John Vinogradov

Holy Hieromartyr John Vinogradov, a protopresbyter, was born on 5 January 1879 in the village of Preobrazhenskoe in the Serpukhov district of the Moscow province, in the family of the psalmist Paul Vinogradov. In 1901 Ivan Pavlovich finished the Moscow Theological Seminary and was named teacher of religion and of the Church Slavonic language at the Spaso-⁠Nalivkovskaya parish school in Moscow. In 1903 he married Maria Feodorovna Chertkova and in the same year was ordained deacon for the church of the Nikita women's monastery in Moscow, and in 1905 priest, at the church on the monastery farm.

Service

Besides the service in church he bore other obediences: between 1905 and 1917 he was head and teacher of religion of the Seraphim parish school, from 1910 to 1918 teacher of religion at the zemstvo school of Puchkovo, between 1911 and 1915 chairman of the Seraphim Temperance Brotherhood and head of the people's house and library at the factory of the Krestovnikov brothers, in 1914-1916 guardian of the families of reservists and chairman of the committee for refugees, and member of the Moscow district section of the diocesan school council. In 1914 he fell gravely ill; to a spiritual daughter who nursed him he wrote: "Pray, labour and endure, and you will enter the chambers of your beloved Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ." In 1919 he fell ill with typhus and was taken to the hospital of the Krestovnikov factory; he recovered, but the illness left him with a weak heart and dilated veins in the legs.

In 1919 he received the pectoral cross, in 1921 was raised to the rank of protopresbyter, and in 1922 was named rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Chashnikovo, Moscow district. From 1924 he was dean of the third district of the Moscow district and member of the Moscow diocesan council beside the holy Patriarch Tikhon. In December 1927, feeling that arrest and suffering were unavoidable, he wrote and carried on him a note with his address, to be found if anything befell him on the road. On 25 February 1930, because of his activity as dean, he was arrested and accused of having "organized around him the clergy of the neighbourhood, held illegal conferences at his home, in which he instructed the clergy in anti-⁠Soviet activity". He rejected the false testimonies and said that all his sermons were of an exclusively religious character. On 22 March 1930 the OGPU troika sentenced him to three years of exile at Arkhangelsk.

On his return, in 1934, Bishop John (Shirokov) of Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo, vicar of the Moscow diocese, named him rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Vysheletz and in the same year he received the mitre. He was a man of unusual meekness and humility, never raised his voice, but with his children was strict when they deserved it. With the parishioners he took no money for services, and people helped him with what they could, mostly food. Once he was called to a dying man far from the village and horses were sent for him. He heard the man's confession and gave him communion, but on the way back he refused the horses, saying that tomorrow they would need them in their farm. The evening passed quickly into night, and in the thick forest it became dark. While the moon shone he knew where he was going, but when the moon hid, he lost his way and was cold. Tired, he sat down to rest and saw near him, on a stump, an old man dressed in white, who asked: "What are you looking for, father?" "I am looking for my church, my home, I am lost." "But look, right in front of you is your church." He looked and indeed he was near the church. He wanted to thank the old man, but he was no longer there. Arriving home, he first served a thanksgiving prayer service to Saint Nicholas, in whose honour the church was consecrated.

Martyrdom

On 27 November 1937 he was arrested again and imprisoned at Butyrka in Moscow. He was accused of anti-⁠Soviet activity, namely of having said aloud that his exile of 1930 was unlawful and that by the will of the Bolsheviks many people suffer innocently in camps, and that, to undermine the collective farm, he held solemn services longer than usual, from which allegedly resulted the peasants' failure to turn out for work. The protopresbyter rejected all the accusations categorically. Asked about his church activity, he said that it began in 1903, as deacon, then as priest, and that he had received from the Holy Synod the pectoral cross, the rank of protopresbyter and the mitre. Asked whether he admitted guilt of anti-⁠Soviet activity, he answered: "I did not engage in anti-⁠Soviet activity, I do not admit guilt." On 5 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Protopresbyter John Vinogradov was shot on 9 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

After the saint's death

After the arrest his wife Maria Feodorovna devoted herself to the spiritual and church life, did not leave home except for church, sang in the choir in the village of Vinogradovo and spoke with no one. She and her son Seraphim tried to learn the fate of the priest, but at the NKVD they were told: "If you keep coming, we shall evict you. Do not come and do not look for him." In Vysheletz there had been two wooden churches, one for summer and one for winter. One burned soon after the priest's arrest, the other was plundered; some locals carried off the icons, chopped them and burned them in stoves, and after the war German prisoners were held in the church. A local chairman made a house of the church for himself, but could not live in it.

The Church commemorates him on 9 December, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo (29 May) and of the Saints of Moscow (5 September).