Cathedral in honor of St. Grand Prince
Alexander Nevsky
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“Previously (before the birth of our Savior into the world) churches were not built in any people's honor; the death of the righteous was not honored by a feast, nor lamented for. But now the commemoration of the saints is celebrated, and churches are built in honor of the saints.” |
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St. John Damascus
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| Cathedral in honor of St. Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky |
Hundreds of cathedrals, churches, and chapels all over the earth are named in honor of the holy warrior Alexander Yaroslavovich called Nevsky. A majestic cathedral in Ekaterinburg situated in the Green Grove bears Alexander Nevsky's name.
This temple was conceived in 1897. Several merchants in Ekaterinburg decided to build a church in honor of the Lord Emperor Alexander I, in the name of his heavenly protector St. Alexander Nevsky, attached to an orphanage (future Novo-Tikhvinsky cloister).
A stone three-altar cathedral in the old classical style not only took a dominating position in the complex block of the Novo-Tikhvinsky monastery, but it also became the largest church building in the city, housing up to six thousand people. The clear-cut proportions and a harmonious combination of the domes' volumes with the vertical line of the bell tower made the cathedral one of the most beautiful buildings in Ekaterinburg.
Our Pain
After the closing of the monastery, the main temple of the cloister in September of 1920 was passed to a community called Tikhvinsky religious society. Attempts to close the temple had been undertaken, yet it functioned long after any other church in Ekaterinburg, and was finally closed only in 1930.
In 1994, the cathedral in honor of St. Alexander Nevsky once again became a functioning church in the monastery. And all this time the nuns in the cloister pray to the Mother of God and to the Saints for this temple to become the heart of the monastery. The problem is that since the sixties and until the present day it stores the funds of a regional museum and does not have an opportunity to begin restoration. In the meantime the cathedral is falling apart…
The cathedral was mutilated in the Soviet era: it was rebuilt, divided in five floors - even today only the ground floor belongs to the monastery. Entering the church today, instead of beholding the space under the dome, one sees a regular low ceiling; practically nothing is left from the festal wall paintings. However, the nuns are not losing hope that the church will be renewed and will blossom to the glory of God, that once again the harmonious and austere monastery chants will rise up to the dome.
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