Today the Church commemorates St. Paphnutius Borovsky. The Venerable Paphnutius Borovsky was born at the end of the 14th century and was baptized with the name Parthenius. His grandfather was a Horde tax collector (baskak), probably forced to be baptized during one of the popular uprisings. At the age of 20, Parthenius left home and came to the Intercession of the Mother of God Monastery, located on the banks of the Protva River (in the modern Moscow-Kaluga regions). Here he received instruction from Venerbale Nikita Borovsky, a relative of our Holy Father Sergius Abbot of Radonezh. In 1413, Parthenius took monastic vows there, and in 1426 he became the rector of the monastery. Great influence on the formation of the worldview of St. Paphnutius was affected by the plague of 1425-1427. The demoralizing impact of the epidemic on society was expressed in the fact that the daily death of many became commonplace; the fear of death, which was the strongest regulator of social behavior, receded into the background. The usual concepts of piety, moral authority, and human dignity should have been greatly shaken in the eyes of the survivors, and the sudden death of thousands of people gave rise to the question of redistribution of the values of the dead among the survivors. Valuables accumulated over several generations of boyars and nobles, merchants and artisans, suddenly became the property of complete strangers (“and the wealth lies countless along the crossroads”). Without trying to preserve and increase these riches for posterity, people sought to immediately use the unexpected benefits. St. Paphnutius paid more attention to issues of the afterlife with the inevitability of punishment for sinners and reward for the righteous for godly deeds. He deeply felt the fear of death, while his faith in God's Providence was combined with faith in the saving power of human activity. So, if in earthly life a person generously gave alms, then after death he can achieve heaven. In 1444, St. Paphnutius fell ill, and so seriously that, not expecting healing, he while being a hieromonk accepted the tonsure into great schema, thus losing the right to perform church services. Seeing in the illness he suffered a manifestation of God's Providence, he left the abbess and the same year, St. Paphnutius left the Intercession Monastery and settled in the estate of Prince Dmitry Shemyaka. As a result, the Pafnutiev-Borovsky Monastery arose, which exists to this day. St. Paphnutius accepted everyone into the monastery and took care of the peasants. One day, thieves stole the monastery's oxen, which were grazing in the surrounding forest. They drove the oxen all night, but when dawn broke, they saw that they were in the monastery field, where the monastery workers found the oxen. The abbot ordered the thieves to be fed and commanded them, in case of need, to come to him and receive everything they needed in the monastery. St. Paphnutius looked after the animals and prohibited to shoot birds. St. Paphnutius remained faithful to his benefactor, the local Prince, Dimitri Shemyaka, who lost in the struggle for the Grand Duke's throne in Moscow to Basil the Blind and as a result was excommunicated from the Church by St. Jonah Metropolitan of Ryazan. Despite this, the Venerable Paphnutius continued Dimitrii's commemoration in the monastery. There is also evidence that he did not recognize St. Jonah's independent installation by Russian bishops as Metropolitan of All Rus (from the time of the baptism of Rus', the Metropolitan was appointed from Constantinople). As a result of this course, St. Paphnutius was kept in Moscow under arrest for some time. On April 24, 1477 St. Paphnutius died, and until the end he refused to accept any offerings from the Moscow Grand Duke.
Source: A.I. Alekseev, A.A. Romanova, Pafnutii, Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia |
