Theodore Bogoyavlensky

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore Bogoyavlensky, a priest, was born on 6 June 1894 (by other data, 1891) in the village of Barki in the Shatsk district of the Ryazan province. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 10 October 1937, near the town of Borisoglebsk, and was buried in an unmarked grave. He was canonized in 2002.

Life

His father, Vasily Afanasievich, was a priest, his mother, Alexandra Alexeevna, a housewife; his brother Alexander also became a priest, while his brothers Nicholas, John and Constantine did not follow their father. After parish school, Theodore Vasilievich entered the Tambov seminary, which he finished in June 1917. From September 1917 he worked as an accountant at a credit cooperative in the village of Ternovoe in the Voronezh province, and in October 1918 he became a psalm-⁠reader at the church in the village of Chapreno. Because of his clerical origin, the authorities deprived him of electoral rights. At that time he married Evgenia Alexeevna, who was eighteen. They had five children: Lyudmila (1925), Michael (1928), Alexis (1930), Nadezhda (1934) and Vladimir (1936). In February 1920 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Dubovitskoe, in 1922 he moved to the village of Novaya Kirsanovka, and in 1926, by decree of Archbishop Peter (Zverev) of Voronezh, he was transferred to the church in Rusanovo. In 1928 he passed under the omophorion of Bishop Alexis (Buy) of Urazovo. From 1929 he served at the church in Sredny Karachan, where he moved with his family.

First arrest

On 6 September 1930 Father Theodore was arrested on charges of anti-⁠Soviet activity and agitation against collectivization and held in Borisoglebsk. During the investigation he did not admit guilt. On 21 November 1930 the Special Council of the OGPU sentenced him to three years in a labour camp. After his release, from the end of 1933 he served at the church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Sredny Karachan.

Martyrdom

On 14 September 1937 he was arrested again on charges of anti-⁠Soviet agitation and held in Borisoglebsk. On 25 September 1937 he was sentenced to death. The sentence was not carried out at once; for a time Father Theodore was held in a camp on the edge of the town, on the so-⁠called Matreshkin Hill, in grey, rainy autumn days, in an open place. Witnesses tell of a little girl who carried bread daily to her prisoner brother and of columns of prisoners whose heels had been cut off. He was shot on 10 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave. That day people were told that there was training firing outside the town, so that they would not be alarmed by the shots.

Veneration

In 1946, in a dry summer, shepherds found a spring near Matreshkin Hill, which people began to visit, and the authorities buried it under manure, but the spring remained in people's memory. Father Theodore was rehabilitated in 1989. On 17 July 2002 the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, under Patriarch Alexy II, canonized him and numbered him in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Since 2005 processions to the place of the shooting have been held every year. In the Borisoglebsk prison a prayer room has been set up, where in 2006 myrrh flowed from a particle of the relics of Saint Mitrophan of Voronezh. At the place of the executions stand four oaks, witnesses of those events, which turn green every spring.

He is commemorated on 10 October (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February on a movable day, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Voronezh Metropolis on 17 September.