Nectaire d'Optina

Nectarius of Optina, known in the world as Nikolai Vasilyevich Tikhonov, was a Russian Orthodox hieromonk and spiritual elder (starets) of Optina Pustyn in the Kaluga region. He was born in 1853 in Yelets, then in the Oryol Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a poor family. Orphaned in childhood, he worked as a shop assistant in his native town. In the 1870s he left secular life and entered Optina Monastery, where he was received by Saint Ambrose of Optina. He remained there until the community was dispersed by the Soviet authorities, spending many years in the monastery skete in obedience, prayer, and extensive reading in the monastic library.

After long years as a novice he was tonsured a monk with the name Nectarius and later ordained deacon and priest. Following the deaths of the older Optina startsy he was acknowledged as an elder and became one of the last bearers of the Optina tradition of spiritual direction. Those who knew him remarked on his combination of inner prayer with a wide, largely self-taught culture; he could discuss secular as well as spiritual subjects. He sometimes veiled gifts of discernment and clairvoyance under a guise of simplicity or foolishness-for-Christ, a trait noted by many visitors in the early twentieth century. Pilgrims continued to seek his confession and counsel through the First World War and the Revolution.

After the Russian Revolution the Bolshevik government suppressed Optina Pustyn. The monastery was closed in the early 1920s and turned to secular use. Elder Nectarius was arrested and subsequently released into internal exile in the village of Kholmishchi. Living in a peasant household there, he continued to receive spiritual children who found their way to him. He died in Kholmishchi on 29 April 1928 and was buried in the village cemetery. In 1992, after the restoration of Optina Monastery, his relics were uncovered and translated to the monastery, where they remain.

Nectarius was glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1990, together with the other elders of Optina. The Moscow Patriarchate established his local veneration at Optina in 1996 and numbered him among the saints of the whole Russian Church in 2000, in the Synaxis of the Optina Elders. His principal feast is 29 April (12 May on the civil calendar); he is also commemorated on 11 October with the other Optina startsy. He is remembered as a confessor who carried the Optina school of eldership into the years of Soviet persecution.