Память преподобного отца нашего Евфимия Суздальского

The Monk Euthymius was born of pious parents. The place of his birth and upbringing was Nizhny Novgorod. When he came of age, his parents sent him to study the Divine Scriptures, and the blessed youth, together with his peers, studied them with great diligence, and was completely averse to children's games. Having a penchant for silence and obeying his parents in everything, he often visited the churches of God, where he loved to stand, secluded in a dark place, so that no one could entertain him with conversations about the perishable objects of this world and so that he could listen with full attention to church singing and reading. One day he came to the holy church and heard the words in the Gospel: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” and so on (Luke 9 et seq.). Hearing these words, blessed Euthymius decided to renounce the blessings of this world and went to the Pechersky Monastery of the Ascension of the Lord, located near Nizhny Novgorod, 2347, where he received monastic tonsure from the abbot of this monastery, named Dionysius. Having entered the monastery, Euthymius began to indulge in great feats. With the constant singing of David's psalms, he usually spent the day in labor, diligently performing various monastic works, and at night he retired to a cave and there, with tears, he offered all-night prayers to God. The blessed monk performed these feats, obeying in everything his mentor, the Monk Dionysius. In his later life, he reached such a degree of asceticism that sometimes he spent the whole night without sleep in prayer and subjected himself to such a feat often. At the same time, he was so abstinent in food that he consumed it in such quantities as was necessary in order not to be exhausted from hunger, and did not drink anything other than water, and even then only when he felt very thirsty. After this, his mentor assigned him obedience to serve in a bakery. Here he further increased his exploits, as he constantly carried water and chopped wood. Soon he was ordered to serve in the bakery itself. While working here, the monk always brought to mind eternal torment from an unquenchable fire and a caustic worm. Often, looking at the fire, he said to himself: “Be patient, Euthymius, so that through this fire you can escape the eternal fire.” Seeing such feats and the patience of the Monk Euthymius, everyone looked at him not as a man, but as an Angel of God living among them. At that time, the Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod principalities were owned by Grand Duke Boris Konstantinovich 2348. He turned to the rector of the Pechersk monastery, the Monk Dionysius, with a request to send Blessed Euthymius to him in Suzdal to build the monastery that he planned to build. Blessed Dionysius joyfully made a promise to the Grand Duke to fulfill his request, and, after a little time, the Monk Euthymius, having accepted parting prayer and blessing from his mentor, set off on his journey. When he came to the city of Gorokhovets, near it, at a distance of about 8 versts, he built a church in the name of Holy Father Vasily, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, and built a communal hermitage with it 2349, after which he came to Suzdal to Grand Duke Boris Konstantinovich. The prince was very happy at the arrival of the monk and, after spending some time with him in conversation, went with him to Bishop John of Suzdal. Arriving at the bishop, the Grand Duke revealed his intention to him, told him in order about the life of Blessed Dionysius - about how the Lord honored him with the gift of prophecy and how he blessed him to build a monastery, and also told about the Monk Euthymius. After this, the prince began to ask the bishop to go with him to find a place to establish a monastery, and the bishop went with the Grand Duke, and the Monk Euthymius went with them. Soon they found a place near the city on a mountain, near a river called Kamennitsa, on the banks of which the city of Suzdal was located, and they liked this place. Then they said a prayer, giving thanks to God. After this, many people gathered at this place, the rulers of all the princely domains, boyars, princes and dignitaries of his court, the clergy, monastic brethren, as well as men and wives of different ages. In the presence of such a crowded meeting, Bishop John blessed and consecrated the place for the monastery and, after a special prayer, erected a cross in the place where the altar of the first church should have been. Then the prince ordered to prepare stones and everything necessary to build the church. And when the prince’s command was fulfilled, he himself was the first to take a spade and begin to dig a ditch with his own hands, and the rulers of the country and the boyars followed his example. After this, a service was performed for the foundation of the church, and the church was founded in honor of the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then they began to erect the walls of the building. The Monk Euthymius, having asked the bishop for a blessing, took an ax and with his own hand hewed three stones at the northern door of the altar near the holy altar and made a coffin for himself, where his honorable body was subsequently laid. The church was completed in 1352 2350 and was consecrated in the same year. Bishop John elevated Blessed Euthymius to the rank of archimandrite and entrusted to his leadership the Christian flock of the verbal sheep of Christ, and the prince gave him a large amount of gold and silver for the establishment of the monastery. From that time on, the Monk Euthymius, with tears of contrition, began to indulge in great exploits. During the day he worked diligently to build the monastery, and at night he offered unceasing, fervent prayers to God, and thus built a monastery and cells in it for the future brethren. In addition to the already former church, he built another church in the name of the Venerable Father John Climacus and attached a stone refectory to it, where monks could gather on winter days for prayer and meals. When about 300 brethren gathered at the monastery at the monastery and they could not fit into the meal, he ordered the construction of a new church in the name of St. Nicholas, the Wonderworker of Myra, called the hospital one, and with it a large wooden meal was built so that those of the brethren who could not fit with others in the stone meal would gather in it. After this, he built other buildings necessary for the monastery as needed. Thus, through the labors and prayers of St. Euthymius, with the assistance of the grace of God, a monastery was built that completely satisfied all the monastic needs of his monastery. And he began to lead the flock entrusted to him firmly and godly. He established the rule that all monks should remain uncomplainingly in obedience, in sincere love for each other, chastity and non-covetousness, so that none of them had anything of their own, but that they had everything in common, and if he found out that one of the brethren had property, he imposed penance on him. He did not allow the brethren to talk among themselves in church, and also always demanded that they remain silent during meals. After the meal, he ordered everyone to go to their cells, silently, without entering into any conversations with each other, and did not allow them to visit other people’s cells except for some extreme need. In addition, he decreed, as a general rule, that none of the monks should have their own wisdom, but everyone should be ready to fulfill all obedience. And the brethren, for their part, obeyed him in everything, as an Angel of God. For spiritual conversations, the Monk Euthymius traveled to the Monk Sergius, the Wonderworker of Radonezh, to his monastery, since they were contemporaries 2351. After such conversations, they lovingly gave each other a blessing, and then the Monk Euthymius returned to his monastery again. Blessed Euthymius lived his entire life in such exploits. He never betrayed his prayer rule and, combining fasting with alms, receiving strangers and giving food to those who did not have it, he added new exploits to his previous exploits. He was clothing for the naked and a consolation for the mourning, as he helped all the poor, saved those who fell into misfortune from troubles, healed the sick with prayer, paid debts for debtors, forgave them all and with one word delivered those who were befallen by disasters from the violence of unrighteous judges. He loved poverty in clothes so much that he seemed to have nothing. He always wore only clothes made from hard sheepskins, and in winter he suffered from cold, and in summer, due to the weight of his clothes, he suffered from heat. So, along all sorts of sorrowful and narrow paths, the Monk Euthymius completed his life’s procession and began to feel bodily infirmities only when he had already reached a very old age. Feeling the approach of death, he called all the monks of the monastery to him. When they saw that their abbot was very weak and that the time of his departure to the Lord was near, everyone began to grieve over his separation from him and said: - Father! You leave us orphans, and when you are not with us, our monastery will be empty. But the monk, comforting them, answered them: - Do not grieve over separation from me and know that if I acquire the boldness of prayer to God and my work is pleasing to Him, then not only will our monastery not be empty, but after my death the number of monks in it will increase even more, if you also have love for each other. The monk spoke and much more to console the brethren. After this, when the time for his departure to the Lord had already begun, all the monks, coming to him, kissed him with tears and asked him for his last blessing. And, like a loving father, the monk gave his blessing to everyone, forgave everyone and asked forgiveness from everyone. When the hour finally came for the separation of his soul from his body, he received communion of the Holy Mysteries and on the first day of the month of April gave up his holy soul into the hands of the Lord, after 52 years of ruling the monastery 2352. The monks buried his holy body in the above-mentioned coffin, which the monk built for himself with his own hands at the beginning of the construction of the first monastery church. Blessed Euthymius to this day performs many miracles and grants healing to those who come with faith to his honest tomb 2353. Like a shining star, you came from the east to the west, leaving your fatherland, Nizhny Novgrad, and, having reached the God-saved city of Sudzhdal, you created a monastery in it, and you gathered many monks, and, receiving the gift of miracles from God, Father Euthymius, you were an interlocutor and companion in Christ with the Monk Sergius. With him, from Christ God, ask our Blessed Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich for health and salvation, and for our souls great mercy. You have immersed many unhumidly unceasing worries in the streams of your tears, O venerable God-wise Euthymius, and thus you have received the gift of miracles; pray unceasingly for all of us. Pechersky Ascension Monastery was founded in the vicinity of Nizhny Novgorod around 1330 by a friend of the Venerable. Sergius of Radonezh by Saint Dionysius, who dug for himself 5 versts from the city on the banks of the river. Volga cave and labored in it, and then became the archimandrite of his monastery and subsequently the archbishop of Suzdal. He died in the rank of Metropolitan of Kyiv in 1384. His memory is June 26. It is not known why Boris Konstantinovich is called the Grand Duke here. The Suzdal princes sought, however, the grand-princely throne after the death of Simeon the Proud, in 1353, but failed in this, and only after the death of John II the Meek, in 1359, did the Suzdal prince Dimitri Konstantinovich receive the great reign. However, the latter was Grand Duke for only a few years. In 1363, he was forced to cede the grand-ducal throne to the son of John the Meek, Dimitri Ioannovich Donskoy. This hermitage has always been assigned to the Spaso-Evfimov Monastery. This year is also considered the year of the founding of the monastery, which later received the name Spaso-Evfimiev. It is remarkable in that it was the first of the Suzdal monasteries to introduce a hostel. In church hymns, the Monk Euthymius is called the “faster and interlocutor” of the Monk Sergius (Mineaion for the month of April 1625). The Monk Euthymius died on April 1, 1405, at about 90 years of age. A century after the death of the saint, in 1507, on June 7, while digging a ditch to build a new church instead of the Transfiguration Church that burned down in 1491, his relics were found and turned out to be incorrupt: “his face was bright and his vestments were as if he had been dressed yesterday.” You might be interested in: