Barbara of Skvorchikha

Blessed Barbara of Skvorchikha (in the world Varvara Vasilievna Arkhangelskaya) was a fool for Christ and a recluse. She was born on 20 November 1890 in the village of Karaulovka near Ufa, and fell asleep in the Lord on 27 February 1966 (14 February old style) in the village of Skvorchikha, in the Bashkir Autonomous Republic. She is a locally venerated saint of the Ufa diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Her life

Barbara was born into the family of a village priest, Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhangelsky. She lost her parents in early childhood and was raised by her grandmother, who served at the church as the baker of the prosphora. In August 1902 she was taken to Ufa to the diocesan school for girls, which she finished in June 1909 with the right to be a home teacher. She refused marriage, left her relatives and from autumn 1909 worked as a primary teacher in village schools. In the 1910s she finished the Teachers' Institute in Ufa. In the middle of these years she worked in the villages of Kuganak, Ira, Bogorodskoe near the town of Meleuz, and later in the schools of Skvorchikha and near the village of Budenya. In 1924 she was transferred to the school of Kandaur, and in 1925-1926 to Novonikolaevka.

Although the Soviet power had forbidden the teaching of the Orthodox faith in schools, she taught children the faith in all the places where she worked. She could not stay in a school where the teaching of atheism had begun, and became a recluse. From the first years of her seclusion she received people who needed help and advice. She always wore the same clothing, did not wash it, did not wash herself and did not comb her hair. Contemporaries recalled that her voice was "clear, bright, like an angel's, pleasant, ringing, loud, young", and her speech very clear, as a teacher's should be. Almost everything that was brought to her she gave away: she helped children and supported families whose breadwinners were at the front. In the 1920s and 1930s she was arrested several times for short periods. During the Cold War she was accused of spying for the United States, because she "lives shut in and yet knows everything". The blessed one lived in a shed open to the winds, without heat or light, in summer in stuffiness, in autumn and spring under rain, in mud and cold, in winter in snow and frost. The Serbian source adds that she wore an old sweater, a cotton dress, stockings and rubber galoshes, and that by day she prayed in the shed and by night kept prayer vigil, sometimes going out to her spring.

In all the years of her seclusion she never went to church (the one at Skvorchikha had been closed at the end of the 1920s or the beginning of the 1930s), but she received Communion from the priests who visited her. Believers brought her prosphora, and she asked for candles, lamp oil and church books in large print. She loved church singing and sometimes asked the girls who came to sing prayers and spiritual songs. She told many that she dearly loved the services, especially Vespers. She greatly honoured Saint Nicholas and Saint John of Kronstadt, and the day of her heavenly patron.

She knew in advance the time and circumstances of her death and had told those who came to her. On 26 February 1966 a fire broke out in the shed where she lived, and Barbara was pulled from the flames. Although the burns were not severe, she died the next morning. The sources give the date of her death as either 27 February or 14 February; it is the same day, in the new and the old calendar.

Veneration

In 2000, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, the relics of Barbara of Skvorchikha were found. They stayed first in the church of the Kazan Icon in Meleuz, then in the church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God of the convent of the Holy Royal Passion-⁠Bearers in Priyutovo, Belebey district. In 2001 Patriarch Alexy II blessed her glorification among the locally venerated saints of the Ufa diocese, and the rite of glorification was performed by Archbishop Nikon (Vasyukov) of Ufa and Sterlitamak. In 2002 Hegumen Simeon (Kuvaev), abbot of the Pokrovsky Monastery of Yenat, composed her akathist, read in the churches of the diocese. Icons of her have been painted. In May 2016 the relics returned to Skvorchikha. On 11 March 2020 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to open the Convent of Saint Barbara in Skvorchikha, where the relics are kept and where a church has been built in her honour. On the northern edge of the village, near the source of the river Yurgabash, is the spring of Blessed Barbara. Her commemoration is on 14 February (old style).