Anna Stolyarova

Holy Venerable Anna Stolyarova, a schemanun (in the world Anisia Gureevna Stolyarova, born on 12 January 1895), a confessor, laboured in the village of Sreznevo, in the Shilovo district of the Ryazan region, and reposed in 1958. She was glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in 2003, among the New Martyrs and Confessors. Her holy relics are in the Kazan church of the village where she laboured. She is commemorated on 23 December, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, on 23 June.

She was a spiritual daughter of the Holy Hieromartyr Philaret of Sreznevo and for many years was keeper of the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God "Surety of Sinners", which is to this day in the church at Sreznevo. Soon Father Philaret was arrested, accused of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and after him Mother Anna and the priest Sergius Sorokin, a cleric of the Kazan church, were sent to concentration camps. After three years they returned to Sreznevo, but a new arrest soon followed. The ascetic had much to suffer in the camps and on the way: she served her sentence in Kazakhstan, in Kamchatka, in the Far East, in Siberia. But the long years of hard labour did not break her spiritually. In 1942, when she was dying of exhaustion in the camp, she asked a priest among the prisoners to hear her confession and give her communion. He, having the gift of foresight, told her what the Lord Himself had revealed to him: the nun would stay alive, would leave the camp, would meet on her life's way a maiden named Maria and, some years after release, would die in her arms. Everything foretold came true. Mother Anna returned to Sreznevo in 1950 and for eight years served at the church with other nuns, who lived by the monastic rule. In everything there was strictness, and at the same time true Christian love. The Lord opened her spiritual eyes; the nuns several times saw her speaking with the Mother of God. She fell ill suddenly and, after three months, died in the arms of one of the novices, Maria, who soon received the tonsure with the name Mariamna and became keeper of the wonderworking icon of Sreznevo. The nun Mariamna died in the spring of 2008, five years after the glorification of the schemanun Anna in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors.