Archimandrite Tavrion Batozs biography

Parents called him Tikhon. He was the sixth child of the ten sons of the treasurer of the city council in the small town of the Kharkov province. From the age of 8, Tikhon served in the temple and dreamed of going to the monastery. Parents hoped to direct the boy to another path and sent to study at the teacher's seminary. But after its end, Tikhon still became a novice in the famous Glinsky desert.

Having served in the army in the First World War, Tikhon returned to his native monastery. In the year, he accepted tonsure in monasticism with the name Tavrion. It was a time of persecution of the church and priests. Tavrion supported Bishop Pavlin, whom the Bolsheviks threw to prison, fought with renovationists who tried to “modernize” Orthodoxy, traveled through remote parishes and attracted believers to active parish life.

It was not possible for the active priest to be in the eye of atheistic power. In the year, already being in the dignity of Archimandrite, about. Tavrion was arrested on charges of conspiracy against the Soviet regime and sent to the construction of Belomorkanal.

Exhausting labor and existence did not break the spirit of the priest. In the most hopeless minutes, when there was no longer a urine to drag a heavy car, he was saved by prayer. After the release, Father Taurion was forced to fulfill the priest’s duty for four years illegally - he served a daily liturgy, professed, communed, baptized and cooked believers secretly from the authorities.

The holy father was again arrested and sentenced to “create secret churches” to 8 years in prison in the Turin concentration camp of the Sverdlovsk region. And again, overwhelming work on Lesopoval, on a meager ration, mockery of criminals. In the year - a lifelong link to Kazakhstan. It became a little easier, but the life was heavy, I had to live in a dugout.

This greatly undermined the health of Fr. Only in the year he was released and rehabilitated as an innocently condemned. The tests not only hardened their will, strengthened in faith, but also developed the missionary spirit of the Orthodox shepherd. Even the Russian Foreign Church, which at that time, implacable to the Moscow Patriarchate, recognized the true righteous in Taurion, is akin to the fathers of the Optina desert.

Taurion's father served in different temples of Russia, and his last appointment was the Transfiguration Deserts in Latvia, in the Yelgavsky district. Ten years - from go to his death on August 13 - Father Taurion served as the confessor of the Yelgavsky desert. His efforts, the branch of the Riga Holy Trinity-Sergius Monastery, was expanded and landscaped. Taurion's father spent daily in the local church of worship and read sermons.

Tavrion Father was strict to brothers and sisters in the church. He himself did not know a single day of rest in his life, he blamed the negligent priests and nuns if they "took a vacation from God." But I always warmly met the pilgrims, for them there was a table, an overnight stay in the desert, and even a bathhouse. In any other monastery, people did not provide such a reception.

So they donated to the desert. We sent part of the money to Metropolitan Leonid, part - the abbess of the Riga Convent, part went to the improvement of the desert. They built cells and refectory for pilgrims, heating was carried out, two temples were restored. The former Vladyka-Metropolitan Leonid-every year on the death of his father Taurion, a memorial service served on him, and now they somehow forgot about the merits of our confessor, ”the Olympics Filippovna is sad.

Actually, during the life of Taurion’s father, not everyone approved him. For example, he asked his mother to give out a pretty penny to the “sore” olympiad, as he called alcoholics. He regretted them and believed that through help from the Church, God's grace would still reach them. But there were dissatisfied, who wrote an anonymous denunciation to his mother Olympics - they say she ruins the monastery.

Father Taurion was a very perspicacious person, possessed the gift of reading people's thoughts and anticipating events. Taurion's father, who himself survived a lot in his life, for the sake of spiritual help to man and his introduction to God could break some church canons, communion of the Baptist, transfer prayer from Old Slavonic to modern Russian, insert the word in Latvian.

Because of this, some clergymen condemned him, believed that he was influenced by the Uniates and Renovationists. But the Metropolitan of All Latvia Leonid very much appreciated Archimandrite, after conversations with him, the lord always left the desert, reassured and enlightened. Like hundreds of believers, suffering and painful, who sought and always found consolation to their sorrows and suffering in the Elgavskaya desert from Father Taurion.

From the memoirs of Archimandrite Taurion: “Many thought about what to ask the old man at the reception. In the sermon of the liturgy, Archimandrite Taurion usually explained the read gospel, addressing everyone without exception. But at the same time, he said to one of the souls standing in the temple. As the pilgrims said, they suddenly received answers to their answers to their answers to their answers to their answers to their answers.

Questions, and the need to go to a conversation to the old man disappeared.In those difficult years of spiritual hunger, he wanted to give people so much that, despite his age, he did not spare himself at all. He gave himself to the service of him, sacrificing himself, his hidden in the camps and prisons, on his own and time - with his whole life and even eternal fate. Taurion's father had a missionary spirit, and he perfectly understood that the time given to him by God was briefly and it was necessary to give people as much as possible at the moment when they came to him for help with their sorrows, diseases and troubles.

As the pilgrims recall, he met everyone with joy, and upon leaving, he gave money to many. "The abbot Evgeny Rumyantsev.