Joseph Gavrilov

Holy Venerable Martyr Joseph Gavrilov was a hieromonk of the Raifa hermitage near Kazan, shot in 1930 for his confession of the faith. He is one of the new martyrs of Raifa.

Monastic labours

Ivan Illarionovich Gavrilov was born on 16 October 1888 into a family of devout peasants. He spent twelve years as a novice in the Raifa monastery before he was tonsured into the mantle. At his interrogation in 1930 he said that his religious convictions had brought him to the monastery. At first he was a novice in the guesthouse and at the apiary. In 1910 he was taken into the army as librarian of the Officers' Assembly, in 1914 he was demobilized and lived two or three months in the monastery, and then he was taken again to the war, as a cook. Of the revolution he later said that, being at the front, he knew that nothing good would come of it.

In 1917 he returned to the monastery, but in 1918 and at the beginning of 1919 he was drafted into a labour battalion unloading railway cars. From 1919 he did not leave the monastery again until his arrest. On 4 January 1920 he was tonsured into the mantle by Abbot Theodosius Luzgin, later archimandrite and abbot of the Raifa hermitage, and in the same year he received the rank of hierodeacon.

The closing of the monastery and the arrest

In June 1928 the Raifa hermitage was closed. The peasants of the surrounding villages formed a community, which included seven of the thirty former inhabitants of the monastery, Father Joseph among them. The monastery church became a parish church, and he was chosen as its rector, although the monastery had hieromonks of older ordination. The monks continued to perform the sacraments, to hear confessions, to baptize, to bury, and even to serve the Liturgy. Peasants came to them from all over Tatarstan, Chuvashia and Mari.

On 23 January 1930 the first arrests took place, in the village of Belaya Bezvodnaya, where the monks had settled: nineteen people. On 27 January, the day of remembrance of the fathers slain at Sinai and Raithu, those who remained gathered in the parish church for its patronal feast. It was the last Liturgy of the Raifa brotherhood, served in red vestments, and the brethren received Holy Communion for the last time, strengthening one another for the trials ahead. After the Liturgy they served a molieben before the icon of the fathers of Sinai and Raithu. While they were still at prayer the church was surrounded and everyone inside was arrested, and the aged monks and the nearly blind nuns were driven in trucks to Kazan.

Martyrdom

The authorities brought three charges against the monks: agitation against the measures of Soviet power, the killing of seven Red Army soldiers in 1918, in which no monk of Raifa had taken part, and the concealment of monastery property. The trial was called "The Case of the Raifa Monks, Kazan, 1930". Neither the threats of the investigators nor the harshness of prison broke Father Joseph. At his interrogation he said that he had belonged to no political party, that he accepted authority as given by God, but that an authority from God must do God's will, while the Soviet one closes churches, mocks holy icons and teaches children to be godless. He testified that he was a true believer, that he believed in Christ's Resurrection and Second Coming, and that he could not admit guilt.

On 20 February 1930 he was sentenced to death by an OGPU troika of the Tatar Republic. He was shot on 7 April 1930, the day of the Annunciation. In 1996 he was numbered among the locally venerated saints of the Diocese of Kazan. He is commemorated on 27 January, on 7 February (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 17 October, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan, in new style.