John (Vasilevsky)

He graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy . He was archpriest , rector of the Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God in Veshnyaki .

He headed the parish school in Vykhin . In his house, opposite the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Veshnyaki, wanderers were received, fed the hungry. He was the confessor of the first district of Moscow deanery ^[1] .

In 1918 he was widowed. Tatyana Fedorovna Korshunova, great-granddaughter of Bishop John, said: “Lyubov Yegorovna was ill for a short time, but very hard, she was a deeply religious, sincere person. Grandfather recalled that she said: "I should at least stand on the last step in paradise." When she was dying, Father John was sitting by her bed. She was so weak that she could not even speak. Apparently, feeling that she was departing to another world, she wanted to cross herself, but she no longer had the strength to raise her hand. From the look of his father John understood her desire. He took her hand and crossed it with her. She was glad that he understood everything, and smiled. With this smile on her lips she died ” ^[1] .

In 1922, when a terrible famine erupted in the Volga region , Patriarch Tikhon appealed to the "peoples of the world and the Orthodox man" with a request for help. Archpriest John Vasilevsky, the rector of the Veshnyakovsky church, said such a heartfelt sermon on this subject that many parishioners in the church cried. There were more funds collected for those in need in the church of Veshnyakovo than in other parishes, which did not save the church from plunder by the authorities during the campaign to seize church property ^[1] .

September 13 ( 26 ), 1923 , being in the dignity of archpriest, was elected Patriarch Tikhon Bishop of Bronnitsky ^[2]

On October 7, 1923, he was consecrated bishop of Bronnitsky , vicar of the Moscow diocese. The consecration was headed by Patriarch Tikhon. He continued to live and serve in Veshnyaki ^[1] .

He consistently supported the successors of Patriarch Tikhon Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) and Sergius (Starogorodsky) ^[1] .

Since 1927 - Bishop of Resurrection (titled in the city of Voskresensk, now Istra ), vicar of the same diocese ^[3] .

In the late 1920s, his children were offered to abandon his father. They did not do this, and then the lord, so as not to endanger his relatives, moved from the church house to the other side of the railway. Secretly, at night, so as not to be noticed or reported, the little granddaughter of Luba, the daughter of Vladyka’s youngest son, secretly came to his grandfather and brought him food ^[1] .

He lived alone in the village of Veshnyaki near Moscow (now within Moscow), where he died on March 4, 1931 from intestinal cancer . The funeral service was later performed in the church of the village of Vishnyakov by the Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), co-served by Archbishop of Veliky Ustyuzhsky Sofroniy (Arefiev) , Bishop of Podolsky Innokenty (Letyaev) and Bishop of Kimry ^[Sokol] . Buried in Veshnyaki on the left side of the altar of the lower Assumption Church ^[1] .