Saints
“Alexander of Svir”
Abbot of the Holy Trinity on the Svir · Seer of the Holy Trinity
A monk of Valaam who went off alone into the forest between Lakes Ladoga and Onega and lived there seven years without seeing anyone. He is the only saint of the Russian Church to whom the tradition ascribes an appearance of the Holy Trinity as three men, as to Abraham at Mamre, and the monastery he founded on the river Svir became one of the great houses of the Russian north.
His life
He was born Amos in 1448 in a village on the Oyat river, of peasant parents, and went north to Valaam at nineteen against their wishes. He was tonsured Alexander and spent about thirteen years there, part of it as a hermit on one of the islands.
About 1485 he left for the mainland forest near the river Svir and lived alone in it for seven years, seeing no one, on what the forest gave. He was found by a hunter, and after that people began to come, and a brotherhood grew up around him that he did not want and did not refuse.
The Life records that in the twenty third year of his life there, at prayer at night, a great light filled the place and three men came in to him in shining garments, and told him to build a church and gather a house in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He asked in whose name the church was to be dedicated, and was told, in the name of the Trinity. Russian iconography has a distinct type for it, and it is unique in the Russian calendar.
He was made abbot against his will by the archbishop of Novgorod, and remained the poorest and least-served man in his own monastery. He reposed on the thirtieth of August, 1533, aged eighty five. His relics were uncovered incorrupt in 1641, were seized by the Soviet authorities in 1918 and displayed as an exhibit, and were found again and returned to the monastery in 1998. The Church keeps his memory on the thirtieth of August and on the seventeenth of April.
Holy St. Alexander of Svir, pray to God for us.