St. Sabbas the Sanctified's Monastery

The monastery of St Sabbas the Sanctified is a men's house of the Zaporizhzhia Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Melitopol, in the Zaporizhzhia region. The diocese calls it the first monastery founded on its territory⁴.

The house was opened by a decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 27 December 1994: by Journal No. 33, on the report of Bishop Vasyl of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol, the Synod blessed the opening of the Terpinnia men's monastery of Melitopol district in the Zaporizhzhia Diocese and confirmed Hieromonk Tykhon (Maslennikov) as its superior¹. The diocese itself had been separated from the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia diocese only two years earlier, in 1992, and Bishop Vasyl (Zlotolynskyi) was its first hierarch⁴. In the first months the brotherhood numbered three or four men⁵.

Early in 1995 Hieromonk Tykhon, remaining superior, was also given charge of the old cemetery church of the Beheading of St John the Forerunner in Melitopol; that church and the adjoining plot of the reinterred old town cemetery, on whose site a park had been laid out in Soviet times, became a dependency of the house^{4, 16}. During the spring and summer of the same year the monastery itself was moved to that dependency, while at the place of its original foundation, in the village of Terpinnia, it was decided to leave a skete⁴. The move was formally recorded only on 21 December 2001, when the Holy Synod, by Journal No. 34, blessed a change to the monastery's address².

Building of the first single-storey block began in May 1995, and parishioners of the church helped the small brotherhood⁵. By October there were already twelve inhabitants, and for want of living space the brethren slept in the church⁵. On 8 November 1995 the newly built block was occupied - it held only three four-bed cells⁴.

The first tonsure in the life of the house was performed by its superior on 18 December 1995⁴. By Christmas 1996 three hieromonks and four deacons were serving in the monastery, and on 22 March of the same year, during Great Lent, a second tonsure took place⁵.

In April 1996 a new two-storey brothers' block was begun, and cells, a prosphora bakery and a garage were later housed in it; by then the brotherhood numbered about twenty men⁴. From July 1996 the brethren began the reading of the unceasing Psalter⁴.

For the next two years, because of an acute shortage of priests in the diocese, the monastery's hieromonks served more than fifteen parishes; the brotherhood grew in that time to thirty-five, and many of them were presented for ordination^{4, 5}. During 1998 the number of inhabitants reached forty-five, and a women's monastic community began to form at the house⁴.

On 4 April 1997 Bishop Vasyl, the monastery's sacred archimandrite, performed here the tonsure of eight men; the newly tonsured were given the names of the eight newly glorified elders of Optina⁵.

In the same year, 1997, an agricultural dependency of the house was formed in the village of Astrakhanka in Melitopol district, and the skete at Terpinnia was closed at the same time^{4, 17}. The head of the new dependency was Hieromonk Iosyf (Maslennikov): on 11 November 2008 the Holy Synod resolved that he should be Bishop of Vilniansk, vicar of the Zaporizhzhia Diocese³, and from April 2009 to December 2010 he was the ruling hierarch of the diocese and therefore the monastery's sacred archimandrite⁴.

In 2002 it was decided to enlarge the monastery church, which could no longer hold all the worshippers, and early in the year the brethren began to raise a new three-altar church around the old one; for the whole time of the building the services in the old church did not stop for a single day⁴. On 2 October 2005 Archbishop Vasyl consecrated the new church: the central altar in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "Look upon Humility", the northern one of the Beheading of St John the Forerunner, and the southern one of St Sabbas the Sanctified^{4, 5}.

Among the holy things of the house were a copy of the Kyiv wonderworking icon "Look upon Humility" and a copy of the Kozelshchyna icon of the Mother of God together with its imprint on glass, made by no human hand¹⁸. The imprint was found in 2007, when the old case of the icon, which then stood in the northern side-chapel, was being taken apart to be replaced; the icon and the glass were placed in separate cases for the veneration of the faithful⁸.

In 2006 the refectory block was rebuilt, and the sisterhood of the house, which by then numbered twenty, was housed in it⁴. In 2007 a baptismal church of the Entry of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple was built and consecrated, with a font for full immersion, and beside it a building for a centre for the rehabilitation of people with alcohol, gambling and drug dependency^{4, 16}.

The centre grew out of an Alcoholics Anonymous group founded at the house in 2005¹⁶. On 9-10 June 2012 the monastery hosted a forum of Alcoholics Anonymous marking the seventh anniversary of the Melitopol group "Hope of Recovery"; representatives of twenty-four cities came to it, and the superior of the house at that time, who had initiated and organised the first such group, said there that the programme of the 12 Steps is built entirely upon the commandments of the Gospel¹⁰.

On 3 March 2012 an open meeting of the Al-Anon group for co-dependants, "Transfiguration", was held in the monastery's teaching church to mark its fourth anniversary, with representatives from Donetsk, Sevastopol, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk¹¹. On 18-19 September 2012 delegates of the house took part in the international forum in Kyiv "The Sobriety Legacy of Hieromartyr Volodymyr (Bohoiavlenskyi) for Contemporary Society", held to mark the centenary of the anti-alcohol congress of 1912¹⁴.

The house's own site listed its workshops - for sewing, candles, icon painting and joinery - together with a prosphora bakery and a church shop⁷. In 2008 a shop for pilgrims and a bakery supplying bread to the house and to pilgrims were opened at the monastery, and an electrical substation was built⁴. In 2009 another building was raised, housing a pilgrims' hostel, a refectory for pilgrims and classrooms of the Sunday school⁴, as well as the spiritual and educational centre "Salvation" and a two-altar church of the holy passion-bearers Borys and Hlib and of Sts Cyril and Methodius, equal to the apostles¹⁶.

In 2010 a new administrative block with a conference hall, an editorial office, an icon-painting workshop and a gymnasium was completed and a new laundry opened, and in 2011-2012 a new brothers' block and a bee-keeping complex were built, an apiary established and a small farmyard, orchard and vegetable garden laid out⁴. On 25 March 2012 a new well of drinking water, sunk to ninety metres, was blessed at the house¹².

In January 2012 a honey centre, "Health and Longevity", opened at the monastery, which the house's own site described as the first establishment of its kind in Ukraine and beside which a museum of the bee was arranged⁹. The house also published its own herald and the Orthodox journal Kolokol¹³.

The monastery also had a cemetery skete with a church of the Resurrection of Christ at the new town cemetery, where requiem litanies and panikhidas were served daily and a requiem liturgy every Saturday⁷.

On 18 December 2012 a particle of the relics of St John of Shanghai and San Francisco and an icon of him were brought to the house, and a small icon of the saint was left in the monastery¹⁹. On 20-21 July 2013 an ancient cross of the seventeenth century, with a particle of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord and sixty-six particles of the relics of saints, stayed here for veneration; in June of the same year the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr, had handed it to a delegation of the Zaporizhzhia Diocese¹⁵.

At the end of 2012 the house had forty brothers and twenty-five sisters⁴. In 2013 five sisters of the women's community moved to the newly formed St John the Theologian's convent in the village of Ternuvate in Novomykolaivka district⁴. In the same year a hard-surfaced road was laid at the monastery, the outer wall was completed and the grounds were put in order, and the monastery itself was divided, in accordance with ancient monastic tradition, by an inner wall into two sectors, a common one and a monastic one⁴.