Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye, its history and miracles

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

In the north-east of the capital, a unique building has been preserved: the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye. This is the only church in Moscow with openwork carved cornices, carved columns, lace trim on the windows, elegant porches, domes.

The temple is a wooden miracle of the century before last and was consecrated on August 17, 1880 with the blessing of Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow.

Building a temple

At first, the temple of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye did not have its own parable, but was assigned to the temple of the Prophet Elijah. Services were performed by Ilyinsky clergymen. In the summer, services were held every day, and in the winter only on holidays, since summer residents were considered the main parishioners of the temple.

In 1887, the Bogatyr factory was built in Bogorodsky, which produced rubber shoes: galoshes, boots, boots. Hundreds of workers with their families moved to the village, and the temple could no longer accommodate all the pilgrims. We decided to attach two side aisles to it. The Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God was placed in the right aislechurch, which was consecrated in her honor in 1897, and a year later the left one was consecrated in honor of the Prophet Elijah and St. Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow.

Priest Alexy Dobroserdov

The first rector of the church was Archpriest Kolychev Alexander Tikhonovich, and in 1902 a young deacon Alexy Ivanovich Dobroserdov entered the service, who later, by the will of God, had to play a huge role in the history of the church.

Aleksy Ivanovich became rector of the church in 1917 and served in it for 47 years. Father Alexy was a very zealous priest and strictly followed the liturgical rules. In the fierce godless years, the priest never took off his cassock and fearlessly blessed everyone who approached him.

Atheistic years

The Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye managed to defend only thanks to the authority of Father Alexy and his ability to unite people. In the difficult years of the early twentieth century, when people were waiting for death or exile just because they were believers, in Bogorodskoye the Soviet authorities were unable to close the church. A crowd of thousands of factory workers surrounded the temple and did not let the atheists. For many days, from morning to evening, people were on duty at the temple in order to inform the workers at the first danger, since they, in turn, categorically stated: if the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye was closed, then none of them would go to work. Fearing a strike at such a large plant, the chairman of the CEC canceled the decision to close the temple.

During the Second World War, the windows of the church were darkened during the fascist bombing, and in the church itself there was a continuous prayer for the people, for the country. From prayer it became much easier and calmer than the soul.

After the victory, in 1945, the church council began to work on building a house for the rector. Later, the father left a will so that this building, after his and mother's death, would remain for the needs of the temple.

Now the church of the Resurrection deanery, or the deanery of the Moscow diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, also includes the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Bogorodskoye.

The fire in the temple

In 1954, on August 14, shortly before the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, a miracle happened that will forever remain in the history of the temple. Late at night before the holiday, a fire broke out in the temple. A taxi driver passing by noticed flames coming from under the dome and called the fire department. When the firefighters put out the fire, a sad picture opened before them: everything around was burned, the iconostasis, icons, even the chandelier burned down, but…

The Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God and the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker remained unharmed. Everything around was blazing from the fire, and these two large icons were not even touched by the flames. On the same day, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy the First, visited the temple and promised to assist in every possible way in the restoration of the temple.

Restoration of the temple

Soon, gilded iconostases were brought from Peredelkino, which, surprisingly, came up to all three aisles of the temple. Obviously, at the same time the icon of St. Martyr Tryphon. Now the church has many icons painted after the fire or received as a gift. Among them are the icon of the Mother of God "Quick Hearer", the icon of the Prophet Elijah, the icon of Matronushka with a particle of relics and the icon of Seraphim of Sarov with a particle of relics, and so on.

Every day there is a divine service in the temple. The churches of the Moscow Diocese are not only a place for the faithful to gather and serve the Lord God, but also living monuments to the history of the Russian Orthodox people, which must be known and protected.