Archippus Shestakov

Holy Venerable Archippus Shestakov was a schemamonk and spiritual elder of the Glinsk Hermitage in Russia. He was born in 1825 in the settlement of Yezdotskaya, in the Stary Oskol district of the Kursk province, into a merchant family, and was baptised Athanasius. He departed to the Lord on 27 September 1896. He is commemorated on 22 September, and was entered into the calendar of the Russian Church by a decision of the Council of Bishops in 2017.

From his youth he showed indifference to earthly goods. When he minded his father's shop, he gave goods to the poor without payment, called money mere iron with scorn, slept without a pillow, sought solitude and disliked fine clothes. Because of these oddities his family troubled him many times. Once he went secretly to Kiev, but was caught up with, beaten and brought home. Later he hid in the cellar of a relative, who kept his secret until the family agreed to give him a release paper.

In 1852 he came to the Glinsk Hermitage and was put to work in the bakery, where for five years he slept on the floor until he was given a cell. If a brother was careless at his work, Athanasius gladly finished it, thinking that he was not performing a feat but only making use of a chance to care for his neighbour. When he began work he put a splinter in his mouth to keep from idle speech; if he was drawn into an empty conversation, he would say that he knew nothing and start saying the Jesus Prayer aloud. At times he played the fool for Christ, spilling flour or water or dropping dough on the floor, so that by humble endurance of reproaches and blows he might put to death the passion of anger in others. And when someone was angry with him unjustly, he asked forgiveness, so that the enmity set by the devil would find no place in his brother's soul.

In 1869 he was tonsured a monk with the name Archippus. Because he was skilled in the bakery, they wished to make him its head, but he refused, calling himself unwise. In 1885 he received the great schema and was freed from the obedience in the bakery; he kept only the reading of the Psalter for the benefactors of the monastery, and yet he often came by night to help the bakers. In the 1890s he was the first head of the Far Skete of the Glinsk Hermitage, and in that time his spiritual gifts were revealed in their fullness.

The brothers said of him that he was wonderful: he could scarcely walk, but when someone needed comfort he came cheerfully, sang of death, encouraged with a word, and whoever saw him took heart. By his gift of insight he saw the schemes of the evil one against many of the brothers and warned them in time: sometimes he counselled gently, as though he himself were asking advice, at other times he rebuked openly, yet with a fatherly love shining from his whole being. Saint Iliodor said of him that one of the elders of old was living in our own time.