HOLY NEW MARTYR PARAMON OF BRAGIL (BELORUSSIA)

In the town of Bragil there lived a 65-year-old bachelor of chaste life, Paramon. His parents died early and he remained living all alone in their house for many years, leading a life of fasting and prayer. His house was not a large one, on the outskirts of town, and a large orchard surrounded it. There were two churches in this town, and when they signed their loyalty to the Soviet Church (Metropolitan Sergius), he stopped going to them and conducted the church services at home.      Once in the month of June Tikhon T. visited this town. He was with his friend Athanasius. It was Sunday morning and they were going to church. As they came closer to it, they saw that on top of the church, instead of an Orthodox cross, there was a hammer and sickle and a red flag. So they went to the other church, and that one had the same stamp of the Antichrist on it. So they decided not to go to church at all, and instead to pay a visit to Paramon, whom they knew.      He was very happy to see them. He was quite stout, of less than medium height. His head was bald, and he had a medium-sized beard not yet grey. He invited them into his house, all the walls of which were thickly covered with icons. There were many icon lamps, all lit, before the holy icons. He even showed us portraits of the Tsars and the new martyr Tsar Nicholas II. They were hidden in a large closet that had many of these old and rare portraits adorning the walls. Having examined everything that he showed them, they came out into the garden. It was a luxuriant orchard, with many tall and shady trees that abounded in fruits. He somehow managed to preserve himself almost to the end from the collective farms and all the horrors and deprivations of the hellish Soviet system, under which everything was liquidated by the communist authority.      Here in the garden, he told them of a miracle that he had beheld in that very garden just over a week before. On the first of June, that is, three weeks before the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany, he suddenly saw in the air some unusually large birds girded about with sky-blue ribbons. As he was watching them, they began to hover over his garden. Suddenly he saw one of these birds come right down into his garden, and when it was almost down it asked him: “What do you see, Paramon?”      Petrified, he said: “I don’t know.”      Then it said: “We go to the East to make way for the Eastern kings to go west.”      With this, it rose up to join the flock and flew to the East.      The war broke out. Very soon the local Soviet guerillas found out about the portraits of the Tsar in Paramon’s cell and about his ascetic life. And in that very garden, they tortured him for a long while and then killed him. He died a martyr’s death in July 1941.