Twenty-three years ago on this day in 2000, the refectory church of the to the Holy Righteous Great Prince Alexander Nevsky was consecrated in the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery. The late Metropolitan Nikolai (Kutepov) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas presided at the service of consecration.

The new stone refectory church was built under Hegumenia Maria (Ushakova) in 1895. Like many churches of that time, the refectory church was dedicated to the heavenly patron of Tsar Alexander III in memory of the miraculous deliverance of the Tsar’s family in the train crash on October 17, 1888 near the Borki station. In 2001-2002, the restored church was decorated by the artists from the “Lik” Palekh icon painting workshop.

Today, on the day of the memory of the Apostle Philip, an early-morning Divine Liturgy was served there. At the conclusion of the service, Rev.Fr. Alexei Kurnosov of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery reminded the sisters of the need to be consistent in prayer.

“Anytime a fasting period begins, it is as if we wake up and think: “Alright, the fast comes up and so we will become more concerned about spiritual things’.” It always looks a bit odd for our part. Because we should fast all our life, we should pray all our life, we should spend our life in austerity, and, in fact, we should not have these leaps when we want to fast and pray. In other words, we should always strive for this just as we should always do it,” the priest remarked.