Paul Lazarev

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Lazarev, a priest, was born on 19 November 1877 in the town of Kolyvan on the Ob, in the family of a townsman. He studied at the veterinary and medical orderly school in Tomsk, and between 1900 and 1903 was an orderly in an artillery battalion. In 1904 he was a choir director at the church of Saint Nicholas in Nikolsk-⁠Ussuriysk. In 1908 he married Claudia Nikolaevna and they had four children: Evgeny, Lev, Varvara and Militina. He could have continued the family business with his brothers, well-⁠known construction engineers of the region, but asked Archbishop Eusebius of Vladivostok to accept him for service: I have an irresistible attraction to church service. Without seminary education, he was given the obedience of psalmist, then organized the singing and choir at the convent in Ussuriysk, and in 1912 was ordained deacon and in 1915 priest. In 1918 he was priest of the Holy Trinity church in the village of Antonovka, in the Primorye region.

Father Paul collected food aid from parishioners for the poor and carried it himself to the needy, and taught the children the faith and the Law of God. One day, during the service, some armed men entered the church, blasphemed the Saviour and mocked holy things; the priest came out calmly and went on with the censing. The people took heart, and the partisans did not dare arrest him then. But a few days later, on the eve of Pentecost, a villager warned him that the red partisans would come at night and proposed that he hide with relatives in Spassk. The priest refused.

When nine armed men entered the house at night and announced his arrest, he was already dressed and waiting for them. He stood before the icons of the Saviour and the Mother of God, prayed, put his cross on his breast, took leave and blessed the children. To his wife he said: Do not grieve, pray to the Queen of Heaven, she will not leave you. They took him to the neighbouring village of Nikitovka, to the primary school, where the interrogation took place. The commander told him that God does not exist and that priests are the tsar's servants who invented Him to keep the people in fear. He was offered freedom on condition that in church he tell the people that he had deceived them all and take off his cross and cassock before everyone. The priest answered firmly that he would not renounce God and was ready to die for Christ.

He was shot in the forest near Nikitovka and left gravely wounded to die, on the day of Pentecost in 1919 (by some data 26 May/8 June; in the register of the church at Spasskoe his death is entered under 20 May/2 June 1919). The villager and his wife, brought under threat to dig the grave, saw that the man had lived on for a time. In August 1919 the peasants found his secret grave; the body was untouched by corruption, but the partisans did not allow a Christian burial and burned the remains. On 31 October 1919 the official funeral service was held. He was numbered among the saints by decision of the Holy Synod of 26 December 2019.

He is commemorated on 2 June (20 May, old style) and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.