Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Built in 1806-1810.
According to the inventory of 1763, the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God was stone, single-domed, with a chapel of St. John of Damascus. In 1806, the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God was dismantled. The two-story stone, cruciform, single-domed Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, founded in 1806, was completed in 1810, thanks to the support of willing donors and the diligence of the builder Jonah. Here are the thrones: at the top of the Intercession of the Mother of God, on the right side of St. Apostles Peter and Paul, on the left St. Nicholas, below St. Jonah, on the sides there are chapels in the name of St. Hilarion the Great and Nil Stolobensky. Thus, the churches of this monastery contain, according to the order of the nine ranks of angels, nine thrones. In the upper Church of the Intercession, the throne restored and decorated with Jonah was consecrated in 1825 by Moscow Archbishop Philaret.
In 1929, a decree was issued to close the monastery. In Soviet times, various organizations were located in the Church of the Intercession: banks, offices, the Ministry of Fuel and Energy and others.
In 1994, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to revive the Intercession Monastery as a nunnery, and at the beginning of 1995. nun Feofania (Miskina) was appointed his abbess.
The first room that was transferred to the mother abbess and the first nuns was the lower (ground) floor of the Intercession Church. It was half covered with earth, partitioned into several rooms and hardly resembled the temple of God. There was not even the most necessary things, the windows were boarded up with plywood, we slept on whatever we could find. The altar was fenced off with plywood and paper icons were glued on. Already on the Intercession, October 14, the first liturgy was served in the chapel of St. Neil of Stolobensky - where the relics of the blessed Matrona of Moscow are now located. Little by little, the 1st floor of the Church of the Intercession was cleared, the altar part was adapted for housing, and services were also served in the left aisle.
By the beginning of 1998, the 1st floor was restored, and already on April 4, 1998, His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II consecrated the 1st floor of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God and the crosses of the Resurrection and Intercession Churches. Mother Feofania recalled:
“His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II scheduled the consecration of the first floor of the Church of the Intercession for April 4, 1998 - the Feast of the Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But we didn’t know anything - it was the first time the Patriarch served with us, and indeed, the first time there was a bishop’s service.
They were very worried; Mother Callisthenia, the dean, acted as regent and administered the rules. And during the Divine Liturgy, the Patriarch elevated me to the rank of abbess, the decree says: “in consideration of the diligent work to revive monastic life in the monastery, the liberation of churches and monastery buildings from previous tenants and their restoration.”
The weather was so beautiful that day - the sun was shining, there was no more snow, we also prepared crosses for the Intercession and Resurrection churches, 5 crosses, His Holiness consecrated them. The festive meal was already in the new refectory in the liberated nursing building.”
On November 22, 1999, His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II performed the Great Consecration of three chapels on the 2nd floor of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.
On the first floor of the Church of the Intercession, in the chapel of St. Neil of Stolobensky, there is the main shrine of the monastery - the honest relics of the blessed Matrona of Moscow.
Every day after the Divine Liturgy a prayer service is held at the relics.
About the temple
The history of the temple dates back to 2007, when a decision was made to build a small church in the Orekhovo-Borisovo Yuzhnoye area. For this purpose, the dean of the Danilovsky district of Moscow, Archpriest Oleg Vorobyov, instructed to assemble an initiative group of parishioners, which was subsequently headed by Archpriest Oleg Korytko. Until then, there were no financial resources, no ready-made projects, and no place for construction had been chosen. However, everyone understood that the local residents needed the church. An initiative group formed very quickly, and subsequently many of these people became the main helpers, beautifiers and prayer books of our small monastery.
In the same year, on December 13, on the day of remembrance of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called, the first meeting of the community was held, at which the participants signed a letter addressed to His Holiness the Patriarch asking for a blessing for the construction. The meeting was held in the building of school No. 979, one of the classrooms of which was provided to the participants by the school director Lyubov Yakovlevna Noskova. The meeting ended with a prayer service with an akathist to the Intercession of the Mother of God.
From then on, for two and a half years, the community met weekly on Saturdays. Oleg Korytko for prayer services at school No. 949. The community owes this hospitable place, which truly became the first home of the parishioners of the future church, to the director of the school, Irina Petrovna Antonova, and to the teacher of this school, an active participant in all events and prayers, Tatyana Ivanovna Grebennikova.
In June 2009, the initiative group was headed by Priest John Kholkin. And already in August, community members, with the blessing of Father John, took an active part in citywide hearings on the approval of a new urban development plan for the area, at which the Orekhovo-Borisovo Yuzhnoye District Administration received several dozen officially registered statements from area residents and, above all, community members about the need the speedy construction of an Orthodox church in ours, one of the most densely populated areas of the city.
A little later, the issue of the site where the future temple was to be located was resolved - it turned out to be part of a turning circle for buses at the intersection of Yaseneva and Tambov streets. September 4, 2009 Fr. John consecrated the future construction site, and the first prayer service took place here. And at the prayer service dedicated to the first parish patronal feast day, Dean Father Oleg Vorobyov presented the community with banners, the Mother of God’s cover and air. Father John accepted the gifts with gratitude.
The temple was erected in a short time, in just 4 months. On December 6, 2009, Archbishop Arseny of Istra consecrated and installed the domed cross. On January 6, 2010, on the eve of the Nativity of Christ, the dean of the Danilovsky district, Fr. Oleg Vorobyov performed the rite of the Small Consecration of the temple. From that moment on, he began to be considered attached to the patriarchal courtyard in honor of the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus', located on Borisov Ponds.
On November 30, 2010, our church received the status of a metochion of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Its rector is currently Fr. John Kholkin.
In 2010-2011 The parish of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God was actively growing and developing. In addition to divine services, parish activities included the work of a youth organization, a Sunday school, religious and educational conversations were held at the parish, pilgrimage trips, creative master classes and art sessions, reading and discussion of spiritual literature, and a charitable and missionary initiative was developed. By this time, the number of parishioners of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Orekhovo-Borisovo South amounted to about five hundred people, and the parishioners who came to the service could barely fit in the small wooden church. There was a need to build a larger temple. Soon, within the framework of Program 200, a decision was made to build a new temple building with a total area of about a thousand square meters.
2012 became the preparatory period for large-scale construction. The necessary documentation was collected, the garages were first demolished and construction waste was removed from the area of the construction site, construction estimates were calculated, the layout and architectural appearance of the future building was developed, and a contractor was selected. And in 2013, as soon as weather conditions allowed, the construction of the temple complex began. As a huge pit was dug under the foundation of the future church and construction began, His Eminence Arseny, Archbishop of Istrinsky, vicar of the Moscow diocese, in concelebration with the clergy of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, performed the rite of consecration of the building under construction and placed it in the altar apse of the new church mortgage deed. The text of the charter reads: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, this church was founded in honor and memory of the Intercession of our Most Blessed Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary... In the summer of 2013 from the Nativity of Christ.” A pre-consecrated foundation stone with the outline of the Cross was also placed at the base of the temple. This significant event for us took place on May 30, 2013, the Day of the Holy Spirit.
In a month and a half, at the intersection of Yaseneva and Tambovskaya streets, the so-called "zero cycle" of construction. The construction of the entire building required about one million two hundred bricks. Residents of the area took the initiative, donated for the construction of the temple - and everyone had the opportunity to observe the progress of construction, studying the changes in the photo reports on the information stand of the temple. Direct control over the progress of construction was carried out by Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vladimir Resin. On July 13, 2013, the delegation of the visiting meeting headed by V.I. Resin, Bishop Tikhon, in the presence of the dean of the Danilovsky district, Archpriest Oleg Vorobyov, the representative of the prefecture G.V. Smoleevsky, and the deputy prefect L.A. Petrova. and the head of the administration Volk V.I., visited the construction site of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Orekhovo-Borisovo Yuzhnoye. For the high pace of construction, as well as the quality of the work performed, the temple construction site received approval from the controlling delegation of Program 200.
In April 2014, the construction site of the Church of the Intercession again received positive feedback from the curators of Program 200: the building was built literally in a year. The brickwork of the temple was completed at the end of May 2014. On June 1, after the Sunday Liturgy, a thanksgiving prayer service was served in the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. Now the future temple had to be covered with a roof. At the same time, other work was carried out: frame domes were welded on the construction site. After the temple was covered with a roof, on June 30, 2014, part of the domes was raised onto the temple building. Weighing approximately 15 tons each, they were manufactured by Chelyabinsk PSK Hephaestus. On July 1, 2014, in front of a large crowd of believers, the “Rite of Consecration of the Crosses for the New Temple being Built” was performed. On the patronal feast of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, after the Divine Liturgy and the Rite of consecration of the new bell, seven bells were raised to the bell tower of the new church. Work has begun on the interior decoration of the building. The appearance of the Intercession Church has become complete: the church is crowned with domes, crosses with a crescent are installed on the domes. Today, the new Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God at the intersection of Tambovskaya and Yaseneva streets is a striking landmark of the area.
2015 was the year of summing up the construction results. On the eve of the bright holiday of the Nativity of Christ, January 4, 2015, the First Vicar of the Holy Patriarch and All Rus', Archbishop Arseny of Istra, in front of a large crowd of people, consecrated the new building of the church in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Orekhovo-Borisovo South. At this point, the main stages of temple construction can be considered completed: the temple stands and operates. On the eve of Easter 2015, the First Hierarch of the Russian Church, as part of a selective visit to Moscow parishes, visited the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Orekhovo-Borisovo South. For the strength of the walls and the strength of spirit of the parishioners, His Holiness the Patriarch called the newly built Intercession Church a “heroic temple,” Fr. The Patriarch also noted the timeliness and relevance of temple construction in the area. “When there is a temple, when there is prayer, when people turn to God, then great changes occur in their soul, in their consciousness, they become different,” said His Holiness.
In May 2015, the installation of the temple iconostasis was completed. Made by masters of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the iconostasis contains not only the main icons, but also icons of famous Russian saints: Matrona of Moscow, Sergius of Radonezh, the icon of the new martyr Seraphim Chichagov, whose memory is especially celebrated in the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, and others. Gilded carving, as a kind of ornament, unites all the icons into a coherent composition that carries a powerful spiritual message to believers. While the walls of the temple were drying out from the plaster and had to stand for the required time before they were covered with paintings or decorated, the area around the temple was marked out for landscaping and landscaping. At the same time, daily services and everyday parish life were being established in the church. The ground floor of the temple was fully equipped for Sunday school classes, lectures and events.
On April 3, 2016, on the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent, the Worship of the Cross, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' performed the rite of the great consecration of our church and led the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in the newly consecrated church.
Concelebrating with His Holiness were: Metropolitan Arseny of Istra, first vicar of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' for Moscow; Bishop Sergius of Solnechnogorsk, head of the Administrative Secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchate; Archpriest Vladimir Divakov, secretary of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' for Moscow; Archimandrite Alexy (Polikarpov), abbot of the Danilov stauropegic monastery; Archpriest Oleg Vorobyov, dean of the Danilovsky district, rector of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity on Borisov Ponds in Moscow; priest John Kholkin, rector of the Intercession Church in Orekhovo-Borisov South; clergy of Moscow.
The service was attended by the Chairman of the Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation L.E. Slutsky, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation P.E. Korolev, deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, adviser to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' on construction issues V.I. Resin, prefect of the South-Western Administrative District of Moscow A.V. Chelyshev, head of the Orekhovo-Borisovo district administration of Moscow V.D. Kozelskaya, co-chairman of the Commission on the Defense-Industrial Complex of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs M.A. Dmitriev, benefactors and builders of the temple.
Liturgical chants were performed by the choir of our temple under the regency of M.Yu. Lapshina.
The Patriarchal service was broadcast live on the Soyuz TV channel.
At the small entrance to the work on the construction of the Church of the Intercession in Orekhovo-Borisov, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill elevated the rector, Priest John Kholkin, to the rank of archpriest.
After the special litany, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church offered a prayer for peace in Ukraine.
During the Divine Liturgy, His Holiness ordained Deacon Andrei Filonov, a student at the Moscow Theological Academy and clergyman of the Intercession Academic Church, as a presbyter.
The sermon before communion was delivered by priest Mikhail Plotnikov, cleric of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Derzhavnaya” in Chertanovo, Moscow.
At the end of the Liturgy, the rector of the Intercession Church, Archpriest John Kholkin, on behalf of the clergy and parishioners of the temple, greeted His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and presented His Holiness with the icon of the Intercession of the Mother of God.
The Primate of the Russian Church addressed the participants of the service with the Primate's word.
Thanking Father John for his work, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, in particular, Fr.
“I have already expressed my gratitude, Father John, by elevating you to the rank of archpriest,” continued His Holiness. - May God grant you to continue to energetically build the Orthodox community. I see that your work with children and youth is also developing. All this, please continue, because this is the guarantee that we will have many new temples. After all, if these children, young people in the future create their own families in which children will be born, and then they will also create their own families and children will be born again, then this will be an Orthodox people. And maybe we or the next generation will be able to see God’s glory revealed both over our Mother See and over our entire Fatherland. “I believe in the undoubted revival of the Orthodox faith on the scale that is necessary so that our country never loses hope for the future.”
The Primate of the Russian Church donated an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov with a memorial inscription to the newly consecrated church.
In recognition of the assistance in the construction of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Orekhovo-Borisov South, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill presented high church awards to: co-chairman of the Commission on the Defense-Industrial Complex of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs M.A. Dmitriev - Order of Glory and Honor, III degree; Director of Interstroy LLC B.V. Flyagin - medal of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir.
At the end of the service, His Holiness the Patriarch was greeted by Sunday school students, their teachers and parents, who thanked the First Hierarch for his special attention to working with youth, children and teenagers in Moscow parishes. A figurine of an angel made by the children was presented to His Holiness as a gift. His Holiness spoke with adults and children and blessed them.
