Macarius the wandering catacomb bishop

MARTYROLOGY OF THE COMMUNIST YOKE

Schema-Bishop Macarius
THE WANDERING CATACOMB BISHOP


SCHEMA-BISHOP MACARIUS
THE LAST ABBOT OF ST. MACARIUS HERMITAGE


All that is known to us of Schema-Bishop Macarius is contained in the two testimonies that follow; but this little is already enough to present a picture of a holy man, a new martyr of the 20th-century catacombs which are described here. Both testimonies are by Orthodox Russians who themselves experienced the Communist Yoke and escaped to the West during the Second World War and wrote of their experience. Both accounts are first-hand; the details of Bishop Macarius' catacomb life given in the second account were heard by Fr. Gerasim from the Bishop's own lips.


Pskov-Caves Monastery: St. Lazarus church with adjacent Refectory building where Schema-Bishop Macarius was killed in one of the ground-floor cells


IN THE VICINITY of Petrograd in the early 1930's a small monas tery still remained, where many came on pilgrimage – the Hermitage of St. Macarius the Roman.

Early one morning we boarded a train and travelled to the Liuban station. There were thirty of us making a pilgrimage. Having stopped to drink some tea at the monastery metochion in town, we started out on foot for the monastery.

At first the way lay through fields. Around us ears of rye swayed in unison, then we passed rustling fields of oat, then pink fields of buckwheat upon which the passing wind made violet-colored waves. Being city dwellers, we rejoiced in the open spaces, the sun, nature.

Having rested in a village, we entered the forest. Father P., who led us, began to recite by heart the Akathist to the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow. Everybody caught up the refrain and later the canticles of the canon. The prayer lasted for a long time; finally the last note died away, but the forest still continued to stretch out just as dense and endless as ever. Everyone was tired and grew silent. Our feet began to ache and swell. Our shoes rubbed our heels until they hurt. Our bodies ached.

We walked and walked – there was no end to the dense green forest. Already dusk was descending, and we still did not know how far we had to go. From one side of the forest the moon appeared; its rays mingled with the twilight, while we continued to walk. Finally we came on a clearing in the forest. Down the hill there ran a small stream, and farther on there appeared a log church. Against the sky a bell-tower was silhouetted, under which was the dark roof of the monastery buildings. And then from a distance there came to us the thin sound of the monastery bell. We hadn't heard a monastery bell for so long, and everyone came to life and almost at a run descended the slope, hoping to arrive in time for the Vigil service.

Here long ago, on a tiny island of firm soil, surrounded on all sides by impenetrable bogs, St. Macarius the Roman had settled and lived a hermit's life. The closed tomb with his holy relics was located in the monastery church. On the site of his cell a small chapel had been built. The monks had drained a large space in the marsh for the church and monastery buildings, had laid out pathways, drained and cultivated parcels of land for fields and vegetable gardens. The Bolsheviks had taken over the fields, depriving the monks of their sustenance. Believers would bring from town sacks of dried bread, and the monks would process them and bake bread for the common table of monks and pilgrims.

Many paupers and fools for Christ had found refuge in the monastery. One of these was Misha, who was well known to everyone from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd. His loud voice was familiar to us, and we respected this white-haired old man with youthful black eyes. I remember when once the doctor had done a bad job of extracting one of my teeth, and my jaw was swollen for several months and hurt a great deal. I had to wear a bandage. Misha came to me once during the Liturgy and whispered into my ear: "Go to Novodevichy Convent, take oil from the vigil lamp before the icon of the Martyr Antipas and anoint your cheek with it. Look at you – you think you're smart, going to get healed by a doctor." I turned around, but he was already gone. So I went to the Liturgy at Novodevichy Convent, but the nuns who were selling candles did not even know where they had an icon of the Martyr Antipas. We barely managed to find a small icon. I did as Misha had told me: anointed the cheek with oil and took some oil from the vigil lamp with me. And soon everything passed away: the inflammation disappeared and the jaw stopped hurting. This same Misha had previously been an atheist intellectual, an engineer. But when the Lord touched his soul, this shocked him so much that he took upon himself a severe ascetic way of life and became a fool for Christ. After my meeting with him in the monastery he disappeared. We heard that he had been arrested and shot at the whim of an interrogator.

It was a very difficult and frightful time when I visited the monastery. "Pray to St. Macarius and the Iveron Mother of God!" Father N. consoled me. The icon of the Iveron Mother of God at the monastery was a special one. The Holy Virgin was painted in full monastic attire in mantle and with a prayer-rope in her hands.

The superior of the monastery, Bishop Macarius, had taken the schema, hardly ever left his cell, and rarely conversed with the pilgrims, except for some of his spiritual children. Several times we met him in the corridor and in church. But finally I had the opportunity to visit him and talk with him. Closed-up, serious, sad, he made a strong impression on the pilgrims; and if anyone conducted himself noisily or in general unbecomingly, or missed church services, Vladika through his cell-attendant asked such a person to leave the monastery. Young people were rather afraid of him and tried hard not to infringe the strict monastic rules.

Matins began at four o'clock in the morning, followed by the early Liturgy. There followed, at nine o'clock, the late Liturgy and a moleben, which ended between noon and one o'clock. Then there was the meal. At four o'clock there was Vespers or the Vigil service, an akathist, and after it a requiem service. The services ended between eight and nine o'clock in the evening. After this there was supper, and around midnight Nocturnes.

After spending some time, I finally had to go back to the city. At the station town, in the metochion church, I attended the All-night Vigil. For a long time I knelt before the icon of St. Macarius. It appeared that with his look he encouraged me. And indeed, everything went well, and I returned without being arrested.

We visited the Hermitage several more times. In a severe frost at the end of the Nativity Fast we arrived at the monastery in order to be with the monks on the feast of St. Macarius. Father P. wished to receive the sacrament of Unction from Vladika. Our clergy gave Unction not only to the seriously ill; in those frightful times everyone lived under the constant threat of sudden violent death, or else in conditions where it was impossible to receive the holy Sacraments. Monks and some of the believing laymen usually gathered during the Nativity Fast or the Great Lent to receive Unction.

That day Father P. served the Liturgy in the small church on the site of the Saint's wilderness cell. Vladika Macarius came to pray together with us. At the direction of Father P. I came up to Vladika for a blessing and presented Father P.'s request for Unction.

"Why does Father P. wish the Unction so much?" asked the Bishop. "He has a heavy weight on his soul," I answered. Vladika looked at me sternly, and suddenly tears gushed from his eyes. He began to sob uncontrollably. "If you only knew what heavy trials lie ahead for us, how much suffering and torment! Our monastery will be devastated, our sacred things defiled!"

He continued to sob. A frightened novice was about to run up to Vladika, but Father P. restrained him. They all left quietly.

I stood before the sorrowing hierarch, profoundly shaken, seized by a presentiment of an approaching storm. He spoke as if to himself, oblivious of me. Then he gradually came to himself, walked up to the icon of the Saint, kissed it, left the church, and set out along the path to the monastery. His tall, dark figure stood out sharply against the pure white sheet of snow, which glistened under the bright rays of the winter sun.

Within a year his prophecy was fulfilled. The arrests of "Holy Night" (when thousands of the clergy and faithful were arrested in one night) broke out and swept from the face of the earth all the remaining monasteries and monastic and lay communities. That night I also was arrested.

Vladika was sent to a concentration camp in Siberia, and was a night-watchman there.

Nun Veronica (Kotliarevskaya).1

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1 Memoirs, "Russian Life" Press, San Francisco, c. 1954.


BISHOP MACARIUS was the last abbot of the St. Macarius Hermitage, and when that monastery was liquidated by the Communists in 1932 he was arrested, but later he was freed. After his release, and until the Novgorod region was occupied by the Germans, Schema-Bishop Macarius was active as a catacomb bishop in the Novgorod, Petrograd and Tver regions. He would travel around the towns and villages performing secret church services as well as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. He gave the monastic tonsure to those who wished it, and ordained those whom he had prepared himself. When Novgorod was occupied by the Germans and the open confession of faith in God was allowed, Bishop Macarius retired from active church work. After a short period of imprisonment by the Germans, he left the town of his last residence, Liuban, and came to the Pskov-Caves (Pechory) Monastery, which was then in Estonia. He was then 70 years old, tall, thin, with an ascetic appearance, looking still strong and energetic. He was a true monk: a strict faster, a fervent man of prayer, and he soon won the love of everyone in the monastery brotherhood.

To a few of those who visited him, Schema-Bishop Macarius would tell the story of his much-suffering life in the USSR. According to his own words, for the course of more than ten years he never spent two nights in a row in the same lodging. With great caution and watchfulness, and in constant danger, he wandered from one village to another, from one town to another. He worked for some people at the collective farms as a shepherd. He had very many spiritual children – lay people, secret monks, and catacomb priests. Joking, he would say that he had his own theological seminary and academy, for he would secretly prepare people to receive ordination. He also foretold the unsuccessful outcome of the war for the Germans, as well as his own death: "I shall not return from here to my homeland again." In the monastery he occupied a cell on the lower floor in the refectory building.

In the night before April 1, 1944, the town of Pechory was severely bombed by Soviet bombs. The Soviets bombed the town for the whole night, in four strikes with intervals of 40 to 50 minutes. Fortunately for the monastery, the huge two-ton bombs fell outside the monastery. Within the monastery some ten bombs of smaller caliber fell. One of these fell across from the refectory and tore out an old oak tree by the roots. A piece of the bomb penetrated through the window frame into the cell of Schema-Bishop Macarius and killed him instantly. On the analogion in front of him there was an opened gospel and a prayer book; they were covered with the Bishop's blood. The clock had stopped at 9:47 p.m. All the monks were hiding in bomb shelters, but Bishop Macarius had refused to go to the cellar and had remained in his cell praying. The bombing caused the monastery much damage, and there was even more damage and many casualties in the neighboring town of Pechory.

Archpriest Gerasim Shoretz.1

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1 Russian Life, San Francisco, April 19, 1944. Also in Orthodox Russia, 1957, no. 3, p. 9; and in Protopresbyter M. Polsky, Russia's New Martyrs, Jordanville, NY., vol. 1, p. 181; vol. 2, p. 284. (All in Russian.)


The body of Bishop Macarius was buried in the caves from which the Pskov Caves Monastery takes its name. And thus did Soviet bombs end the earthly life of a confessor of God's truth who had already suffered much inside the USSR, and who well earned the title that is bis by right, of a new martyr of this much-suffering age.