On this day of November 20, 1997, the upper left side chapel of the Trinity Cathedral was consecrated for the second time to the Third Finding of the Honorable Head of St. John the Forerunner. His Eminence Archbishop Nikolay (Kutepov), Metropolitan Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas of blessed memory celebrated the service of consecration.

After the monastery was closed down in 1927, the Trinity Cathedral was desecrated with its crosses taken down. When the crosses fell, they damaged the domes and the roof, and water penetrated the interior of the cathedral.

During the Soviet times, the Trinity Cathedral was used first as a granary and as a construction storage facility later. That is how Alexey Artsybushev sums up his feelings upon seeing the ruined cathedral: “Up front, a wooden fence and construction crew shacks encircle the cathedral; a construction crane looms above its south side; with its exterior blistered down to the brick and the roof overtaken by birch saplings, it pierces the March sky with its rusty domes. As I entered it, I was so dumbstruck that I could not at first get my bearings. Piles of plaster, buckled rotten wooden floor; in the dull morning light of early spring, the walls, stripped naked down to the red brick, were rising up towards the light that streamed down from the broken windows of the dome.”

In October 1989, the Trinity Cathedral was transferred to the church community. In the spring of 1990, on the day the cathedral’s cross was raised again, the rainbow illuminated the skies above. The services resumed there on Saturday of Laudation of the Most Holy Mother of God on March 31, 1990, the day of the consecration of its main altar.

The dates of church renewal are considered as the memorable days in the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery. On this special day this year as well, an early morning liturgy was served at the side chapel of the Third Finding of the Honorable Head of St. John the Forerunner.