Vladivostok, Russia, November 10, 2020
Photo: vladivostok-eparhia.ru
On December 26 last year, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church resolved to add the name of Hieromartyr Pavel Lazarev to the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.
On October 25, his canonization was liturgically celebrated in the Vladivostok Diocese, where he was serving when he met his martyric end at the hands of the godless authorities. Fr. Pavel was canonized at the petition of Metropolitan Vladimir of Vladivostok and Primorye.
Photo: vladivostok-eparhia.ru
The Divine Liturgy and glorification of Fr. Pavel were celebrated by Met. Vladimir at Holy Protection Cathedral in Vladivostok. Before the Liturgy, Bishop Gury of Arseniev and Dalnegorsk served the last memorial litiya for Fr. Pavel, reports the Vladivostok Diocese.
Photo: vladivostok-eparhia.ru
Met. Vladimir and Bp. Gury were concelebrated by local clerics and abbots, and the service was sung by the Metropolitan choir.
At the Small Entrance, Met. Vladimir read out the Holy Synod’s decision to canonize St. Pavel, and an icon of the newly-glorified saint was brought out from the altar while the choir sang his troparion, kontakion, and magnification.
Photo: vladivostok-eparhia.ru
Following the Liturgy, Met. Vladimir led a procession around the church, after which the glorification of St. Pavel was celebrated.
Met. Vladimir congratulated all the faithful with the glorification of their local saint and offered an archpastoral address. He then thanked Bp. Gury for joining him for the service and presented him with an icon of the new saint. Icons of Hieromartyr Pavel were also distributed to all the faithful.
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Photo: vladivostok-eparhia.ru
Fr. Pavel Lazarev was born in the city of Kolyvan on the Ob River in 1877. He studied at a veterinary-paramedic school and served 3 years as a paramedic in the Siberian Reserve Artillery Division. In 1904, he was the choir director at St. Nicholas’ Church in Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. He was married in 1908 and his family eventually had four children.
He was ordained as a deacon in 1912 and as a priest in 1915. In 1918, he was serving as the full-time priest of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in the village of Antonovka in the Primorsky Province. He collected food for the impoverished among his parishioners and delivered it to the needy himself. He also taught children the basics of religious life and the Law of God.
On the eve of the Feast of Pentecost in 1919, a parishioner warned Fr. Pavel that red partisans would come for him at night and asked him to hide with his relatives in a nearby town, but Fr. Pavel refused. He was already dressed and waiting for the men who came to arrest him. He stood before the icons of the Savior and the Mother of God, prayed, put on his cross, said goodbye and blessed his children, and told his wife: “Do not grieve! Pray to the Queen of Heaven. She will not leave you.”
The partisans took Fr. Pavel to a nearby village and interrogated him in the local elementary school. As a condition of his release, Fr. Pavel was asked to declare that he had deceived people with a made-up God and to publicly remove his cross and cassock. He firmly declared that he would never renounce God and that he was ready to accept death for his faith in Christ.
Fr. Pavel was martyred on the feast of Pentecost, May 20/June 2, in 1919. Seriously wounded after being shot, he was left to die in the forest near Nikitovka.
Fr. Pavel’s wife Claudia preserved some of his words in her diary: “I clearly see that the people’s task is not to remake the state system, but to work on the human person, and to be better yourself, and even to suffer for the truth.” He often advised his wife: “Pray to the Lord for me that I might not be afraid of suffering and torment but might cheerfuly stand for faith in Christ the Lord even unto death.
