Mark Makhrov

Holy Venerable Martyr Mark Makhrov, a monk, was born on 3 October 1875 in the village of Zaitsevo in the Babichevo volost, Maloyaroslavets district, Kaluga province, in the family of the peasant Emelian Makhrov, and at Baptism received the name Michael. In 1899 he entered the Optina Hermitage, where he carried the obedience of gardener. On 24 June 1911, on the patronal feast of Saint John the Forerunner, on the same day as the monk Eutychius, he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Mark. His spiritual father was the hieromonk Nectarius (Tikhonov), the Venerable elder of Optina.

From 1923, after the closing of the monastery, the monk Mark settled in Kozelsk, earning his living by helping the locals with various jobs, and the rest of the time praying at the church services or in his cell. In 1937 the last period of the persecution came, and the monks of Optina who had remained at liberty in Kozelsk were arrested. On 30 October 1937 the monk Mark was arrested and shut in prison at Sukhinichi. At the investigation he said that the monks had kept the monastic traditions, taken part in the church services and supported themselves by occasional work; that earlier in the monastery life was better, they had bread and lodging, and after the monastery was closed, when they were refused work, life grew worse, and now it was altogether bad.

In the same case were tried the monks Eutychius (Didenko), Avenir (Sinitsyn), Savva (Suslov) and the layman Boris Kozlov, born on 23 July 1886 in the village of Sleptsovo, who had become warden of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God at Pokrovskoe, and sang in the choir beside the monks and nuns of Kozelsk. On 21 November 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced all to death by shooting. It pleased the Lord that on the day of the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, 4 December, they should remain in prayer, though in prison, yet still on earth. The next day, 5 December 1937, the monks Eutychius, Avenir, Savva, Mark and the warden Boris Kozlov were shot and buried in an unmarked common grave.

He is commemorated on 5 December, the day of his death, in the new style, on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 31 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga and on 24 October in the Synaxis of All the Saints Who Shone Forth in Optina Hermitage.