St. John the Forerunner's Monastery

St. John the Forerunner's Monastery of the Khmelnytsk Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands in the village of Velyka Kalynivka in the Khmelnytskyy region, 18 kilometres north of the city of Khmelnytskyy⁴.

The village has long been Orthodox. In the middle of the eighteenth century it numbered 633 inhabitants, and in 1793 a wooden parish church in the name of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica was raised here, which stood until 1870; in 1884 a parish school was built in the village⁵.

At the origins of the house stood the monk Iov (Ivan Hnatovych Hryhorenko), who lived for a long time in Velyka Kalynivka^{2, 4, 6}. By the diocese's account he had the gift of healing infirmities of soul and body: he offered prayers, taught those who came to him to pray and to work, and prepared healing decoctions and ointments from medicinal herbs, and the sick came to him from every corner of the Khmelnytskyy region^{2, 4}.

At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, when state policy towards the Church changed, the monk Iov began at his own expense to build a new church in the village in honour of the Nativity of St. John the Forerunner^{2, 4}. The historical note of the Oleshyn village council likewise places the building of the monastery in the village in that same period⁵.

From the consecration of the church the St. John the Forerunner's skete was for a time a metochion of the Holy Trinity Korets Stavropegial Monastery, and in 2001 it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Khmelnytsk Diocese^{2, 4}.

About the years that followed the sources tell different stories: the house itself writes that until 2007 it was counted a skete of the Horodyshche house³, while the diocesan accounts do not mention that stage and speak of the parish of the village of Velyka Kalynivka, transformed into a monastery^{2, 4}.

On 28 January 2004, in the 80th year of his life, the monk Iov departed to the Lord and was buried near the skete church, and his work was continued by other monks who wished to labour in this place^{2, 4}.

In 2008 Antonii, then the ruling bishop of the Khmelnytsk Diocese, petitioned His Beatitude Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, and the Holy Synod for the opening of the house^{2, 4}. By journal No. 16 of the session of 18 April 2008 the Holy Synod blessed the opening of St. John the Forerunner's Monastery in the village of Velyka Kalynivka¹.

The monastery occupies 1.45 hectares and has a vegetable garden and a subsidiary farm^{2, 4}. By the diocese's account, which reflects the state of things around 2016, a boiler house was built and the heating of the church started, the windows and doors in the brothers' block were replaced, more than 50 square metres of paving were laid, the wiring was replaced throughout and the cells were being repaired⁴.

The founder's grave has remained a place of continual commemoration: the ruling bishop of the Khmelnytsk Diocese served requiem litias at it in 2024, 2025 and 2026^{6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14}. On 28 January 2024, when 100 years had passed since the monk Iov's birth and 20 years since his repose, the bishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the house, a panikhida and a litia at the grave⁶.

The church of the house has become the meeting place of the monastic deanery of the Khmelnytsk Diocese: on 19 April 2024 an assembly of the deanery's clergy was held here⁸, and the ruling bishop celebrated the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts with that clergy in the monastery on 19 April 2024, 12 March 2025 and 1 April 2026^{7, 12, 14}.

The patronal feast of the house, the Nativity of the Prophet John the Forerunner, was led in 2023 by the secretary of the diocesan administration¹⁵, and in 2024 and 2025 by the ruling bishop himself, who concluded the service with a procession of the cross^{9, 13}.

On 20 December 2024 the ruling bishop performed in the house the monastic tonsure of a novice, who received his name in honour of St. Amvrosii, bishop of Kamianets-Podilskyi, confessor: on that day the Church kept his memory^{10, 16}. On 22 December of the same year the bishop consecrated the renewed frescoes of the altar in the monastery church¹¹.