Daria of Sezenovo

Holy Venerable Daria of Sezenovo, also called Daria of Lebedyan, was an elder and the founder of the Sezenovo Monastery in Russia. By her family name Daria Dmitrievna Kutukova, she was born in 1772 (in other sources 1782) in the village of Pikovo, in the Ranenburg district of the Ryazan province, in the family of the state peasant Dmitry Gavrilovich Kutukov. She fell asleep on 28 July 1858, at the age of eighty-⁠five. She is commemorated on 23 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, on 10 August, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tambov, and on 23 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Lipetsk.

Youth

The girl grew up lively, cheerful and sociable, but when she reached marriageable age she said she did not wish to marry. At the wedding of her younger brother she went, under the pretext of a dislocated arm, to the village of Nizhnee Lomovoe, on the other bank of the river, to a relative, so that she might find her a good bonesetter. At the ferry she gave her coat and earrings to those who accompanied her, told them to ask her father's blessing and crossed to the other bank. From then nothing more was heard of her. She went to the elder Hilarion, who blessed her to go to the women's monastery in the Chalk Mountains. Its abbess, Agathia, an elder of lofty life, had had a dream: a meek and innocent dove was coming to her, whom she was to receive as was fitting. For the seven years she spent there, Daria served the sisters with great humility, in the refectory, taking, according to her life, hot pots from the oven with bare hands, and keeping silence. To live in a monastery a passport was needed. Receiving it, she set out on pilgrimages to holy places, seeking a stricter life. Her wanderings ended when her father built for her, at the age of thirty-⁠five, a cell in the village of Golovinshchina, where for twelve years she baked prosphora for the churches round about.

Sezenovo

In 1817 Daria met the fool for Christ John, in the cell of the elder hieroschemamonk Agapitus of the Zadonsk Monastery, who told her to take John to Father Hilarion. Hilarion refused to take John into his service, saying that it was not John but he who must serve John, for John was older. Then Prince Fyodor Nikolaevich Nesvitsky, the owner of the village of Sezenovo, came to Hilarion, whom the elder persuaded to house John on his estate. The prince did not dare to refuse, for he had seen in a dream that God willed John to live at Sezenovo. Daria, who lived at Golovshchino, visited the recluse and received spiritual counsels from him. In 1828 she built herself a small cell not far from his and, for God's sake, began to serve him. With his wise teachings the recluse prepared her for the great labour to which God had brought her at Sezenovo: to be a builder of churches and a good mother not only for the future nuns but also for the laity who came to her for counsel.

A year before his death, in 1838, Venerable John began to build a stone church with seven altars, in the name of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. After his death Daria continued. But evil people drove her from Sezenovo by all kinds of schemes, and she went to the Borisov women's hermitage in the Belgorod district. Those who had driven her out, the envious, who had taken the building upon themselves, could not continue it and were forced to ask her to return. The ascetic took up her work again, and the seven-⁠altar church was raised in three years. John's cell she turned into the church of the Transfiguration. She began the building of the church of the Nativity of Christ. By her care a well was dug, whose water had healing power.

On 1 October 1849, with the sanction of the emperor, a women's community was opened, called the Sezenovo John community. Venerable Daria was elected its head. And on 11 April 1853, with the blessing of the Holy Synod, the community was turned into the John-⁠Kazan women's monastery. The first abbess of the monastery, because of the old age of Daria, was her faithful helper, Euphimia Morgacheva, tonsured with the name Seraphima, made abbess in 1855. Daria, laying down the burden of leadership, did not cease to labour for the monastery until her death. She had a firm and decisive character and was gentle and welcoming to all. For her labours she received from the Lord the gift of insight.

Repose and veneration

Three years before her death she ordered cut down an apple tree that grew on the right of the church of the Transfiguration, foretelling that her grave would be there. After a short illness, Venerable Daria ended her earthly labours on 28 July 1858, in the eighty-⁠fifth year of her life. They wished to bury her under the church, as a builder of churches, but did not receive permission. They buried her in the very place she had indicated. In 1864, in the place of the little church of the Transfiguration, a two-⁠storey stone church was raised, in the name of the Holy Trinity, under which her grave also came to lie. According to her will, after her death a shelter for children and a girls' school were opened in the monastery. In 1930 the monastery was closed. On 25-26 July 2005, in the cave church of the Trinity cathedral, the remains of two skeletons were found, and with the blessing of Bishop Nikon of Lipetsk they were reburied there. At the site of the monastery restoration work is under way and a small women's community functions. Venerable Daria was glorified in 1988, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tambov, and in 2002, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Voronezh and Lipetsk.