It is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Saint Sophronius of Essextranslated

Saint Sophronius was born in Moscow on September 22, 1896, receiving the baptismal name of Sergei Simeonovich Sakharov.

He studied Fine Arts in Moscow, in search of an ideal of beauty that went beyond purely aesthetic beauty.

During the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, he was arrested twice and imprisoned in Liubianka, but in 1921 he managed to leave the country.

Settled in Paris, he attracted the attention of the French press with a few exhibitions, but did not feel his spiritual quests satisfied by art.

Holy Mount Athos In 1925, although he had enrolled to study Theology at the "St. Sergius" Institute in Paris, he gave it up and went to St. Mount Athos, where, in 1926, he entered the Monastery of "St. Pantelimon" - Russikon, where he became a disciple of St. Siluan the Athonite.

On September 24, 1938, Venerable Siluan passed to the eternal. Following the exhortation of his spiritual father, Father Sophronie left the Saint Pantelimon Monastery and headed for the wilderness of the Holy Mountain.

After staying for a while in Karulia, Father Sophronie settled in a cave near the Saint Paul Monastery.

Founding of the Abbey at Essex In 1947 he had to...