Michael Makarov

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Makarov, a priest, was born in 1881 to the peasant Pyotr Makarov, in Penza province. In 1907 he graduated from the extended-⁠programme parish school at Poim and was appointed at the village of Poim assistant to the synodal missionary Archpriest Xenophon Kryuchkov, then known in many regions of Orthodox Russia. The village of Poim had long been noted for the large number of schismatics of various kinds. Not rarely children from schismatic families, sent to the parish school, listened attentively to the lessons of religion and joined Orthodoxy, which sometimes aroused such anger among the relatives that the priest had to shelter the new spiritual son in his own house. It is no wonder that Michael became the missionary's assistant, and from 1908 he also filled the post of reader at the Edinoverie church of the Dormition at Poim. On 5 May 1909 Father Xenophon died, and Michael was appointed assistant to the diocesan anti-⁠schism missionary and reader at the church of Saints Florus and Laurus in Kursk.

In 1911 he passed the examination for the title of teacher in a parish school. On 28 July 1912 he was ordained a priest for the church of Saint Paraskeva at the Kenoretsk graveyard, Kargopol district, Olonets province, and appointed third diocesan missionary and religion teacher at the zemstvo schools. He was married but soon was widowed. On 1 July 1913 he was appointed third missionary of the Kargopol district. On 21 January 1914 he was moved to the church of the Ascension in Tyumen and appointed anti-⁠schism missionary of the Tyumen and Yalutorovsk districts. In 1915, on the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, he visited the village of Rusakovka, where there was a sect of Seventh-⁠day Adventists, and held a very successful conversation with the inhabitants. The Old Believers of the Tyumen and Yalutorovsk districts numbered about thirty-⁠three thousand in 1915, among them a hundred and nine houses of prayer, and small groups of wanderers and fugitives.

When Archbishop Barnabas (Nakropin) was appointed to Tobolsk, he took Father Michael on his journeys through the diocese as a missionary and preacher and for sermons at episcopal services, among them at the glorification of Saint John, Metropolitan of Tobolsk. In the first months of 1917, extremely busy, he could not give the council of the Brotherhood of Saint Demetrius an account of his missionary activity, and this was reported to Bishop Hermogenes. The bishop relieved him of the duties of a parish priest and moved him to serve at the Znamensky cathedral in Tyumen, retaining his duties as diocesan missionary, which he carried out so successfully that the Tobolsk Diocesan Gazette wrote that his talks stopped "the spread of Baptism in Tyumen". Called to explain the reproach of inactivity, he answered that he had given reports for all the years of his service punctually to the diocesan missionary of the time, and those for January and February he had made while accompanying Archbishop Barnabas at Tobolsk. On 1 October 1917 he entered the theological classes of the Tobolsk seminary as a listener.

Later he joined the diocesan commission which negotiated with the Bolsheviks for the release of Bishop Hermogenes, and he won the crown of martyrdom, laying down his life for his friends. The diocesan delegation, which also included Archpriest Ephraim Dolganev, the bishop's brother, and the lawyer Konstantin Alexandrovich Minyatov, asked for the bishop's release on bail; when the sum was paid, Khokhryakov gave a receipt but, instead of releasing the bishop, ordered the members of the delegation arrested: Ephraim Dolganev, the priest Michael Makarov and Minyatov. Their martyric suffering preceded the death of Bishop Hermogenes on 16 June 1918. The page does not give the date or the circumstances of Father Michael's death, but says that he was killed because he joined the church delegation negotiating the terms of release of the great hierarch and confessor of the Christians, Bishop Hermogenes of Tobolsk and Siberia. A contemporary wrote of him that he was a "good shepherd", dedicated, modest yet boldly manly, winning hearts and love.

He is commemorated on 29 June, with Bishop Hermogenes and the other martyrs, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day), on 11 February with the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg, and on 23 June with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Tobolsk Metropolis.