The Righteous Shall Live by Faith
The life of the hegumenia of the Presentation of the Virgin Convent in Orel (1866-1941)
The life of Hegumenia Alexia is one of those many existences broken by the arrival and establishment of communism in Russia, which could have remained in the anonymous depths of history. But history is often made of chance events, and in the case of Hegumenia Alexia, it comes from France.
In 2002, Jean Liamine, a Parisian doctor of Russian origin, received a television crew from Russia that was interested in his father’s liturgical compositions. On this occasion, he showed them an icon of St Seraphim of Sarov that had arrived in Paris in 1923 in his mother’s luggage from the Orel monastery.
Jean Liamine was then contacted by the nuns of Orel, who wished to learn more about the fate of this icon. This was the starting point of a meticulous reconstruction of the fates of those who made the history of the monastery in the early twentieth century, and in particular of its last hegumenia.
The story of Mother Alexia, reconstructed from letters, notebooks and court documents, unpublished photographs and the recollections of the last witnesses, reveals a woman whose faith remained unshakable in the face of repression. Her fate merges with that of many martyrs, victims of their religious fidelity. This book now allows the reader to hear this voice, which reaches us with all its power and conviction and which reflects the Christ-centred spirituality of the Russian tradition nourished by the Elders of Optina.
Thanks are due to Dr Jean Liamine for his perseverance in seeing this biography of Mother Alexia published. Sadly, he died before the appearance of this book, which he carried with great faith and love.
