Anatoly of Optina

Saint Anatoly of Optina, called Anatoly the Elder (born Alexei Moiseevich Zertsalov, 1824 to 1894), was a priest and elder of Optina Pustyn, a disciple of Saints Macarius and Ambrose, and a spiritual father to many convents of nuns. He is one of the fourteen venerable elders of Optina who were glorified together in 2000.

Early life

He was born in 1824 in the village of Bobyli in the Borovsk district of the Kaluga province, in the family of the deacon Moses Kopiev, who served in the village church. At baptism he was given the name Alexei, after Saint Alexis the Man of God. There were six children in the family. He completed the church school at Borovsk and then the seminary at Kaluga, where he was given the surname Zertsalov. For six years he worked in the Treasury Chamber of the provincial administration.

During a grave illness he vowed to enter a monastery if he recovered. After his healing he left his post and, with his parents' blessing, set out for Optina, where he remained to the end of his life.

At Optina

He arrived at the monastery on 31 July 1853. He performed various obediences, for a long time as assistant to Father Euthymius (Trunov), the monastery's clerk. For seven years, until the repose of Elder Macarius, he was that elder's spiritual disciple, and then he passed under the guidance of Elder Ambrose.

After nine years as a novice, on 17 November 1862, he was tonsured into the mantle in the skete church with the name Anatoly, after Saint Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople. In 1866 he was ordained hierodeacon and in 1870 hieromonk. From December 1866 he was the monastery librarian, and from December 1870 its steward. In the summer of 1871 a decree of the Synod appointed him, with the rank of archimandrite, abbot of the Orlov monastery in the Vyatka province, but the appointment was cancelled at the request of Bishop Gregory of Kaluga. In 1873, after the death of Elder Hilarion, he was made elder of the skete and confessor of the brotherhood.

Father of the nuns

When the convent of Shamordino was founded, Elder Ambrose entrusted its nuns to his care. He often told the sisters that he received them rarely because he was at peace about them, since they were in the hands of Father Anatoly. Besides this, he was the spiritual father of convents in six other dioceses.

A man of fervent prayer and a practitioner of the Jesus Prayer, he taught his spiritual children the same labour. Elder Ambrose said of him that he had been given a prayer and a grace such as is given to one in a thousand. His guidance raised up at Optina elders of the last times, such as Barsanuphius and Nectarius. At the end of 1892 he travelled to Saint Petersburg, where he served the Liturgy together with Saint John of Kronstadt.

Repose and veneration

Gravely ill, he secretly received the schema on 15 December 1893. He reposed in the Lord at twenty minutes past four in the morning on Tuesday, 25 January 1894 (7 February New Style). In 1996 he was numbered among the saints venerated locally at Optina, and in August 2000 the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him for veneration throughout the Church. The relics of Saint Anatoly the Elder are kept in the Vladimir church of Optina Monastery.