Pelagia Diveevskaya

Pelagia was born in 1809 in a wealthy merchant family in Arzamas ^[3] . Grew in the house of a stern stepfather. According to the mother’s stories, she was strange from childhood on, and her mother quickly tried to marry a “fool”. During the watch, Pelageya played a frenzy, but her fiancé did not refuse her ^[1] . Her three children - two sons and a daughter - died in infancy.

In 1828, the young couple visited the Sarov Desert to receive the guidance and prayer help of Father Seraphim . The holy elder Seraphim talked with Pelagia for a long time and showed her the path of the highest selflessness. He entrusted her with the feat of foolishness , as necessary for her spiritual salvation, and predicted that she would subsequently live in Diveevo and replace him there. Father Seraphim told her: “Go, mother, go immediately to my monastery, take care of my orphans.” Many of you will be saved, and you will be the light of the world ” ^[2] .

After that, she began to study Jesus prayer ^[3] . During the days, she seemed to increasingly lose her mind, running through the streets of Arzamas, screaming ugly, causing gossip and insults that sincerely pleased her soul, despising all the blessings of this world ^[3] . At night, she prayed on the church porch . The husband did not understand her feat, beat her and scoffed, put on a chain. At his request, the mayor severely punished Pelagius: “Her body hung in shreds, blood poured over the entire room, and she at least gasped” ^[2] . The mayor in a dream saw a cauldron prepared for him ^[2] .

The husband renounced Pelagia and in 1837 ^[3] her mother placed her in the Diveevo monastery. Here, for the first time, she continued to go crazy, suffered hardships, she never asked for food, and ate when she was offered and very poorly. She walked barefoot all year round, didn’t wash, slept on the floor on a felt sheet, never took money from anyone, spoke allegorically, but had the gift of perspicacity.

Pelageya spent forty-six years in the monastery. During the time of unrest in the monastery, the blessed one fought for the truth in her own way, and even, having exposed the bishop , hit him on the cheek ^[2] . The war with the enemies looked like violent insanity, but after the battle that left broken dishes, broken furniture, torn clothes, the sisters were pacified and enlightened ^[1] .

After the troubles ended, the blessed one changed, fell in love with flowers and began to deal with them. Abbess Maria did nothing without her advice ^[2] . Whom to send in obedience, whom to take to the monastery or to send - decided mother with the blessing of the blessed ^[3] .

Spiritual gifts began to attract many people of different ranks and with different problems. They came to her, wrote letters. Comforting and healing, instructing and revealing, the blessed one guided many along the path of salvation. According to the cellwoman, “she only told everyone what the Lord Himself would indicate and to whom it was necessary for spiritual salvation: he caresses one, scolds the other, smiles from whom, turns away, cries with one, and sighs with whom he sheltered, and whom he will drive away, and with another, even if he is sitting all day, he won’t say a word, as if he didn’t see ” ^[1] .

The description of Pelagia made by the artist M.P. Petrov in 1874 is preserved: “an old, wrinkled and dirty woman sat on the floor on the felt, with huge nails on her hands and bare feet”, “she immediately stood up and straightened before me in front of me all growth. This was a beautifully built woman, with unusually vibrant, sparkling eyes ” ^[3] .

January 11, 1884, saying that she had a headache, Pelagia went to the door to go out, but fell. After a few days, she began to bow to everyone and ask for forgiveness. January 20, she began pneumonia . On January 23, a priest came to her to take communion, but the blessed one several times removed the Holy Chalice from her. “Is it really possible some other time?” Said the blessed one, that those around her perceived that the Angel of the Lord had already communed her before that. On January 25, a waste room was read on it, after which Pelagia completely fell silent. The long-suffering soul of the blessed departed to God on January 30 ^[3] .

The funeral service was performed on the ninth day with a large crowd of people. The saint was buried in a cypress coffin decorated with cherubs, on the inside of the lid there was a small plaque with the inscription: "The blessed Pelageya, who walked the path of Christ for the sake of the foolishness of God, departed to the Lord on January 30, 1884." On the grave, located opposite the main altar of the Trinity Cathedral, a monument was erected with inscriptions on four sides:

• “Pelagia Ivanovna Serebrennikova, nee Surina, with the blessing of the elder of God, Hieromonk Seraphim for holy obedience, abandoned all the happiness of earthly life, husband and children, having assumed the feat of foolishness, and accepted the persecution, murder, beating and chain of Christ the Lord for the sake of. She was born in 1809, lived in the monastery for 47 years, and on January 30, 1884 she departed to the Lord 75 years of age ”;
• “Beatitudes naturally, they always reproach you, and will be exhausted, and every verb is evil, a verb is upon you, for me a lie. Rejoice and have fun, as your bribe is many in heaven. Everything here has undergone and overcame by the power of your love for God, His love for the sake of our spiritual weakness and in the cross of your deed intercede us ”;
• “Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery Seraphim Seraphim, Blessed Pelageya. Pelagia, having taken her cross for the sake of God, she lived on earth all in God, and lives in heaven forever with God ”;
• “Blessed are they to cast out the truth for the sake of those who are the kingdom of heaven. On the thorny path of your deed, you did not leave anyone, do not forget to come running to you, and there, in the bliss of God's eternal glory, the monastery, your beloved ” ^[3] .

Contemporaries called the blessed “second Seraphim” ^[4] . Prior to the revolution, a thick iron chain was preserved, which had once chained the sufferer with her husband to the wall, and the cell in which she died ^[4] .

Blessed Paraskeva became the successor of Pelagia. In the Diveevo monastery, the succession of blessed old women did not stop until its closure ^[1] . The last blessed Diveyevo is called Anna Vasilyevna. The feat of Anna’s foolishness began with the blessing of the Sarov elder Anatoly, who ordered her to wander along Diveevo. Only in recent years she began to live with the Diveevsky sisters in the house number 16 on Lesnaya street ^[5] .

On July 31, 2004, the blessed old woman Pelagia Diveevskaya was glorified in the face of the locally revered saints of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese . In October 2004, the Council of Bishops made a decision on its veneration of the whole church.

The holy relics of the blessed Pelagia were found in September 2004 and rest in the Kazan church of the Seraphim-Diveevo monastery . In honor of the blessed Pelagia, one of its eight chapels, on the north side, was consecrated. ^[one]