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| St. Sergius Mechev (Feast Day - December 24) |
He was born in Moscow on September 17, 1892, into the family of the Righteous Alexei Mechev, rector of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Kleniki on Maroseyka Street. Father Alexei dearly loved his son Sergius and wished to have him as his successor, but he did not want to pressure him and therefore allowed his son to receive a secular education. In 1910 Sergius graduated from the gymnasium with a silver medal and entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. Soon he transferred to the Department of Philology of the Faculty of History and Philology, which he completed in 1917.
During the war in 1914, Sergius Alexeyevich worked on the Western Front as a medical orderly on one of the hospital trains. There he also met his future wife, who likewise served as a nurse of mercy.
At the same time as his university studies, Sergius Alexeyevich took part in the work of the student theological circle named after Saint John Chrysostom, organized by the abbot of the Chudov Monastery, Bishop Arsenius (Zhadanovsky). At the meetings of the circle, reports on various theological topics were read and discussed.
In 1917 a Commission for Relations with the Civil Authorities of the Russian Orthodox Church was established. Sergius Alexeyevich became one of its members. During this period he often visited Patriarch Tikhon, who grew very fond of him.
The decision to accept the priesthood was connected for Sergius Alexeyevich with a trip in 1918 to Optina Hermitage, where he received the blessing for this from the elders Father Anatoly and Father Nektary.
In 1919, after completing Moscow University, he was ordained first a deacon and then a priest. The ordinations were performed at the Danilov Monastery by Archbishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky).
The son served alongside his father in the church on Maroseyka. This parish was called a “lay monastery.” Obedience to one’s spiritual father, the cleansing of the conscience through repentance, frequent Communion, daily liturgical services according to the Typikon (the Divine Liturgy on Maroseyka began at 6 a.m., and parishioners could still make it to work on time) — all this created the conditions for genuine spiritual life. “Christianity is not a teaching, but a life,” Father Sergius often repeated.
After the repose of his father, Father Alexei, on May 27, 1923, Father Sergius took the parish under his pastoral care and shepherded it until his own martyric death. “You are my path to Christ — how can I go without you?” he wrote in 1930 to his spiritual children. Father Sergius’ services were marked by strictness, order, and concentration. His sermons were imbued with a strong call to action; listening to them, one wanted to act. His spiritual children were drawn to him by the ardor of his faith, his sensitive and incorruptible conscience, his knowledge of patristic teaching, and, finally, his kindness and compassion.
Foreseeing the martyric feat of Father Sergius, the Optina elder Nektary once said something like this about him to his spiritual daughter: “Did you know Father Alexei? All of Moscow knew him, but for now only half of Moscow knows Father Sergius. Yet he will be greater than his father.”
After the Renovationists seized churches, only a few parishes in Moscow remained faithful to Patriarch Tikhon; among them were the Danilov Monastery and “Maroseyka.” Father Sergius was an uncompromising fighter for the purity of Orthodoxy. He did not allow church prayer for atheists and the godless. In 1929 Father Sergius was arrested and exiled; in 1932 the church on Maroseyka was closed.
He was sent to the North, to the small town of Kadnikov in the Vologda region. There, in 1933, he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in labor camps: first at Lake Kubenskoye at a sawmill, then on the Sheleksa River, and then in Ust-Pinega. In 1935 he was transferred to the Svir camps, to Lodeynoye Pole; after that to the area near Rybinsk (Perebory station), to work on the construction of a dam.
In the camp on the Sheleksa, Father Sergius suffered severe hunger. He was constantly robbed by criminal inmates. Spiritual daughters who came to visit him noticed that, despite extreme exhaustion, all irritability had disappeared from him; he had become very gentle, and there was not a single word of reproach.
In 1937 Father Sergius was released from the camp. He settled in the vicinity of the city of Kalinin and worked as a physician in one of the clinics. At home he secretly celebrated the Divine Liturgy. Spiritual children constantly came to him, and he wrote letters to them: “Pray to the Lord, ask Him to remove from you constriction and self-enclosure, that you may receive an enlarged heart!” — thus he instructed them.
Soon the authorities learned of the illegal status of his community. Father Sergius was advised to flee to Central Asia, but he feared leaving his spiritual children. For about a year he wandered without residence registration. In the summer of 1941 he secretly lived with some of his spiritual children in a village near Tutayev, serving the Divine Liturgy every day. Because of the general atmosphere of suspicion that arose with the beginning of the war, local residents took them for German spies and reported them to the NKVD. On July 7, 1941, Father Sergius was arrested and placed in the Yaroslavl prison. After four months of interrogations and torture — during which he behaved with great courage, striving that no one from the community should suffer — on the night of December 24/January 6, 1942, Father Sergius was shot in the prison of the Yaroslavl NKVD.
He was glorified among the saints as one of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for universal Church veneration.
During the war in 1914, Sergius Alexeyevich worked on the Western Front as a medical orderly on one of the hospital trains. There he also met his future wife, who likewise served as a nurse of mercy.
At the same time as his university studies, Sergius Alexeyevich took part in the work of the student theological circle named after Saint John Chrysostom, organized by the abbot of the Chudov Monastery, Bishop Arsenius (Zhadanovsky). At the meetings of the circle, reports on various theological topics were read and discussed.
In 1917 a Commission for Relations with the Civil Authorities of the Russian Orthodox Church was established. Sergius Alexeyevich became one of its members. During this period he often visited Patriarch Tikhon, who grew very fond of him.
The decision to accept the priesthood was connected for Sergius Alexeyevich with a trip in 1918 to Optina Hermitage, where he received the blessing for this from the elders Father Anatoly and Father Nektary.
In 1919, after completing Moscow University, he was ordained first a deacon and then a priest. The ordinations were performed at the Danilov Monastery by Archbishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky).
The son served alongside his father in the church on Maroseyka. This parish was called a “lay monastery.” Obedience to one’s spiritual father, the cleansing of the conscience through repentance, frequent Communion, daily liturgical services according to the Typikon (the Divine Liturgy on Maroseyka began at 6 a.m., and parishioners could still make it to work on time) — all this created the conditions for genuine spiritual life. “Christianity is not a teaching, but a life,” Father Sergius often repeated.
After the repose of his father, Father Alexei, on May 27, 1923, Father Sergius took the parish under his pastoral care and shepherded it until his own martyric death. “You are my path to Christ — how can I go without you?” he wrote in 1930 to his spiritual children. Father Sergius’ services were marked by strictness, order, and concentration. His sermons were imbued with a strong call to action; listening to them, one wanted to act. His spiritual children were drawn to him by the ardor of his faith, his sensitive and incorruptible conscience, his knowledge of patristic teaching, and, finally, his kindness and compassion.
Foreseeing the martyric feat of Father Sergius, the Optina elder Nektary once said something like this about him to his spiritual daughter: “Did you know Father Alexei? All of Moscow knew him, but for now only half of Moscow knows Father Sergius. Yet he will be greater than his father.”
After the Renovationists seized churches, only a few parishes in Moscow remained faithful to Patriarch Tikhon; among them were the Danilov Monastery and “Maroseyka.” Father Sergius was an uncompromising fighter for the purity of Orthodoxy. He did not allow church prayer for atheists and the godless. In 1929 Father Sergius was arrested and exiled; in 1932 the church on Maroseyka was closed.
He was sent to the North, to the small town of Kadnikov in the Vologda region. There, in 1933, he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in labor camps: first at Lake Kubenskoye at a sawmill, then on the Sheleksa River, and then in Ust-Pinega. In 1935 he was transferred to the Svir camps, to Lodeynoye Pole; after that to the area near Rybinsk (Perebory station), to work on the construction of a dam.
In the camp on the Sheleksa, Father Sergius suffered severe hunger. He was constantly robbed by criminal inmates. Spiritual daughters who came to visit him noticed that, despite extreme exhaustion, all irritability had disappeared from him; he had become very gentle, and there was not a single word of reproach.
In 1937 Father Sergius was released from the camp. He settled in the vicinity of the city of Kalinin and worked as a physician in one of the clinics. At home he secretly celebrated the Divine Liturgy. Spiritual children constantly came to him, and he wrote letters to them: “Pray to the Lord, ask Him to remove from you constriction and self-enclosure, that you may receive an enlarged heart!” — thus he instructed them.
Soon the authorities learned of the illegal status of his community. Father Sergius was advised to flee to Central Asia, but he feared leaving his spiritual children. For about a year he wandered without residence registration. In the summer of 1941 he secretly lived with some of his spiritual children in a village near Tutayev, serving the Divine Liturgy every day. Because of the general atmosphere of suspicion that arose with the beginning of the war, local residents took them for German spies and reported them to the NKVD. On July 7, 1941, Father Sergius was arrested and placed in the Yaroslavl prison. After four months of interrogations and torture — during which he behaved with great courage, striving that no one from the community should suffer — on the night of December 24/January 6, 1942, Father Sergius was shot in the prison of the Yaroslavl NKVD.
He was glorified among the saints as one of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for universal Church veneration.
Troparion in Tone 4
From a righteous root you did spring forth,
instructor and zealot of Orthodoxy;
standing before God in bonds and even unto death,
with an unceasing voice you guided the flock;
O holy hieromartyr Sergius,
pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Kontakion in Tone 8
With great love you labored in the mystery of the divine services,
calling your flock to follow the life of the Holy Fathers
and to know their writings through their own deeds;
for Christ you accepted sufferings in bonds and death;
therefore we cry to you:
Rejoice, O holy hieromartyr Sergius.
From a righteous root you did spring forth,
instructor and zealot of Orthodoxy;
standing before God in bonds and even unto death,
with an unceasing voice you guided the flock;
O holy hieromartyr Sergius,
pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Kontakion in Tone 8
With great love you labored in the mystery of the divine services,
calling your flock to follow the life of the Holy Fathers
and to know their writings through their own deeds;
for Christ you accepted sufferings in bonds and death;
therefore we cry to you:
Rejoice, O holy hieromartyr Sergius.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.