Rachel of Spaso-⁠Borodino

Holy Venerable Rachel of Spaso-⁠Borodino (Korotkova), a schema-⁠nun and spiritual elder, was born in a rich merchant family of Dorogobuzh, Smolensk province. From childhood she was devout, loved prayer and pilgrimages to holy places, hospitality to strangers and love for the poor.

On a pilgrimage to the Kyiv Caves Lavra Venerable Theodosius appeared to her and blessed her for the monastic struggle. Leaving the vanity and riches of the world, she left her parents' home and, strengthened by the blessing of the Mother of God on her virginity, settled in 1861 at the Holy Mountain Dormition Hermitage in the Izyum district, Kharkiv province. In 1867 Maria, as she was called in the world, was moved to the Bishop's Monastery in Serpukhov, and in 1872 she passed to the Spaso-⁠Borodino convent, where she stayed all her life.

On 13 March 1885, in the second week of Great Lent, the rasophore novice Pavla (the name given her by St Philaret, metropolitan of Moscow, at her tonsure into the rason) was tonsured into the mantle with the name Mitrodora and given the obedience of altar server. Before this, Venerable Theodosius of the Caves appeared to her in a dream and gave her a censer full of coals and incense. The nun Mitrodora saw angels at the Holy Altar several times and a white dove above the Holy Gifts, and she was given to see the spiritual state of the priests who served, which later showed in her counsel to priests and laity. When she was over seventy, the Lord showed her in a vision an enormous coffin with a schema-⁠nun in it, a sign that she would receive the highest monastic rank. On 17 November 1915 she was tonsured into the schema with the name Rachel. While she prayed in the church, fasting, the Mother of God appeared to her again. After the schema she was named head of the monastery's almshouse.

The sisters and pilgrims began to turn to her for counsel and guidance. When she was once asked for a blessing, the old woman, amazed, prayed all night, and toward morning, dozing in her chair, saw the Mother of God, who blessed her and told her that all her requests for people would be fulfilled and that She Herself would bless through her those who were blessed by her. This was the blessing for the labour of eldership, for which the Lord had prepared her all her life. Contemporaries bear witness to her foresight and wonders. She also foresaw her departure: on 8 September 1928 she told several visitors that she saw them for the last time, asked that the monastery confessor, Father Andrew, be called with the Holy Gifts, received communion for the last time and from then on tasted nothing more. She departed to the Lord in the first hour of the night of 9 to 10 October 1928. As she had foretold, she was buried on the eve of the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, in the cemetery by the south-⁠east wall of the monastery.

She is commemorated on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.