condemn me.’”

The wedding was performed privately, without pomp or guests. She confessed before the wedding. Father Alexei was amazed and moved by the warmth of her faith and genuine humility, and remembered her with love. This was one of many unexpected moments that filled his life and which no one knew about.

About the beginning of his ministry at [St Nicholas Church in] Klenniky he said: “For eight years I served the liturgy every day in an empty church,” and added sadly: “One archpriest told me: ‘Whenever I pass by your church, there’s always ringing. I went into the church — empty. Nothing will come of it, you’re ringing in vain.’”

But Father Alexei continued to serve unwaveringly — and the people came. He said this in response to a question about how to establish a parish, how to bring life to a church. The answer was single — to pray.

He lived among people, amid people, for people; it seems he was never alone. Always with people and in people’s sight: the walls of his room were as if made of glass — everything visible. And yet, I think, few possessed such mystery as Father Alexei — this endless treasure of goodness, love and help to people in the most unexpected, infinitely varied forms, complex as the life of the city amidst which he lived. No one knew and no one will ever know how many he helped and how many he embraced with his love. This was his secret. People weep for him whom we didn’t even remotely suspect of having known him. It is premature and impossible to lift even the smallest part of the veil that separates this mystery from us — only a small part will be revealed to us. The Lord knows all that is needed. I will say one thing: Father Alexei found friends where he expected to find enemies, and in him himself was fulfilled what he said about the Apostle of Love.

Part Three: https://www.chansonetoiles.com/p/father-alexei-mechev-memoirs-part-605

1. Translator’s note: Metropolitan Philaret [Drozdov] served as Metropolitan of Moscow from 1821-1867 and was one of the most influential figures in 19th century Russian Orthodoxy. He played a key role in translating the Bible into Russian and was known for his sermons, theological writings, and pastoral work. He combined deep spirituality with intellectual sophistication, and profoundly influenced Russian church life through his leadership, teaching, and the many priests he mentored.

2. Metropolitan Philaret [Drozdov] died in 1867: from this it follows that Alexei Mechev was born around 1860.

3. Translator’s note: That is, to remember them in the proskomedia.

4. Translator’s note: “Mary’s Grove,” then a wooded and less-affluent district of Moscow.

5. Translator’s note: Father John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) was one of the most revered Russian Orthodox priests of the pre-revolutionary period, known particularly for his ministry at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt. He was famous for his pastoral care, spiritual counseling, and the revival of frequent communion in Russian Orthodox practice, with thousands traveling to receive his blessing and counsel. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1964 and by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990.

6. Father Anatoly (the younger) was a disciple of Elder Ambrose, and after his death became the main universally recognized elder of Optina Pustyn... “By his outward stooped appearance... and by his joyful-loving and humble treatment of people, he reminded one of St. Seraphim of Sarov,” according to Fr. Sergius Chetverikov (Optina Pustyn, Paris, 1926, p. 100). Fr. Anatoly died in 1922, a year before Optina’s closure. [English translation in Elder Anatole the Younger of Optina, St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, CA.]

7. Elder Nectarius (Tikhonov) was born in Yeltsa in 1857 or ‘58. He entered the skete in 1876, was a disciple of Elder Ambrose and Father Anatoly [Zertsalov]. He began his eldership in 1913, passed away on May 12, 1928, in the village of Kholmishchi, Bryansk region.

8. Translator’s note: Anastasia Dmitrievna Vyaltseva (1871-1913) was a Russian mezzo-soprano who specialized in Gypsy art songs and was a major star of Russian popular music in the 1900s.