August 16

Newsletter Archive

This Day in the Life of the Church

August 16, 2023


An Ecclesiastical Refugee from West to East

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The monastery in Novgorod founded by St. Anthony. The construction of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God began in 1116

Today is the day of the repose of Saint Anthony of Rome in 1147

St. Anthony was born in Rome from the Orthodox believing parents, and following the 1054 schism between Eastern and Western Churches, Monk Anthony flew the city. According to his vita, he lived on the seashore and prayed on the rocks. Suddenly, the sea carried the stone away into the open sea, and on September 5, 1106, he arrived in Novgorod. Anthony founded a monastery in the city, where he lived up until his death.

Source:

A.V. Nazarenko, L.A. Sekretar’, “Antonii Rimlianin,” Pravoslavania Entsiklopedia


Another Link Connecting the ROCOR and Russian Ascetical Tradition

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Photo credit: “Iz raskazov monakhini Veroniki,” [Nun Veronika’s stories] Русская народная линия. https://ruskline.ru/analitika/2023/03/09/tri_duhovnika_russkogo_eleona

Archimandrite Modest of the Mount of Olives monastery in Israel passed away on this day in 1984.

Fr. Modest was born Minas Shust in modern Ukraine. In 1911, when he was 19, he became a novice at the so-called New Athos monastery in the Caucasus. Minas was called up to fight against the Ottomans during the First World War. After the Revolution, Minas received the monastic tonsure at this monastery and remained there until it was closed in 1929. He went into hiding in the mountains with other brethren, but was arrested and interrogated, and even subjected to a mock execution. Finally, Fr. Modest, as a skillful fisherman, was sent to work on fishing grounds in the Russian Far East. In the 1930s, it was still possible to flee Soviet Russia. At that time, Fr. Modest, along with four other prisoners, took over a fishing vessel and travelled to Japan. He thus joined the group of other future ROCOR clergymen who were former fugitives from the pre-WWII USSR: Fr. Michael Polsky, who crossed into Iran, and Fr. Theodosii (Almazov), who escaped to Romania. From Japan, Fr. Modest went to Shanghai and became a close associate of St. John. He followed St. John from China to France. When St. John received an assignment to America, Fr. Modest joined St. Panteleimon Monastery and remained there until the arrival of the first group of monks sent from the Soviet Union to revive the depopulating monastery. At this point, Fr. Modest moved to the Holy Land, where he lived in obedience to the father-confessor of the Mount of Olives convent.

Source:
“Pamiati dorogogo nashego batiushki,” [“In the Memory of Dear Father”] Pravoslavanaia Rusʹ, 18, 1984.


Another  Clergyman Who Joined the Russian Church Abroad

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Fr. Chadomir receives King Peter of Yugoslavia in the Russian church in Brussels. The warden Kotliarevskii is in the center. Photo: The Russian Church Abroad, 1918-1968, A.Sologub ed. Jerusalem, 1968

Archpriest Chadomir Ostoich passed away on this way in 1990.

Fr. Chadomir was born in 1918. He graduated from seminary in Sremski Karlovci and was ordained in Yugoslavia. After World War II, he crossed into Austria, while his family remained in Yugoslavia. At that time, Archbishop St. John (Maksimovich) was serving in Brussels. Vladyka provided pastoral care for the Serbian community of Fr. Chadomir at the Church of St. John the Long-Suffering, a memorial to the martyred Russian imperial family. Later, Fr. Chadomir received a canonical release from the Serbian Church to join the ROCOR. He and St. John loved the Church’s liturgical life, which may explain why they were so close. Like St. John, Fr. Chadomir always had time for the sick and needy. After suffering a car accident, he passed away in 1990. The ROCOR Holy Resurrection Parish on Rue Drapier in Brussels was the first parish where I began to serve as an acolyte in January of 1990. While there, I was delighted to meet Fr. Chadomir, who was living in an apartment next to the church building.

Source:
Bernard Le Caro, Svetloi Pamiati Protoiereia Chadomira Ostoicha. Религиозные деятели русского зарубежья. http://zarubezhje.narod.ru/suppl/Sp_242.htm


 The First Russian Orthodox Priest in the Republic of Ireland

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Father Nicholas in Dublin in 1972 and before the Revolution in the unform in His Imperial Majesty Corps of Pages

Fr. Nicholas Couriss passed away on this day in 1977.

“Father Nicholas was born in St. Petersburg in 1896. He left Russia at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Before going to Ireland, he lived in Greece for seven years. He first visited Dublin in 1931 and soon afterwards he and his wife settled at Collon, Co. Louth, where they took up market gardening.

After the death of his wife in 1966, Father Nicholas traveled to New York where on Saturday 1/14 January, 1967 Metropolitan Philaret of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia ordained him to the priesthood. Father Nicholas then returned to Dublin where he spent the reminder of his life serving the parishioners, visiting the old and the sick in hospitals and homes throughout Dublin [and Northern Ireland – ROCOR Studies] He also ministered to visiting Greek Orthodox seamen. Although he remained a loyal priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Father Nicholas in recent years was listed as being the Greek priest in Dublin in the yearbook of the Greek Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. In recent years a number of Irish converts were instructed by Fr. Nicholas and received by him into the Holy Orthodox Church.

Sadly, contact with the London clergy was minimal; he would have died without the sacraments of the Church, had it not been that by chance Archbishop John [Shakhovskoi –ROCOR Studies] of San Francisco (Orthodox Church in America), an old friend of Father Nicholas, happened to break his journey to Copenhagen in order to visit Father Nicholas, not knowing that he was sick. Archbishop John visited Father Nicholas at a Dun Laoghire (Co. Dublin) nursing home and administrated to him spiritually. Father Nicholas passed away peacefully a few days later.”

Source:
Old Calendarist, no. 44, November 1975, n.p.


Photo:
Nicolas Mabin

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This project has been supported by the Fund for Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad


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Copyright 2023 Andrei Psarev.

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