Biography of Kuksha Odessa

Article from the Encyclopedia "Tree": Drevo-info. The mother of Kosma Haritin in her youth wanted to be a nun, but her parents blessed her for marriage. Haritin prayed to God that at least one of her children would be able to grate in a monastic rank. Kosma from an early age loved prayer and solitude. Even from his youth, the Monk had compassion for people, especially to sick, suffering.

For this, the enemy of the salvation of the human all his life took up arms against him. The next event of his adolescence is known. Kosma had a cousin, obsessed with an unclean spirit. Kosma went with him to one old man who expelled demons. The elder healed the young man, and Kosme said: “For the only that you brought him to me, the enemy will take revenge on you - you will drive your whole life.” Having lived in Jerusalem for six months, having examined all the holy places in Palestine, Kosma on the military path visited the Holy Mount Athos.

Here, he especially inflamed the desire to get on monasticism. However, before it was necessary to return home and get the blessing of parents. Mother with joy and thanksgiving to God took the decision of the son, but his father had to persuade his father for a long time before he released his son. Poping on the road, the mother blessed the Kosmma of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God with whom the Monk did not part all his life, and which was laid in his coffin after the death.

In the year, Kosma arrived at Athos and entered the Russian Holy Panteleimon Monastery. Jealously performed the obedience of the prosphid person entrusted to him by the abbot of the monastery. In the year, the mother of Kosma Haritin was heading into a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When a ship with travelers made a stop off the coast of Athos, Haritin in writing asked the abbot of the monastery to bless to visit the Holy Land and Kosm.

The blessing was received - so the parent once again saw her son. In Jerusalem, two events occurred with a comedian, which omened the Monk's ministry: when the traveling people were pushed at the Siloam font, and he fell into the water, and when the pilgrims were in the temple of the Resurrection of Christ, the middle lamp burned at the coffin of the Lord, and all of the fir trees and spilled over.

Since there is a custom to plunge into the water of the Siloam font to especially barren women, the first of whom the Lord granted Chadoro, people laughed, saying that now Kosma would have many children, which came true - in a spiritual sense. In the case of a lamp, people quickly surrounded Kosmu and, gathering their hands flowing through his clothes of fir trees, reverently anointed them, which also indicated an abundance of grace, which would pour out from the Monk to people.

A year later, Kosma was sent for a year and a half to carry obedience in the order of priority at the Holy Sepulcher. Returning to Athos, Kosma was appointed to obedience the hotel in a strange way for pilgrims, where he had been working for 11 years. Digently fulfilling this obedience for such a long time, Kosma acquired complacency patience and humility. Soon, the novice of Kosma was tonsured in a bums with the name Konstantin, and on March 23, to monasticism with the name of the name Ksenophon.

In the years on Athos Mountain, an imperial unrest arose for the shortest time. Father Xenophon had nothing to do with this teaching, but the Greek authorities, fearing the spread of the Time of Troubles, demanded that many Russian monks leave Athos, including him. During the First World War, together with other monks, he was aimed at the hard obedience of his brother of mercy to the sanitary train, which went along the Kyiv -Lviv line.

At this time, rare spiritual qualities and virtues showed in it: patience, compassion and love in the service of a seriously ill and wounded. Upon returning to the laurel, Father Xenophon carried obedience in distant caves: he tucked and lit the lamps over holy relics, reassembled the holy relics, and followed cleanliness and order. I really wanted to accept the schema, but they refused him because of his youth.

At the age of 56, he unexpectedly seriously ill, as they thought, hopelessly. It was decided to immediately cut the dying in the schema, which was committed on April 8 with a cuckoo rod, named the Holy Martyr Kuksha, whose relics rest in the near caves. After the tonsure, Father Kuksh began to recover and soon completely recovered. In the year, he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years of camps in the city of Wilm, the Molotov region, to exhausting forestry work, and after the departure of this period - to 3 years of exile in the Solikamsk region, in a village near the city of Kungur.

Taking a blessing from the bishop in Solikamsk, he often performed a worship in a neighboring village. At the end of the term of the reference of the year, he returned to the inhabitant to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, where he was obedient to the candle in the nearby caves. From these years, more and more people seek to confess him and get spiritual advice and edification.

This was not left without the attention of the authorities, and in [3] he was transferred to the Pochaev Lavra. Spiritism in the southern monastery in Pochaev people strove for the old man as before - hundreds stood in line for confession. You can judge by a popular love for the old man by the next event.Father Kuksh, according to Athos custom, had shook his whole life only in boots.

From long and many exploits on his feet there were deep venous wounds. Once, when he stood at the miraculous icon of the Mother of God, Vienna burst on his leg, and his boots were filled with blood. He was taken to cells, laid in bed. The abbot Joseph, famous for his healing, came in the Amphilochius scheme, examined his leg and said: “Get ready, father, home,” that is, to die - and left.

A week later, the abbot again came to his father Kukshe, examined the almost healing wound on his leg and exclaimed in amazement: “Spiritual children were prayed! The arrival of the elder Kukshi in this monastery was beneficial for her - the spiritual life of the brethren came to life, the pilgrims reached for the monastery, the monastery was able to erect new buildings with their gifts.

The reverend himself, despite the senile weakness, felt good here, often repeated: “Here I am at home, here I am on Athos! At the same time, Father Kukshu was transferred to the Odessa Assumption Monastery. In the Assumption monastery to Father Kukshe, it was determined obedience to confess people and help to take out particles from prosphora during the commission of proskomidia.

Despite the ban on the authorities to visit the holy old man, people here did not lose his spiritual fed. The Patriarch always invited the fertile old man “to a cup of tea”, loved to talk with him, asked how the previous times were in Jerusalem and on Athos. Blessed ascetic foresaw his death. The spiritual daughter of the elder Schimonakhin A. And indeed, his words were fulfilled exactly.

He rested at 2 a.m., and at 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the same day a cross rose over the grave mound. He died when he was about 90 years old. "Having served in monasteries for 70 years, Rev. Kuksh died on December 24. The authorities, fearing a large coincidence of the people, prevented the priest to burden in the monastery, and demanded a burial in his homeland. But the governor of the monastery, admonished by God, wisely replied: "The monk has a native of the monastery." The authorities gave a deadline for a burial for 2 hours.

The veneration of the Monk Kukshi began immediately after his death. The people went to his grave at the brotherly monastery cemetery, asked the holy saint and, according to his prayers, received relief in sorrows and diseases. In the year, his holy relics were acquired and the scum of Kuksh was ranked to the Holy of Saints in the rank of St. Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

In the monastery cemetery, at the site of the saint’s burial lies a marble plate with the inscription “Rev. Kuksha Odessa was buried here, while its holy relics are in the Assumption Church of the Odessa Monastery. By the definition of the Bishop Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church on February, the name of the Monk Kukshi Odessa was included in the month of the Russian Orthodox Church for general church veneration [4].