Matthias Voznesensky

Holy Hieromartyr Matthias Voznesensky, a priest (1860-1919), the son of a sexton of the Kursk province, served almost thirty-⁠five years in the village of Foshchevatoe and was killed in his garden by Budyonny's men. He was born on 9 August 1860, on the day of the Apostle Matthias, in a family of eleven children; he studied at the Belgorod seminary as a poor sexton's son and was psalmist at Novy Oskol. In 1885 he married Anna Bogoyavlenskaya, whose brothers became bishops (Metropolitan Eleutherius of Lithuania and Bishop Isidore of Tallinn), and the same year was ordained priest and sent to the church of the Ascension at Foshchevatoe.

His service

Father Matthias directed the church literacy school, built a new church in 1896 and from 1908 began a great stone cathedral, whose brick walls had risen by the war of 1914. In 1911 the parish contributed to the shrine of Saint Joasaph of Belgorod. He received the epigonation (1891), the skufia (1903) and the kamilavka (1912), and from 1911 was dean over fourteen parishes. He met Bishop Nikodim of Belgorod, with whom he later received martyrdom in the same year and glorification on the same day.

Martyrdom

In 1919 he was called out of his house at night and killed in his garden, then buried shallow, bent over, in a small pit. The family heard the shots and found him in the morning. His children stayed in the house, with windows onto the same garden. The church of Foshchevatoe was demolished in 1957. He is the father of the Martyr Michael Voznesensky († 1937) and was glorified in the year 2000. A note on the page shows that the correct name is Matthias, not Matthew, as was wrongly written.

He is commemorated on 1 June, in the new style, on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk and on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.