Elijah of Makeevka

Elijah of Makeevka was a schemamonk born in 1837, a struggler at the Skete of St Elias on Athos, then an elder sought out by the people of Makeevka in the Donetsk region. He reposed in 1946, aged 109, and was canonized in 2012 by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a locally venerated saint of the Donetsk diocese.

Named Ilya Yakovlevich Ganzha in the world, he was born in a settlement called Makeevka, in the Don Host region. At fifteen he set out, in his own words, to look for the holy places. It is not known where he was tonsured or how he spent the ninety years before; he only said that he had a cell in a place hard to reach, to which food was sent by rope. He struggled many years in the Skete of St Elias on Athos, from where he probably moved in the early twentieth century to the Kiev Caves Lavra. In 1927 he returned to Makeevka, like other monks driven out by persecution. He went first to the Holy Trinity church at Kalinovo, and after its closure in 1936 moved into the town.

Almost to the end he had no dwelling of his own, taken in by faithful families, though sheltering a monk was dangerous. People held him a great man of prayer with the gift of foresight. He read the Gospel, akathists and the Psalter daily and rose at night to pray, waking the household too. He taught: do not stay home on Sundays and feasts, go to church. One account tells how he healed a sixteen-⁠year-⁠old girl, the daughter of a general from Khabarovsk, by making her pray and then commanding her to stand. He told those he helped that not the old man but God had healed them. After the war he received a small house, bought by his spiritual children, and lived there to the end. On Holy Wednesday, 17 April 1946 (an old-⁠style date), he passed to the Lord.

On 8 May 2012 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided his canonization. On 28 May 2012 his relics were found at Makeevka, and on 23 September 2012 the glorification took place in the Cathedral of St George in the city, where the relics rest.