Day of Remembrance of St. Macarius Zhabynsky, Belevsky Wonderworker (04/02)

Rev. Macarius Zhabynsky, Belevsky wonderworker, was born in 1539. In his early youth, he took monastic vows with the name Onuphry and in 1585 founded the Zhabynsky Vvedenskaya Hermitage (a monastery located in a remote desert place) near the Oka River, near the city of Belev.

In 1615, the desert was completely devastated by Polish troops under the command of Lisovsky.

Returning to the ashes, the monk became the renewer of the monastery. He gathered the brethren again, and instead of a wooden one, a stone temple was built in honor of the «Introduction of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the temple», with a bell tower on the gate.

The monk spent his life in harsh monastic exploits, enduring frost, heat, hunger and thirst, as was written about in the monastery synodics. Often he retired to the forest thicket, where he prayed to God alone.

One day, when the monk was walking along a forest path, he heard a faint groan. He looked around and saw a Pole leaning against the trunk of a pine tree, who was reclining in exhaustion. His saber lay nearby. He fell behind his party and got lost in the woods. In a barely audible voice, the enemy, possibly robbing the monastery, asked for a drink. Love and compassion prevailed in the Monk. With prayer to the Lord, he struck the ground with his staff, from which he hammered a cool spring, and gave the dying man something to drink.

When the restored monastery became stronger in external and internal life, Saint Onuphry left the general monastery life and, entrusting the brethren to the reliable leadership of one of his students, accepted a schema with the name Macarius. He chose the upper reaches of the Zhabynka channel as his place of solitude — « storehouse Zhabynets», located one mile from the mouth of the channel and the bank of the Oka River.

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