Therapon of Monza
Our Venerable Father Therapon, Abbot of Monza
Venerable · Wonderworker · d. 1597
Commemorated 12 December — Repose
Therapon of Monza (died 1597) was a Russian monk of the Kostroma region, an ascetic of great hiddenness who laboured at the small monastery founded on the River Monza, north of Galich. He withdrew each day to pray alone in the forest and spent his nights copying spiritually profitable books, was granted the gift of wonderworking in his lifetime, and foretold the great famine of 1601. The monastery took his name after his repose.
Therapon began his monastic struggle in Moscow, and afterwards moved to Kostroma, where he was tonsured at the monastery of the Elevation of the Cross. Around that time the pious monks Adrian and Paphnutius, seeking greater solitude, had left the monastery of Saint Paul of Obnora and founded a new community on the River Monza, some twenty-five versts from Galich, dedicated under Saint Adrian. Therapon transferred there and passed the rest of his life in its ascetic labour.
His discipline was one of quiet withdrawal: with the blessing of the abbot he went out daily into the depth of the forest to pray, and by night read and copied out books of spiritual profit for the brotherhood. The tradition relates that he venerated Blessed Basil the fool-for-Christ of Moscow (commemorated August 2), whom he called his friend though the two never met in the flesh. Even during his life Therapon was glorified with the gift of wonderworking, and shortly before his repose he foretold the year of famine that came upon Russia in 1601. He surrendered his soul to God in 1597, and the monastery on the Monza was thereafter called the Theraponov after him.
Feast and commemoration
Therapon is commemorated on December 12 (church date; Old Calendar civil December 25), within the Nativity Fast. His veneration is kept in the Russian Church and by the Orthodox Church in America.
He is not to be confused with the other saints of the name, all of them kept in the second half of May: the hieromartyr Therapon of Cyprus, bishop of Kition, slain at the altar (May 14 in Greek and Antiochian usage, May 25 in the Russian books); the hieromartyr Therapon of Sardis (May 27); and the venerable Therapon of White Lake (Belozersk) and Mozhaisk (†1426, also May 27), another northern Russian abbot, with whom this Therapon is most often conflated.