the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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the Gospel: ‘One cannot serve two masters.’ In camp he received another term
– ten years for sabotage in accordance with article 58-10. For his refusal to go
to work he was often beaten to the verge of death. He got yet another term –
25 years. I have been with monks from my childhood. I know this group of the
population thoroughly. But perhaps the strictest monk of all those I have seen
I met in camp. And he was, moreover, a simple, illiterate layman. That was
Theodore. He categorically refused to take a mattress and underwear from the
store-room. He slept on bare boards. He prayed all through the night every
night, on his knees, making prostrations to the ground. He was a very strict
faster. He was barely literate. But it was difficult to believe that when one
looked at his nervous face edged with a black beard, at his expressive, burning
eyes. His face was radiant with thought, inspired, gleaming with an inner
light. He did not want to work. But there was no resentment in him. It was
from a deep principle: ‘One cannot serve two masters.’ If a friend would ask
him for something, he would immediately do it. If someone was in trouble
with something and did not ask for help – he would go up and do it. When it
was necessary to clean the barracks, he was the first to run for water, clean the
floor, seep and scrub. This was not for the bosses – it was for the comrades. For
a long time he refused to write a petition for his release. But when they wrote
it, for a long time he did not take it to the bosses. But then, nevertheless, they
took it to the boss of the camp. The reply came in three weeks: exonerate him
in everything, release him… He lived in the village with his sister doing
handiwork. He was counted as an invalid.” Until 1958 he corresponded with
Anatoly Levitin-Krasnov. Nothing more is known about him.
*
During the Khruschev years, Fr. Innocent used to serve some catacomb
nuns in Suzdal. He himself was from Astrakhan, and had neither passport nor
documents, but only a certificate from a psychiatric hospital. But he was
completely normal, although he was able to imitate a mentally ill person very
well.
He used to describe the terrible things that Kirov had done in Astrakhan.
He himself survived because they buried him in the kitchen-garden. In
Simbirsk province they would put priests in barrels, put nails into them and
throw them down the cliffs into the Volga. In the Alatyr monastery of the
Archangel Michael the whole brotherhood was driven into the Alatyrka
stream and drowned there. Their bodies dammed the river for a while.
Fr. Innocent was old, he could no longer see well and for that reason was
detained in Suzdal. But he wanted to go to the other side of the Volga, to a
skete, to die. There they knew him well and invited him to join them.
The services with the nuns were monastic, sometimes they served the
whole night, reading in turn. During the day they cultivated vegetables,
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