Holy Confessors John (Maisuradze) (+1957) and George-John (Mkheidze) (+1960)
Archimandrite John (in the world Vasil Maisuradze) was born in Tskhinvali around 1882. From childhood Vasil was good at every kind of work. As a boy of about twelve he selflessly helped the abbot of the monastery of Betania, the hieromonk Spiridon (Ketiladze), who with great difficulty set up and restored the house in 1894–96.
Inclined from his youth to the monastic life and seeking holiness, Vasil, by God’s providence, began to live on the mountain of Athos from 1903, in the house of Saint John the Theologian. The young ascetic, distinguished by simplicity, service of the brethren and every virtue, was soon tonsured a monk and, as a sign of his special love for Saint John the Theologian, named John. Soon the monk John was ordained priest, which brought out his personality still more. Filled with boundless love for God and selfless service of his neighbour, the holy father tried in every way to please God and to make his life useful to his neighbour too. (It should be noted that this quality stayed with him all his life: despite his unlawful expulsion from the Holy Mountain of Athos and his later being condemned to death by the atheist authorities, Saint John always showed a wonderful love for all people.)
Saint John spent seventeen years on Athos, and then, because of the hard circumstances of the times, in 1920–21 he was forced, together with other Georgian monks, to leave the Holy Mountain. Having returned to Georgia, Saint John settled in the monastery of Armazi, where because of the persecution by the God-fighting Bolsheviks only one monk was living. Once armed Chekists came to the monastery and took the monks away by force, and on the way, at the edge of a ravine, shot both monks in the back. The Chekists took the monks who had fallen into the ravine for dead. By God’s providence the monk who was relatively lightly wounded dragged himself with difficulty to Mtskheta. John too was found, more dead than alive, and brought to the convent of Samtavro.
Father John in the Georgian house on Athos, 1910s
When he had recovered, Father John went to the monastery of Betania, where the teacher of his childhood, the hieromonk Spiridon, was still living. Very soon Father John took over the abbacy of the house.
Father John, used to work since childhood, soon set up the monastery’s farm, and he would entertain the people who came to the monastery for spiritual counsel with a fine meal. For the people’s sake he was cheerful himself; he loved children dearly and always had sweets for them; the children were so at ease with him that on the feast of John the Baptist, after Father John had blessed the faithful and sprinkled them with holy water, the children drenched the venerable father completely. To the parents, embarrassed by the children’s behaviour, Father John said cheerfully: it is a feast, and that is how it should be. Father John, so simple with children, received with wonderful honour the very young Irakli Ghudushauri, then a student at the Moscow Theological Seminary. Father John’s behaviour, inexplicable at the time — his unconcealed tears of joy and the unusual reverence he showed the student — makes us think that in the student who had come for his blessing he foresaw the future Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia, Ilia II, and the revival of the Church of Georgia bound up with his work.
Father John fasted very strictly, worked all day, slept only on a board and prayed whole nights; those with him could not understand when Father John rested and where he got such vigour. Besides pilgrims, robbers emboldened by the authorities’ connivance often came to the monastery and stole and took from the monks the food and livestock they had come by with difficulty. However, the monastery also had protectors in the government, in the person of secret Christians, with whose help the life of Father John Maisuradze and Father George Mkheidze in the monastery was registered as that of guards of a monument, and the monks even received a small wage.
Many miracles worked through Father John’s prayer are known, though the venerable father always avoided their being made public. Father John and Father George healed a deaf-mute by prayer; people suffering from various incurable diseases were brought to them, and after staying a few days at Betania (in this way the fathers hid their gift of working miracles) the sick were healed. Father John himself did the heaviest work of the monastery and was very anxious about Father George, who was in poor health. But it was he who departed from this world first. The sufferings of life and constant labour undermined his health, and after a short illness he died in 1957 at the age of seventy-five.
Archimandrite George (Mkheidze) was born in the village of Skhvava in the Ambrolauri district around 1887. Following the tradition among the nobility at that time, George began to study at a military school, but instead of making a military career in the empire he joined the national liberation movement, and for a time served as private secretary to the holy Ilia the Righteous; he often met Saint Ilia’s spiritual father, the holy Bishop Alexander (Okropiridze), and the Hieromartyr Nazar (Lezhava), and knew closely almost all the outstanding people of his time.
Father George, a monk of the monastery of Khirsa, 1923
Wishing to offer his whole life to God, George chose the path of the monastic life; he was tonsured by the Hieromartyr Nazar. Father George, highly educated and humble, in whom refined aristocratic manners and monastic asceticism were wonderfully blended, was ordained priest and raised to the rank of archimandrite. Filled with love for God and the desire to give himself for his fatherland, this holy ascetic experienced in his own person every trial that fell upon our Church and nation at that time.
In 1924, while Father George was labouring in the monastery of Khirsa, armed Chekists attacked him. They beat him, cut off his hair and beard and threatened to kill him. And when he took refuge for a time with his family, still more painful hurt was done to him by his own brothers, poisoned by the atheist worldview, who cut off the sleeping monk’s beard again. (Afterwards one brother killed himself, and the other was shot together with his wife.)
In 1924 Saint George went up to the monastery of Betania, where Father John Maisuradze met him, and from that day these two holy fathers laboured together all their lives; their life may be called “one soul in two bodies”.
Because of his poor health Father George was occupied in the monastery with comparatively light work — looking after the bees and tending the vegetable garden. Father George was wonderfully merciful; because of his boundless generosity they were sometimes left almost without food, and he would say hopefully to Father John: God will give.
Tall, thin and always upright, Father George seemed sterner in appearance; he spoke less with the people who came to the monastery, and the children did not dare to play with him as with Father John, but always tried to please the holy father by learning prayers by heart and behaving well.
Father George seldom left the monastery, but he did have to go down to Tbilisi, where he had a great many spiritual children, among them patriotically minded secret Christians serving in the government.
Father George was gifted with prophecy and healing, which he carefully hid, and if it came to light he tried in every way to explain what had happened by everyday causes. Once he called a stranger who had come to the monastery by name, and calmed the astonished visitor: when you were baptised in such-and-such a church, I was there too; the baptism had taken place thirty years before, when the man was two months old. Father George sensed in spirit beforehand when his nephew was bringing to him his sisters, whom he had not seen for forty-eight years, and, although it was the last week of Great Lent, he prepared fish for his sisters’ meal.
Through the prayers of Father George and Father John, Father George’s nephew, who was brought to the monastery doomed to die of meningitis, was healed. A deaf-mute child was brought to the monastery, and the fathers’ prayer restored his hearing; people possessed by various sicknesses were brought, and were taken home healed.
In 1957, when Father John died, Father George was tonsured into the great schema and, like his spiritual brother, was named John. The whole weight of the monastery fell on George-John, now left alone, and undermined his already weak health still further. His spiritual children came up from the city to look after him. A girl of about twenty came to the monastery, suffering from terrible headaches. Someone had advised her that the water of the monastery of Betania would heal her, and indeed, after living a week at the monastery, she was entirely healed. Father George-John walked eight kilometres to see the girl on her way.
Father George had an appearance of the Theotokos: the all-holy Virgin healed the confessor, who was tormented by unbearable pains. The Protomartyr Thecla appeared to the saint and brought him a bunch of grapes as a gift. A few days before his end the elder was in the city, where an angel appeared to him, told him of his approaching end and bade him wait in the monastery for his departure from this world.
The holy father George-John (Mkheidze) died in 1960 and is buried in the monastery of Betania beside Father John (Maisuradze).
