Vladimir Chetverin

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Chetverin was a priest in Simbirsk province and was shot on 2 September 1918 because he refused to hand over the civil registers and the property of the church. His relics were preserved incorrupt.

He was born in 1874 in the village of Barakhman-⁠Gart in the Ardatov district, Simbirsk province, in a simple, devout family. From youth he loved teaching and was a teacher at a literacy school, then for seven years at the parish school of Kutyevo. At twenty-⁠nine he asked to be ordained, was first made psalm-⁠reader in several villages, and took missionary courses at the Academy of Kazan. At thirty-⁠six he was ordained priest for the church of Siryatino, where he was also a teacher in the parish school and catechist in the neighboring village. By 1915 Father Vladimir and Matushka Maria had eleven children, of whom three died young; many of the others became teachers, and three of the sons also died as martyrs, shot. Then he served at the church of the Nativity of Christ in Barakhman-⁠Gart, where the most venerated icon was the Kazan icon of the Mother of God, before which he prayed with tears for all his flock.

In the time of turmoil the parishioners entrusted the keeping of their grain to him, and he was very careful with it; when some in the village wanted to take all the grain in exchange for false money, he uncovered the trick and defended the people. Then the persecutors demanded that he violate the seal of confession and hand over the registers. He preferred to suffer rather than break his priestly oath. False witnesses appeared who accused him of not carrying out the order of Soviet power about handing over the registers, of ruining the finances of the country and of not handing over a firearm, and the villagers were tricked into seeking another priest.

On 19 August 1918 he served his last Liturgy and was arrested, with no charge. Interrogations began, at which he was accused of "propaganda against Soviet power", but he, a stranger to politics, answered that the priest's service is not resistance to earthly power but the fulfillment of God's will "on earth as it is in heaven". The villagers of Barakhman-⁠Gart prayed for him and asked for his release, and the dean of the district, Father Constantine Benevolensky, defended him. Yet he was condemned to death. At one o'clock in the night of 2 September 1918 he was led out to be shot and received the martyr's end without complaint. His relics were found incorrupt in the grave, through which a cold spring ran; the cross on his breast and the Gospel placed in his hand also remained whole.

In the church of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Zelenograd, where his relics are sewn into the antimension, the patronal feast is on 2 September, the day of the saint's memory. He is commemorated on 2 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.