Macarius Smirnov

Saint Macarius (in the world Mikhail Efimovich Smirnov), venerable martyr, was a monk and priest in Russia who received the martyr's death by shooting on 29 December 1937. He was glorified among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 29 December by the new style, which is 16 December by the old.

He was born on 1 April 1877 in the village of Melekhovo in the Novaya Ladoga district of the Saint Petersburg governorate, into a peasant family, the son of Euthymius and Anna. He attended the theological seminary, was tonsured a monk with the name Macarius, and received priestly ordination. He served as a parish priest.

In 1933 the state imposed heavy taxes on the church, and because they could not be paid, Father Macarius was sentenced to one year in a labour camp. After his release, the hieromonk Macarius served at the church in the village of Krasnaya Polyana, where he arrived in the summer of 1937, shortly before his last arrest and his martyrdom.

On 27 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death “for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation in the village.” The hieromonk Macarius was shot two days later, on 29 December 1937.