Nizhyn, Ukraine, March 30, 2020
Photo: orthodox.cn.ua
Eight more faithful women of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church gave their lives to Christ in holy monasticism last week, including the first tonsures at the recently-revived St. Nicholas-Rikhly Hermitage.
Six women were tonsured at the Holy Trinity-Gustinya Convent on March 26 and two at the St. Nicholas-Rikhly Hermitage on March 27. The tonsures in both monasteries were served by His Eminence Metropolitan Clement of Nizhyn, reports the Nizhyn Diocese.
After celebrating the evening service at the St. Nicholas Hermitage, Met. Clement performed the monastic tonsure over two novices of the monastery—the first in the reviving monastery.
After celebrating the service, His Eminence offered the new nuns spiritual advice for carrying out their spiritual podvigs and gave them has archpastoral blessing.
OrthoChristian previously reported that nine nuns of the Holy Protection-Krasnogorsk Convent in the Cherkasy Diocese were tonsured into the Great Schema last week.
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St. Nicholas-Rikhly Hermitage is located on the spot of the miraculous appearance of a wonderworking icon of St. Nicholas, where a Church of St. Nicholas had already stood from the end of the 16th century. The site soon became a center of Orthodoxy in Chernigov.
The first monks, who came there from other monasteries, lived in caves. Residential premises, a trapeza, and a church were later built on the site of the icon’s appearance, and the monastery was firmly established by 1666. It was destroyed by fire in 1754, but quickly rebuilt.
The monastery was closed in 1922 and the brotherhood was expelled. The monastery had grown to 300 monks and novices, 5 churches, and 100 buildings by the time it was closed. Starting in the 1930s, the walls of the church were dismantled for the construction of a road.
The monastery began to be revived in 2004.
Among its most famous inhabitants is St. Lawrence of Chernigov, who labored at St. Nicholas in the late 19th century.
