The life of St Theophan the Recluse
After some years of active episcopal duty, he petitioned in 1866 to be released from his see altogether and withdrew to the Vysha Hermitage, a monastery he had long been drawn to. For the first six years there he still kept to the community's common life, joining the other monks for services and, on Sundays and feast days, concelebrating the Liturgy. In 1872, after Pascha, he withdrew further still, shutting himself into a separate cell, ceasing to attend even the monastery church, and living for the next twenty-two years as a recluse in the fullest sense, seen almost by no one. In that long silence he wrote steadily, producing works on prayer and the inner life and a large correspondence answering those who wrote to him for guidance, work that reached and shaped many who never saw his face. He reposed at Vysha in 1894, not long before his own feast day, and was glorified by the Russian Church in 1988.
