Jonah of Odessa

Righteous Jonah of Odessa, archpriest, known in the world as Father Jonah Atamansky, was one of the great pastors of Russia in the early twentieth century. He lived from 1855 to 1924, and Odessa honours him as its protector and wonderworker.

Childhood and calling

He was born on 14 September 1855 (in 1852 according to some researchers), on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in the Slobodka quarter of Odessa. His father Moses was a deacon at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, and his mother was named Glykeria. Orphaned early, he spent days and nights at his parents' grave, weaving wreaths of flowers. He knew hunger and wandering on the streets near the sea, until an uncle and a former nurse took him in and sent him to school.

His mother, dying, had told him she wished him to be a good shepherd. Tradition says that she appeared to him in dreams and comforted him, and that in one dream she kept him from boarding a steamer that sank that very day. He went on to the church school, where he was noted for his gift for singing. He married Anastasia, and they had nine children, three sons and six daughters.

Pastoral ministry

In 1884 he was ordained deacon and two years later priest by Archbishop Nikanor, who said of him that he sensed a special grace upon him. For eight years he served as a village missionary in Kardashovka, a village inhabited mainly by Stundists, a sect, and through his conversations and prayers two hundred of them, together with their leader, joined the Orthodox Church. From 1897 he served at the Dormition church in Odessa, and on 3 June 1901 he took leave of the faithful and moved to the church of Saint Nicholas at the port, where he remained to the end.

There he showed boundless mercy. His house was open to the afflicted, and the poor, orphans and homeless people were fed at his table. In Great Lent the church stood open day and night, he served the midnight office with akathists and gave out blessed bread. It is said that he knew the faithful by name and read their thoughts. He also composed church melodies, among them a setting for the service of the Dormition of the Mother of God and a chant for the memorial service.

Miracles

Many sick and possessed people were brought to him, and through his prayer they were healed. One of the best known accounts concerns a child born blind whom the eye surgeon Vladimir Filatov could not cure. After Father Jonah prayed for nine nights, the child received sight on the tenth day. The Soviet authorities opened a trial, but Professor Filatov testified that this was the very child he had been unable to cure, and the trial ended without any sentence. It is related that Filatov afterwards remained the priest's friend.

Saint John of Kronstadt is said to have told southerners who came to him that they had their own John of Kronstadt in Odessa. Sailors did not leave port without his blessing. Father Jonah stayed faithful to Patriarch Tikhon during the Renovationist and autocephalist schisms, and priests of the Renovationist party who had erred came to him to repent before the people. At the Annunciation convent, shortly before his end, he is said to have told the nuns that he saw two hundred martyrs' crowns above them, and indeed two hundred nuns were tortured in the time of persecution.

Repose and veneration

In 1921, during the confiscation of church valuables, he was arrested, but a crowd gathered on Marazlievskaya Street and the authorities had to release him. A severe uremia brought his life to its end, and on 17 May 1924 (30 May, new style) he passed to the Lord. The faithful came in such numbers to his funeral that the procession lasted from four in the afternoon until late at night, and the dockworkers carried the coffin on their shoulders to the cemetery in Slobodka.

At his own wish he was buried beside his parents, not in the port church, which he had foretold would be destroyed. His grave has remained a place of prayer and healing. Since 1995 he has been venerated as a locally honoured saint of the Diocese of Odessa, and his day of commemoration is 30 May (new style).