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On the question of canonization of priest Mikhail Kritskiy, priest of the Trinity Church in the village of Avtodeevo, Nizhny Novgorod province
Authors: Inna G. Menkova
Number of views: 291
Seventeen years ago, the consideration of the Synodal Commission for the
Canonization of Saints was offered a biography of the priest Michael Kritskiy,
who was shot by a guard. But since there is a version according to which the
priest tried to escape, Father Michael was declared a suicide and was not
numbered among the holy martyrs. Over the following years, a lot of materials were collected about his life path and death, completing the initial information. Father Mikhail belonged to the family of hereditary rural priests, who
were well aware of the problems of the material and spiritual condition of
the peasants. He also saw how they affected the attitude of the people to the
Church, he knew that the clergy led at times a beggarly existence. All this did
not stop Mikhail from choosing the path of life. Having assumed the priesthood, he was called to help these very hardened people, now entrusted by the
Providence of God to his spiritual care. The priest was an ardent man, faithful to God to the depths of his heart. Together with his parishioners, Father
Mikhail went through the most difficult periods in the history of the Russian
state and the Church at the beginning of the 20th century. His selfless pastoral care for people in an atmosphere of spiritual mortification, bitterness, and
sometimes aggression, his labors to improve the moral state of the people
and the churching of fallen parishioners were a daily feat. State and church
events soon demanded a wide participation of the clergy in public life, and
Fr. Mikhail was involved in educational and anti-schismatic activities, which
he conducted with considerable success. The priest turned out to be a talented preacher. He was also elected a deputy of diocesan congresses. Then, for the first time, his spiritual gifts manifested themselves: the ability to foresee
future events and control what was happening at an unattainable distance,
which the priest covered with some foolishness. The decree of the Soviet
government on the separation of church from state became an incentive for
an all-Russian church pogrom. The property of the Church, deprived of the
rights of a legal entity and, consequently, of all civil rights, was plundered,
and the clergy were destroyed by lynching. During this period, the inhabitants
of the Diveyevo Monastery, deprived of the opportunity not only to use the
fruits of their labors, but also bread and water, suffered greatly from the unrestrained and cynical arbitrariness of the authorities. Father Michael could not
remain indifferent. Being a beggar himself, he collected alms for the sisters
in the villages, for which he was arrested, and after the second imprisonment
he was shot by a guard along the way. The article uses materials from the
State Archives of the Russian Federation, Nizhny Novgorod archives, historical and local history works, as well as the personal archive of Priest Georgy
Pavlovich.