Raphael Sheychenko

Holy Confessor Raphael Sheychenko, a hieromonk, was a monk of Optina, spent many years in camps for his faith and served as a priest in Kozelsk until his death on 19 June 1957. His relics were found in 2007 and are kept today at Optina.

Optina

In the world he was called Rodion and was born in 1891 in the village of Velikaya Mikhailovka, Novy Oskol district, Kursk province, in the family of the Little Russian peasant Ivan Sheychenko, who worked as a shoemaker and bookbinder. In 1906 he finished the parish school and attended a zemstvo school for three years, then worked as a shoemaker, like his father. In 1913 he was drafted into the army, where he finished a school for veterinary assistants, received the rank of non-⁠commissioned officer and served in the Volhynian Uhlan regiment until 1918. Returning from the front, he took leave of his family and went to Optina, where he had been several times a pilgrim and labourer. Later, from the camp, he told how he stood at the monastery gates one May morning, torn between the voice of youth and flesh, crying out what he was leaving behind, and the call of the soul, until he saw in his mind an angel above the gate holding a cross and a crown and understood that without the cross there is no crown; he crossed the threshold with reverence and took up the cross. On 26 August 1918 he was received as a novice at Optina, where he worked as a veterinary assistant and in the choir.

From 1918 Optina was closed; the authorities turned it into a breeding farm, but the brotherhood stayed and could keep the services. In 1923 the monastery was finally abolished, and the monks moved to Kozelsk, to private lodgings. The novice Rodion began to earn his living by shoemaking. In 1928 the Optina hieromonk Macarius (Chilikin), with the blessing of Bishop Stephen of Maloyaroslavets, tonsured him into the mantle with the name Raphael, in honour of the Archangel Raphael, healer of sicknesses. In the same year Bishop Herman of Masalsk ordained him hierodeacon and archdeacon, and for ten months he served beside the bishop. In 1929 he refused to follow him to Alma-⁠Ata, bound in soul to Optina, returned to Kozelsk and served at the church of St George.

The camps

In 1930, when the persecution grew harsher, the OGPU decided to arrest a group of Optina monks, charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation and with having stirred up the peasants in the disorders at Kozelsk on the day of the Holy Spirit, 9 June 1930. On 18 August 1930, on the eve of the feast of the Transfiguration, forty monks and laymen were arrested, among them the archdeacon Raphael. At the interrogation of 2 September he said, in brief, that he did not admit guilt, that he had not belonged to any counter-⁠revolutionary group, and that the spiritual guidance of the brotherhood had been given through confession to confessors. On 27 November 1930 an OGPU troika sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment and sent him to the Vishera camp in the Urals. In 1934 he was moved to the camp at Dmitrov, near Moscow, where he worked as a veterinary assistant at the pig farm of the Ermolino state farm; he lived in an empty pen and ate what was given to the pigs, which was a stroke of luck compared with the other prisoners. He did not hide his faith: at a visit he was given the Gospel, a prayer book and an icon, and he prayed undisturbed, sometimes inviting other prisoners. Even the common-⁠law women prisoners bowed before him and greeted him with, Hello, Father.

On 21 June 1936 an NKVD officer reported that the prisoner Sheychenko was carrying on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation; he was searched, and letters and poems found were used as evidence. He declared, in brief, that he had never carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation anywhere; on 13 September 1936 a closed court sentenced him to six years of deprivation of liberty and five years without rights. He was sent to Murmansk, then, after four years, to Usollag in Solikamsk. He was freed on 18 November 1943, but was not permitted to live in Kozelsk and lived for a time at Kirsanov, with a devout old woman; in April 1944 he returned to Kozelsk.

Priest in Kozelsk

On 1 October 1944 Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) of Krutitsy ordained him hieromonk in the church of the Dormition in Goncharakh, Moscow, and named him, at the community's request, rector of the Annunciation church in Kozelsk. The church had been damaged by the Germans and the Soviets; Father Raphael rebuilt it by hand, and by 1949 it was almost restored, with an iconostasis. He was a good shepherd and helped his neighbours; the Shamordino nuns returned from exile, ill, found help with him, his cell was open to all, and many chose him as confessor. From his surviving letters his teaching appears: that suffering purifies us like gold in the furnace, that earthly life is less than a moment before eternity, that we must forgive everyone and pray for enemies. From 1948 he was watched by the MGB, with an agent even in his own church, and when he protested with the starosta against the excessive taxes, the complaints were not accepted.

On 9 July 1949 he was called by telegram to Kaluga, and on 11 July he was arrested in the office of the commissioner. Among the accusations in the file were sermons about the Three-⁠Handed icon of the Mother of God, about the holy martyrs Faith, Hope and Love, and about excessive taxes for priests. He explained that his sermons had been about the life of St John of Damascus and about the courage of faith and that he had made no comparison with the condition of workers in the USSR. On 12 November 1949 the Special Council sentenced him to ten years in a camp, and on 26 November he was sent to Vyatlag, in the Kirov region. The faithful suspected that he was arrested through the fault of the new rector, Sergius Shumilin, and of the former church warden, Natalia Alexandrova, but Father Raphael advised them not to look for the guilty, but to forgive and pray for them; he had forgiven everyone already on 11 July 1949. In the letters from the camp he wrote, Glory to God for all things. Camp labour stayed hard for him, but his soul, he wrote, was free. After Stalin's death, in March 1953, the faithful asked for his release, but the Central Commission upheld the sentence in August 1954. He was freed in 1955, in the wave of releases from the camps.

On 5 October 1955 Bishop Onesiphorus of Kaluga named him second priest at the Annunciation church in Kozelsk, under the same Sergius Shumilin. He came back with his health still weaker, but his spirit still more ardent. Every Sunday he invited the beggars to tea and cared for them. He served as often as he could, refused no one and received all who were spiritually thirsty. In the spring of 1957, although ill, he spent the Saturday of the dead (8 June) in the cemetery until late evening, at memorial services. He fell gravely ill; Sergius Shumilin gave him communion and anointed him with holy oil, and on 19 June 1957 he departed to the Lord. At the funeral the coffin took almost a whole day to go from the house to the cemetery, because of the many people who wished to take leave of him.

Father Raphael was buried in the old cemetery of Kozelsk. His name was entered in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church. On 22 June 2007, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, his relics were found, and are kept today at Optina. He is commemorated on 19 June, on 22 June (the finding of his relics), on 31 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga, on 21 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka, on 24 October in the Synaxis of all the Saints who shone at Optina and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.