Macaria Saprykina

Holy Venerable Martyr Macaria Saprykina, a nun, in the world Praskovia Afanasievna Saprykina, was born on 28 October 1867 in the village of Telyazhye, in the Malo-⁠Arkhangelsk district of the Orel province. She finished the village school. In 1887 she entered as a novice the women's monastery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the city of Belev, Tula province.

The monastery was closed in 1921. Until 1930 Mother Macaria, deprived of civil rights, lived on the territory of the former monastery and worked at the church of Saint Stephen, which still served until 1931. On 1 June 1931 she was arrested for "taking part in organizing an illegal monastery at the church of Saint Stephen in Belev" and on 18 June 1931 was sentenced to five years of camp, converted to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. Released in 1936, she returned to Belev and, after the church was closed, worked in the artel "Krasny proizvoditel".

On 16 December 1937 she was arrested again, in the group case of Bishop Nikita (Pribytkov). She was accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and of "belonging to an underground monastery". On 30 December 1937 the NKVD troika of the Tula region sentenced her to death by shooting. The venerable martyr Macaria was shot on 8 January 1938, on the day of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God, and was buried with other martyrs in a common grave at the 162nd kilometre of the Simferopol highway.

She is commemorated on 8 January, the day of her death, in the new style, on 5 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tula, and on the movable day near 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.