Father Nektarij

The cave monastery and underground Chapel of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker

The services at cave-monastery and underground temple of St. Nicholas are ministered on Thursdays and important celebrations.

Kazan Icon of the God’s Mother Church where father Nektarij reads sermons every Sundays and prays every day

Divine Liturgy at Kazan Icon of the God’s Mother Church

Father Nektarij with sons of Irina, his spiritual daughter

Father Andrei, the ex-prior of the monastery and Nektarij’s spiritual father, loved flowers, and died among flowers.

Once he didn’t come to the service, everyone began to look for him, and found him, already cold, at the spring: it was an apoplexy.

Father Nektarij at the cave-monastery and underground temple of St. Nicholas

Father Nektarij’s spiritual daughter at Saint Michael Church (Serdobsk), putting a candle for Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

First Polina (15 years) got to a service when she was 12. She wished father Nektarij to be her spiritual father at once.

Sunday service at Kazan Icon of the God’s Mother Church

Такие дела, 2018

Сноб, 2018

Sasha Kudryashov was born in Penza. Because of the nearby drug factory emissions a two year old toddler was constantly ill. His parents quitted their work at the factory and moved to the countryside. When Sasha was 23, he received a draft notice, and passing the medical board he learnt that he has a tumor. He started the treatment, and then took the veil and became a monk.

Today Sasha’s name is father Nektarij. At the age of 30 he took a great schema — the highest degree of renunciation of the world. He keeps to especially strict ascetic rules. Such a man no longer belongs to himself or the world — only to God. The great schema vow is so strict and hard, that only few dare to take it. In XVIII—XIX centuries in Russia there were several hundreds schema monks, in modern Russia — only about 20. Sasha is the youngest of them. And he’s still fighting his disease.