Patriarch Tikhon short biography for children. Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia († 1925). Harassment and criminal proceedings

In his diocese), after which he had no close relatives.

At the age of nine, Vasily entered the Toropetsk Theological School, and in 1878, upon graduation, he left his parental home to continue his education at the Pskov Theological Seminary.

According to a contemporary, " from childhood, Tikhon was very good-natured, meek and God-fearing without guile and holiness»; among his comrades at the Pskov Seminary he had a playful nickname " Bishop».

On June 11, 1888, he was assigned as a teacher of dogmatic theology at the Pskov Theological Seminary.

In December 1891 he was tonsured a monk with the name Tikhon; On December 22, he was ordained a hieromonk.

Activities in North America

In the bishopric of Tikhon, there were cases when a number of Americans moved from heterodoxy to the bosom of the Russian Church. So, the former priest of the Episcopal Church of the USA Ingram Irwin ( Ingram N. W. Irvine) was ordained by Archbishop Tikhon in New York on November 5, 1905.

With his active participation, the translation of liturgical texts into English was continued and completed: performed by Mrs. Isabelle Hapgood ( Isabel F. Hapgood) from Church Slavonic.

Under him, dozens of new churches were opened, and the Russian Orthodox Catholic Society for Mutual Aid took an active role in the construction and organization of parishes. At the suggestion of the latter, Archbishop Tikhon blessed Hieromonk Arseny (Chagovtsov) to build the first Orthodox monastery in North America (South Kanan, Pennsylvania), at which an orphanage school was set up.

Under His Grace Tikhon, the diocese included 32 communities that wished to convert from Uniatism to Orthodoxy, which was a continuation of the “Tovt movement”, which brought about 250 thousand Ruthenian Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy.

At the Yaroslavl and Vilna departments

Archbishop of Vilna and Lithuania Tikhon (Bellavin)

He was the honorary chairman of the Yaroslavl branch of the Union of the Russian people.

On December 22, 1913, due, according to some evidence, to a conflict with the Yaroslavl governor, Count D. N. Tatishchev, he was transferred to Vilna (North-Western Territory). When transferring from Yaroslavl, the City Duma of Yaroslavl honored him with the title of "Honorary Citizen of the City of Yaroslavl"; The Holy Synod in September 1914 allowed him to accept the title - "the case of the election of a bishop as an honorary citizen of the city is almost the only one in the history of the Russian Church." He left Yaroslavl on January 20, 1914, after a parting prayer in the Cathedral of the Spassky Monastery, escorted, among others, by the governor Count Tatishchev.

In Vilna, he replaced Archbishop Agafangel (Preobrazhensky). During World War I, he was evacuated to Moscow.

At this time, Archbishop Tikhon was very popular among the people, according to some sources, even Catholics and Old Believers came to him for blessing.

After the fall of the monarchy

Election as a Moscow hierarch and Patriarch of All Russia

In May 1917, the election of diocesan structures of church government was introduced in the Russian Church; in the summer of the same year, elections of ruling bishops were held in a number of dioceses. On June 19, 1917, the Congress of the Clergy and Laity of the Moscow Diocese opened in Moscow to elect the head of the diocese: on June 21, by secret ballot, Archbishop Tikhon was elected the ruling bishop of Moscow. The definition of the Holy Synod of June 23 (O.S.) 1917, No. 4159, decreed: “To the elected by free vote of the clergy and laity of the Moscow diocese to the chair of the Moscow diocesan bishop, the archbishop of Lithuania and Vilna Tikhon, to be the archbishop of Moscow and Kolomna, the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra as a sacred archimandrite without being elevated to the rank of metropolitan until the decision of this issue by the cathedral.

By the definition of the Holy Synod of August 13, 1917, No. 4979, approved by the Provisional Government on August 14 of the same year, he was elevated to the rank of metropolitan.

On November 7, the betrothed Patriarch left for the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where he stayed for several days, about which the memoirs of Archimandrite Kronid (Lubimov) († December 10), the governor of the Lavra, have been preserved.

Activities of the Local Council 1917-

The first session of the council adopted a number of normative and legal documents for the organization of church life in the new conditions: Definition of the legal status of the Church in the state which, in particular, provided for: the prevailing public law provision Orthodox Church in the Russian state; the independence of the Church from the state - subject to the coordination of church and secular laws; the obligation of the Orthodox confession for the head of state, the minister of confessions and the minister of public education. It was approved Regulations on the Holy Synod and the Supreme Church Council as the highest governing bodies in the period between the convocations of local councils.

The second session opened on January 20 (February 2), 1918, and ended in April. In conditions of extreme political instability, the council instructed the Patriarch to secretly appoint his locum tenens, which he did by appointing Metropolitans Kirill (Smirnov), Agafangel (Preobrazhensky) and Peter (Polyansky) as his possible successors.

The flow of news about the reprisals against the clergy, in particular the murder of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev (Bogoyavlensky), prompted the establishment of a special commemoration of confessors and martyrs who "died their lives for the Orthodox faith." The Parish Charter was adopted, designed to rally the parishioners around churches, as well as the definitions of diocesan government (suggesting more active participation of the laity in it), against new laws on civil marriage and its dissolution (the latter should in no way affect church marriage) and other documents.

Anathema and other statements

Although the opinion was entrenched in the public mind that an anathema was pronounced against the Bolsheviks, the latter are not explicitly named; The Patriarch condemned those who:

open and secret enemies of this truth have raised persecution against the truth of Christ and are striving to destroy the cause of Christ, and instead of Christian love, seeds of malice, hatred and fratricidal warfare are sowed everywhere. Forgotten and trampled on are the commandments of Christ about love for one's neighbors: every day news reaches Us of terrible and brutal beatings of innocent people and even on the bed of illness of people who are guilty only of honestly fulfilling their duty to the Motherland, that all forces they believed their own to serve the good of the people. And all this is done not only under the cover of night darkness, but also awake, with daylight, with hitherto unheard-of impudence and merciless cruelty, without any trial and with the violation of all rights and legality, is being committed today in almost all cities and villages of our homeland: both in the capitals and on remote outskirts (in Petrograd, Moscow, Irkutsk, Sevastopol and etc.).

All this fills Our heart with deep, painful sorrow and compels Us to turn to such monsters of the human race with a formidable word of denunciation and rebuke according to the covenant of St. Apostle: “Reprove those who sin against all, that the rest may fear” (1 Tim.).

More specific addressee Appeals to the Council of People's Commissars dated October 13/26:

"All who take the sword will perish by the sword"(Matt.)

We turn this prophecy of the Savior to you, the current arbiters of the fate of our fatherland, who call themselves "people's" commissars. You have been holding state power in your hands for a whole year and are already preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution, but the rivers of blood shed by our brothers, mercilessly killed at your call, cries out to heaven and forces Us to tell you a bitter word of truth.

When seizing power and calling on the people to trust you, what promises did you make to them and how did you fulfill these promises?

In truth, you gave him a stone instead of bread and a snake instead of a fish (Matt.). To the people, exhausted by the bloody war, you promised to give peace "without annexations and indemnities."

What conquests could you refuse, having led Russia to a shameful peace, the humiliating conditions of which even you yourself did not dare to make public in full? Instead of annexations and indemnities, our great homeland has been conquered, belittled, dismembered, and in payment of the tribute imposed on it, you are secretly exporting to Germany the accumulated gold not by you.<…>

However, Tikhon, remaining adamant on issues of principle, tried to find an acceptable compromise between the church and the atheistic state and condemned the way of resisting the authorities:

Convey to the Soviet government and the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR deep gratitude - both from me and from my flock.

It's time<…>accept everything that happened as an expression of the will of God<…>condemning any association with the enemies of Soviet power and open or covert agitation against it.

We<…>publicly recognized the new order of things and the Workers' and Peasants' Power of the Peoples, whose government was sincerely welcomed.

We<…>have already condemned the foreign church cathedral Karlovitsky for an attempt to restore the monarchy in Russia from the house of the Romanovs.

We implore you with a clear conscience, without fear of sinning against the holy faith, to submit to the Soviet authorities not out of fear, but out of conscience, remembering the words of the apostle: “Let every soul be submissive to the highest authorities, for there is no power not from God, but the existing authorities are from God installed."

Criminal prosecution

<…>We have found it possible to allow parochial councils and communities to donate precious church decorations and objects that do not have liturgical use for the needs of the starving, about which we notified the Orthodox population on February 6 (19) of this year. a special appeal, which was allowed by the Government to be printed and distributed among the population.

But after this, after sharp attacks in government newspapers in relation to the spiritual leaders of the Church, on February 10 (23), the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in order to help the starving, decided to remove all precious church things from churches, including sacred vessels and other liturgical church items . From the point of view of the Church, such an act is an act of sacrilege, and We considered it our sacred duty to clarify the Church's view of this act, and also to inform Our faithful spiritual children about this. We allowed, due to extremely difficult circumstances, the possibility of donating church objects that were not consecrated and did not have liturgical use. We call on the believing children of the Church even now to make such donations, only desiring that these donations be a response loving heart to the needs of our neighbor, if only they really provided real help to our suffering brothers. But We cannot approve the removal from churches, even if through a voluntary donation, of sacred objects, the use of which is not for liturgical purposes is prohibited by the canons of the Universal Church and is punished by Her as sacrilege - the laity by excommunication from Her, the clergy - by defrocking (Canon 73). Apostolic, 10th canon of the Double Ecumenical Council).

The Patriarch's message was sent to the diocesan bishops with a proposal to bring it to the attention of every parish.

In March, excesses occurred in a number of places related to the seizure of valuables, the events in Shuya had a particularly great resonance. In connection with the latter, on March 19, 1922, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, V. I. Lenin, wrote a secret letter. The letter qualified the events in Shuya as just one of the manifestations of the general plan of resistance to the decree of Soviet power on the part of "the most influential group of the Black Hundred clergy."

“By submitting this application to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, I consider it necessary, in accordance with the duty of my pastoral conscience, to state the following:

Having been brought up in a monarchical society and being under the influence of anti-Soviet people until my arrest, I really was hostile to the Soviet government, and hostility from a passive state at times turned into active actions. For example: an appeal about the Peace of Brest in 1918, an anthematization in the same year of power, and finally an appeal against the decree on the seizure of church valuables in 1922. All my anti-Soviet actions, with a few inaccuracies, are set out in the indictment of the Supreme Court. Recognizing the correctness of the decision of the Court to bring me to justice under the articles of the criminal code indicated in the indictment for anti-Soviet activities, I repent of these offenses against political system and I ask the Supreme Court to change my measure of restraint, that is, to release me from custody.

At the same time, I declare to the Supreme Court that from now on I am not an enemy of the Soviet government. I finally and decisively dissociate myself from both foreign and domestic monarchist-Whiteguard counter-revolution.

The same issue of the newspaper, next to a facsimile of Tikhon's statement, published on the same page coverage of comments in the foreign press "about the release of Tikhon" and a caricature of "immigrant 'writers'" (the central figure depicted Kerensky), who broke away from reading emigre newspapers with reports of persecution of the Patriarch and angrily looking at a pig with the inscription “Statement b. Patriarch Tikhon" - with exclamations: "I planted a pig!" There was also published material under the heading "Religious persecution in Poland" - about the oppression of the Orthodox in the eastern regions of the country (Rivne, Lutsk and others).

An editorial in the Pravda party newspaper dated June 27, 1923 ended like this:<…>Let the proletarians and peasants of the whole world, who have reached the provocative campaign of political archbishops and pious imperialists, let them find out what kind of spit they were given by the former patriarch, whom they wanted to use to sink their rotten teeth into the living body of the working Soviet country.

However, he remained under investigation and the legalization (that is, registration with the authorities) of the Patriarchate as a governing body did not happen; the decision to terminate the investigation and close the case was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on March 13, 1924, and then by the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee on March 21, 1924.

At the beginning of 1925, under the leadership of the head of the 6th department of the SO GPU Yevgeny Tuchkov, the development of a “spy organization of churchmen” began, which, according to the plan of the investigation, was headed by Patriarch Tikhon; On March 21, 1925, the latter was interrogated at the Lubyanka. From the resolution of the Special Meeting of the Collegium of the OGPU of June 19, 1925 on the termination and filing of the case due to the death of the person under investigation, it is clear that there was “case No. 32530 on charges of c. Belavin Vasily Ivanovich on 59 and 73 Art. Art. UK "; the corpus delicti under Article 59 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of June 1, 1922 included “dealing with foreign states or their individual representatives with the aim of inducing them to armed intervention in the affairs of the Republic, declaring war on it or organizing a military expedition”, which provided for the highest measure punishment with confiscation of property.

Church turmoil

Vasily Vinogradov, then chairman of the Moscow Diocesan Council (later ROCOR Protopresbyter), while in exile, testified in his book: “The Patriarch’s ‘repentant statement’, published in Soviet newspapers, did not make the slightest impression on the believing people. Without the slightest propaganda, the entire believing people, as one person, by some miracle of God, formulated their attitude to this “repentant statement” in this way: “The Patriarch wrote this not for us, but for the Bolsheviks.” The “Sobor” of 1923 did not for a single moment have the slightest authority for the believing people: everyone understood well that the whole idea of ​​this “sobor” was simply a trick of the Soviet government, which had no church significance. As a result of its miscalculation, the Soviet government found itself in front of a fact that was completely unexpected for it: the overwhelming mass of the believing people openly accepted the liberated Patriarch as their only legitimate head and leader, and the Patriarch appeared before the eyes of the Soviet government not as the head of some insignificant handful of believers, but in full halo of the actual spiritual leader of the believing masses.

The release from custody, and in particular the fact that Tikhon began to perform divine services, to which large masses of people flocked, caused concern among the renovationist leadership. Under the material “Tikhon’s New Appeal” published on July 6, 1923 (contained an extract from a message to the laity allegedly issued by the “former Patriarch Tikhon”, which again expressed his “offense against the people and the Soviet government” and condemned the actions of “those living in Russia and abroad malicious opponents "of her), a selection of opinions of renovationists was placed, who expressed the idea that now Tikhon must also recognize the legitimacy of the decree" of the II local all-Russian. cathedral” (that is, his deposition), and the new chairman of the All-Russian Central Council, Metropolitan Evdokim (Meshchersky) of Odessa, commented: “When I was in Moscow, at the All-Russian Church Council, on the sidelines, it was suggested that Tikhon, after his cards were revealed, in largely harmed. However, we did not believe that the Supreme Court would show such a humane attitude towards the ardent enemy of Soviet power. For the Living Church, the liberated Tikhon is also not terrible, since the counter-revolutionary part of the clergy, after Tikhon's renunciation of counter-revolutionary ideas, will also hasten to dissociate himself from him. For the remnants of the “Tikhonism”, the release of Tikhon, in the sense of strengthening the reactionary part of the church, cannot matter.<…>"The former chairman of the All-Russian Central Council, Metropolitan Antonin (Granovsky), in his "explanation of Tikhon's appeal" characterized Tikhon's behavior after his release as "churchless, proud, swaggering, narcissistic, contentious, arrogant manifestation."

Based only on a verbal promise of freedom of action, having no office, the Patriarch tried to organize a general church administration: a temporary Holy Synod was convened from three bishops: Archbishop Seraphim (Aleksandrov) of Tver, Archbishop Tikhon (Obolensky) of the Urals, and Vicar Bishop Hilarion (Troitsky); the activities of the former composition of the Moscow Diocesan Council were restored under the chairmanship of Professor Archpriest Vasily Vinogradov, who also took part in some meetings of the Synod.

Last months, death and burial

The burial rite was performed on March 30 (April 12), 1925, on Palm Sunday, in the Donskoy Monastery; 56 bishops and up to 500 priests participated, the choirs of Chesnokov and Astafiev sang. He was buried on the inside of the southern wall of the refectory of the Small Don Cathedral. On the day of the burial of Patriarch Tikhon, a meeting of the archpastors who had gathered for his funeral took place, at which the duties of Patriarchal locum tenens were assigned to Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy (Polyansky).

Veneration and canonization

An anonymous witness to the funeral of Patriarch Tikhon, who anonymously published her memoirs, wrote: “There was a huge gathering of people to the Donskoy. According to a rough estimate, at least one million people stayed there in those mournful days. Around the Donskoy, all the streets leading to it and the entire Kaluga Square were crowded with people. Street traffic along them ceased, trams reached only Kaluga Square. Order was maintained by stewards who wore a black armband with a white cross on their sleeves.<…>The line from Neskuchny - 1.5 versts from the monastery - went four in a row. We traveled to the cathedral for more than three hours. Continuously replenished at Neskuchny with new arrivals, this slowly moving day and night human stream did not look like ordinary “tails”. It was a solemn procession.<…>On the day of the burial of the Patriarch, the weather was wonderful - warm, clear, spring. The service, according to the established order, began at 7 o'clock in the morning and continued until dark. The doors of the cathedral were wide open, incl. those who did not fit inside it and those who stood in front could hear the divine service, and the singing could be heard further. From the front rows that echoed it, it rolled into the back rows, and the entire crowd of thousands sang. It was a public service for the dead. The spiritual and prayerful upsurge was so great that even weeping was not heard. It was not only the burial of Patriarch Tikhon, but also his national glorification.

Literature

1. Sat. in 2 parts / Comp. M. E. Gubonin. M., 1994.
2. JMP. 1990, No. 2, pp. 56 - 68: Life of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
3. Gerd Stricker. // Patriarch Tikhon in search of ways of coexistence with the Soviet government.
4. Gerd Stricker. Russian Orthodox Church in Soviet times (1917-1991). Materials and documents on the history of relations between the state and the Church // Seizure of church property. Trial against Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd.
5. Archpriest A. I. Vvedensky. Why the former Patriarch Tikhon was defrocked(Speech by Archpriest AI Vvedensky at a meeting of the 2nd All-Russian Local Council on May 3, 1923 in Moscow). - M.: Krasnaya Nov, 1923.
6. Archpriest A. I. Vvedensky. Church of Patriarch Tikhon. Moscow, 1923.

Notes

1. After 1917, in many documents his surname was written as Belavin.
2. Orthodoxy in Argentina
3. Cit. by: "Orthodox Russian calendar for 1930" Russian church printing house - Vladimirova in Slovenska. - 1929, 3rd part (with separate pagination), p. 65.
4. His Eminence Tikhon, Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov, // Yaroslavl Diocesan Gazette, 1907, No. 8 (February 25), unofficial part, pp. 113-114.
5. St. Nicholas Cathedral
6. St. Nicholas Cathedral of New York
7. Prot. Kohanik P. Anniversary Collection of the Union of Orthodox Priests in America. New York, 1936, p. 261.
8. First edition in October 1906: Service Book of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church by Isabel Florence Hapgood
9. America's Oldest Orthodox Monastery
10. "Yaroslavl Diocesan Gazette", 1907, No. 18, unofficial part, p. 257.
11. "Yaroslavl Gubernskie Vedomosti", May 25, 1913, No. 40, p. 4.
12. About the essence of the conflict between Archbishop Tikhon and Governor Tatishchev there is no unequivocal reliable information in open sources; for evidence of the existence of a conflict, see: Gubonin M.E. M., 2007, T. I, pp. 492-493.
13. Gubonin M. E. Contemporaries about Patriarch Tikhon. M., 2007, T. I, p. 184.
14. "Yaroslavl Gubernskie Vedomosti", 1914, No. 7 (January 24), pp. 3-4.
15. "Church Gazette Published under the Most Holy Governing Synod", May 6, 1916, No. 18-19, p. 119 (annual pagination).
16. Gubonin M. E. Contemporaries about Patriarch Tikhon. M., 2007, T. I, pp. 189-190.
17. Cit. Quoted from: “Bulletin of the Provisional Government”, June 27 (July 10), 1917, No. 90, p. 2 (source writing features preserved).
18. “Church Gazette Published under the Most Holy Governing Synod”, September 2, 1917, No. 35, p. 295 (general annual pagination).
19. Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow
20. Quoted from: Letters from His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky). Jordanville. New York, 1988, p. 67.
21. Mikhail Shkarovsky. Influence of the All-Russian Local Council of 1917-1918 in the Soviet era.
22. Text of the Appeal of January 19, 1918
23. It should be noted that on behalf of the Local Council, which then continued its studies, a leaflet was published that read: “The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, in a message to his beloved in the Lord to the archpastors, pastors and faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ, drew his spiritual sword against the monsters of the human race - the Bolsheviks and betrayed their anathema<…>» - Cited. In: "Issues of Scientific Atheism". 1989, no. 39, p. 301. (TsGAOR USSR, f. 1235, op. 1, d. 10, l. 205, 205v.)
24. Epistle of Patriarch Tikhon to the Council of People's Commissars dated 13/26 Oct. 1918
25. Gubonin M. E. Contemporaries about Patriarch Tikhon. M., 2007, T. I, p. 550.
26. Safonov D. V. On the Problem of the Authenticity of the "Testamental Letter" of Patriarch Tikhon
27. Protopresbyter Vasily Vinogradov. About some critical moments the last period of the life and work of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon (1923-1925) Munich, 1959, p. 15.
28. Lobanov V. V. Patriarch Tikhon and the Soviet Power (1917–1925). M., 2008. p. 159.
29. "Acts of Patriarch Tikhon", M. 1994, p.313
30. "Acts of Patriarch Tikhon", M. 1994, p.298
31. "Acts of Patriarch Tikhon", M. 1994, p.296
32. Kremlin archives. Politburo and Church. 1922-1925, M. 1998, p. 292
33. Kremlin archives. Politburo and Church. 1922-1925, M. 1998, pp. 291-292
34. "Acts of Patriarch Tikhon", M. 1994, p.287
35. Kremlin archives. Politburo and Church. 1922-1925, M. 1998, p.295
36. Polikarpov V.V. Volga Germans and the Famine of 1921(The Russian Review (Columbus), 1992, No. 4) // Questions of History. 1993, No. 8, pp. 181-182.
37. Long D. Volga Germans and famine in the early 1920s. // Russian History: Dialogue between Russian and American Historians. Saratov, 1994, pp. 127, 134.
38. Acts of Patriarch Tikhon and the Tragedy of the Russian Church of the XX century // Issue 18
39. Message of St. Tikhon Patriarch of Moscow 15/28 Feb. 1922
40. Editorial cit. text by: Acts of His Holiness Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, later documents and correspondence on the canonical succession of the highest church authority. 1917-1943. Sat. in 2 parts / Comp. M. E. Gubonin. M., 1994, p. 190.

Hierarch Tikhon was born on January 19, 1865 in the family of a village priest of the Toropetsk district of the Pskov diocese, John Bellavin. In the world, he bore the name Vasily. He spent his childhood and youth in the countryside, in direct contact with the peasantry and close to rural labor. From a young age, he was distinguished by a special religious disposition, love for the Church and rare meekness and humility.

When Basil was still a minor, his father had a revelation about each of his children. One day he and his three sons slept in the hayloft. At night he suddenly woke up and woke them up. “You know,” he said, “I just saw my late mother, who predicted my imminent death, and then, pointing to you, she added: this one will be a mourner all his life, this one will die in his youth, and this one, Vasily, will be great.” The prophecy of the late mother of the father, who appeared, was fulfilled with all accuracy on all three brothers.

Vasily studied at the Pskov Theological Seminary in 1878-1883. The modest seminarian was distinguished by an affectionate and attractive character. He was quite tall and blond. Comrades loved him. This love was always accompanied by a sense of respect, which was explained by his religiosity, brilliant successes in the sciences and his constant readiness to help comrades who invariably turned to him for clarification of lessons, especially for help in compiling and correcting numerous essays in the Seminary.

In 1888, Vasily Bellavin, 23 years old, graduated from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and, in a secular rank, was appointed to his native Pskov Theological Seminary as a teacher. And here he was a favorite not only of the entire Seminary, but also of the city of Pskov.

In an effort to pure soul to God, he led a strict, chaste life, and in the 26th year of his life, in 1891, he became a monk. Almost the whole city gathered for his tonsure. The one who was shorn consciously and deliberately entered into new life wishing to devote himself exclusively to the service of the Church. He, distinguished from his youth by meekness and humility, was given the name Tikhon in honor of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk.

From the Pskov Seminary, Hieromonk Tikhon was transferred as an inspector to the Kholm Theological Seminary, where he soon became its rector in the rank of archimandrite. At the age of 34, in 1898, Archimandrite Tikhon was elevated to the rank of Bishop of Lublin with his appointment as vicar of the Kholm diocese.

Bishop Tikhon zealously devoted himself to the work of organizing a new vicariate, and by the charm of his moral character he won the universal love not only of the Russian population, but also of Lithuanians and Poles.

September 14, 1898 Bishop Tikhon was sent to carry the responsibility of serving overseas, a distant American diocese as a bishop of the Aleutian, 1905 - Archbishop. As head of the Orthodox Church in America, Archbishop Tikhon did much in the great cause of the spread of Orthodoxy in the improvement of its vast diocese, in which he established two vicariate, and in the construction of temples for the Orthodox Russian people. A loving attitude to all, in particular, in the device home for gratuitous shelter and nutrition-poor immigrants from Russia, he won universal respect. Americans elected him an honorary citizen of the United States.

In 1907 he returned to Russia and was appointed to the chair of Yaroslavl. One of the first orders of the diocese of modest and simple Archbishop was a categorical prohibition of the clergy in person to put it appeals included in the custom of prostration. And in Yaroslavl, he quickly won the love of his flock, praised his bright soul, as reflected, for example, in the election of an honorary citizen of the city.

In 1914, he - Archbishop of Vilnius and Lithuania. After the transfer of Vilna, he made a particularly large donation to various charities. It also revealed its nature, rich in the spirit of love for the people. He strained all his powers to ensure that help the unfortunate inhabitants of Vilnius, who lost because of the war with the Germans of their homes and livelihoods and crowds marching to your Archbishop.

After the February Revolution and the formation of a new Synod Archbishop Tikhon became a member. June 21, 1917 the Moscow Diocesan Congress of clergy and laity elected him as their ruling bishop, as a zealous and enlightened hierarch, widely known even outside the country.

August 15, 1917 in Moscow, opened the Local Council, and Tikhon, Archbishop of Moscow, becoming a participant, he was awarded the rank of Metropolitan, and was then elected and the chairman of the council.

Cathedral was intended to restore the life of the Russian Orthodox Church on strictly canonical basis, and the first big and important task, sharply confronted the Council, was the restoration of the Patriarchate. In the election of the Patriarch it was decided to vote of all members of the Council elect three candidates, and then provide the will of God by lot specify the chosen one. Free voting members of the Council at the Patriarchal Throne three candidates were elected: Archbishop Anthony Kharkov, Archbishop Arseny of Novgorod and Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow.

Before the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God brought from the Assumption Cathedral of Christ the Savior Cathedral after the solemn liturgy and prayers November 5 skhiieromonah Zosima Alex Desert, Council member, reverently took out the small chest is one of three the lots with the candidate name, and Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv proclaimed the name of the chosen one - Metropolitan Tikhon.

Having led the Russian hierarchs, Patriarch Tikhon has not changed, it remains as an affordable, easy, gentle man. All that is in contact with the Holy Tikhon, marveled at his amazing accessibility, simplicity and modesty. Widespread availability of His Holiness did not limit his high rank. his house door has always been open to all as it was revealed to everyone's heart - the gentle, sympathetic, loving. Being extremely simple and humble in his personal life and in his primatial ministry, His Holiness Patriarch could not stand not doing anything external, ostentatious. But the softness in The Conversion of Saint Tikhon did not prevent him from being inexorably firm in affairs of the Church, where needed, especially in protecting the Church from its enemies.

Immeasurably heavy was his cross. To lead the Church, he had among the universal church ruin, without government support, in a situation of internal splits and turmoil caused by various "Living Church", "Renovators", "autocephalists". The situation was complicated by external circumstances: the change of the political system and the advent of the godless forces, famine, civil war. It was a time when the church property were selected, when the clergy are harassed and persecuted, mass repression swept the Church of Christ. From all parts of Russia came to the Patriarch of this news.

Its exceptionally high moral and ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarch was able to piece together scattered and bloodless church forces. During the period of stagnation of the church of his unsullied name was a bright beacon pointing the way to the truth of Orthodoxy. His message, he called the people to fulfill the commandments of the Christian faith, a spiritual revival through repentance. His flawless life was an example for all.

To save thousands of lives and improve the overall situation of the Church Patriarch took steps to fence the priests from a purely political speech. September 25, 1919, is already in the midst of the Civil War, he published The message demanding that the clergy not to engage in political struggle. In the summer of 1921 he broke out a famine in the Volga region. In August, Patriarch Tikhon addressed a message of famine relief, directed to all the Russian people and the peoples of the universe, and blessed the church donation box without liturgical use. But the new government was not enough. Already in February 1922, a decree was issued, according to which the withdrawal subject to all the precious items. According to the 73 th Apostolic Canon such action is a sacrilege, and the Patriarch could not approve of such an exception, expressing his negative attitude to what is happening in the arbitrary message, moreover, that many have doubts that all values will be used for the fight against hunger. On the ground, the forcible seizure caused widespread popular indignation. According to Russia passed up to two thousand and processes were shot more than ten thousand believers. Message to the Patriarch was regarded as sabotage, in connection with which he was imprisoned from April 1922 to June 1923.

Especially a lot served as the Russian Orthodox Church, His Holiness Tikhon in excruciating time for the Church of so-called "split Renovationist". Holy proved himself a faithful minister and confessor intact and undistorted precepts of the true Church. He was the living embodiment of Orthodoxy that unconsciously emphasized even enemies of the Church, calling its members "Tikhonites".

"Please believe that I do not go to the agreements and concessions that will lead to the loss of purity and strength of Orthodoxy" - firmly and authoritatively spoken patriarch. Being a good shepherd who gave all of himself to the Church, he also urged the clergy: "Dedicated to all my strength to preach the word of God, the truth of Christ, especially nowadays, when unbelief and atheism boldly turned against the Church of Christ. And the God of peace and love be with you all! "

It was extremely painful to experience all the church troubles loving, sympathetic heart of the Patriarch. External and internal religious upheaval, "Renovationist split", incessant primatial labors and care of the ordering and the pacification of the Church's life, sleepless nights and heavy thoughts, more than one-year imprisonment, vicious, vile persecution by enemies, dull incomprehension and irrepressible criticism from the often and Orthodox environment undermined his once strong body. Since 1924, His Holiness Patriarch became severely unwell.

In the Sunday, April 5, 1925, he served as the last liturgy. Two days later, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon died. In the last moments of his life, he turned to God and with a quiet prayer of thanks and praise, cross, said: "Glory to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee ..." - the third time he did not have time to cross.

It came to bid farewell to the Patriarch about a million people, although the big cathedral Donskoi Monastery in Moscow could not bear to say goodbye to all the continuation of a hundred hours.

On the hot seat of the Primate of the Russian Church, His Holiness Tikhon spent seven and a half years. It is hard to imagine the Russian Orthodox Church without Patriarch Tikhon in these years. So immeasurably much he made and for the Church, and to strengthen the faith itself in the difficult years of the trials endured by the faithful.

Date of publication or update 12/15/2017

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Prayer of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

The Life of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia is great, white and small.

In difficult times, when the normal course of life is disrupted, when life is outraged by grandiose events that overturn everything and everything into the abyss, when death and despair set in all around, God sends His saints, heroes of the spirit, people of special courage and selflessness, ascetics of faith and love, which the world needs in order to stand in the truth, so as not to lose the distinction between good and evil, so as not to perish spiritually. And the feat of such holy giants, the spiritual leaders of the people, can probably be called the most difficult of all feats.

Holy Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin), when he was Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov (1907-1913), repeatedly served in the churches of the Nativity Convent. Image from the page of the Mother Superior-ascetic of the book of the Nativity of the Virgin Convent in Rostov Veliky.

Turning to our history, we are unlikely to find, even among the illustrious Moscow hierarchs, a person who would be called to the helm of church life in such a difficult and tragic period as the one that fell to the lot of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon. The very grandiose scale of historical events made St. Tikhon, one of the greatest participants in them, incomprehensible to his contemporaries. Even today it is difficult to appreciate in essence the greatness and beauty of his feat, his holiness. This is similar to how a great mountain can be looked at only from a sufficiently large distance - close to it, all its grandiosity is not visible.

So and the greatest people become clearer and more visible over time. And the more significant a person, the more he is, the more time is required to see and appreciate him. And yet, not a single hierarch of the Russian Church has attracted such close, compassionate and respectful attention from the entire Christian world as Patriarch Tikhon did during his lifetime. This very fact, pointing to his world significance, his worldwide authority, makes us turn to his image with special attention and love.

The future Patriarch Tikhon in the world bore the name Vasily Ivanovich Belavin. He was born according to the old style on January 19, and according to the new style - on February 1, 1865 in the small village of Klin near the town of Toropets, Pskov province, in the family of the parish priest of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior. His childhood passed among the common people, he saw peasant labor and lived a simple folk life. From the remarkable episodes of his childhood, it is known that one day the priest John Belavin, his father, spent the night with his sons in the hayloft. In a dream, his mother, the grandmother of Patriarch Tikhon, appeared to him and predicted the fate of her three sons, her grandchildren. She said about one that he would live an ordinary life, about the other that he would die young, and about Vasily she said that he would be great. Father John, waking up, told this dream to his wife, thus this tradition was preserved in the family. The prophetic dream subsequently came true exactly.

Upon reaching the appropriate age, the future Patriarch Tikhon, then still a boy, began the usual teaching. As the son of a priest, he first studied at the Toropets Theological School. Then he entered the Pskov Seminary, and after graduating brilliantly, he entered the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Love for the Church, meekness, humility, purity of heart, chastity, amazing innate simplicity, so previously inherent in the Russian people, constant goodwill towards everyone, a special gift of prudence, positivity - all this made Vasily Belavin a favorite of fellow students, who jokingly called him Patriarch. In those days, it could not even cross my mind that this comic nickname would turn out to be prophetic, because the patriarchate did not exist in Russia at that time.

Icon of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
From the page of the Shrine of the Alexievsky Monastery of the book Saratov St. Alexievsky Convent

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy in 1888, Vasily Belavin was sent to his native Pskov Theological Seminary as a teacher. His students loved him very much, like everyone he met (this was a feature of his life). In 1891 he was tonsured a monk with the name Tikhon in honor of his beloved Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. Soon he was ordained to the rank of hieromonk and sent to the Kholmsky Theological Seminary (of the Warsaw diocese), where he was appointed first as an inspector, and then as a rector. At the age of 33, in 1897, he was consecrated Bishop of Lublin, Vicar of the Warsaw Diocese.

Church life at the site of the new ministry of Bishop Tikhon was greatly complicated by acute national and religious strife. Vladyka Tikhon never resorted to arguments “from a position of strength,” which did not prevent him from successfully defending the Orthodox faith. Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) vividly recalls this period of his life: “Archimandrite Tikhon was very popular both in the seminary and among the common people. Local priests invited him to temple holidays. Sweet and charming, he was a welcome guest everywhere, he disposed of everyone, enlivened any meeting, in his company everyone was pleasant, easy. As a rector, he was able to establish lively and lasting relationships with the people, and he showed me the same path. In the rank of bishop, he further deepened and expanded his connection with the people and really became “his own” bishop for the Kholmshchyna. During my trips around the diocese, I constantly heard the most heartfelt comments about him from the clergy and the people.

Very soon, however, the young Bishop Tikhon was sent to America. There, a huge diocese awaited him, which included the United States of North America, Canada, and Alaska. There were Russian people in this diocese, but there were not very many of them. Therefore, of course, he had to turn to the local population, learn the local traditions and language. Bishop Tikhon showed himself here, as elsewhere, as an amazingly light, joyful, cheerful person. He very actively took up the improvement of his diocese, took a number of measures to develop Orthodox life: in particular, he divided this diocese and introduced the vicariate. He opened religious schools, tried to develop missionary work in order to attract Anglicans to Orthodoxy. The years of his archpastoral labors, amazing in scope and Christian spirit, made St. Tikhon one of the most revered saints of Orthodox America.

Once during the years of his American life, he came to Russia, where his successful work was noted: he was elevated to the rank of archbishop.

In 1907, Archbishop Tikhon was transferred to one of the largest and oldest dioceses of Russia - Yaroslavl on the chair. Here he also quickly find a contact with his flock. He was loved and respected by all sectors of society. He was a very simple, accessible, many served, often even in different small churches of the diocese where the bishops are usually not visited. He took to heart everything about life, the good and interests of the people, and its activities are not confined to church affairs. Being elected an honorary member of the Russian people, he had a major influence on the work of the Union in Yaroslavl. Archbishop Tikhon was a man of free, open-minded, democratic and independent enough. Due to the extent that it did not agree with the governor of Yaroslavl, and, apparently, in connection with the complaint of the latter, the Lord was moved in 1914 to the Department of Vilna. It is remarkable that as a sign of his love for the people of Yaroslavl translated lord elected him an honorary citizen of the city (the case almost unique in Russian history).

The new diocese existed Orthodox churches and monasteries, even, but the main part of the population professed Catholicism. Archbishop Tikhon, as always, and here very quickly won the respect, authority and love. Shortly after his appointment as the war began, and his ministry was complicated by a number of new concerns. He had to think of the refugees evacuated to Moscow power Vilna Martyrs, he also persisted Zhirovitskaya miraculous icon of Our Lady, later they returned to the monastery Zhirovitsky. He visited and at the front, was even under fire, for which he was awarded one of the highest awards. At this time, comes the turn of Archbishop Tikhon present in the Holy Synod. Its activities are expanding, he spends much time in Moscow, where he found the February revolution of 1917.

After the revolution, V.N. was appointed Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod. Lvov. He removed from the chairs two senior metropolitans of the Russian Church: Metropolitan Macarius (Nevsky) of Moscow and Metropolitan Pitirim (Oknov) of St. Petersburg, then soon dissolved the Synod in order to make the new composition more convenient for himself. Among the disgraced was Archbishop Tikhon of Vilna, who at that time was a member of the Holy Synod. Wanting to attract new people to the church administration, V.N. Lvov organized elections for the vacated Moscow, St. Petersburg, and several other dioceses, the cathedra, which was headed by bishops unacceptable from the point of view of the reformers. The freedom that came at that time, unprecedented in Russia, made it possible for free elections to the Moscow and St. Petersburg departments. Indeed, in ancient times in the Church, bishops were elected by the people, but over many centuries this tradition was lost, and bishops began to receive appointment from the authorities. The elections to the main sees of the Russian Church that suddenly became possible were, of course, an unprecedented event and attracted general attention.

And so, in Moscow, the diocesan congress of the Moscow clergy and laity faces the task of electing a new Moscow archbishop or metropolitan. These elections were preceded, of course, by a prayer performed in front of the main Moscow shrine - the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. One of the contenders for this place was everyone's favorite, wonderful church leader Alexander Dmitrievich Samarin, a descendant of the famous Slavophile. It is interesting that his candidacy was proposed in the circle of the Moscow church intelligentsia by the future priest, and then a philosopher, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov and the famous church figure Mikhail Aleksandrovich Novoselov.

The elections did not justify the hopes of V.N. Lvov, whose candidates were rejected by the church people. On July 4, 1917, Archbishop Tikhon of Vilna, dismissed from the Synod by the Chief Procurator, was elected to the Moscow cathedra, who was immediately entrusted with the burden of preparing the Local Council and organizing the election of its future participants. A local council in the Russian Church has not met for more than two hundred years.

It can be said with confidence that in Russian history there was no cathedral so representative, responsible and courageous, so inspired by living faith and ready to go on a feat, like the Local Council of 1917-1918. This cathedral was opened on the day of the Assumption of the Mother of God, according to the new style 28 August 1917. The oldest Metropolitan of Kyiv Vladimir became the honorary chairman of the cathedral, and St. Tikhon, who had been elevated to the rank of metropolitan a few days earlier, was elected the acting chairman. From the very beginning of the work of the cathedral, there was a disturbing time, disturbing signs of future changes. And at the council the question of the reform of church administration was raised: it was proposed to revive the patriarchate in the Russian Church. There were many objections to this.

Many leaders of the Russian Church, accustomed to synodal governance, believed that patriarchal governance was similar to monarchical governance, it destroys collegiality and gives free rein to the arbitrariness of one person - the patriarch, they believed that this was dangerous and harmful. At this time, the monarchy was overthrown, so in Russia a return to such personal leadership seemed unpopular. But after many meetings and heated discussions, where remarkable figures of the Russian Church, wonderful thinkers, people of holy life spoke, it was decided to elect a patriarch. Three candidates were selected by voting, from which the patriarch was to be chosen by lot. The first candidate was the well-known theologian Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky). The second candidate was one of the oldest bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Arseniy (Stadnitsky) of Novgorod. And only the third candidate was elected Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow.

On November 5/18, 1917, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. In front of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, specially brought from the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, a sealed ark with lots was placed. After the liturgy, the elder of the Zosima Smolensk hermitage, hieroschemamonk Alexy, drew lots. The future Hieromartyr Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv announced the name of the chosen one: "Metropolitan Tikhon." On the Feast of the Entry into the Temple Holy Mother of God The enthronement of Patriarch Tikhon took place in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

It is impossible to imagine today the full burden of responsibility that fell on the shoulders of the new Patriarch. The Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly, and he turned out to be the only legally elected leader of the people, since the majority of the country's population participated in the election of members of the council. The people unusually loved and honored their archpastor. Patriarch Tikhon was often invited to serve in various churches in Moscow and the Moscow region. When he came to some city near Moscow, all the people met him, so that in the city they usually stopped working for the entire time of his stay.

Almost immediately after the October Revolution, relations state power and the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church took on the character of an acute conflict, since even the first decrees of the Soviet government radically broke both church and people's life. In 1917, very soon after the revolution, Fr. Ioann Kochurov, associate of Patriarch Tikhon in American service. The patriarch experienced this first martyrdom very hard. Then, at the end of January 1918, Metropolitan Vladimir, the honorary chairman of the Council, was shot in Kyiv. Direct attacks on the Alexander Nevsky Lavra began in Petrograd.

An interesting story is how in early 1918, during the second session of the cathedral, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the house of the Trinity Compound. Once he was informed that a large group of sailors had gathered in Petrograd, which was going to Moscow with the aim of arresting the Patriarch at the cathedral and taking him to Petrograd. The patriarch paid no attention to this. A few days later it became known that a train had left Petrograd, in which a whole carriage was occupied by sailors who were going to arrest him at the cathedral. The cell attendant, who came in the evening to warn the Patriarch that the sailors would be in Moscow in the morning, the Patriarch replied: "Don't disturb my sleep." Then he went to his bedroom and fell sound asleep. In the morning, information was received that the sailors had arrived in Moscow, were standing at the Nikolaevsky railway station, and could appear in the afternoon and arrest the Patriarch. They suggested that the Patriarch move to the building of the seminary, where the participants of the cathedral lived, but Patriarch Tikhon, with his usual equanimity, replied that he would not hide anywhere and was not afraid of anything. The sailors didn't come. They spent half a day at the station and then went back to Petrograd.

After that, Patriarch Tikhon was invited to Petrograd - and he accepted the invitation. This historic trip took place in 1918. By the time Patriarch Tikhon arrived in Petrograd, the whole city had gathered near the station square. Not only the whole square, but all the adjacent streets were filled with crowds of people. Characteristically, the authorities refused to provide the Patriarch with a compartment at his request and gave him a seat in a reserved seat carriage. But the railway workers, contrary to this order, hitched a whole carriage to the train and placed Patriarch Tikhon and his attendants in it.

And now, a surprisingly solemn meeting in Petrograd. The Patriarch was met by Metropolitan of Petrograd and Gdov Veniamin (Kazansky), vicars of the Petrograd diocese, and many clergy; celebration knows no bounds. The Patriarch goes to the Metropolitan's chambers in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. A patriarchal service is being performed in the Trinity Church, co-served by Metropolitan Veniamin and other bishops. The whole Lavra is filled with people. After the service, the Patriarch blesses the people from the balcony of the Metropolitan's house.

Shortly after the shelling of the Kremlin and the armed seizure of the Alexander Nevsky and Pochaev Lavra, Patriarch Tikhon issued a message dated January 19, 1918, known as "anathematization of Soviet power." The patriarch courageously fulfilled his pastoral duty, explaining to the people the meaning of what was happening from the ecclesiastical point of view and warning them against participating in the sins and crimes into which the Bolsheviks dragged the common people. In the message, the Patriarch spoke out against the destruction of churches, the seizure of church property, persecution and violence against the Church. Pointing to the "brutal beatings of innocent people," which are carried out "with hitherto unheard-of impudence and merciless cruelty," St. Tikhon urged the perpetrators of iniquity to come to their senses, to stop the bloody massacres, and with the power given to him by God, forbade those of the lawless who still bore the name Christian, to proceed to the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Having excommunicated all “workers of lawlessness” from the Church, the Patriarch urged Christians not to enter into communion and alliances with any of them. And although the message dealt only with individual "madmen" and did not directly name the Soviet government, the message was perceived as an anathema to the Soviet government.

Having condemned the policy of bloodshed and called for an end to internecine strife, Patriarch Tikhon in a number of messages in 1918-1919. rejected the participation of the Church in the struggle against the Soviet regime and called for reconciliation, striving to maintain neutrality in civil war and to finally determine the position of the apolitical Church.

On the first anniversary of the October Revolution, Patriarch Tikhon addressed the Council of People's Commissars with the word "reproaches and exhortations." Pointing to the violation of all the promises made to the people before coming to power, the Patriarch again condemned the bloody repressions, especially singling out the killing of innocent hostages. To achieve their goals, the new authorities seduced "the dark and ignorant people with the possibility of easy and unpunished gain, clouded their conscience and drowned out the consciousness of sin in them." Saint Tikhon denied the accusation of resisting authority and added: “It is not our business to judge earthly authority; any power, admitted from God, would attract our blessing, ”if its activity would be directed to the benefit of subordinates. The appeal ended with a truly prophetic warning not to use power to persecute your neighbors: “Otherwise, all the righteous blood that you shed will be exacted from you, and you yourself, who took the sword, will perish by the sword.”

The Patriarch called on the “faithful children of the Church” not to armed struggle, but to repentance and spiritual, prayerful feat: “Resist them with the power of your faith, your powerful popular cry, which will stop the madmen and show them that they have no right to call themselves champions of the people’s good ". His Holiness Tikhon implored the Orthodox people "not to deviate from the path of the cross, sent down by God, to the path of admiration of worldly strength", he especially warned not to allow themselves to be carried away by the passion of vengeance. The Patriarch reminded the servants of the Church that they “by their rank should stand above and beyond any political interests” and not participate in political parties and speeches.

The demand of the Patriarch not to associate the Church with any political movement, with any form of government in the conditions of a fierce war, could not avert threats against him. The authorities accused him of complicity with the white movement and counter-revolutionary.

In the autumn of 1918, during the rampant Red Terror, the authorities attempted to organize a campaign against Patriarch Tikhon in connection with the case of the head of the British mission, Lockhart, and conducted the first search of his apartment. On November 24, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon was placed under house arrest. The main point of the accusations brought against the Patriarch boiled down to the alleged calls of the Primate to overthrow the Soviet regime.

In a response letter to the Council of People's Commissars, the Patriarch stated that he had not signed any appeals "on the overthrow of the Soviet regime" and had not taken any action for this and was not going to take any. “That I do not sympathize with many activities of the people’s rulers and cannot sympathize as a servant of the principles of Christ, I do not hide this and openly wrote about this in an appeal to the People’s Commissars before the celebration of the anniversary of the October Revolution, but then and just as frankly I declared that I did not our business is to judge the earthly power, permitted by God, and even more so to take actions aimed at its overthrow. Our duty is only to point out human deviations from the great Christ's covenants, love, freedom and brotherhood, expose actions based on violence and hatred, and call everyone to Christ. The Council of the United Parishes of Moscow, realizing that the life of the Patriarch was in danger, organized from volunteers an unarmed guard at the chambers of His Holiness in the Trinity Compound. On August 14, 1919, the People's Commissariat issued a decree on organizing the opening of relics, and on August 25, 1920, on the elimination of relics on an all-Russian scale. 65 shrines were opened with the relics of Russian saints, including the most revered ones, such as St. Sergius of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov. Patriarch Tikhon could not leave this mockery unanswered and wrote an appeal demanding an end to blasphemy.

The opening of the relics was accompanied by the closing of the monasteries. In 1919, the authorities encroached on the national shrine - the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the holy relics of St. Sergius of Radonezh, causing a storm of indignation. Despite the fact that the opening of the relics was extremely offensive to the Church and meant direct persecution of the faith, the people did not leave the Church. On September 13 and October 10, 1919, Patriarch Tikhon was interrogated. On December 24, 1919, the VChK decided to again subject the Patriarch to house arrest, the main purpose of which was to isolate him. During this period, St. Tikhon constantly served in the house Sergius Church of the Trinity Metochion. He was released from house arrest no earlier than September 1921, although the regime of arrest was gradually relaxed and the saint was allowed to travel to serve. The events that followed were even more ominous.

In 1921, a terrible famine began in the Volga region. In the summer of 1921, Patriarch Tikhon published a message entitled "Appeal of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia for help to the starving." This message was read publicly in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It was followed by appeals of Patriarch Tikhon to the Pope of Rome, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the American Bishop with a request for an ambulance to the starving Volga region. And this help came. An association called ARA (American Relief Association) was organized, which, along with other international organizations, saved a lot of people. And there is no doubt that the voice of Patriarch Tikhon played a huge role in this matter, because it was he who was most trusted abroad.

After the appeal of Patriarch Tikhon to the Russian flock, the peoples of the world, the heads of Christian churches abroad for help to the starving people of the Volga region, donations began to be collected in churches in Russia. At the same time, in a letter dated August 22, 1921, the Patriarch proposed to the authorities a broad program of assistance to the starving, including the creation of a Church Committee composed of clergy and laity to organize assistance. On February 19, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon issued an appeal in which he proposed to collect the funds necessary for the starving "in the amount of things that do not have liturgical use," and the Pomgol Central Committee approved this proposal. However, already on February 23, 1922, a decree was published on the seizure of church valuables, adopted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the initiative of L.D. Trotsky and laid the foundation for the robbery of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Russia. The decree dealt with the surrender to the state of all precious items made of gold, silver and stones, including those intended for worship, it was forbidden to replace precious items that have “liturgical use” with an equivalent amount of gold and silver.

In each province, a commission was created under the chairmanship of one of the members of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the participation of the clergy in its work was excluded - the Church was removed from organizing the delivery of valuables. Thus, the voluntary donation of church property was replaced by a decree for forcible confiscation. Control by the clergy was completely unacceptable for the Bolsheviks, since at that time food aid had already arrived in sufficient quantities from various countries that had responded to the calls of the Patriarch and other Russian public figures, and there was no need to attract church funds for these purposes. In a letter to M.I. Kalinin dated February 25, 1922, the Patriarch called on the authorities to abandon such unexpected decision fraught with unpredictable consequences. But St. Tikhon's attempts to prevent the inevitable conflict were interpreted as the desire of the "Black Hundred clergy" to protect the church good. Then Patriarch Tikhon published his message of February 28, 1922, condemning the decreed confiscation as "an act of sacrilege."

In a statement published on March 15, 1922 in Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Patriarch Tikhon called on the Pomgol Seizure Commission to “take due care in the liquidation of valuable property” and convinced that the Church did not have such an amount of gold that V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky.

The resolutions of the Politburo of the Central Committee, regulating the anti-church policy of the Bolsheviks in the described period, were actually adopted under the dictation of Trotsky: both the ideological development and personnel appointments, as well as the initiative itself and the “mad” energy in its implementation, together with the strategy and tactics - everything came from from Lev Davidovich, truly obsessed with the desire to take away gold, shoot priests, rob even the poorest churches. One after another he writes guiding letters, notes, theses, directing all the activities of the Politburo, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Revolutionary Tribunal, the People's Commissariat of Justice, various commissions, etc.

But along with his letters dated March 11, 13, 22, 30 no less, but rather even more ominous masterpiece is Lenin's now famous, and then "strictly secret" letter to the members of the Politburo dated March 19, 1922, on resistance to the withdrawal in Shuya and politics in relation to the Church. In general, echoing Trotsky, Lenin, also obsessed with the dream of plundering several billion gold rubles, insists that “it is now, and only now, when people are being eaten in hungry areas and hundreds, if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads, we can (and therefore, we must) carry out the seizure of church valuables with the most frenzied and merciless energy and without stopping [before] suppressing any kind of resistance ... The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better.

In this letter, on the whole, the program goals of the party in relations with the Church for the coming decades were determined: to eliminate the institution of the Church, to liquidate the clergy class, to find gold for the world revolution and the strengthening of the proletarian state. At a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee on March 20, 1922, a practical plan for conducting a campaign (“17 theses” by L.D. Trotsky) was approved, which meant a transition from imitations of legal ones, personified by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, to openly military methods of conducting a campaign for seizure.

On March 24, 1922, Izvestia published an editorial in which it was stated in a harsh tone that the peaceful period of the campaign to confiscate valuables was over. Mass popular resistance everywhere was mercilessly crushed. Trials, open trials of "churchmen", executions swept across Russia. The Supreme Tribunal ordered the revolutionary tribunals to incriminate Patriarch Tikhon, Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazansky) and other church hierarchs with the ideological leadership of popular resistance actions. By the beginning of May 1922, no matter how hard the Bolsheviks tried, the campaign to confiscate church valuables was not completed. On the contrary, the methods of its conduct became tougher. The “frantic” campaign carried out did not achieve the goals set by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(6). The authorities received about one thousandth of the planned amount of gold. The collected jewelry amounted to only a small part of the amount that was expected - only a little more than 4.5 million gold rubles, which were mainly spent on the withdrawal campaign itself. But the damage did not fit into any figures. The shrines of Orthodoxy, the national treasures of Russia, perished.

The tough line against the clergy, sanctioned by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), was zealously implemented by the GPU, in which the VI branch of the secret department, headed by E.A. Tuchkov. Chekists, falsifying reality, made the church leadership responsible for the unrest of believers and bloody clashes. On March 28, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon was summoned to the Lubyanka and interrogated. After that, he was summoned to the GPU on March 31, April 8 and May 5. All these interrogations did not produce the expected result: Patriarch Tikhon's condemnation of the anti-government actions of the clergy did not take place. On May 6, 1922, the Patriarch was placed under house arrest (the official decree on house arrest was signed on May 31, 1922). During the interrogation on May 9, 1922, the Patriarch was acquainted with the verdict in the Moscow trial on bringing him to justice and took a written undertaking not to leave.

By this time, as a result of the intensive work of the GPU, a Renovationist split had been prepared. On May 12, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon, who was under house arrest at the Trinity Compound, was visited by three priests, leaders of the so-called "Initiative Group of Progressive Clergy." They accused the Patriarch that his line of governing the Church became the reason for the death sentences, and demanded that St. Tikhon leave the Patriarchal throne. Understanding perfectly well who initiated this visit, not without painful hesitation, the Patriarch decided to temporarily appoint the oldest hierarch of Yaroslavl, Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky), as the head of the church administration, of which he officially informed the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee M.I. Kalinin, but did not abdicate the throne. On May 18, the members of the “Initiative Group” obtained from Patriarch Tikhon consent to transfer the chancellery to Metropolitan Agafangel through them, after which they announced the creation in their person of a new Supreme Church Administration (HCU) of the Russian Church.

On May 19, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon was placed in the Donskoy Monastery in one of the apartments in a small two-story house near the northern gate. Now he was under the strictest guard, he was forbidden to perform worship. Only once a day he was let out for a walk on the fenced area above the gate, which resembled a large balcony. Visits were not allowed. Patriarchal mail was intercepted and confiscated.

The case of Patriarch Tikhon was transferred to the GPU, the direction of the trial was carried out by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Together with Patriarch Tikhon, Archbishop Nikandr (Phenomenov), Metropolitan Arseniy (Stadnitsky) of Novgorod, and Pyotr Viktorovich Guryev, head of the Chancellery of the Synod and the Supreme Church Administration, were involved in the investigation. Together with the file of the Patriarch, the GPU kept the files of all members of the Holy Synod, and about 10 people were under arrest.

A bright page of this period was the Petrograd case of Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazansky) and his closest associates. in the campaign; on the seizure of valuables, Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd took an even softer position than Patriarch Tikhon, and called for everything to be given away without resistance. However, after refusing to cooperate with the Renovationists, he was arrested and convicted in an "open" trial. On the night of August 13, 1922, Metropolitan Veniamin was shot. The renovationist schism developed according to a plan agreed upon with the Cheka, and quickly won over to its side all the unstable elements that were in the Church. IN a short time throughout Russia, all bishops and even priests received demands from local authorities, from the Cheka to obey the HCU. Resisting these recommendations was seen as collaborating with the counter-revolution. Patriarch Tikhon was declared a counter-revolutionary, a White Guard, and the Church, which remained faithful to him, was called "Tikhonism." In all the newspapers of that time, large pogrom articles were published daily, which denounced Patriarch Tikhon in "counter-revolutionary activities", and "Tikhonites" in all sorts of crimes. In 1923, a Renovationist "sobor" was held, which was attended by several dozen, for the most part, illegally appointed bishops, many of whom were married. At this “sobor” a false announcement was made that “a decision was unanimously taken to remove the rank and even monasticism from Patriarch Tikhon. From now on, he is just a layman Vasily Ivanovich Belavin. This robber "sobor" received wide coverage and support in the press, where from now on Patriarch Tikhon was called only "former patriarch" until his death.

From August 1922 until the spring of 1923, regular interrogations of the Patriarch and those involved with him were conducted. Patriarch Tikhon was accused of crimes for which capital punishment was provided. In April 1923 At a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(6), a secret resolution was adopted, according to which the Tribunal was to pass a death sentence on Saint Tikhon. At this time, Patriarch Tikhon already had worldwide authority. The whole world followed with particular concern the course of the trial, the world press was full of indignation over the bringing of Patriarch Tikhon to trial. And the position of the authorities changed: instead of passing a death sentence, the Patriarch was “defrocked” by the Renovationists, after which the authorities began to strenuously seek repentance from him.

Since the Patriarch did not have reliable information about the situation of the Church, according to newspaper reports, he had the idea that the Church was perishing ... Meanwhile, the leaders of the HCU quarreled among themselves, split into different groups and more and more began to instill disgust in the believing people. Patriarch Tikhon was offered release from arrest on the condition of public "repentance", and he decided to sacrifice his authority for the sake of easing the position of the Church. On June 16, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon signed the well-known "repentant" statement to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, remembered by the words: "... I am no longer an enemy of the Soviet government."

The execution of the Patriarch did not take place, but at the Lubyanka they received a “repentant” statement from Patriarch Tikhon, which called into question the staunchness of the saint in the eyes of the zealots of the purity of the church position. From then on, bishops will constantly be faced with the question of which is better: to keep intact their testimony to the truth in the face of torture and death, or, through compromise, try to gain freedom and still serve the Church in freedom.

On June 27, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon spent more than a year under arrest, his imprisonment in the internal prison of the GPU, and he was again transferred to the Donskoy Monastery. Even earlier, on March 13, 1923, the investigation into the accusation of Patriarch Tikhon was terminated by a decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). One of the most high-profile court cases of that terrible time ended without beginning.

On June 28, 1923, the day after his release from the Lubyanka inner prison, Saint Tikhon went to the Lazarevskoye cemetery, where the famous elder Father Alexei Mechev was buried. “... You, of course, heard that I was defrocked, but the Lord brought me here to pray with you ...,” Patriarch Tikhon said to the crowd of people gathered (all of Moscow knew Father Alexei Mechev). He was greeted with enthusiasm, the people threw flowers at his carriage. Father Alexei's prediction came true: "When I die, you will be very happy."

The people's love for Patriarch Tikhon not only did not waver in connection with his "repentant" statement, but became even greater. He was always invited to serve. Often he served in the large summer cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery. It was during the last two years of his life that His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon performed especially many episcopal consecrations. Renovationist parishes immediately began to return to the jurisdiction of Patriarch Tikhon. The hierarchs and priests who had gone over to the Renovationists in large numbers brought repentance to His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, who graciously accepted them into communion again, invited them to serve with him, and often even gave gifts to these former traitors.

The last period of the life of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon was truly an ascent to Golgotha. The constant provocations of the Cheka, the malice and slander of the Renovationists, the continuous arrests and exiles of bishops and clergy... Deprived of any administrative apparatus, Patriarch Tikhon often had no connection with the diocesan bishops, did not have the necessary information, and had to unravel the secret meaning of annoying demands all the time Chekists and resist them with the least losses. In fact, every time the Patriarch rejected the next demand of the Soviet authorities, one of his closest assistants was arrested and sent to death. The position of Patriarch Tikhon at that time clearly depicts the episode associated with the demand of E.A. Tuchkov to introduce Archpriest Krasnitsky, the head of the “living Church”, a traitor who supposedly repented, into the Church administration.

At this time, Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov), one of his closest associates, came to Patriarch Tikhon, having been released from exile for a short time. They had a wonderful conversation. Metropolitan Kirill said: “It is not necessary, Your Holiness, to introduce these commissars in cassocks into the Supreme Church Administration.” Patriarch Tikhon answered him: "If we do not compromise, then all of you will be shot or arrested." To this, Metropolitan Kirill replied to the Patriarch: “Your Holiness, now we are only fit for that, to sit in prisons.” After that, having received an address from the Elisavetgrad clergy with a request not to include Krasnitsky in the Supreme Church Administration, the Patriarch wrote a resolution on it that characterizes his spiritual appearance very well: “I ask you to believe that I will not agree to agreements and concessions that will lead to a loss of purity and the fortress of Orthodoxy.

This resolution shows that the Patriarch relied on the trust of the people, and the people really believed him. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon drew his strength precisely from faith, and by faith he called to resist every crime, every evil. The plan to introduce Krasnitsky into the Church Administration failed, and in response to this, the Tuchkovs banned and abolished the diocesan administration, diocesan meetings.

Patriarch Tikhon, left without Vladyka Hilarion (Troitsky), who was exiled to Solovki, is now working together with Metropolitan Krutitsky Peter (Polyansky). He serves in many churches, receives people, his door is always open for everyone. He is surprisingly accessible and simple and tries to affirm the Church, to strengthen everyone who comes to him with his love, his service, his prayer. Characteristically, during the seven years of his patriarchate, he celebrated 777 liturgies and about 400 evening services. It turns out that he served approximately every two or three days ... In the first period before his arrest, the Patriarch most often served in the Cross Church in honor of St. Sergius of the Trinity Compound, after his arrest - in the Donskoy Monastery. And he always traveled a lot to Moscow churches.

But the life of the saint was always under threat. He was attacked many times. Here is one of those tragic episodes. On December 9, 1924, the door of the apartment where the Patriarch lived was suddenly opened with a key, and two people entered the house. The beloved cell-attendant of His Holiness the Patriarch Yakov Anisimovich Polozov came out to meet them, who was killed at point-blank range by three shots of "bandits". Obviously, the shots were intended for the Patriarch, because. at this time he usually remained alone.

Patriarch Tikhon, who was extremely fond of Yakov Anisimovich, experienced this death very hard. He understood that the bullet was meant for him, so he ordered to bury his cell-attendant near the wall of the temple in the Donskoy Monastery. Tuchkov forbade this, but Patriarch Tikhon said: “He will lie here” and bequeathed to be buried next to him, on the other side of the church wall, which was later done.

Terrible tension, constant struggle undermined the health of the Patriarch. Apparently, anticipating the danger, the Patriarch took advantage of the right (granted to him by the Council of 1917) to leave behind a will, indicating three Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne in case of his death. He wrote this will on December 25, 1925 (January 7, New Style), on Christmas Day, and shortly thereafter was admitted to the hospital.

In the hospital, Patriarch Tikhon soon began to feel better. Has begun Great Lent, and he began to travel frequently to worship services. The Patriarch tried to hold all the main services of Great Lent in the Church. After the services, he returned to the hospital (it was Bakunin's private hospital on Ostozhenka, opposite the Zachatievsky Monastery). He celebrated his last Liturgy on Sunday of the fifth week of Great Lent, April 5, in the Church of the Great Ascension at the Nikitsky Gates.

On March 21, 1925, another interrogation of the ailing Patriarch took place. Immediately after the interrogation, a decision was issued on the choice of a measure of restraint, however, the column remained blank and no date was set, obviously, to resolve the issue at a higher level.

On the day of the Annunciation, April 7, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon was going to serve a liturgy in Yelokhovo in the Epiphany Cathedral, but he could not, feeling unwell. However, at the request of Tuchkov, he was taken away from the hospital for some kind of meeting. When he returned, Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) visited him several times, the last visit ended only at 9 pm. The saint had to painfully edit the text of the appeal, which E.A. persistently, urgently and, as always, ultimatum demanded. Tuchkov. The text was prepared by the GPU and had content unacceptable to the Patriarch. The patriarch corrected, Tuchkov did not agree. To Tuchkov's demands, transmitted through Metropolitan Peter, Saint Tikhon replied: "I can't do that." What option His Holiness the Patriarch would have chosen if his life had been extended, and whether he signed the text that appeared in Izvestia on April 14, 1925 as a dying will, is now impossible to say. After the departure of Metropolitan Peter, the Patriarch asked him to give him an injection of sleeping pills and said: “Well, now I will fall asleep. The night will be long, long, dark, dark.” The injection was made, but soon His Holiness felt very ill.

At 11:45 p.m., the Patriarch asked: “What time is it?” Having received the answer, he said: "Well, thank God." Then repeating three times: “Glory to Thee, Lord!” and, having crossed himself twice, quietly departed to the Lord. Metropolitan Peter was immediately summoned, and for some reason Tuchkov immediately arrived. He rubbed his hands with joy, smiled, and immediately appropriated to himself four thousand rubles, collected by parishioners for the construction of a separate house in the Donskoy Monastery for Patriarch Tikhon.

Before the funeral, Patriarch Tikhon was transferred to the Donskoy Monastery. Almost all the bishops of the Russian Church came to his funeral, there were about sixty of them. The testament of the Patriarch was opened, in which three Locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne were named. Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) of Kazan was named the first Locum Tenens, who at that time was in exile and therefore had no opportunity to accept locum tenens. The oldest hierarch of the Russian Church, Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky) of Yaroslavl, was again named the Second Locum Tenens. He was also in exile at the time. Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy (Polyansky) was named the third Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne. By the decision of the entire present meeting of bishops, which in essence was a Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, he assumed the title of Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne. Farewell to the Patriarch was open. People went to say goodbye to him day and night: according to estimates, about a million people passed by the coffin. The most solemn burial of Patriarch Tikhon was performed by a host of bishops and clergy in the presence of colossal crowds of people. Not only the entire Donskoy Monastery, but all the nearby streets were completely crowded with people. Of course, no police could cope with such a crowd, but everyone kept a reverent order, there were no scandals, no noise. Thus ended the life of the great saint.

Patriarch Tikhon was characterized by amazing humility, meekness, and quietness. He was a great prayer book and always gave himself over to the will of God. His services were marked by solemnity and deep prayerfulness. There are several remarkable testimonies about his spiritual life. Very characteristic is the testimony of the escorts who guarded him during his house arrest. “The old man is good for everyone,” they said, “only he prays for a long time at night. Don't sleep with him." Patriarch Tikhon himself said: "I am ready for any suffering, even death, in the name of the faith of Christ." Other words of his explain the "compromise" messages: "Let my name perish in history, if only the Church would benefit."

In conclusion, we can cite the words of several church leaders about Patriarch Tikhon. “The patriarch in bonds at the head of Russia has become the light of the world. Never since the beginning of history has the Russian Church been so exalted in its head as it was exalted in these lamentable days of trials, and throughout the Christian world there is no name that would be repeated with such respect as the name of the head of the Russian Church ”(Arch. Sergei Bulgakov ). “He, Patriarch Tikhon, exhausted all the measures of reconciliation with civil authority possible for the Church and the church person and became a victim in the most internal, wide and deep sense this word. Sacrificing himself, his name, his fame as a confessor and denouncer of iniquity, he humiliated himself when he changed his tone with power, but he never fell. He humiliated himself, but no one else, was not preserved and exalted by the humiliation of others. He did not spare himself in order to gain mercy for the pastors, the people and the church property. His compromises are the doing of love and humility. And the people understood this and pitied him sincerely and deeply, having received full conviction of his holiness. This is a courageous and meekest being, this is an exceptionally irreproachable holy person” (Arch. Michael Polsky).

There is another evidence of the holiness of Patriarch Tikhon, which is little known. In Paris, a certain Orthodox doctor M., who had recently converted to the faith, came to Metropolitan Evlogii (Georgievsky), the Patriarchal Exarch of Western Europe, and told him that he had a dream. In a dream, he was told that “behold, the Mother of God is coming for the soul of Patriarch Tikhon, with Saint Basil the Great, who helped him a lot during his life in managing the Church.” After that, he heard a noise and realized that the Mother of God was passing by. This is where the dream ended. The doctor began to ask Metropolitan Evlogii why Basil the Great was walking with the Mother of God? To this, Metropolitan Evlogy replied that Patriarch Tikhon in the world bore the name in honor of St. Basil the Great. The next day, newspaper reports came in about the death of Patriarch Tikhon. It was at the very moment when Patriarch Tikhon was dying that the Mother of God appeared to this doctor.

Patriarch Tikhon possessed the gift of clairvoyance; he predicted the future for many. Often foreseeing events, he was able to hand over himself, the fate of the Church, the flock, and all his neighbors to the will of God, to which he was always faithful and always sought it. And he believed that the will of God alone can govern the Church, it alone is saving.

Saint Tikhon led the Russian Orthodox Church during the most difficult years of persecution. He became the first Patriarch of Russia after the Synodal period, when the Church was only an institution subordinate to the state, which was sometimes headed by unbelievers. The time of his patriarchate came during the first years of persecution and the Red Terror, and during this terrible time he managed to live such a life and manage the Church in such a way that he preserved it and himself found holiness before the Lord. He was canonized at the end of the 20th century.

ICON OF ST. TIKHON OF MOSCOW - HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE HOLY

As a bishop, the saint was more than once photographed and sketched by painters from nature. His appearance is well known and easy to remember.

• • The saint has full face, gray-haired small beard, hair is also gray. They are hidden under the patriarchal cockle or hood - this is a white spherical cap covered with a basting - a white cloth that falls on the back and shoulders in three parts as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. At the top of the patriarchal cockle, unlike the monastic and episcopal ones, there is a small cross, all its sides are decorated with icons - sometimes it is an image of Christ with the Mother of God and John the Baptist (deesis), sometimes images of seraphim.

• • Saint Tikhon is usually depicted in the patriarchal green mantle, which the Patriarch of Moscow wears today. Right hand he blesses believers or holds a cross. Sometimes he is depicted with a staff or rod - this is a symbol of archpastoral power, to this day he is always taken to worship after the bishops, because in the Gospel the Lord often compares the clergy with shepherds, shepherds and protecting the people, like sheep, keeping them from demons - spiritual wolves .

• • On the saint's chest is a panagia, a round or square medallion depicting the Mother of God. Every bishop must wear this small icon on his chest.

• • A rare type of iconography of St. Tikhon is a hagiographic icon, that is, stamps are placed around the image of the saint himself, on which various episodes from the life of the saint are depicted. You need to “read” such a picturesque life from left to right and from top to bottom. Unlike other icons, there are more than a hundred subjects here: this iconography has continued to develop over the centuries. The very image of the saint, around whom the hallmarks are built, usually represents him in full growth in traditional bishop's robes with a blessing gesture of his right hand.

THE LIFE OF ST. TIKHON - BIOGRAPHY OF THE PATRIARCH

The future saint was born in 1865 into the family of a rural priest of the Pskov diocese, not far from the town of Velikiye Luki. At birth, he received the name Vasily. Before entering the seminary, like most of the children of the rural clergy, he worked on the ground. Entering the theological school in Toropets, and then the seminary in Pskov, he did not think about monasticism, but even then he attracted the attention of his peers and teachers with a virtuous life, love for worship.

At the age of 23, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy (now SPbPDAiS) and was sent to teach back to Pskov. Here, three years later, he became a monk - after going through a series of labors assigned to a novice, he accepted a cassock with the name Tikhon. It is known that many townspeople gathered for the vows of the saint: he was already known and loved by many people, teachers and students. The cassock tonsure is only the giving of a new name, the symbolic cutting of hair, and the opportunity to wear some monastic clothes. At this time, Tikhon, like all cassock novices, had the opportunity to refuse to be tonsured a monk, this would not be a sin. However, the saint was already firm in his decision to renounce worldly life and then took the vows of the mantle. The mantle is a “small angelic image”, a small schema. The saint gave vows of obedience to the rector of the monastery, renunciation of the world and lack of possessions - that is, the absence of his own property. A few days later, the saint was consecrated a hierodeacon, and then a hieromonk, a priest who bears the monastic rank. The future saint remained to teach at the Kholmsky Seminary, and eventually became its rector.

Ten years later, Tikhon was enthroned as a bishop, vicar (deputy metropolitan) of the Kholm diocese. A few years later, Vladyka Tikhon was sent to America to head the local Orthodox Church in the rank of Bishop of the Aleutian. Here the saint did a lot of missionary work for the spread of Orthodoxy, built several Orthodox churches. The Americans even awarded him the title of honorary citizen of the United States. Saint Tikhon returned to his homeland only in 1907, having been appointed to the Yaroslavl see. In 1914, Vladyka was transferred to Vilna, where extensive social activity was needed. He developed many charitable institutions. Many residents of the Vilnius region lost their roof over their heads and material resources because of the First World War.

After the formation of the new Synod in 1917, Bishop Tikhon became a member. The election of the Patriarch was being prepared long years still with the participation of the holy tsar-passion-bearer Nicholas II. During the congress of the laity and the clergy, and then the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the saint was elected first the chairman of the Council, and then the Patriarch (by lot).

Here's how it happened. The most important task of the Council was to revive the life of the Russian Orthodox Church on a canonical basis - after all, Peter the Great made the Church one of the departments of the state, dividing them into the Senate and the Synod. For many years, under various sovereigns, the Church was headed in the position of chief prosecutors and all non-believers or persons of other faiths.

There were three candidates for the place of the Primate of the Church. After the Divine Liturgy and a prayer service on November 5, 10917, the schemamonk of the Zosima Hermitage, a revered elder, took from the reliquary, which was placed behind miraculous icon Mother of God, one of the three lots with the name of the candidate - he turned out to be St. Tikhon, who received the title of Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

Despite his high position, the saint did not change either his ascetic way of life or his good character. Gentleness and calmness did not prevent him from being firm in matters of defending the Church and faith - after all, a year later the persecution of the Church began, the terrible years of red terror and famine. During this terrible time, Saint Tikhon called on the people to prayer and calmness, wishing to prevent possible bloodshed. After all, Nicholas II himself abdicated the throne, people were at a loss and did not know what political force they would be subject to.

Already in 1922, the Soviet government began a campaign to confiscate church valuables. At the same time, a group of adventurers from among the clergy created the so-called Renovationist "church", calling for "spiritual freedom", which consisted in changing worship services, introducing a married episcopate contrary to the traditions of the Church, and much more. It was an attempt at an ecclesiastical revolution. And it was precisely her Patriarch Tikhon, whom the Renovationists, together with the Soviet government, accused of conducting counter-revolutionary activities and arrested, managed to prevent.

In the middle of 1921, St. Tikhon created a committee to help the starving, calling on all parishes to make donations, donating church utensils and jewelry in favor of the "starving Volga region." The paradox was that it was precisely to help the starving (by the way, the famine arose precisely because of the actions of the Soviet government) that the state called for. However, as it became clear to historians from the surviving instructions of Lenin, the campaign to seize church valuables under the pretext of helping the starving had as its goal only the ruin, and then the destruction of the Church. The authorities assumed that the Church would resist and they would be able to legally, under the pretext of "defending the revolution", kill the Orthodox. But St. Tikhon denounced them, himself calling on people to help the people of the Volga region.

Of course, the Soviets could not leave this unpunished and arrested the saint for the time being as a "witness", accusing him of supporting the counter-revolution. No one could prove anything, and after a few months the Patriarch was released.

It is suggested that this happened because the position of the Church remained quite strong. Only in this way did the saint escape execution: the authorities were afraid of a wave of popular protest. It is known that two attempts were made on his life - during one of them, Vladyka's cell-attendant Yakov Polozov died.

The Patriarch had a hard time enduring the struggle and difficulties of leading the Ship of the Church. From 1924 he was very ill. In the middle of the spring of 1925 he celebrated the last Liturgy and died in prayer.

HONORING PATRIARCH TIKHON

More than a million people came to say goodbye to the saint, not only from Moscow, but from all over Russia. The Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery was crowded for a hundred hours - so long was the farewell to His Holiness. According to eyewitnesses, already in the hours of farewell, people, kissing the coffin with the body of the Patriarch - and after all, these were relics, that is, the body of a saint - received healing from serious illnesses, blindness, deafness, mental illness, lameness ... I can’t believe that this happened in years of persecution of the Church, some people are still alive who heard it themselves from eyewitnesses. It was said that it was not just a farewell, but also a popular glorification of the saint.

Already in 1981, Patriarch Tikhon was glorified as a confessor by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and in 1989 he was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, which until then had not had the opportunity to canonize the saint, probably due to continued oppression by the Soviet authorities.

In 1992, after some hooligans set fire to the Small Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery, the imperishable relics of St. Tikhon were discovered almost by accident. Since then, many people have come to pray to the saint and venerate the shrine - his relics, specially making pilgrimages to Moscow.

• • A monument to St. Tikhon was recently erected in Arkhangelsk.

• • It is planned to erect a monument in the homeland of the saint, in Velikiye Luki.

• • In the Museon Museum of Sculpture in Moscow there is an interesting monument to the saint in the form of a burning candle.

• • In 2015, a postage stamp with a portrait of the saint was issued.

The memory of St. Tikhon is celebrated by the entire Orthodox Church several times a year:

February 5 - (movable holiday of the first week of February) - on the day of the Council of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
June 25 - Cathedral of St. Petersburg Saints.
April 7 - on the day of the repose of the saint to the Lord.
June 5 - Cathedral of the Rostov-Yaroslavl Saints.
October 9 is the day of the glorification of St. Tikhon.
October 18 - Cathedral of Moscow Saints.
November 18 - Election of St. Tikhon to the Patriarchal throne and the memory of all the saints who participated in the Local Council of the Russian Church in 1917-1918.

These days the day before is done All-night vigil, and on the day of remembrance the Divine Liturgy, after which special short prayers to the saint are sung: troparia and kontakia. They were compiled by admirers and witnesses of the saint's miracles shortly after his death. The shepherd of the people does not leave all the people even after his death. Brief prayers to the saint can be read online or by heart, except for the days of memory, also at any difficult moment in life, with an exacerbation of the disease, with pain:

In a difficult time, chosen by God, in perfect holiness and love you became glorified and you glorified the Lord, showed greatness in humility, and in simplicity and meekness showed the power of God, for the Church and your people suffered torment, arrest, troubles, O holy confessor, Patriarch Tikhon, pray to Christ God, with whom you were crucified, and today save the Russian land and Orthodox people.
Guardian of the Apostolic Testaments, Church of Christ good shepherd, who gave his life for the people, chosen by the lot of God, let us glorify the holy Patriarch Tikhon and pray to him with faith, love and hope: by intercession to the Lord, preserve the Russian Church in silence, gather the members of the Church scattered over the face of the Earth into one flock, convert those who have departed from Orthodoxy to repentance, save our Russian country from civil strife and give the peace of God through your prayers to your people.

HOW TO PRAY TO PATRIARCH TIKHON OF MOSCOW, A SAINT AND ASSISTANT IN SORRY

In difficult moments of life, we understand that our fate largely depends on the will of God, the Lord reveals it in circumstances and accidents. Often we ourselves can no longer influence our lives - for example, we cannot get rid of alcoholism ourselves, we cannot find a good job ourselves - and this is the time to ask the Lord and His saints for help.

Saint Tikhon took care of the whole country during his lifetime, managed to find out the needs of everyone, correct and change to better people. That is why even after death he is revered as a good intercessor, healer and help - and there are many testimonies of the help of the saint through prayers to him.

Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, according to the testimony of those praying to him, has a special grace of help

• • in changing your character for the better,

• • in the awareness of their sins, repentance,

• • deliverance from sinful passions and bad habits,

• • addiction to alcohol, smoking, drugs,

• • in poverty, material difficulties,

• • about stability in the state,

• • in the recovery of the mentally ill, possessed,

• • about the speedy recovery of children, especially those with hearing and speech difficulties,

• • under the influence of sorcerers, psychics. from cirrhosis of the liver.

In the books of the Donskoy Monastery, evidence of miracles from the relics of St. Tikhon is preserved. So, by prayer to him, people were healed of many diseases:

• • Inflammation in the body

• • Hemorrhoid,

• • Tumors and growths

• • Tantrums and other mental disorders,

• • dropsy,

• • ophthalmic diseases,

• • Paralysis

• • Bleeding.

In order to be healed both spiritually and physically, it is worth attending services in the temple if possible or praying daily at home. The Church has established a morning and evening prayer rule, which every Orthodox Christian tries to read every day.

• • To pray to St. Tikhon, you can visit any Orthodox church - perhaps there will be an icon of the saint - or purchase an icon for home prayer.

• • Praying at home or in the temple, light a thin church candle in front of her.

• • After the prayer, you can apply to the icon: cross yourself twice, kiss the hand or edge of the clothes of the saint depicted on the icon, cross yourself again.

• • Read the prayer with attention, not as a conspiracy, but as an appeal to a saint. Tell in your own words about trouble and sorrow, ask for help.

• • In case of great difficulties, visit the relics of St. Tikhon in Moscow. You need to apply to them in the same way as to the icon - cross yourself twice and bow, kiss. You can pray both before and after kissing the shrine.

Prayer to St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow can be read online in Russian according to the text below:

O great saint of God and glorious miracle worker, saint and father, our father Tikhon! With tenderness we kneel and worship the cancer of your honest and healing relics, we praise and glorify God, who glorified you with many miracles, and to us, His servants, who gave the great mercy of His grace through your icons and relics. Earnestly, with faith and love, honoring your holy memory, we pray to you: bring our prayer to the Savior and Almighty our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom you now stand with the faces of angels and with all the saints, so that He affirms a living and strong spirit in the Holy Orthodox Church of faith and piety, so that all its members would be freed from unreasonable superstitions, worship Him in spirit and in truth, diligently trying to keep the commandments of God.
May the Lord give the priesthood holy zeal and concern for the salvation of entrusted people: to help Orthodox believers, to strengthen the weak in the faith, to instruct the insignificant, to denounce opponents of the faith.
And praying again, with hope, as if the children of their father are asking, we implore you, Saint Tikhon, and we believe that you, alive in heaven, love us with the same love that you loved all your neighbors when you lived on earth: ask the merciful God and we all give everything that everyone needs, everything useful for temporary and eternal life, peace of mind, preservation of cities, productivity of the earth, deliverance from hunger and death, preservation from the invasion of enemies, help in sorrows to all, blessing to parents, upbringing of children in help in the fear of God and in learning, help to mentors and teachers of knowledge and piety, unreasonable instruction, intercession and help to orphans and the poor, peace and parting words to dying and seriously ill people in eternal life, and peace to those who have gone away in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Saint Tikhon, ask the generous God, having a special power to pray to Him, help us in everything: we have you as an everlasting intercessor and a warm intercessor for us before the Lord of Glory, to whom we all give glory and honor forever, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Through the prayers of St. Tikhon of Moscow, may the Lord keep you!

Vasily Ivanovich Belavin (the future Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia) was born on January 19, 1865 in the village of Klin, Toropetsky district, Pskov province, in a pious family of a priest with a patriarchal way of life. Children helped their parents with the housework, went for cattle, they knew how to do everything with their own hands.

At the age of nine, Vasily entered the Toropetsk Theological School, and in 1878, upon graduation, he left his parental home to continue his education at the Pskov Seminary. Vasily was of a good disposition, modest and friendly, studying was easy for him, and he was happy to help his classmates, who called him "bishop". After graduating from the seminary as one of the best students, Vasily successfully passed the exams for the St. Petersburg Theological Academy in 1884. And the new respectful nickname - Patriarch, received by him from academic friends and turned out to be prophetic, speaks of the way of his life at that time. In 1888, after graduating from the academy as a 23-year-old candidate of theology, he returned to Pskov and taught at his native seminary for three years. At the age of 26, after serious reflection, he takes his first step after the Lord to the cross, bending his will under three high monastic vows - virginity, poverty and obedience. On December 14, 1891, he was tonsured with the name Tikhon, in honor of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, the next day he was ordained a hierodeacon, and soon a hieromonk.

In 1892, Fr. Tikhon was transferred as an inspector to the Kholm Theological Seminary, where he soon became rector in the rank of archimandrite. And on October 19, 1899, in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, he was consecrated Bishop of Lublin with the appointment of a vicar of the Kholm-Warsaw diocese. St. Tikhon spent only a year in his first cathedra, but when the decree came to transfer him, the city was filled with weeping—the Orthodox wept, the Uniates and Catholics wept, of whom there were also many in the Kholm region. The city gathered at the station to see off the archpastor who had served so little with them, but so much beloved by them. The people tried to keep the departing bishop by force, removing the train attendants, and many simply lay down on the canvas railway, not giving them the opportunity to take away from them a precious pearl - an Orthodox bishop. And only the heartfelt appeal of the lord himself calmed the people. And such farewells surrounded the saint all his life. Orthodox America wept, where he is still called the Apostle of Orthodoxy, where he wisely led the flock for seven years: overcoming thousands of miles, visiting hard-to-reach and remote parishes, helping to equip their spiritual life, erecting new churches, among which is the majestic St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. His flock in America grew to four hundred thousand: Russians and Serbs, Greeks and Arabs, Slovaks and Rusyns converted from Uniatism, indigenous people - Creoles, Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos.

Heading the ancient Yaroslavl cathedra for seven years, upon his return from America, Saint Tikhon traveled on horseback, on foot or by boat to remote villages, visited monasteries and county towns, and brought church life into a state of spiritual unity. From 1914 to 1917 he managed the Vilna and Lithuanian departments. To the first world war When the Germans were already under the walls of Vilna, he took the relics of the Vilna martyrs and other shrines to Moscow and, returning to the lands not yet occupied by the enemy, served in crowded churches, bypassed the hospitals, blesses and admonishes the troops leaving to defend the Fatherland.

Shortly before his death, St. John of Kronstadt, in one of his conversations with St. Tikhon, said to him: “Now, Vladyka, sit down in my place, and I will go and rest.” A few years later, the elder's prophecy came true when Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow was elected Patriarch by lot. There was a troubled time in Russia, and at the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church that opened on August 15, 1917, the question of restoring the patriarchate in Russia was raised. The opinion of the people was expressed by the peasants: “We no longer have a Tsar, there is no father whom we loved; It is impossible to love the Synod, and therefore we, the peasants, want the Patriarch.”

There was a time when everything and everyone was seized with anxiety for the future, when anger revived and grew, and deadly hunger looked into the faces of the working people, the fear of robbery and violence penetrated homes and churches. A presentiment of general impending chaos and the kingdom of the Antichrist seized Russia. And under the thunder of guns, under the chirping of machine guns, the First Hierarch Tikhon is placed by God's hand on the Patriarchal throne in order to ascend to his Golgotha ​​and become a holy martyr Patriarch. He burned in the fire of spiritual torment every hour and was tormented by questions: “How long can one yield to godless power?” Where is the line when he is obliged to put the good of the Church above the well-being of his people, above human life, and not his own, but the life of Orthodox children faithful to him. He no longer thought about his life, about his future. He himself was ready for death every day. “Let my name perish in history, if only the Church would benefit,” he said, following his Divine Teacher to the end.

How tearfully the new Patriarch weeps before the Lord for his people, the Church of God: “Lord, the sons of Russia forsook Thy Testament, destroyed Thy altars, shot at temple and Kremlin shrines, beaten Thy priests...” He calls on the Russian people to cleanse their hearts with repentance and prayer , to resurrect "in the year of the Great Visitation of God in the current feat of the Orthodox Russian people, the bright unforgettable deeds of pious ancestors." To raise religious feelings among the people, with his blessing, grand processions were arranged, in which His Holiness invariably took part. Petrograd, Yaroslavl and other cities, strengthening the spiritual flock.When, under the pretext of helping the starving, an attempt was made to defeat the Church, Patriarch Tikhon, having blessed the donation of church values, spoke out against encroachments on shrines and public property.As a result, he was arrested and from May 16, 1922 was imprisoned until June 1923. The authorities did not they broke the saint and were forced to release him, but they began to follow his every step. On June 12, 1919, and on December 9, 1923, assassination attempts were made; during the second attempt, the cell-attendant of His Holiness Yakov Polozov was martyred. Despite the persecution, St. Tikhon continued to receive people at the Donskoy Monastery, where he lived in seclusion, and people came in an endless stream, often coming from afar or traveling thousands of miles on foot. The last painful year of his life, persecuted and sick, he invariably served on Sundays and holidays. On March 23, 1925, he celebrated the last Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Great Ascension, and on the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, he reposed in the Lord with a prayer on his lips.

The glorification of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, took place at the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 9, 1989, on the day of the repose of the Apostle John the Theologian, and many see God's Providence in this. “Children, love one another! - says the Apostle John in his last sermon. “This is the commandment of the Lord, if you keep it, then it’s enough.”

The last words of Patriarch Tikhon sound in unison: “My children! All Orthodox Russian people! All Christians! Only on the stone of healing evil with good will the indestructible glory and majesty of our Holy Orthodox Church be built, and it will be elusive even for enemies holy name her, the purity of the feat of her children and servants. Follow Christ! Don't change Him. Do not succumb to temptation, do not destroy your soul in the blood of vengeance. Don't be overcome by evil. Defeat evil with good!"

67 years have passed since the death of St. Tikhon, and the Lord granted Russia his holy relics to strengthen her for the difficult times ahead. They rest in the large cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery.