Maria Grosheva

Holy Venerable Martyr Maria Grosheva, a novice (1876-1938), and her sister, Holy Venerable Martyr Matrona (born 1882), were daughters of the peasants Naum and Platonida Groshev of the village of Varyukovka, near Yegoryevsk in the Ryazan province. Of the family's five children, three girls once went to an elder honoured for his foresight; to Maria and Matrona he said to go to the monastery, while Pelagia, the third, was sent into an unbelieving family, where her patience at last brought her husband to church.

Life at Tugoles

In 1909 Maria and Matrona entered the Alexander-⁠Mariinsky monastery as novices: Maria worked in the tailoring shop, Matrona on the monastery farm. After the monastery was closed they went home and later moved into the watchman's house beside the churches of Tugoles, in the Moscow region. They stayed there two decades, baking prosphora, serving in the altar, cleaning the church, sewing quilts and tending their garden. The villagers loved them, and their nieces learned prayer and the reading of the Psalter from them.

The persecution reached Tugoles too. The chairman of the village council, Vasily Yazykov, would go out on the road to drive away those on their way to services. The warden hid the church keys by throwing them into the snow, and the sisters put liturgical objects in safety. After the arrest of the priest Nazarius Gribkov the church was closed, the bell tower pulled down and the building itself turned into a lemonade factory. From then on the sisters walked to the church at Petrovskoe, fifteen kilometres away, and urged their neighbours to come with them. In November 1937 the last two priests and the psalmist were arrested, and the sisters were left as the only ones in the region who could still read the Psalter over the dead and teach the faith.

Arrest and death

On 15 February 1938 Yazykov gave false testimony against them: that they went round to the collective farmers telling them to go to church instead of working, and read to them from books about the birth of Christ and the Last Judgement. On 26 February they were arrested and taken to Yegoryevsk. Maria admitted only that she kept church objects in the house and read the Psalter over the dead; Matrona said that she spoke to people about Christ but denied any agitation. On 11 March the NKVD troika condemned them, and on 20 March 1938 they were shot at Butovo and buried in the common grave.

Maria is commemorated on 20 March, the day of her death, in the new style, on the movable day around 29 May in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on the movable day around 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.