Theophilus of Luga

Venerable Theophilus of Omuch (Theophilus of Luga) was a monk, the founder of the hermitage of the Dormition of the Mother of God on the river Omucha, in the Luga district near Saint Petersburg, who died in 1412. In the calendars he is called the wonderworker of Luga. He is commemorated on 21 October and, on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg and the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod.

He came from a pious family of Karelian villagers, from the present territory of Saint Petersburg, and had learned letters and the reading of divine books. He was a monk at the Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery at Konevets, where he was tonsured, passed through all the obediences and, for the holiness of his life, was made abbot. Burdened by the glory and honour he received for the height of his ascetic labours, he sought quiet and solitude among moss, hills and swamps, on the banks of the river Omucha. From 1396 he spent his life there, in strict fasting, unceasing prayer and struggle with thoughts and the attacks of cunning spirits.

His labours, however, soon became known and drew zealots of piety, who founded together with the venerable one, in the wild country, the hermitage of the Dormition, afterward named for Theophilus; a great contribution to the building of the monastery was made by Jacob, later numbered among the venerable saints as well. Theophilus reached great old age and reposed on 29 December 1412 in the monastery he had organised, having taken the schema shortly before. His relics were buried under a slab in the wooden church of the Dormition. The source says that his commemoration is kept on the day of his death, 21 October, although it gives 29 December as the day of death; the two days do not agree.

Theophilus' hermitage was closed in 1764, and the church became a parish church. It is told that the emperor Alexander I, passing that way, prayed at the shrine of Venerable Theophilus and was healed of a cold; in memory, in 1816, funds were granted from the Commission of Theological Schools for the building of a stone church, around which there soon arose a medical station, a community of sisters of mercy and a villa for the pupils of the theological school of Saint Petersburg.