Nun Agnia (Starodubtseva) reposed in the Lord on this day in 1976. The editorial team of This Day in the Life of the Church and I ask for forgiveness for any shortcomings in our work since August and wish all of our readers a blessed and spiritually fruitful Lent. Schema-nun Agnia, in the world Alexandra Vasilevna Starodubtseva, was born on April 15, 1884. She was born blind, and her parents took her to Voronezh to the relics of St. Mitrophan. At the relics, the young girl received healing and her sight was restored. Her parents died early – first her father, and then, when Alexandra was fourteen years old, her mother. Alexandra was left with an older sister and a younger brother. Her sister began to bring up her brother, and Alexandra dropped out of the gymnasium where she had been studying and asked her relatives to take her to Sukhotinka Holy Sign Convent in Tambov Province. She was drawn to this convent’s famous icon-painting school. The young Alexandra very much desired to learn to paint icons. In this convent, Novice Alexandra was tonsured into the rasson with the name of Agnia and was trained in the art of icon-painting. Her spiritual father was Hieromonk Varsonofii (Plekhankov), and she would go to visit him in Optina Pustyn every year on vacation. From Optina Hermitage, Mother Agnia was very well acquainted with Hieromonk Sevastian (Fomin), canonized in 1997, and also saw him every year until Sukhotinka Convent was closed. There was once an incident when Mother Agnia came to the elders and was standing in the foyer of the hut. A certain novice Stefan came up to her and lightly touched her hand with his. Mother Agnia was indignant at this, as it seemed to her, liberty taken by the novice. But life showed that the future elder had already come to see her as his spiritual child and foresaw that her hand would do much to beautify churches with holy icons. In November 1919, Sukhotinka Holy Sign Convent, which had about 400 nuns, was broken up by the Bolsheviks, and Mother Agnia settled in the town of Nqovokhopersk, Voronezh Region. During this period, Mother Agnia wrote in her diary: “Lord, help me to survive everything that I must face; give me strength and patience. Now I need wisdom to resolve serious matters by myself, alone in a strange country (1929, February, the 18th day).” In 1952, Father Sevastian called her to Karaganda to paint icons for his house of prayer. She found it difficult to put down roots in Karaganda. At first, she had the intention to go back, but through the prayers of Father Sevastian, she stayed on and later painted icons for several churches in Alma-Ata Diocese, as well as for Metropolitan Iosif (Chernov) of Alma-Ata. In 1956, Mother Agnia was tonsured into the mandias with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Aleksii I. Mother Agnia was not only a talented artist, but also a wise elder. She had the gift of clairvoyance, which she hid from people and sometimes said to those who addressed her with questions: “Well? I am an elderly person, I know nothing, I just sit at the stove and do not go anywhere”. But she herself knew and saw everything. Agnia received everyone with joy, even though she was very ill, suffering from dropsy. She had the gift of touching people’s souls with grace. Agnia predicted that Metropolitan Iosif, who would visit Karaganda, would be offered the Patriarchate, and indeed, he was put forward as a candidate for the Patriarchal Throne during the preparations for the 1971 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. Before her death, Nun Agnia was tonsured into the Great Schema. Anticipating her impending death, she predicted that there would be two coffins at her funeral. On March 17, 1976, after communing in Holy Mysteries, Nun Agnia peacefully surrendered her soul to the Lord. One of the sisters who came to vest her, Nun Fekla, died suddenly alongside her. They were buried side by side in the Mikhailovsky cemetery of Karaganda. Source: Monastyrskii vestnik |
