Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God Convent

The Nativity of the Mother of God convent is a women's house of the Odesa eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the village of Oleksandrivka in the Bolhrad district; the eparchy, in its own survey of the deanery, gives 1924 as the year of its foundation³.

By the house's own tradition, its beginning was an appearance of the Mother of God at a place outside the village, first witnessed by a mute shepherd, Foma Tadzhi¹. On 4 August 1924 (new style), the day of St Mary Magdalene, women from Oleksandrivka came to that place - among them the forty-nine-year-old Kateryna Dmytrivna Terzi; the monastery counts that date as the day of its foundation¹. In the same year, by the blessing of Iustynian, bishop of Izmail, a men's monastery was founded here under the name "Skete of Iustynian": six monks came from the St Nicholas monastery in Izmail, and the hieromonk Venedykt was appointed superior¹.

In 1933 the men's monastery was reorganised as a women's one: the monks returned to Izmail, eight sisters came from the Varzaresti St Demetrius women's skete, and the nun Zinaida (Terziohlo) took charge of the house¹. By 1936 twenty-four sisters lived here - four nuns, three sisters of mercy and seventeen novices, among them the future abbess Alevtyna, in the world Anna Petrivna Pisova¹.

In 1944, when the Soviet troops arrived, several nuns left for Romania together with the abbess Zinaida; eight sisters remained, and the house was headed by the nun Alevtyna, raised to the rank of abbess in 1945¹. When the Transfiguration women's monastery in the village of Borysivka in the Tatarbunary district was closed in 1949, some of its nuns were transferred here¹. After the abolition of the Izmail region in 1954 the house passed into the charge of the Odesa eparchy¹. At the beginning of the 1960s the authorities decided to close the monastery, but soon announced that it would remain open, because the St Michael women's monastery in Odesa was being closed and part of its sisters were being moved here¹.

The abbess Alevtyna governed the house from 1944 to 1987; after her death the nun Yevfrosyniia (Olena Nykodymivna Paskalova) became superior¹. In 1990 the building of a large three-altar cathedral of the Life-giving Trinity was begun here; abbess Yevfrosyniia died in 2001 and is buried between the two churches, the Nativity and the Trinity¹. The cathedral was completed in 2004 and consecrated on 21 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, with more than sixty priests taking part¹. In 2002-2005 the holy gates and the wall with its corner towers were built and a seven-kilometre gas pipeline was brought to the house, and in 2005 a new prosphora bakery was put up¹.

Today the monastery lives by its own farming: forty hectares under grain, a kitchen garden, an orchard and a vineyard, together with a cattle yard, a poultry house and an apiary; the sisters bake their own prosphora and bread and sew church garments². A library and a bookbinding workshop work at the house². The day begins at a quarter to five in the morning, when the great bell calls the sisters to prayer, and the Psalter is read here without a break, day and night, for the whole world². Among the holy things of the house is the Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God, before which an akathist is read every Saturday⁴.