Timon of Nadeevo

Holy Venerable Timon of Nadeevo, an elder, whose name in the world was Tikhon Fyodorov, was born in 1766 in the town of Balakhna, in Nizhny Novgorod province, in the family of the deacon Theodore and his wife Anisia. Taught by his father, at seven he read church books fluently and loved solitude and prayer. After the theological school of Nizhny Novgorod he returned to his parents' house, to his seriously ill father, and in those years often made pilgrimages to monasteries of the dioceses of Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, Vladimir and Tambov.

At twenty he married Evdokia, the daughter of a churchman of Balakhna, and was ordained a deacon at the church of Saint Alexis in the village of Zinyakovo. His wife soon died. To ease his grief the deacon Tikhon often went to Sarov Hermitage, where the great saint of the Russian land, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, became his spiritual father. With Father Seraphim's blessing he entered the Ascension Caves Monastery of Nizhny Novgorod in 1800 and soon was tonsured with the name Troadius. In 1801 Bishop Benjamin appointed the hierodeacon Troadius as builder of the Monastery of the Mother of God and Saint Theodore in Gorodets, where until 1239 the great wonderworking Theodorovskaya icon of the Mother of God had been kept. In January 1804 he was tonsured with the name Timon, after the holy apostle Timon, one of the seventy. In 1814 Bishop Moses ordained him a hieromonk.

In 1818, ill, he was released from his post as builder. Longing for a solitary life of struggle, he moved to the Vysokogorsk Hermitage near Arzamas and then made a pilgrimage to the holy places of the Russian North. It was then that he first visited the Nikolo-⁠Nadeevo Hermitage in the Kostroma diocese, and, coming to love the place, resolved to move there. Saint Seraphim blessed his wish, telling him to sow so that flowers might bloom. From the spring of 1825 he lived in the Nadeevo Hermitage, and ten versts from the monastery he dug a dugout and lived in it for seven years in fasting, prayer and contemplation, coming to the monastery only on Sundays and feast days for services.

In early 1832, according to tradition, the Lord appeared to him and commanded him to restore the Nadeevo Hermitage, dedicated to Saint Nicholas and an old place of ascetic struggle, then in ruins and without a settled brotherhood. The elder, then 65, frail in body and without means, thought the task beyond his powers. In a light sleep Saint Nicholas appeared to him, told him that the Lord was able to help him and showed him a sack full of gold. His doubts vanished and he prepared for the work. In April 1832 he went for the last time to Sarov, to Saint Seraphim, who blessed him and told him to sow the wheat he had been given everywhere, on good soil, on sand, on stone, on the road and among thorns, since something would sprout and bear fruit, though not quickly. In blessing him, Seraphim also foretold his own departure to the Lord in eight months, told him that he would live seven years after him and left him a pair of bast sandals to wear when the Lord should call him.

In the same year, 1832, he began to build at Nadeevo a stone church of the Dormition, with side altars to Saint Nicholas and to Saint Macarius of Unzha, completed in 1837. He dug a ditch around the monastery like the famous one at Diveyevo, and dug a spring near it, which he consecrated in honour of Saint Nicholas. The Lord granted him the gifts of foresight and wonderworking, and his love and humility drew crowds of people, monks and laity, who sought advice, comfort and instruction. Among his spiritual children was Bishop Vladimir (Alyavdin) of Kostroma and Galich.

Venerable Timon reposed in peace on 21 January 1840, in the old style, and was buried at Nadeevo, behind the altar of the Dormition church. His last words to the brethren urged faith in God's providence, a temperate life, vigilant prayer and sincere repentance on the way to eternity. In the twentieth century the hermitage was closed and laid waste, but the faithful kept coming to his grave and to the spring of Saint Nicholas, where through his prayers healings still take place. On 25 December 2003 he was numbered among the locally venerated saints of the Kostroma diocese, as the crowning of the celebration on Kostroma land of the centenary of the canonization of Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

He is commemorated on 5 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma and on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia, in the new style.