On September 24 (September 11 on the Julian Calendar) we commemorate Saints Nikolai Podyakov and Victor Usov, Priests and New Martyrs of the Communist Yoke, who reposed in the Lord in 1930.
Hieromartyr Nikolai served in the Nativity of the Mother of God Church in the village of Podosinovets in the Vologda diocese. In 1918, Father Nikolai Podyakov read a message from Patriarch Tikhon from the pulpit; the courageous word of the Patriarch-Confessor, denouncing sin and calling for repentance, irritated the militant atheists, and the parishioners, fearing attacks on the church and worried about the life of the priest, established a permanent vigil in the church.
On September 24, 1918, Archpriest Nikolai performed the funeral service for a parishioner and went to the cemetery with the deceased's relatives. Towards the end of the funeral service, a nun who served at the church came running to the cemetery, dressed this time not in monastic attire, but in secular clothes:
"Father Nikolai, hide quickly. They'll come to shoot you today."
Father Nikolai smiled and, noticing her unusual outfit, said, "Why did you come running to save me in just a skirt?"
The punitive detachment arrived in the village after midday. Everyone was wearing identical red shirts. "Where is the priest?" the punitive detachments asked.
Nobody wanted to point him out.
"Well, if he doesn't show up, we'll take the youngest son," they threatened.
Having learned of this, Father Nikolai came home and gathered the children for a final conversation. The priest taught them how, despite all the hardships of this life, to maintain faith in God, to remain faithful to the Church, not to deviate from the fulfillment of the commandments, even if everything around them compels them to do so. He was serenely calm and in his instructions and advice he went into all the details of their future life: how the children should live alone, since they had lost their mother, who had died early, long ago. During the conversation, the punitive forces burst into the house.
"No one comes out!" they ordered.
Overjoyed to have found the priest, they began to shoot at him and, seeing that they had wounded him, left the house.
"Well, thank God!" Father Nikolai sighed with relief and crossed himself.
It was unclear to the family how long the executioners had gone and whether they would return. The son ran for a doctor. The doctor came right away, but before he could bandage the wound, the executioners burst into the house again.
"Why are you here?" they angrily approached the doctor.
"I am a doctor and I am obliged to come to the patient."
"Get out of here right now! We don't want you here! We'll take him to the 'hospital' ourselves," the executioners shouted, pointing to the stretcher they had brought with them.
The children were forbidden to accompany their father. The "hospital" was nearby - it was a hayfield near a river. Having laid Father Nikolai near a pit, they began to torture him. Some shot, some stabbed, thrusting the bayonet into the body, pulling it out and thrusting it in again. Later, when examining the body, it turned out that in addition to gunshot wounds, he had eleven bayonet wounds.
The body of the murdered priest was thrown into a pit, but not buried. At that time, a priest from a neighboring parish, Father Viktor, was sitting in the village council, detained by the punitive forces. He was brought to the pit and ordered to perform the funeral service for the tortured priest. When the funeral service was over, one of the executioners shot Father Viktor in the back of the head.
In the spring, Father Victor's sons arrived and, together with Father Nikolai's children, asked the authorities for permission to bury the priests in the cemetery. The sons took Father Victor's body to the parish where he served, and Father Nikolai Podyakov was buried in the cemetery in Podosinovets.
They were canonized as New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for universal veneration.
