Memorial Day of St. Macarius of Zhabynsk, Belevsky Wonderworker

On February 4, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Day of Remembrance of St Macarius of Zhabynsky, the Wonderworker of Belevsky The monk lived in the 16th and 17th centuries His life coincided with the cruel reign of Ivan the Terrible and the terrible time of troubles All the more amazing is the Christian feat of Macarius, who became the founder of the Zhabynskaya Vvedenskaya hermitage In his youth, the monk became a monk under the name Onuphry, and becoming a monk in his mature years, in 1585 he founded a monastic monastery Thirty years later, the holy place was completely devastated and burned by Polish troops But Onufriy was given the strength to build new stone ones instead of the old wooden walls In place of the ashes, a beautiful temple and a gate with a bell tower rose, the ringing of which could be heard far throughout the area But the monk himself preferred to retire from the desert into the thicket of the forest, where he indulged in prayer alone, enduring hunger and cold A legend is associated with this period of Onuphrius’s life, testifying to his miraculous power One day a wounded Polish soldier found himself in a deep forest Having fought off his army, the Pole moaned, leaning against the trunk of a spreading pine tree The groans of the unfortunate man were heard by a nearby monk, whose Christian mercy did not allow him to pass by the suffering enemy The Pole asked for a drink, and when Onuphry advised him to go to a source of water, he replied that in his condition this was impossible The monk declared that nothing is impossible for God and struck the ground with his staff At that same second, a toad spring gushed out from under the ground, and the wounded Pole drank from the spring water When the monastery restored by the monk grew stronger and began to prosper, Onufry decides to become a schema-monk He entrusts mentorship over the monastery to one of his students and accepts the schema under the name Macarius The saint's righteous life ended in 1624; the monastery brethren buried his body on February 4, opposite the gates of the monastery After the death of Macarius, the veneration of his holy relics began, which were initially kept openly, and later in 1721 the relics were placed under cover In the 18th century the monastery fell into disrepair For many years, the memory of the feat of the ascetic Macarius seemed to be erased from the memory of Christians, but in 1788, the abbot of the Zhabynsk Hermitage, Jonah, solemnly honored the Monk Macarius on the day of his burial - February 4 Another plan of Jonah was to reveal the relics of the saint, but Macarius, who appeared to him in a dream, strictly warned him not to commit this act Despite this, prayers addressed to the monk always found his merciful response And miracles of healing performed in the name of Macarius Zhabynsky continue to this day