Biography of Schiarchimandrite Elijah

Article from the Encyclopedia "Tree": Drevo-info. Eli Nozdrin Ili Nozdrin -, Schiarchimandrite, the confessor of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill and the Holy Vvedensky Optina Desert in the world of Nozdrin Alexei Afanasevich, was born on March 8 [1] in the village of Stanovaya Stanise of the Oryol district of the Oryol region, in a pious peasant family.

At baptism, he was called in honor of Alexy, the man of God. He had three brothers and sister. His grandfather - Ivan Nozdrin - was a great truth -seeker, did not reconcile with new orders, and was the head of the Pokrovsky church in the Stanovoy Polodeza. In the year, both his grandfather Ivan and Father Athanasius died - after a severe wound at the front [2].

After the death of her husband, the mother did not marry a second time, engaged in children and economy. They baptized Alexei in the church of the neighboring village of Lukino. As he himself subsequently assumed, he began to pray from three years. The family gave him only indirect spiritual education, but he grew up a very religious boy and already in childhood he was called "Divine," "" God's man.

" The case of the year in the village - year, when, being renewed and praying with tears in front of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God, Alexei found a hot wheat loaf on the ground was widely known in the village and district. In the year he graduated from the Stanovokolodezian secondary school. He served in the army, where the foreman persuaded him to join the Komsomol.

Upon returning home, he deeply repented of this, seeing in this a sin against God, and immediately burned his Komsomol ticket. In the years he studied the machine -building college in Serpukhov. After the college, on distribution, he got to work in the city of Kamyshin of the Volgograd region. There was one of the current temple in the city, Nicholas the Wonderworker, where John Bukotkin served as the second priest, who became the first confessor of Alexei.

He spoke a lot and for a long time with the priest, began to pray at night in the barn. Father John invited him to enter the Saratov Theological Seminary and helped to arrange this, albeit with a great risk for himself. After the closure of the Saratov seminary was transferred to Leningradskaya, then he studied at the Theological Academy. In Leningrad, he decided to accept monasticism, received the blessing of Father John Bukotkin, and was tonsured with the name Ilian, in honor of one of the forty martyrs of the Sevasti.

The tonsure was performed by Metropolitan Nicodemus Rotov, he then ordained him in Hierodeacon and Hieromonk. During the years in the Leningrad diocese, he worked a lot at different parishes. From a year, he spent ten years in the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Reading in the year of the book about the then not glorified Monk Siluan Athos was an important step for him in spiritual life.

He was among the handful of the monks who helped to preserve the monastic life here, to maintain the connection of the monastery with the Russian Orthodox Church, and to prevent the Greeks widely discussed and expected in Greece. He carried obedience to the monastery on the old Rossika, in a secluded dwelling hidden in mountain gorges. In the Athos period, the Father Ilian was also entrusted with the Distance in the walls of the Panteleimon Monastery.

At the end of the x, he was called back to his homeland and was directed to the recovery of Optina deserts as a confessor of the brethren. He arrived there in the year when the monastery was still overgrown with overgrown ruins. Soon he accepted here to tonsure a great schema with the name Eli in honor of another Sevastian martyr.

He embarked on the path of senile service in Optina, which lasted 20 years. His many spiritual children, and even people who happened only a minute communication with him, testified to the decisive significance of his image, actions and instructions for them. But the seekers of the revelations often left him in bewilderment, as it seemed that he said the capital truths known to everyone.

Elder Eli and Patriarch Kirill, shortly after the Local Cathedral of the Year, Schigumen Ilia became the confessor of his fellow student at the spiritual academy, the newly elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Cyril, and moved to Peredelkino, to the courtyard of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Since December 16 - a member of the Commission on the Organization of the Life of Monasteries and the Monasticities of Inter -Subordinate Presence [4].