Ηegumen / Abbot
Saint Methodius (in the world Nikolai Mikhailovich Ivanov) was born in 1899 in Simbirsk into the family of a priest. He graduated from a church-parish school and a theological school, then entered the Simbirsk Theological Seminary, but did not finish due to the state coup. From 1920, he worked as a teacher in Saransk and Penza, and then moved to Moscow, where he began teaching in higher education. In 1923, he left the school and became a novice at the Pokrovsky Monastery, where he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Methodius and ordained as hierodeacon. In 1925, he was ordained as hieromonk, and in 1929, after the monastery was closed, he began serving at the Church of the Jerusalem Icon of the Mother of God.
In 1929, he was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activity and sentenced to three years of exile in the Pinezhsky District of the Arkhangelsk Region. After returning from exile in 1933, he settled in Kashira, then in the village of Sukovo, where he served in the church and gathered a small monastic community around him. In 1936, he was elevated to the rank of igumen.
On July 3, 1937, a new persecution of the clergy began. On July 26, an order was given for his arrest. On July 28, Father Methodius was arrested, and interrogations began. He denied all accusations of counter-revolutionary activity. On September 8, 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to death by shooting, and he was executed on September 9, 1937, buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.
