Eutychius Didenko

Holy Venerable Martyr Eutychius Didenko, a monk, was born in 1870 in the village of Nikolaevskoe in the Zmeinogorsk district of the Tomsk province, in the family of the peasant Ivan Didenko, and received at Baptism the name Emelian. He was a first cousin of the Optina hieromonk Lavrenty Levchenko, was married, was widowed and went to a monastery. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 5 December 1937.

Monastic life

For a time he stayed at the Kyiv Caves Lavra, then on 10 November 1901 he entered the skete of Saint John the Forerunner at Optina. On 20 November 1901 he was clothed in the cassock, and on 4 June 1905 tonsured a rasophore monk. His obedience was work on the monastery farm. He was small of stature, and everyone loved him for his simplicity and kindness. On 24 June 1911, at the skete's feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner, at a service celebrated in concelebration under the skete superior, Hegumen Barsanuphius Plikhankov, he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Eutychius.

At the vigil on Palm Sunday, 14 April 1917, a temptation befell him that can be understood as a foretelling of what was to come. He was at the monastery farm when a wolf ran into the already locked yard and caused a great uproar. Father Eutychius came out with a pitchfork against it, but the hungry beast was not frightened and flung itself at the monk, and a fierce struggle followed. In the end the wolf fled, but Father Eutychius was severely wounded and had to be sent urgently to hospital in Moscow.

After the godless closed the monastery in 1923, Father Eutychius first lived in Kozelsk with the cell attendants of the Elder Nectarius, Peter Shvyrev and the hierodeacon Sebastian Fomin, and in the 1930s he settled in one house with the Optina monks Avenir Sinitsyn and Savva Suslov. He earned his living by helping with people's household tasks and serving in church.

Arrest

He was arrested on 30 October 1937 and imprisoned in the town of Sukhinichi. On 4 November the duty witnesses were questioned, a neighbour and the landlady of the house in which the monks Eutychius, Avenir and Savva lived. The neighbour said the landlady kept the monks specially because they prayed to God, and that they did nothing useful and went from house to house. The landlady declared that each monk lived in his own cell, and that a monk, Vincent Nikolsky, had come that summer to Father Eutychius, served and left, after which Father Eutychius began to recover. She added that he had said that now everyone was being put in prison because elections were coming and priests had already been arrested. At the inquiry Father Eutychius confirmed that things had been better in the time of the monastery, that the monks then gathered at the services, and that until recently all had kept the monastic way of life. The investigator told him he was closely connected with the former dean Gregory Nikolsky, meanwhile arrested. He answered that he knew him well, had visited him and met him in church, that he was a good man and defended the monks, but that he himself had done no work against the Soviet authorities. On 16 November, at a second interrogation, he said the same.

Martyrdom

On 21 November 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced the monks Eutychius, Avenir, Savva, Mark Makhrov and the layman Boris Kozlov to death by shooting. Being in prison, they spent the very day of the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, 4 December, in prayer. The next day, 5 December 1937, they were shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 5 December (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February on a movable day, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga on 31 July, and in the Synaxis of All Saints who shone at Optina on 24 October.