The First Akathyst to the Ural New Martyr Was Written in the United States

In 1917, when so many young men seized by the whirlwind of the revolution, were abdicating the Church, a seminarian Konstantin Bogoyavlensky who was only 21 at that time, entered the path of wholehearted service to the Lord and became a priest. Upon his ordination, Fr. Konstantin was sent to Merkushino village. This place had been since long glorified by the life and feats of righteous Simeon of Verkhoturye, one of the most venerated saints of the Urals. Here the young priest served slightly over a year.
In July of 1918, the Bolsheviks accused Fr. Konstantin of organizing a peasants' insurrection and decided to execute him without any court procedure. With faith and manliness did the priest meet his horrible death – all the way from the local municipal center to the site of execution he would not give himself over to faint-heartedness, he did not ask for mercy – he was singing! Fr. Konstantin, already facing death, was singing to the Lord: he was singing funeral odes for the other arrested with him and for himself. The sentenced people were forced to dig a common grave; they were stood on its edge and killed by shootings in the head. In 2002, at the restoration of the destroyed church of Michael the Archangel, the fully incorrupt relics of Fr. Konstantin were found. That same year he was canonized. And only a few years later, the new saint began to be piously venerated not just in the Ural, but also in the USA.
In America, people first learned about the Russian neo-martyr in 2007, when the wife of one American priest, matushka Elena, translated the book "Hieromartyr Konstantin of Merkushino", by request of our sisters, into English language. Soon after this, the sisters sent an icon they painted of the hieromartyr Konstantin with a piece of his relics to the church of St. Katherine, where the husband of matushka Elena was serving. Now this icon is in the church of St. Katherine (Saint Katherine Orthodox Mission) in Kirkland, Washington, and it became one of the most beloved relics of the parishioners. It is remarkable that the icon was placed by the altar icon of holy great martyr Katherine right before the iconostasis, aiming to show thereby the connection of the neo-martyrs to the martyrs of the first times of Christianity.
Many parishioners of the American church of St. Katherine so greatly loved the Russian saint that they even included the prayer to hieromartyr Konstantin into their daily prayer rule. The choir director of this church, Meagan (Martha in baptism) composed the first akathyst to the hieromartyr -- in English language. The life and the feat of St. Konstantin is glorified in the akathyst through the images taken out of Sacred Scripture, liturgical, and other church hymns. Thus, a simple country priest about whom, upon the finding of his relics, it was barely possible to find historical information, became known to the entire Orthodox world. Not so long ago the hagiography of hieromartyr Konstantin was translated into Greek, it has been published in Greece, in the book "Martyrs of the North." Truly, "Precious before the Lord is the death of His saints!"