St. Ambrose of Optina

Alexander Grenkov, a seminary teacher who became a monk of the Optina hermitage and, from 1860, its elder, receiving from dawn to night the stream of people who came to him from every class: peasants with a sick cow, students losing their faith, and writers, Dostoevsky after the death of his son and Tolstoy more than once. His counsel was short, homely and often funny, and he was almost always ill. He founded the women’s monastery at Shamordino and died there in 1891. The eldership that Optina made famous, handed down from St Paisius Velichkovsky, reached its height in him. Glorified in 1988. Feast: October 10.