Biography of the Optina elder

Hieromonk, spiritual mentor, elder Optina desert. Biography Days of memory: October 11, April 29, May 12, the last Council of Council of Optina, the Rev. Nectarium, a student of the Monk Elders Anatoly Mirtsalov and Ambrose Grenkov. Fifty years, the elder Nectarius spent the Optina Desert in the monastery, of which twenty were in the shutter. Less is known about his life path - in connection with persecution of the church, the persecution of monasticism - than about his glorified predecessors.

His father was a worker at the mill and died when his son was only seven years old. Before death, he blessed his son icon of St. Nicholas, entrusting his child to his guardianship. The elder did not part with this icon all his life. With his mother, Nikolai had the warmest and most cordial relationship. She acted more likely and knew how to touch his heart. But his mother died early.

The boy remained a round orphan. From the age of 11, he began to work in the shop of a wealthy merchant, was hardworking and by the age of 17 he rose to the younger clerk. When the young man was 20 years old, the senior clerk decided to marry him with his daughter. At that time, an almost hundred -year -old schemat, the old man of Feoktista, the spiritual daughter of St.

Tikhon Zadonsky, lived in Yelets. The owner sent a young man to her for a blessing for marriage. And the schematic blessed him to go to Optina to the elder Hilarion.

The owner let the young man go to Optina, and Nikolai hit the road. In the year he came to Optina Deserts, carrying only the Gospel in a knapsack behind him. First, the young man came to the monastery of the elder Hilarion, and he sent him to the Monk Ambrose. At that time, so many people came to the great elder Ambrose that he had to wait for reception for weeks. But Nicholas he accepted immediately and spoke to him for two hours.

What was their conversation about, the Monk Nectarium did not open to anyone, but after it he forever remained in the monastery and became the spiritual son of the Monk Elder Anatoly, and went to the council to the reverend old man Ambrose. The first obedience in Optina was to take care of the flowers, then he was appointed to the Ponomar obedience. The reverend of Nectaria had a cell that went out to the church; In it, he lived for twenty years, not talking to any of the monks: he was just going to the old man or the confessor and vice versa.

He himself loved to repeat that for the monk there are only two exits from the cell - to the temple and to the grave. Under the leadership of his great mentors, the Monk Nectarius quickly increased spiritually. He was then thirty -four years old. Already in these years, he healed the sick, had the gift of insight, miracles and reasoning. But in his humility, he hid these high spiritual talents under external foolishness.

In the year, the Optina brethren elected him to the elders. But the Monk Nectarium refused, saying: “No, fathers and brethren! I am a meager and I can’t bear such an hardships. ” And only by obedience did he agree to take on oldness. The fratoring of the old man often contained prophecies, the meaning of which was revealed only after time. For example, six months before the revolution, the elder began to walk with a red bow on his chest; He lit an electric flashlight and with a serious look walked with him in his cell, examining all the corners and cabinets and after a year they remembered this “eccentricity” completely different: this is how, in the light of the flashlights, the Bolsheviks searched the cells of the monks, including the old man of Nectaria.

Or he collects all the rubbish, puts it in a locker and shows everyone: "This is my museum." Indeed, after the closure of Optina, the Museum was in the monastery. Once, an elder Barsonofius, while still a novice, passed by the house of the father of Nectaria. And he stands on his porch and says: "You have exactly twenty years left to live." This prophecy later turned exactly.

Archpriest Vasily Shustin told how the priest, without reading, examined the letters: “We need to give an answer here, and these letters are thanks, they can be left unanswered.” There are cases when the priest healed deaths. One woman had an incurable daughter. All doctors refused the patient. Mother came to the old man to be blessed with him, but did not have time to say a word to him, how the elder turned to her himself: “Did you come to pray for a sick daughter?

She will be healthy. " He gave her seven gingerbread and ordered her to eat her daughter one per day and more often communed. The daughter with Vera accepted the gingerbread, after the seventh communed and recovered. The disease did not return to her anymore. The nun Nektarius with a teenage boy, who suddenly fell ill, came to him. The temperature rose to forty degrees. The elder gave the boy an apple: "Here is the medicine." And, blessing them on the road, he said: "During the stop, when you feed the horses, let him drink boiling water and be healthy." And so it happened, the boy drank boiling water and fell asleep, and when he woke up, he was healthy.

The Rev. Elder Nectarium in the "hibark" of former elders took. Sometimes he left on the table in the reception book; Visitors, in anticipation, read these books and found answers to their questions.And the Monk Nectarius, in his humility, noticed that they were coming to the old man Ambrose, and Kellia herself speaks for him. The father had a cat who was unusually obeyed, and the father loved to say: "The elder Gerasim was a great elder, because he had a lion, and we have small a cat." Outwardly, the elder was short, bent, with a rounded face and a small wedge -shaped beard.

His face, as it were, had no age - either ancient, severe, then young to liveliness, then children's in cleanliness and peace. He walked with a light, sliding gait, as if barely touching the earth. Only before his death he moved with difficulty, his legs were swollen like logs, oozed a sucker - this was affected by many years of standing in prayer. Once they asked the old man if he should take the suffering and sins of him to ease or console them.

Then grace comes and blurs this mountain of stones as a mountain of dry leaves. And you can accept again. " The elder often and with love spoke of prayer. He taught the constancy in prayer, considering the non -fulfillment of petitions a kind sign from the Lord. Sometimes a year later the Lord fulfills the request for an example from Joachim and Anna.

They prayed all their lives and did not lose heart, and what the Lord sent them comfort! After the monastery was closed on the Palm Sunday of the year, the Monk Nectaria was arrested. The elder was placed in a monastery bread building, turned into prison. The room where he was imprisoned was not blocked to the very top, in the second half the escorts were sitting; They constantly smoked, and the elder was suffocating from the smoke.

On a passionate Thursday, he was taken to prison in Kozelsk. Upon leaving the prison, the authorities demanded that the Father of Nectar leave the Kaluga region. The elder lived in the village of Kholmyshchi, the Bryansk region, one peasant, a relative of the spiritual son of Father. The Cheka threatened this peasant with a link to Kamchatka for sheltering the old man.

In the fall of the year, it was covered with a particularly difficult tax. Despite the difficulties, spiritual children from all over Russia came to the hills. Saint Patriarch Tikhon consulted with the Monk Nectarius through his proxies. The Rev. Nectarium, being a seer, predicted in the year: "Russia will rise and be financially poor, but will be rich in spirit, and there will be seven more lamps, seven pillars in Optina." Since the year, the elder began to seriously inquire, his strength faded him.

Father Sergius Mechev came to him to communer the old man. Shortly before the death of the question where to bury him, the elder pointed to the rural cemetery and did not order to bury it near the Intercession Church, saying that it would be worse than a pork pasture. So it happened. The temple was destroyed, and on Cathedral Square they arranged a fair and dance floor. Fulfilling the elder’s desire, he was buried at the local rural cemetery two or three miles from the village of Kholmyshchi.

In the year, the robbers tearing the elder’s grave, hoping to find values ​​there. They tore off the coffin cover and put an open coffin, leaning against a tree. In the morning, collective farmers who came to the cemetery saw that the elder was worthless - wax skin, soft hands. The coffin was closed and lowered into the grave with the singing "Holy God." When the solemn procession moved along the monastery, a wonderful fragrance emanated from the relics: the old man’s mantle turned out to be imperishable, the relics were amber color.

In the year, the Rev. Nectarium was ranked to the local authorized Saints of Optina Desert, and in August the anniversary bishop's cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church was glorified for general church veneration. Currently, cancer with the relics of the elder Nectaria is located in the western part of the Ambrosievsky chapel of the Vvedensky Cathedral of the monastery. Both during the life of the old man, and after his blessed death, everyone who addresses him with true faith receives fertile help.

According to the prayers of the Monk Nectaria, people come out of difficult life situations, miracles of spiritual and bodily healing are performed. The reverence is our nectarium, praying God for us! Literature about the author.