A Holy Bishop Who “Walked the Walk”

December 31, 2024

St. Thaddeus of Tver was martyred on this day in 1937.

In the tradition of our Church, it is not uncommon for saints to be “classified” in terms of a particular charism they possessed: martyr, ascetic, hierarch, or prophet. It is less usual to find one who straddles these categories, being endowed with several gifts at once. St. Thaddeus (Uspensky) of Tver, who was executed by order of the NKVD on this day in 1937, was one such Man of God.

The future Archbishop Thaddeus was born Ivan Uspensky on November 12, 1872, into a clergy family in Nizhny Novgorod Province. Superficially, he followed a typical path for a priest’s son at the time. (Many of the other New Martyrs initially followed similar trajectories.) He studied at Moscow Theological Academy and, after being tonsured and ordained in 1897, he embarked on an outwardly run-of-the-mill career in the system of Russian ecclesiastical education, holding teaching and administrative positions in Smolensk, Ufa, and Olonets. In 1908, he was appointed Bishop of Volodymyr-Volynsky in modern-day Western Ukraine.

From left to right: Archbishop Antonii (Khrapovitskii) of Volhynia, (then-)Bishop Thaddeus, and Bishop Dionisii (Valedinskii) of Kremenets, another vicar bishop of Volhyn Diocese and the future First Hierarch of the Church of Poland.

At the same time, from an early point in his life, he exhibited certain special spiritual gifts. He felt a yearning for monastic life at a young age and resolved to become a monk rather than following in his father’s footsteps as a married priest. While still a student, he had a formative encounter with St. John of Kronstadt, who impressed him with Christ’s words, addressed to St. Peter, from St. John’s Gospel (John 21:17–18):

If thou lovest me, feed my sheep […] When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.

These words would come true with respect to St. Thaddeus, as well.

When teaching at the church schools, he was known for his modest way of life and stringent regimen of fasting and prayer. Often, he would give his salary away to people whom he saw in need around him, with the full assurance that God would provide for him.

As a bishop, he did not make any adjustments to this manner of living. He was loved by his flock as a model of meekness, humility, and purity. On occasion, he was said to have predicted future events affecting souls in his care. When he gave sermons, they addressed first and foremost the Christian virtues; he did not dwell on politics, except as it pertained to the integrity of Church life. The texts of his homilies were saturated with beautiful metaphors drawn from Scripture and the offices of the Church, giving them an almost hymnodic quality. Patriarch St. Tikhon recognized these qualities and is quoted as telling a member of his flock in Astrakhan later on [1]:

Do you know that Vladyka Thaddeus is a holy man? He is an unusual, rare person. Such luminaries of the church are an uncommon phenomenon. But you must spare him, for such extreme asceticism and utter negligence of earthy things has an effect on one’s health. It is evident that he has chosen a holy, yet difficult path; few are given such spiritual vigor. We must pray for the Lord to give him strength to continue along this path of struggle [podvig].

Perhaps because of this, he was visited by persecution under the Bolsheviks early and fiercely. He was initially arrested in Zhytomyr in 1921 and released to Moscow in 1922, before being imprisoned again later that same year, allegedly for distributing an appeal against the church policy being pursued by Metropolitan Sergius (Stargorodskii, who joined in 1922 the Renovationist schism –ed.).

During this first period of incarceration, a remarkable event occurred that was recorded in the diaries of his fellow New Martyr Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov). On the way to exile in Zyriansky Krai, Northern Russia, they were both transferred to a holding cell in Vladimir. The squalid conditions and abrasive manners of the hard criminals all around them weighed heavily on Metropolitan Kirill. St. Thaddeus, meanwhile, kept a calm and prayerful demeanor. One night, sensing Metropolitan Kirill’s despondency, he grabbed him by the arm spontaneously and said to him [1]:

For us, a truly Christian time has come. Our souls should be filled with joy, not sadness. Our souls must be open now to struggle and sacrifice. Do not be downcast, for Christ is with us.

These words are emblematic of the New Martyrs’ spiritual path and can be treated as an exemplary attitude for Orthodox Christians to adopt in dark times.

In 1923, he was finally allowed to assume his duties as Archbishop of Astrakhan, a see to which he had been appointed a year earlier. He served briefly as Archbishop of Piatigorsk in 1927 and Saratov in 1928, before being transferred to Tver, which was to become his final episcopal see and his resting-place. He preached extensively, and was always close to the People of God and much loved by his flock. In 1936, the attention of the Soviet regime again turned to him, and he was stripped of his registration papers and issued a ban from serving in church (which he defied). He was calumniated by a priest who had been questioned in custody during the Stalinist terror in summer of 1937. St. Thaddeus himself was finally arrested on December 20 and brought to be executed 10 days later. It seems somehow symbolic that that the terrible year of 1937 – the Great Purge – was closed out by his martyrdom.

The Communist persecution of the Church brought forth an assembly of New Martyrs who were all remarkable for their individual personalities and extraordinary acts of piety. Even in such a radiant firmament, St. Thaddeus stands out as a shining star not only for the circumstances of his death, but also his mode of life, which he upheld without fail from the very beginning of his ministry up to the moment of his martyrdom.

St. Thaddeus’ relics were uncovered in 1993, and in 1997, he was canonized as a New Martyr by the Russian Orthodox Church.

As a source of joy and solace in our present time, a new complete liturgical service to St. Thaddeus was approved on December 27, 2023, four days before his feast-day a year ago. A translation of the first three stichera and the doxastikon at Great Vespers is offered here (from an original version supplied by the author, Olga I. Hailova, a scholar at St. Tikhon’s University in Moscow):

Having renewed the countries of the Gentiles through the martyrs’ blood, / the Church concealeth in the wilderness a choir of the venerable / and adorneth them with Gospel comeliness, / that they might renew the Christian people with the waters of doctrine. / As one of them let us honor holy Thaddeus, // who sealed the word of his teaching through his martyrdom.

Having mingled grace of episcopacy / with the Spirit-bearing poverty of monasticism, / thou hadst care for but one thing alone: / to be united as an Apostle with the people of God / and to set their hearts aright by thy word, / for what is more than that, thou hast said, shall be added by Christ, // as we have been taught in the Gospel.

Thou precious stone and pure vessel / filled with the meekness of Christ: / thou wast led forth from a tranquil cell onto a bishop’s throne, / that thou mightest shine out unto the ends of the Earth in profound peace / through the heights and depths of thy spirit, // pouring out the love of God upon a faithful people.

“Let our souls be filled with joy instead of sadness, / and let us open them to struggles and sacrifice, O brethren,” / thou didst say, O holy hierarch, comforting the captives, / speaking in light amidst the darkness of the prison. / “Be ye not downhearted, for Christ is with us, / and the time that is now come is Christian indeed.” / Wherefore, wondering at the vigor of thy heart, / we pray thee: grant us succor from Heaven / to mortify our members which are upon the earth // that we might serve Christ with spiritual joy.

Holy Hieromartyr Thaddeus, pray to God for us!

This post is a guest contribution by ROCOR Studies associate Dr. Walker R. Thompson of Heidelberg University.

Reading this account, I cannot help but think that St. Thaddeus was a soulmate of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, who lived a similar life of prayer and self-renunciation abroad. St. Taddeus’ story restores a broader context of the fates of those close to Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii) who remained in Russia, like Bishop Nikodim (Korotkov) and Archbishop Tikhon (Sharapov). –Protodeacon Andrei

Footnotes

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[1] Tver Metropolitanate of the Russian Orthodox Church
https://tvereparhia.ru/about/tver-shrines/svjashhennomuchenik-faddej-arhiepiskop-tverskoj/