Matrona Grosheva

Holy Venerable Martyr Matrona Grosheva, a novice (1882-1938), was the sister of the Holy Venerable Martyr Maria Grosheva. They were daughters of the peasants Naum and Platonida Groshev of Varyukovka, near Yegoryevsk. Told by a spiritual elder to go to the monastery, they entered the Alexander-⁠Mariinsky monastery in 1909 as novices: Matrona worked on the monastery farm, Maria in the tailoring shop. After the monastery was closed they lived twenty years at the churches of Tugoles, baking prosphora, serving in the altar and sewing quilts. When the priests were arrested and the churches closed, they remained the only ones in the region who still read the Psalter over the dead and urged people to pray; the chairman of the village council, Vasily Yazykov, made a lemonade factory of the church.

Questioning and death

On the basis of Yazykov's false testimony the sisters were arrested on 26 February 1938. Matrona told the investigator that for twenty years she had lived with her sister on the church's alms, that faith was spoken of in their house and that people from afar could stay the night, but denied counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and services at home. She admitted only that she had told collective farmers that work could wait on feast days and that, after the church was closed, she went to Petrovskoe, sometimes together with collective farmers. On 11 March the NKVD troika condemned them, and on 20 March 1938 they were shot at Butovo and buried in the common grave.

She 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.