Following today’s Divine Liturgy at the St. John the Baptist Church of the Kazansky monastery in Tambov, the holy relics of Venerable Seraphim of Sarov and his icon were sent off at a solemn ceremony.

Metropolitan Theodosius of Tambov and Rasskazov presided at the services and the procession with the relics from Diveyevo.

The sisters of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery who accompanied the reliquary and the icon will return to their monastery today. As a gift from Metropolitan Theodosius, they will bring back an icon of the Venerable Martha of Tambov.

The Diveyevo monastery is intimately related to the Kazansky Monastery in Tambov. Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, on September 2/15, 1793, Bishop Theophilus (Raev) elevated Batiushka Seraphim to the rank of a hieromonk in the Kazansky Monastery. A memorial stone was laid and consecrated on the territory of the monastery at the future location of the monument to Venerable Seraphim of Sarov.

There is a chapel across from the Our Lady of Kazan Church and the grave of Archbishop Evgeny (Zhdan) of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas, who was the head of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese from March 2002 to October 2002 while also overseeing the Tambov Diocese. The Kazan Church itself is a replica of the Dormition Cathedral of the Sarov Pustyn monastery, where the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov labored in asceticism.