Catacomb Hieromonk Ignatiy

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Sean
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Faith: Old Calendar Greek Orthodox
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Catacomb Hieromonk Ignatiy

Post by Sean »

The English isn't great, but this is a wonderful martyrology of a Catacomb Saint.

Mother-Superior Evfimia remembers
her spiritual director catacomb hieromonk Ignatiy

He was truly a marvelous person. He spent 23 years in concentration
camps for faith, for the refusal to recognize Sergiy's Declaration.
We would send him our confessions, and he would mail us a package
with Eucharist from the camp. He was permanently taken to
questionings at nights, he was severely beaten, they plucked his
beard hair after hair. He was locked up in cells where he could
neither sit nor lie, with drops of water falling right on the top of
his head. He caught up pneumonia there, and he felt so bad that he
was lying like a dead man. They took him and put him together with
the corpses, and they went to bury him. And when they prepared to
throw him into the ditch, he opened his eyes and looked at them. The
grave-diggers were kind enough to take him back, they took him to the
camp hospital, and got him cured. It seems, it was God's will to have
him live longer.

He was in exile with father Mikhail Rozhdestvensky, who father
Ignatiy had made friends with, and with Bishop Ioasaf Voronezhsky.
Father Mikhail was set free earlier, but he lost the address of
father Ignatiy. Then father Ignatiy wrote to him himself and asked
him to come. When father Mikhail came, father Ignatiy asked him to
take care of his flock. And after the father's death father Mikhail
provided spiritual support for us, up to his death on September 13
(26) 1988. He spent the end of his life in Novozybkovo, he died and
was buried there.

When the father came back, he settled in Uglianka village in the
Voronezhskaya region, in 40 km off Voronezh. He prayed and served in
his house, refusing to recognize the "Soviet Church". They often came
to his house with inspections and questionings. The father served at
nights for the sake of safety, though it happened that he was
inspected at nights too, and it was by a miracle that no one was ever
captured.

The last years of the father's life were darkened by trouble. He was
attacked by his spiritual son monk Modest. He began to cast
aspersions on him. He was accused of confessing people who visited
Sergian churches, that he allegedly crossed himself with five fingers
(in actual fact the father had a defective fourth finger that
couldn't bend), but the main thing was that the father had an impure
relationship with his novice. The father was so sick after the exile,
because all his insides had bean beaten up, that he needed help. He
was so slandered, that many people believed it. Once he and 5 other
men came to judge the father at the "council". They locked in his
room with him and began to shout at him. And they assaulted him so
that the father fell on his knees and said: "Forgive me, for Christ's
sake, I am guilty". Then we interfered and helped him. Later father
Ignatiy used to say, that he had said it just for the sake of peace,
in order to disgrace the Evil One.

His death was truly a death of a martyr. The father suffered from
dropsy, all his body was filled with water, but he kept serving. He
served his last liturgy on New Year's Day, and when he was serving,
two novices held his arms. He censed everyone with the censer, he
crossed with it, then bowed, and the novices turned him, and he
looked at everyone so knowingly and gently, as if saying good-bye. At
the end of 1971 he felt worse than ever, he was 80 already. He was
lying in his cell, and multitudes of people came to him. He accepted
everyone and said their secrets to many of them. For example, a woman
came and brought him eau de cologne, and he told her: "You've stolen
it and brought here. You shouldn't steal". The father said to an old
man who made candles: "Don't add paraffin into wax, don't". And he
told me not to work and not to dress attractively. When he was close
to death, he couldn't breathe, sweat was falling in large drops from
his face and neck. They even wanted to rub his chest with honey to
ease it, but they decided not to. At that time they were singing the
canon "Sea Wave" at the compline. When the father began to pass away,
his face became suddenly lit with a light so bright that it was
unbearable to look at it. And then, after he died, his face was still
shining, shining so bright. As soon as he died, the house was filled
with an unusual fragrance, so that even the neighbors were surprised.
His body lay for six days, but there was no smell of decay. People
came and went away, kissed his hand, asked him to commemorate them in
front of God's Throne. The burial service for him was read by
Protopriest Mikhail Rozhdestvensky, who specially came from
Leningrad. They knew each other closely, they commemorated
Metropolitan Filaret at the Liturgy. Then he began to provide
spiritual support for us. And when they brought him out for burial,
the procession stretched up to two kilometers, so many people were
there. Some "God's fool" was going at the head with an icon, then
followed icons, a cross, gonfalons. Two choir were singing, one was
marching in front of the coffin, the other one – at the back. They
sung irmoses "Sea Wave". When they approached the church and stopped,
people even climbed up the trees to see the coffin. The father was
buried behind the church altar in Uglianka, where he had served, so
he still lies there in his grave. He passed away on January the 3rd,
1972.

When the father died, a nun Alevtina of high spiritual life saw how a
white pigeon flew down to his coffin, landed, and walked three times
along the edge. And when they were taking the coffin to the cemetery,
she also saw a God's Angel of a height almost up to the sky, who was
following the coffin.

He was made a monk and consecrated by martyr Bishop Ioasaf (Popov).
Among the father's spiritual children were monks and nuns who had
been imprisoned in concentration camps for the truth of church. A nun
told about Bishop Piotr (Zverev) – a famous Archpastor of Voronezh
exiled to concentration camps. He was flung to criminals, who took
all the parcels that arrived to the camp. And vladyka gave them
everything away himself. And they liked him so much that when people
came to take him to questioning, the criminals drove them out and
didn't give vladyka away. When Vladyka died, the criminals carried
the coffin in their arms, and there were so many of them that the
coffin seemed to be floating in the air. When spring came, Vladyka's
grave all blossomed in blue tiny forget-me-nots, as if Vladyka asked
not to forget him…

Father Ignatiy was a person of unordinary simplicity, humbleness, and
meekness, very lovable and not mammonish. He took charity with one
hand and gave it away at once with another.

He built little cells for many nuns. God bless him in Your Kingdom,
and have mercy upon us, the sinners.

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