"Joy of All Who Sorrows" Icon of the Mother of God Convent

The convent of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrows" stands in the village of Bilka in Ivanivskyi district of the Odesa region and belongs to the Balta Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church^{1, 2}.

The village is bound up with the memory of the hieromartyr Pavlo Haidai, a priest: a fellow labourer of the righteous Iona of Odesa, he was venerated by the people of Odesa and the villages around it as an ascetic of piety, a clairvoyant and a healer, and Bilka was his favourite place of prayer and of meeting his spiritual children⁵.

According to the archival evidence the convent sets out, the hieromartyr was held in the remand prison in Odesa and in a prison in Leningrad for his loyalty to the canonical Church, and on 30 June 1929 he was sentenced to administrative exile in Turukhansk in the Krasnoyarsk region for three years; after the term of exile he was forbidden to return to Odesa⁵.

In 1933 the priest Pavlo was arrested and exiled by administrative order to Akmolinsk, where on 21-22 January 1936 he was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment⁵. While serving that sentence in Karlag he was arrested again on 28 August 1937 and condemned to be shot; the sentence was carried out on 5 September of the same year⁵. On 14 August 2000 the Jubilee Council of Bishops numbered him among the saints⁵.

The making of the convent began more than ten years before it was opened: the building of churches and the repair of dwelling blocks were started in Bilka, and land and buildings for the future house were bought into the ownership of the Odesa diocese, at the blessing of hegumen Lukian (Kutsenko), a native of the village⁴. On 20 June 2002 he, then the confessor of the Pokrovo-Tervenichesky convent of the St Petersburg diocese, sent a nun of that house to Bilka to take up obedience there⁴.

On 3 March 2003 the building of a new church of the Holy Trinity was begun in the village; in December of the same year the building was brought into use, and the church and its plot were registered as the property of the Odesa diocese⁴. On 6 June 2004 Metropolitan Agafangel of Odesa and Izmail consecrated the Trinity church with the hierarchical rite⁴.

The Trinity church was raised by the efforts of hegumen Lukian in his native village, and in 2013 it marked its tenth anniversary¹⁶. A Sunday school worked at the church, where pupils of the village school were taught the Law of God⁴.

In 2005, with the help of archimandrite Lukian (Kutsenko), then the superior of the Holy Trinity Alexander-Svirsky monastery, a guest house for pilgrims and for a priest was bought and given to the future convent; it was repaired, a refectory and farm buildings were put up, and the grounds of the church were laid out⁴.

In 2006 the derelict building of a former kindergarten was handed over to the Trinity church and thoroughly repaired⁴. In March 2010 the building of the former collective-farm office was given to the community of the hieromartyr Pavlo: its roof was renewed, its windows and doors replaced, its garages repaired, a stone wall was built, and a stele with a sculpture of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrows" was set up on the grounds⁴.

In September 2007, at the blessing of Metropolitan Agafangel, the building of a church in honour of the hieromartyr Pavlo Haidai was begun in Bilka, and in September 2008 it was completed by the efforts of archimandrite Lukian^{4, 5}. A parish community in honour and memory of the hieromartyr was founded in the village and officially registered^{4, 5}. The first icon of the hieromartyr was painted by the sisters of the Pokrovo-Tervenichesky convent, and it is kept in the Trinity church of Bilka⁵.

In the hieromartyr's church, in a kiot, stands an image of the Saviour, his own cell icon, before which, as the convent testifies, many healings took place in the saint's lifetime; the image was kept by his spiritual children and given to the house at the consecration of the church in 2008⁵. Fulfilling Father Pavlo's own bequest, a moleben with an akathist is served before this image every day^{5, 6}.

On 15 August 2011 Metropolitan Agafangel came to Bilka, acquainted himself with the building and finishing work and inspected the sisters' block and the farm buildings; in his words, the first women's monastic house in the northern districts of the Odesa region was to appear here⁷.

On 26 August 2011 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 69, blessed the opening in the village of Bilka in Ivanivskyi district of the Odesa region of a convent in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrows", on the report of Metropolitan Agafangel¹. In the same month several sisters of the Pokrovo-Tervenichesky sisterhood who had worked at the creation of the future house transferred to the Odesa diocese⁴, and the church of the hieromartyr Pavlo was handed over to the newly formed convent⁵.

On 5 September 2011, the day of the hieromartyr's memory, Metropolitan Agafangel visited the newly formed house and led the first festal service in it^{4, 8}; on the same day the church of the hieromartyr Pavlo was consecrated⁵.

On 26 April 2012 the building of a new and larger church in honour of the same icon was begun on the convent's own ground; before the work started, archimandrite Viktor (Bykov), the superior of the St Elias monastery in Odesa, served a moleben^{5, 9}.

On 10 June 2012 Metropolitan Agafangel laid into the foundation of the future main church a capsule with a particle of the relics of the hieromartyr Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kyiv^{5, 10}. On 10 October of the same year archimandrite Viktor consecrated the cross for that church, and on the same day the cross was set upon the dome¹¹.

On 5 November 2012, on the eve of the icon's feast, the first monastic tonsure in the house's life took place: a sister was tonsured with the name Pavla, in honour of the convent's heavenly patron¹².

On 20 December 2012 the Holy Synod, by journal No. 103, separated the Balta diocese from the Odesa diocese, forming it within the administrative bounds of fourteen districts of the Odesa region, Ivanivskyi among them²; from that time the convent passed under the canonical governance of a new ruling bishop¹³. On 14 January 2013 Archbishop Oleksii of Balta and Ananiv visited the house for the first time after his appointment¹⁴.

A story of its own at the convent is the holy spring. In 2002, at the blessing of hegumen Lukian, the people of Bilka set up a statue of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God on a rise at the entrance to the village; a year later the villagers noticed three streams below the statue at the foot of the hill⁵.

In 2012 the spring was laid out: drainage survey work was carried out, the spring was faced with natural stone, approach paths were made and ornamental trees planted⁵. In the spring of 2013 a chapel in honour of the hieromartyr Pavlo Haidai was built at the source, and a mosaic icon of the Mother of God "Life-Giving Spring" was laid at the spring itself⁵. On 10 May 2013 Archbishop Oleksii consecrated the chapel, the icon and the waters of the spring^{5, 15}.

On 6 November 2014 Archbishop Oleksii, concelebrating with Bishop Viktor of Artsyz, performed the rite of the great consecration of the convent's main church^{5, 18}.

The main church keeps a reliquary with particles of the relics of many saints, among them the righteous Iona of Odesa, the venerable Kuksha of Odesa, the righteous Feodosii of Balta and the venerable Anastasia of Kyiv, together with a fragment of the Oak of Mamre and soil from the ditch at Butovo⁵. There too are icons with particles of the relics of the great martyr George the Victorious, St Spyridon of Trimythous and the healer Panteleimon; the church of the hieromartyr Pavlo has a reliquary of its own⁵.

On 17 April 2016 archimandrite Andronik (Khrystofor), superior of the Holy Protection Balta Feodosiivskyi monastery, led the rite of consecration of the dome cross for the chapel in honour of the Archangel Michael, which was then being built¹⁹; that chapel keeps an icon of the Archangel Michael which had belonged to the hieromartyr Pavlo⁵.

On 26 July 2017 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the establishment of a day of celebration for the Council of the Saints of Balta and included in it the hieromartyr Pavlo Haidai, presbyter³.

On 6 November 2017, for the convent's patronal feast, Bishop Viktor of Artsyz brought the relics of the hieromartyr Cyprian and the martyr Justina of Antioch for veneration, and at the blessing of Archbishop Teodosie of Tomis a representative of the Tomis diocese of the Romanian Orthodox Church came to the celebration²⁰.

16 sisters live at the convent, and several volunteer helpers work there constantly⁶. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated here five days a week, and since 2016, at the blessing of the ruling bishop, the Unsleeping Psalter is read⁶. The sisters give out presents to the children of the village at Easter, at the Nativity of Christ and on the day of St Nicholas⁶.

The convent keeps a small farm and provides its own food entirely: a kitchen garden, several cows in the yard, its own baking of bread⁶. A sewing workshop makes monastic and church vestments, and handmade soap is produced as well⁶. In July 2013 the house took part in the international Orthodox exhibition and fair "Mir Pravoslavnyi" in Odesa, where the sisters offered soap of their own making and a statue of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrows" made of marble chip in the convent's own workshop¹⁷.