John was born to a peasant family in Russia in the Tver Guberniya on 26 February 1873, and his lay name was Ivan Alekseevich Alekseev.

At the age of thirteen, Ivan Alekseev left home and went to St. Petersburg and began to work in a bar owned by his elder brother; there he would see the dark side of the human nature in all its wretchedness.

He said much later, that for a future spiritual guide, there would not have been a better place to get acquainted with the joys and sorrows of human life, especially with its agony and anxiety.

[4] In 1907 he became a member of the brotherhood, and in 1910 he was tonsured a monk and given a new name, Brother Iakinf, after the Greek martyr Yakinthos (Hyacinth, d. 98 A.D.).

[1][5] Brother Iakinf served the monastery eagerly, but a two-year assignment to the monastery's podvor’e in St. Petersburg was difficult for him, but he took it with obedience, and when he returned to Valamo, he was given a reward: he was assigned to the St. John the Baptist Skete, of which he had dreamed, a place known for its strenuous life of fasting and profound prayer.

[6] The Independence of Finland and the Controversy concerning chronology in the Finnish Orthodox Church did not affect this place of calm and prayer.

Compared to Valamo, the monks in Petsamo were quite uneducated, and spiritual guidance and teaching literacy were the most challenging tasks of the new igumen.

He also called to their attention that monk Anatoli had sworn during haymaking and that the latter had told his father confessor to shut up when he had reprimanded him.

In addition to this, he had to call to the attention of the brethren that they missed services regularly and that various sales and building projects had been initiated without his blessing.

He thus considered that his position as the head of the monastery had been undermined and that he was unworthy to lead it, and he therefore announced that he would return to Valamo.

[11] The new Schema-Igumen was allowed to return to his beloved St. John the Baptist Skete to continue his monastic life.

Even there he was not totally alienated from the world: one summer he had an assistant there, a young novice by the name of Georgi, who later became a hieromonk and in 1955 vicar bishop, and finally in 1960, Archbishop of Karelia and All Finland.

[13] The difficult days of the Winter War arrived in Valamo, including the people of the St. John the Baptist Skete.

John had sat calmly in his cell and read the Gospel, not minding the windows being broken and the doors swinging open due to the blasts from exploding bombs.

[14] The elderly hermit showed an example to his younger monastic brethren, and he helped to make the difficult time easier for them.

During three decades, many hundreds of people coming to confessions knocked on its door and said the Jesus prayer and thus asked for permission to enter, which they were granted when they heard the word "Amen" from the room.

In the summer of 1947, the head of the monastery who had led it during the evacuation, Igumen Hariton (Dunaev) was tonsured to the Great Schema, but his time in this capacity was short, as he was ill with an advanced form of cancer, which claimed him in October the same year.

In 1948, the last father confessor of Old Valamo, Schema Igumen Yefrem, who had lived in the Smolensk Skete, died, and now Fr.

John had a lively correspondence with this confession children, and for many of them his letters were a source of great comfort in the midst of grief, trials and tribulations.

After many difficulties, the book was published in Russian in 1956 as duplicates from typed pages with the title "Letters from a Valamo elder".

This had not been written to condemn anyone, but the monks’ notions have become more obvious than before.The book was published in Finnish in 1976, and as before, the texts were translated and edited by Archbishop Paul.

However, a new cover was devised: a stylized image of the main monastery in Lake Ladoga, and above it, a black and white photograph of Fr.

John's funeral, most notably Tito Colliander, together with his family, and Klaudia Korelin ja Jelena Armfelt.

On 29 November 2018, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople "recorded in the Hagiologion of the Orthodox Church" the two proposed names.