On the day when the Orthodox Church commemorates the “Burning Bush” icon of the Mother of God, the skete in Meliayevo celebrates a patronal feast.

Hegumenia Sergiya (Konkova) took part in the celebration.

Diveyevo’s blessed elder Natalia Dmitrievna was the founder of the community in Meliayevo. She never visited it during her life but she used to send her novices there, saying what and how they should arrange it. About 60 sisters were living in the community.

“This is another branch shooting from the Diveyevo vineyard that was cultivated by Venerable Seraphim, the Wonderworker of Sarov! This new offshoot skillfully grafted by a hand of the experienced gardener to a new location has quickly acclimated in local soil, blossomed out, and was clothed in thick green foliage. It is the Meliayevo community for women. The church in this young community was consecrated to the icon of the Mother of God ‘Tenderness,’ ” wrote the community’s senior priest Vladimir Tenischev in the “Russian Pilgrim” magazine in 1904.

During Soviet times, the community was laid to waste. All that was left standing was a half-destroyed building of the wooden church to the icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness.”

In August 2012, Metropolitan Georgiy of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas blessed the bells and crosses of the Church to the icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness.” The Office of Great Consecration of the church took place in July 2013.

One of the side chapels of the Church to the icon of the Mother of God “Tenderness” was dedicated to the “Burning Bush” icon of the Mother of God.

The burning bush the Prophet Moses saw alight but not burning was an Old Testament prefiguration pointing at the Mother of God. The bush signified the Virgin Birth of Christ by His Mother from the Holy Spirit, when, becoming a mother, She stayed a Virgin before, Virgin at nativity, and the Virgin following it.

There is another interpretation of the prefiguring about the burning bush: despite the Mother of God was born in the fallen world, She remained pure, clean from sin, and a stranger to lawlessness. The church hymns point to that Old Testament symbol: “Just as the bush burned but was not consumed, so also the Virgin gave birth and was not corrupted.”

According to the folk tradition, this icon preserves the homes of the faithful from fire.