Kozelsk, Kaluga Province, Russia, November 17, 2022
Photo: optina.ru
Today, November 17, marks the 35th anniversary of the official revival of the Optina Hermitage—a monastery that is highly esteemed for its line of great 19th and 20th-century elders, who helped revive hesychastic spiritualty in Russia under the influence of the teachings of the great St. Paisius Velichkovsky.
Photo: optina.ru
The monastery’s Telegram channel writes today:
November 17 is a special date for the Optina Hermitage. This is the day of the official revival of the monastery: 35 years ago, the monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.
By the decree of the Government of the RSFSR of November 4/17, 1987, Optina Hermitage was returned to the Church. On December 17/30, 1987, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to open the monastery. Archimandrite Evlogy (Smirnov; later Metropolitan of Vladimir and Suzdal) was appointed the first abbot of the stavropegial monastery.
In the autumn of 1987, Hieromonk Joseph (Bratischev; later Archimandrite, about of the Solovki Holy Transfiguration Monastery) arrived to Optina with 15 builders from the Restoration and Construction Department of Moscow’s Danilov Monastery, and they began the restoration work (some restoration work had been carried out by the state since 1972, but the restorers weren’t able to do much, and the work was carried out very slowly).
On the eve of the transfer of the monastery to the Church, the premises of the Kozelsk Agricultural Vocational School, as well as residential apartments, were located within the walls of the monastery. Since 1957, the monastery had housed the literary department of the Kozelsk Museum of Local Lore, to which some books of the monastery library were transferred from Moscow. The museum housed an exhibition dedicated to L. Tolstoy. There was a village elementary school in the monastery buildings of the skete.
Photo: optina.ru
OrthoChristian has published a wealth of articles on the Optina Elders and on the rebirth of Optina Monastery in the 1980s and 1990s.
See, for example, “1990: A Pilgrimage to Optina Monastery,” “The Power of Baptism: Optina Stories,” and, “The Prayer of a Spiritual Father: Several Stories from Nun N. About the Reposed Abbot of Optina, Archimandrite Benedict (Penkov).”
Photo: optina.ru
In March, it was reported that the monastery is actively collecting testimonies of miracles worked by the prayers of Hieromonk Vasily (Roslyakov), Monk Trophim (Tatarinov), and Monk Therapont (Pushkarev), who were martyred at the monastery on Pascha in 1993, and stories about Archimandrite Benedict (Penkov), abbot of the monastery from 1990 to 2018, who reposed in January 2018; Igumen Theodore (Trutnev), who labored at the monastery from the time of its reopening until his repose in 2003; and Hierodeacon Iliodor (Gairiyants), a monk of Optina from 1989 until his repose in October 2020, affectionately known as the “Voice of Optina.”
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