John of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr John of Valaam is numbered among the thirty-⁠four monastics killed by the Swedes at the Valaam monastery in 1578. In its long history the monastery, near the border of the lands of Great Novgorod with Sweden, was many times plundered by the Swedes. Under King Gustav Vasa (1523-1560) Sweden passed through the Reformation. In the time of his son, John III, a band of soldiers, recent Lutherans, filled, according to Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), with a fanatical zeal for their newborn faith, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed over the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery.

On 20 February 1578 eighteen blessed elders and sixteen novices were killed for their steadfastness in the Orthodox faith. Their names, with the note "killed by the Germans on Valaam, elders and servants", were entered in a synodikon that later came to the Vasilievsky monastery. John is named there among the monks, after the hieromonk Titus, the schemamonk Tikhon and other monks. The attacks of the Swedes continued, and on Valaam there is no stone that was not sealed with the blood of ascetics.

In the nineteenth century one of the monks of Valaam, near the hermitage of the elder Nazarius, had a vision of unknown monks who walked in two rows out of a green grove bathed in sun, singing burial prayers in the old chant of the choir. They had radiant faces and eyes of matchless gentleness, but were sprinkled with blood and covered with wounds, and the grass where they passed was not trampled. They vanished as they had come, in the green thicket. With the blessing of Abbot Damascene, on the day of the martyrdom of the thirty-⁠four monastics, 20 February (4 March in the new style), the Divine Liturgy for their eternal repose was served every year at the Valaam monastery, followed by a general memorial service.

They were numbered among the saints of the Russian Church, for veneration throughout the Church, at the Council of Bishops in August 2000. His commemoration falls on 5 March, on a movable day, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 22 August, on a movable day, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.