Monasticism is blessedness a man can ever afford on earth,
you can’t have anything more blessed than this…
Ultimate bliss is in heaven,
but its lower stage is on earth.
St. Barsonophius of Optina
A well-known ascetic Schema-Abbess Sophia (born Sophia Evgenievna Grineva) was the founder of the convent dedicated to the “Joy and Consolation” Icon of the Mother of God in the Kaluga diocese (1896–1913), abbess of the Kiev Protection Convent (from 1913 to 1923), and a monastic confessor of the faith. The holy nun Sophia had a difficult journey of life, which coincided with the turmoil Russia suffered at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Nun-Confessor Sophia (Grineva) The ancestors of the ancient Grinev family were awarded for their military exploits with land, and became landowners in central Russia. Sophia Evgenievna Grineva was born in 1873 in the family of nobleman Evgeny Ivanovich Grinev, who at the time of Sophia’s birth was a third-year student of the Law Faculty at Moscow University. Her mother, Lydia Dmitrievna Glazunova, was married at age sixteen. After graduating from the university, her father was assigned to serve as a judge in the Tula district court. Soon the family moved to the town of Belev, Tula Province, where her father was appointed an attorney. During one of his trips around the county, he caught a cold and literally burned away from rapid consumption in a matter of several days. He hadn’t even turned thirty. The young widow of twenty-six years was left alone with small children—seven-year-old Sophia, five-year-old Maria and one-year-old Boris. The orphaned children were placed in the Belev Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, where the abbess at that time was Nun Magdalina (Chelishcheva), a former governess at the Grinev family.
Sonya Grineva, who often attended monastery services, enjoyed playing the part of an abbess—she would dress up in a long cape and stand in a prominent place, while her younger sister and brother censed around her using spools tied to strings for censors. Then, the little “abbess” would bless them and they would bow reverently before her.
At the beginning of the 1880s, suffering severe hardships, the family moved to live with relatives in Tarusa county of Kaluga Province, and the children were left to reside there. Beginning from the age of sixteen, Sonya stayed with her aunt and grandmother on her mother’s side in their estate in the Kaluga Province, not far from Optina. Visiting Optina Monastery since her youth, Sonya grew fond of this monastery. Maria Evgenievna Popova, St. Sophia’s sister, reminisced about an event that took place in 1885, when Sophia was twelve.
“When the service was over, the elder came out carrying a cross. “Let the abbess approach first,” he said, looking at our side of the church. We were puzzled until we realized he was calling out my sister Sonya. He gave her a cross to venerate, patted her head, and said: “What a abbess she’ll become!”1
During the same visit, the Grinevs chanced upon a Schemamonk who was living in seclusion in the woods not far from Optina Monastery. As he was passing by Sophia, he bowed to the ground before her.
There was also another prophecy about Sophia’s further fate. One day, when their mother took her daughters to the field at threshing season, one peasant woman, a cripple, walked up to her and shared about her prophetic dream: “You’d better not marry off your daughter. I saw a dream today. Your daughter was in place of the Mother of God in the iconostasis.” It is known that an abbess is considered a sort of vicar of the Mother of God.
Later on, the family of the Grinevs moved to Voronezh, where they owned a small estate their mother had inherited unexpectedly. This is where their brother was enrolled in the Cadet Corps, while Sonya was taken by her mother to Moscow’s Alexandro-Mariinsky Insititute for Noble Young Ladies. However, she received her secondary education not in Moscow, but in Kiev, in the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium for girls—the first one of this kind founded in the Russian Empire. After completing secondary education, Sophia entered the Kiev Conservatory, in the vocal classes. Her professors predicted an opera career for her. At the time, Sophia led a genteel lifestyle: balls followed by theatrical performances, musical evenings and the watching of the “dissolving views” or magic lantern shows—the precursors to silent cinema).
Once Sonya, who was visiting her aunt at the estate in Tarusa county of Kaluga Province, went to visit her friend who lived a couple of kilometers away. The winter was severe that year and the surrounding wooded area was teeming with hungry wolves. As Sonya was walking across the field, a huge wolf ran up and stood before her. Imminent death awaited the young girl—she knew that just recently the starving wolves had torn an officer and his horse to pieces; all that was left of them was the rider’s boots and spurs. Sonya broadly made the sign of the cross over the wolf and began praying aloud. The wolf stood as if listening, then slowly retreated and disappeared into the ravine. At that moment, Sonya vowed to God that if she lives, she would definitely take the path of monasticism.2
The reason for the twenty-two-year-old girl’s irreversible break with the world was a sudden serious throat disease, which happened just before she graduated from the conservatory. For nine months she was unable to speak and had to write notes to communicate with others. It came to the point that her doctors diagnosed tuberculosis of the throat and her relatives awaited her imminent death. But by Divine power she received healing after a Confession (the sick girl could not speak but only cried on the shoulder of the elder) and the Communion of the Holy Mysteries in the Holy Trinity monastery at Tarusa county, Kaluga province. Stunned by the miracle she had just experienced, Sophia received the tonsure as ryassophore nun in that same monastery. Her mother and sister Maria disowned her for many years to come, resenting her decision of becoming a nun.
For the place of her monastic labors the young nun Sophia chose a picturesque place in Kaluga Province located forty-five kilometers away from Kaluga at the confluence of the Dugna and the Oka Rivers. An iron foundry Nikita Demidov had founded in the eighteenth century by the order of Peter the Great was located nearby. Convicts who completed their prison term were exiled there from Kaluga and neighboring provinces. Not far from the factory stood an abandoned church dedicated to St. John the Merciful. The church was in a state of utter desolation—its windows were broken and the roof had sunken in. Inside it was the icon of the Mother of God, “Joy and Consolation.” This icon became the patroness of a future convent of the same name.
This is where Nun Sophia, along with another sister, Nun Catherine, founded a monastic community for women. Soon the sisters who desired to serve God flocked to their community. It lived in extreme poverty and the sisters often went hungry. The rude factory workers tried in every possible way to drive the sisters out of Dugna, but the young abbess firmly believed that God would not abandon them and would send them His help, and she succeeded at conveying her belief to other sisters. And help did come: the church was fully repaired, while the monastery buildings and the orphanage building were renovated. Soon afterwards, about one hundred and fifty nuns were living in the monastery. Abbess Sophia often held talks on spiritual issues, which the sisters liked very much. The monastery became a spiritual center, a hospital for suffering souls, and a model of Christian life. The locals came to love the monastery and its abbess and would visit her in search of advice and support.
The locals came to love the monastery and its abbess and flocked to her for advice and support
But she needed wise advice and guidance herself, and so she went to receive it from the elders of Optina Monastery. Sts. Anatoly and Nektary of Optina became her spiritual fathers. As her contemporaries recalled, Nun Sophia was the embodiment of simplicity, intelligence and kindness, yet she also possessed a strong-willed character. People who knew her noted her beauty and her lovely blue eyes. She was also very talented—her poems signed “I.S.” were published in spiritual periodicals.
The abbess petitioned the Holy Synod to hand over to the community the church of St. John the Merciful, along with its assigned land. It took awhile for the final decision, which cost the abbess many tears; the community was growing, yet she didn’t have enough food to feed the sisters and the orphaned girls.
S. A. Nilus, a spiritual writer who lived near Optina at the time, called the “Joy and Consolation” Convent “an abode of love, faith and… poverty.”3
Finally, on the eve of the Christmas holidays, the Holy Synod issued a decree: to hand over the church and its assigned land to the convent—upon condition that the abbess contributes five thousand rubles to the Kaluga diocesan office. On the commeration day of St. Seraphim, whom Nun Sophia especially revered, she placed the paper with the above decree near his icon and said in the presence of all the sisters: “Batiushka, you know what I am doing! We have no money, but I have already answered bishop that I will pay before the deadline. And you know, Batiushka, that we destitute sisters have nowhere to get them.” She also urged the sisters: “Sisters let us tearfully appeal day and night to our venerable father with confidence that he will come to our aid.” Two days later, the required five thousand were received from a stranger!”
Nun Sophia remained seventeen years in the “Joy and Consolation” Convent, until the age of thirty-nine.
At the end of 1912, the righteous nun went to Petersburg to make arrangements for her convent. At the same time, Metropolitan Flavian (Gorodetsky) of Kiev and Galicia was coincidentally seeking an abbess for the Holy Protection Convent in Kiev. Having met Nun Sophia in Petersburg, Metropolitan Flavian immediately understood that he had chanced upon an, intelligent, enterprising young nun who was experienced in conducting the practical activities and economic operations of the monastic community she had founded. He offered to the Holy Synod to assign her as abbess of the Protection Convent. At the Novodevichy Convent in St. Petersburg, she was tonsured to as a stavrophore nun with her previous name, and elevated to the rank of abbess. That is how Nun Sophia came to reside in the Protection Convent in Kiev. The sisters of “Joy and Consolation” community closest to her were also transferred to the Protection Convent. It was hard for Abbess Sophia to part with her beloved community, the sisters, the orphaned children and the elders of Optina Monastery. She cried all night long upon learning she was confirmed as abbess of the Kiev monastery.
To be continued…
Source: Orthodox Christianity
