Sebastian of Sokhota

Venerable Sebastian of Sokhota, also called Sebastian of Poshekhonye, was abbot of the Transfiguration Monastery on the river Sokhota, in the Poshekhonye region, who died in 1492. He is commemorated on 18 December and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl. Our input data gives 1500 as the year of birth, which cannot fit a death in 1492.

Almost nothing has been preserved about his childhood and worldly life, and the other data are few and fragmentary. It is known only that he lived in the fifteenth century. According to popular tradition, even in youth he felt an inclination to the ascetic life and entered one of the many monasteries of the time. He passed through various obediences, was tonsured a monk and ordained hierodeacon and then hieromonk.

Not content with the monastic labours within the monastery walls, Father Sebastian withdrew into the dense forests of Poshekhonye, on the river Sokhota, and built there a church of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Soon his solitude was discovered, other monks began to come and settle beside him, and under his direction a monastery took shape.

Living in a poor and cramped hut, Sebastian spent all his time in prayer, fasting and work: he carried water, chopped wood, ground grain, helped those who baked bread, spun wool, braided ropes and the like. He lived there until his death in 1492. His relics were laid under a slab in the monastery he had founded, which was closed in 1764. On its site an Orthodox women's community was opened in 1885, raised in 1889 to the status of the Transfiguration convent, called Sebastianovsky. His troparion, in the fourth tone, says that he withdrew from the world and settled in the wilderness, struggling well through hardship, attentiveness and prayers, and that after death he pours forth healings.