Alexander Avaev

Alexander Avaev (Alexander Mikhailovich Avaev) was an archpriest, honoured as an ascetic of piety in the Polish Orthodox Church, parish priest from 1923 to 1958 of the Old Rite church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Wojnowo, in Poland. He fell asleep on 25 November 1958 at Wojnowo. Our sources show no canonization and give no feast day: he is honoured by the faithful as a spiritual elder.

Youth and Optina

He was born into a noble family. His father studied at the Demidov lyceum and graduated in 1880 from the law faculty of Moscow University. He served in Moscow in a grenadier regiment, with the rank of lieutenant. At the beginning of 1911, with the rank of captain of the third mortar artillery park, he was enrolled among the reserve officers, and in the same year he entered Optina Hermitage, where in a short time he became a rassophore monk in the skete of Saint John the Forerunner and a disciple of the elder Barsanuphius of Optina. Until 1914, with the blessing of the elder Barsanuphius, he kept the chronicle of Optina. At the beginning of the First World War about fifty of the Optina brotherhood were called into the army. On 27 July 1914 Alexander also left for active service. In the 291st Trubchevsk infantry regiment he took part in the battles of the Russian army in East Prussia. In 1915, with his battalion, he was taken prisoner and came to Germany.

The priest of Wojnowo

The war did not quench his monastic spirit and he desired to serve God and the Church. Coming to Berlin, he was able to meet Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky), who, after a conversation, advised him to accept the priesthood, and he accepted gladly. In 1922, at Berlin, Metropolitan Evlogy ordained him deacon, and later priest, to serve at the church in the village of Feodorwalde in East Prussia. In 1923 he was appointed to the parish in the village of Eckertsdorf (now Wojnowo), to care for the Russian believers of the same rite who lived in Germany. He settled in the village of Wojnowo, near the picturesque Masurian lakes in former East Prussia. A peasant gave land and Father Alexander collected money for the building of a church. Little by little the priest built, with the parishioners, a beautiful church and, under the same roof, rooms for a school, for the parish priest and for the watchman. Metropolitan Evlogy visited the parish and consecrated the church in honour of the Protection of the Mother of God. He became a perfect priest: modest, devoted without reserve to his flock. He served by the old rite, bound himself to the parish and was the beloved father. With the blessing of Metropolitan Evlogy he also cared for a small community in Königsberg, going there two or three times a year. On 7 January 1931 he was raised to archpriest.

The years after the war

Between 1941 and 1944 he was rector of the missionary community in the city of Memel, and in 1945 he led the community in the city of Danzig. After the end of the Second World War and the change of borders in Europe, the church of the village of Wojnowo (Eckertsdorf) was on Polish territory. On 14 June 1946 he was received into the clergy of the Polish Orthodox Church, returned to Wojnowo and until his death was rector of the Old Rite church in the settlement. He led a severe life of prayer, was held a spiritual elder in the world and, in the 1930s, founded at his church a community of nuns. He fell asleep on 25 November 1958 and was buried beside the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Wojnowo. In Poland he is honoured by the faithful as an Orthodox ascetic of piety. In 1995, on the basis of the church of the Protection in Wojnowo, the Dormition monastery of Wojnowo was re-⁠founded, in which the grave of Archpriest Alexander Avaev is honoured as one of the monastery's holy places.