On October 3 (September 20 on the Julian Calendar) we commemorate Saint Theoctistus (Theoktist) Smelnitsky, priest and martyr of the Communist yoke, who reposed in the Lord in 1937.
Hieromartyr Theoktist was born on January 17, 1874 in the village of Tarasovichi, Oster district, Chernigov province (Vyshgorod district, Kyiv region) into the family of the psalm-reader of the Resurrection Church, Elisey Smelnitsky.
After finishing his studies at the Chernigov Theological Seminary in 1898, Theoktist Smelnitsky married Klavdia Mikhailovna Yagodovskaya, with whom he lived his entire life. Matushka Klavdia was born on May 18, 1879. They had two children: Valentin was born on April 14, 1899, and daughter Nonna was born on April 15, 1905.
On August 28 of the same year, on the day of the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, Bishop Anthony (Sokolov) of Chernigov and Nezhinsk ordained him to the church in the village of Verkhlichi, Surazh district, Chernigov province (Krasnogorsk district, Bryansk region), where he also served as a religious teacher at the church parish school.
On June 26, 1900, he was transferred to the St. Nicholas Church in the town of Gorsk, Gorodnyansky district, Chernigov province (Shchorsky district, Chernigov region), and served as a director and religious teacher in the zemstvo schools of the town of Gorsk and the villages of Zhovedi and Peschanka in the same district.
On June 7, 1905, at his own request, he was transferred to the Transfiguration Church in the town of Gogolevo, Oster district, Chernigov province (Brovarsky district, Kyiv region). From November 30, 1905, he was a religious teacher at the local zemstvo school. In Gogolevo, Fr. Theoktist actively rebelled against the Jewish pogroms, during which he and his family were on duty for days on end, protecting Jewish homes from pogroms, preventing property from being taken out, and hiding entire families.
On April 30, 1906, he was admitted to the performance of priestly duties at the church of a parish that had not yet opened, in the village of Voropayev, Oster district, Chernigov province (Vyshgorod district, Kyiv region), and on May 24, after the opening of the parish of the village of Voropayev by the Holy Governing Synod, he was approved as a priest for this church.
From 1913 to 1917 he was a teacher at the Chernigov Theological Seminary and conducted divine services in the seminary's church of the holy martyrs Michael and Theodore of Chernigov.
Father Theoktist's last parish was the Holy Trinity Church in the village of Losinovka in the Nezhinsky District of the Chernigov Region, where he served until its closure in 1936. That same year, the priest was arrested and sent to the Karlag concentration camp in Kazakhstan, and the following year, the priest was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on October 3, 1937, at 11:30 p.m. The priest's burial place is unknown.
By the decision of the Jubilee Holy Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on August 20, 2000, Archpriest Theoktist Eliseevich Smelnitsky was canonized among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
The day of remembrance of the holy martyr Theoktistos is October 3, the day of his blessed death.