Azarius of Vyksa

Holy Venerable Azarius of Vyksa struggled in the second half of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, in the lands of the Northern Thebaid. History has kept of some God-⁠lovers only oral accounts, of others long lives, and of some only the name and the place of their labours. Azarius is one of these hidden silent ones, whose life time has largely concealed. Only God knows his labours and toils.

Zealous for the angelic life, Azarius was tonsured a monk at the Resurrection Monastery in Cherepovets, founded by Venerable Athanasius and Theodosius of Cherepovets. In this renowned monastery he passed through the school of obedience and self-⁠denial and acquired the habit of humility and unceasing prayer. Longing for stillness, he settled, with the blessing of the abbot, on the lands of the monastery, in a secluded place on the little river Vyksa, a right tributary of the Sheksna, today in the Cherepovets district. There, hidden from human eyes, he served God day and night with labours and prayer.

However hard he tried to hide, the fragrance of his prayers and his righteousness drew those seeking salvation to the hermit, like honey to bees. So on the place of his labours the Monastery of Saint Nicholas at Vyksa, also called the monastery of Azarius, gradually arose. After a fire and the closing of the monastery, the information about the venerable one was lost. For this reason the date of his repose is not known precisely. The saint's relics rest on the site of the monastery, which is now covered by the waters of the Rybinsk Reservoir. He is commemorated on 30 December, the day of his namesake, the holy youth Azariah, one of the three youths in the Babylonian captivity, and on 11 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda.