Matthew Aleksandrov

Holy Hieromartyr Matthew Aleksandrov, a priest, with the full name Matthew Ivanovich Aleksandrov, was born in 1872 in the village of Verkhny Rogachik, near Melitopol. He finished the Theological Seminary at Kyiv and served as priest at the church of Saint Nicholas in his native village. Father Matthew was a devout preacher, full of Christian virtues: strict with himself, sober, attentive to himself, merciful to those around him; for everyone he had love and fatherly counsel. One thing only he could not bear: the revolutionary moods preaching general destruction and militant atheism. He saw not only the shortcomings of the country but also the horrors of the coming changes, but he trusted in the mercy of God and strengthened parish life with all his power. After the revolution he called people still more insistently to prayer and repentance, and many who had fallen away from the faith returned to Mother Church.

On 10 December 1920 he was arrested and stayed in the Cheka of Zaporozhye awaiting shooting until 29 August 1921. Only after the Dormition was he released for a short time. He served as before with zeal, preached unceasingly, rebuking every injustice, and did not attach himself to any schism, which alarmed the authorities. They resolved to close the church and confiscate the church property. On the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple Father Matthew gave a sermon in which he called the parishioners to save the church of Saint Nicholas from desecration. A commission was formed, to whose session he was also summoned. He proposed gathering a parish meeting to discuss an alternative, but was forbidden, and on 12 December 1921 he was arrested. The charge was: "Malicious and conscious counter-⁠revolution and anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The fact of the crime to be held proven." Three days later the trial took place. Father Matthew stood bravely both at the interrogation and at the trial. He refuted all the charges, but this no longer interested the persecutors of the faith. To avoid unrest among the people, he was shot in haste, by decision of the provincial troika, right after the trial, on 15 December 1921.

He is commemorated on 15 December, the day of his death, in the new style, on 2 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Crimean Metropolis, on 28 December in the Synaxis of the Saints of Crimea and on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.