Bishop Macarius, in the world Cosmas Vasilyevich Vasiliev, was born in 1871 in Guba village, Tikhvin district, Novgorod province, the oldest of many children in his family. From childhood he was drawn to church services and their otherworldly chanting. As a teenager he went to Petersburg, where he often visited the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and listened attentively to the inspiring sermons of Hieromonk Arsenius, who was a professional missionary who primarily defended against the ideas of and brought to repentance sectarians and schismatics. With the aim of creating a missionary-oriented monastery with Mt. Athos typicon, he revived the St. Macarius the Roman Hermitage, located in the marshy wilderness of the Novogorod region, not far from Petersburg. By the turn of the century, this monastery was already well established with 200 monks; it had a stone church and four major stone buildings, a metochion in a nearby town and a guest house - all of which gave consolation to many visitors.
At the age of 23 young Cosmas first arrived at the monastery, and found himself in the midst of a group of other young aspirants for monastic and missionary life. His friend, Fr. Conon, who came there together with him, remembers as a novice he chopped fire wood and did other manual labor as his obedience. In 1897, he was tonsured by Abbot Arsenius and given the name Cyril. By 1900 he was already a hieromonk and head of the monastery metochion in Lyuban, where he stayed for the next five years. In 1906, Fr. Arsenius went to Mount Athos as a missionary to combat the new heresy of the "name worshippers," however, Fr. Arsenius succumbed to the heresy he went off to fight and never returned, so Fr. Cyril was made his successor (in 1906). The monastery continued to flourish, and even after the revolution the Bolsheviks did not touch it because of its remoteness.
In 1923, he was consecrated bishop of Lyuban by the hierarchs Seraphim of Kolpinsk and Micah (Alexeyev) of Archangelsk, according to the decree of Patriarch Tikhon. According to another source he was secretly consecrated bishop of Malovishery by Archbishop Andrew of Ufa, Bishop Michah (Alexeyev) and Bishop Stefan (Bekh). However that same year Bishop Macarius was arrested. The Bolsheviks, having inflicted an artificially created famine of their own making, when hundreds and thousands were dying from starvation, now forced the Church leaders to give up church valuables: chalices, crosses, etc., with the pretense of helping the victims of hunger. In actuality, however, they sold these valuables (church property) abroad to strengthen the Soviet power. And many innocent people perished during this time. For the supposed concealment of church valuables of St. Macarius Monastery, its Abbot was arrested and condemned to prison for five years. He was sent to "the Crosses", an infamous prison in Leningrad, then to Solovki and other prisons. Then he was sent into exile, where he looked after cattle and performed other menial labour. After three and a half years exile he was amnestied and returned to his monastery. According to another source, however, he fled from exile. There, in order to dedicate himself entirely to prayer and to have less contact with worldly life, he accepted the great schema with the name of his beloved St. Macarius - the founder of his monastery.
He lived upstairs in a cell; his cell attendant was Hierodeacon Bucolus, a former peasant boy from a neighboring village. Daily he celebrated early Liturgy in the side altar, not pontifically, but as a simple priest, only with a small omophorion over his phelon, He attended all other services standing on the cliros, always wearing the embroidered schema cape. He was always deeply engrossed in prayer and seemed to live in the world of the saints. But, as was to be expected, he did not manage for long to avoid contact with the God-hating authority of the communists.
In 1928, Vladyka Macarius signed the decisions of the so-called "Nomadic Council" of the Catacomb Church. In 1931, he said to Nun Veronica, sobbing uncontrollably: "If you only knew what heavy trials lie ahead for us, how much suffering and torment! Our monastery will be devastated, our sacred things defiled"! Within a year the prophecy was fulfilled. On February 18, 1932, during the "Holy Night" of the Passion of Russian monasticism, when thousands of the clergy and faithful of Petrograd were arrested in one night, Bishop Macarius and the whole of his brotherhood were also arrested. Within a short time most of the monks perished. Vladyka was sent again to "the Crosses," where he spent a preliminary confinement before being given a relatively short sentence, on March 22, of three years "voluntary" exile to Alma-Ata in Central Asia, which he spent in the prison of that city. Then he was sent to the village of George near the town of Frunze. Because of his ill health he was relieved from work, but during the nights he was compelled to guard hay. One night he went to church to receive confession. For that he was again arrested and locked up in prison where he spent eight months in very wretched conditions.
In 1935, having completed the sentence of his "voluntary" settlement, Bishop Macarius returned home, to the site of his monastery which now lay in ruins. What could he do? His cell-attendant, having a similar prison experience, was still around. Together they settled in Chudovo, a town not too far from Luban. But now the question arose of how they were to live. Where could they obtain a livelihood? In the Soviet Union those who had completed their time of sentence were to be allowed, according to article 58, to receive their "living permit of residence" only if they showed their "work card" (a type of ID card). The Bishop however, did not have it and thus for several years had to exist without that "living permit". But God helped him and he lived illegally with a believing family.
During this time he served secretly as a catacomb hierarch, disseminating the Mysteries wherever needed, baptizing, ordaining priests, consecrating catacomb bishops. In 1937 the mass arrests of the clergy increased again, and he, hiding from his inevitable arrest, went to Central Asia where he spent a year. Then he returned to Chudovo where, finally, he managed to obtain the required "living permit". There he stayed until the war and the coming of the Germans, at which time he found himself in the middle of the front.
Fr. Bucolus was with him during this time. The war was raging. With the increase of Soviet guerilla troops it was highly dangerous. They managed to escape to a neighboring village and sought shelter in a small cabin through the mercy of some local people. Their stay was prolonged; the famine was fierce. The area even during peaceful times did not abound in food, for the soil of Novgorod region is poor. One night the old lady of the house where they were staying saw a strange dream: a golden carriage drove up to her poor dwelling and in it was a majestic Queen who said: "I have an elder here; he is very tired. He must be given rest." Thus did the Queen of Heaven herself intercede for the suffering schema-elder. The next day a Catholic priest came to the old lady and said, "I have heard that an Orthodox bishop and his cell attendant live here." Hearing this, the bishop came out, and the priest told him how they could escape west to the Pskov Caves Monastery. They immediately put their knapsacks on their backs, took walking staves and left for the monastery.
In the night before April 1, 1944, which was the radiant feast of Pascha, the town of Pechory was severely bombed by the Soviets. They bombed the town for the whole night, in four strikes with intervals of 40 to 50 minutes. Fortunately for the monastery, the huge two-ton bombs fell outside the monastery. Within the monastery fell around ten bombs of smaller caliber. One of these fell across the refectory and tore out an old oak tree by the roots. A piece of the bomb penetrated through the window frame into the cell of Schema-Bishop Macarius and killed him instantly. On the analogion in front of him there was an open Gospel and a prayer book; they were covered in the Bishop's blood. The clock had stopped at 9:47pm. All the monks were hiding in bomb shelters, but Bishop Macarius had refused to go to the cellar and had remained in his cell praying. According to another source, he was in fact killed by Soviet agents dressed as monks. The body of Bishop Macarius was buried in the caves from which the Pskov Caves Monastery takes its name.
The Holy Night of Russian Monasticism
The following experiences of this terrible persecution of Orthodox Christians are from Natalia Georgievna Kieter of Germany.
"The 'Holy Night', so called by the people, was the night of the 17th-18th of February, 1932. I remember it well because on February 16th my mother died. She had only recently accepted secret tonsure and was a nun in the world. On February 18 our spiritual father, Hieromonk Benjamin, was expected; he was to celebrate the funeral in our home. For a long time I waited for him, and finally telephoned him at his apartment. I was told: 'He cannot come; you understand.' A long pause followed, and I understood without words that he was in a dangerous situation. I wished to look for another priest but not a single one who was not a Renovationist was available in the whole of Petersburg. No church had a priest that day. I was in the Valaam metochion nearby. All the priests from there were arrested. Fortunately, I happened to find a kind Batiushka in the cemetery. He was not a Renovationist which was most unusual for it was only the Renovationists who were not arrested.
"Soon I learned of the tragedy that took place in St. Macarius Monastery and with one teenage boy I hastened there since I knew that not a single person was left there. The church was boarded up and it was guarded by NKVD agents. It was an incredible incident in our Soviet life. The holiest object of the monastery was the chains of St. Macarius which for centuries had been exposed for veneration by the faithful. They had to be saved.
On our way to the monastery we had to go through a dense forest and thick marshes. We barely managed to escape being sucked into a quagmire. Avoiding the roads where we may be spotted, we sang a moleban to St. Macarius. After a series of adventures we managed to reach the monastery. Breaking a window, we crawled into the church where we saw a whole box of church valuables still there. I took the holy chains of the Saint together with many icons and church books. St. Macarius covered us with his mantia from the eyes of the NKVD agents and miraculously we were not caught. I kept the holy chains at home until such a time as it would be possible to give them to the Church. But it was dangerous even for me to keep them. I therefore gave them for safekeeping for a while to a friend, a young woman of kindred spirit and co-worker in the vineyard of the Lord. She placed them temporarily in a drawer of her night table. Suddenly her brother, a young scholar, was arrested and accused of religious propaganda. The NKVD agents stormed into the house for a search. They turned everything upside down; they looked into every single box and only the drawer in which the chains were kept was not opened. The miracle was that, having found nothing, they set the brother free. Truly St. Macarius had protected us all. Soon after this incident I brought the chains to a certain nun who took them to Moscow. Where are the chains today?"
The date was February 18, 1932 (new style). It is a radiant and yet terrible date, the Passion Friday of Russian monasticism - ignored by all and almost unknown to the whole world - when all of Russian monasticism in a single night disappeared into the concentration camps. It was done in the dead of night and with the full knowledge of Metropolitan Alexis (later "Patriarch" Alexis I of Moscow) - about which there is sufficient evidence. In Leningrad there were arrested: 40 monks of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra; 12 monks of the Kiev metochion (the other monks had all been arrested in 1930); 10 monks from the Valaam metochion; 90 nuns of the Novodevichi Convent; 16 nuns of Abbess Taisia's Leushinsky metochion; 12 monks from St. Theodore's Cathedral; 8 monks from the "Kinovia" of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra's "Big Okhotko"; a hundred or so monastics from various other Leningrad churches. In all - 318 people. That same night all the monks and brethren of the St. Macarius the Roman Monastery were arrested and brought to Leningrad as vicious criminals whose very presence was a threat to society; they were treated as deadly insects which must be stamped out...
The wave of arrests, like thunder, rolled over the Russian land striking chiefly the monastic population which so recently had been the glorious guardian of the nation's morals and values. It also struck many of the white clergy and laymen who, in one way or another, were close in spirit to monasticism. For example, the flaming sermons of the parish priest Father Alexander Medvedsky were the cause of his arrest. All were sent to the Kazakhstan region from where almost no one ever returned.
At the same time, in Leningrad alone many churches were closed and destroyed. Even the parish church to which the famous scientist I.P. Pavlov (of Pavlov's dogs) so ardently belonged (he went personally to Moscow to try to save the church) was struck, and, as soon as he died, this magnificent architectural monument dedicated to the Theotokos of the Sign (Znamenie) was blown up with dynamite (1937), and not a trace of it remains. By this time, of course, all of Russia's 1,400 monasteries - not counting sketes and newly-formed monastic communities - were closed and, with a handful of exceptions, obliterated.
"We all," recalled a witness, "felt miserable during this frightful period, almost to the point of nausea. Everyone felt as though they (the authorities) had sadistically spit into our souls or beaten our mothers to death before our very eyes. It was a terrible feeling of hurt and rage, and yet one was helpless. I experienced this frightful state during the spring of 1932" (Levitin-Krasnov). Little did these people suspect that soon after this "Holy Night", the freedom-loving United States of America was to recognize the Soviet tyranny as a lawful government. And all the while, the puppet-bishops of Sergianism declared throughout the whole world that Christians in Russia were free.