At the Convent of the Society of the Holy Cross at Zymne, which is located not far from the ancient town of Volodymyr-Volynsky and is one of Ukraine’s oldest cloistered communities, the sisters have been taking care of children like true mothers and teaching others in their own music school.
CONVENT: TRUE HOME
A family is very fortunate to have monks among its members: by their prayers they obtain the forgiveness of sins for seven living and nine dead generations. Where did I read or hear this? Anyway, I have long stopped trying to find out from the sisters or brothers the reason why they took the vow. This must be God’s will.
I was startled out of my reverie by the emergence of a nun. The small woman had materialized out of a long corridor in the administrative building that looked empty save for a small crowd of laymen and several sisters. The courtyard also looked deserted. In fact, one could take one’s time entering through the gateway and taking a stroll round the restored Dormition Church (it was closed on that weekday).
One could also admire the breathtaking landscape opening up right beside the temple, behind a small door in the wall: the Luha River’s floodplain and the princely town of Volodymyr-Volynsky. There are also the underground church and the ancient monastic caves dug deep under the site. Behind the monument to Prince Volodymyr, the Baptizer of Kyivan Rus’, and what is left of the fortified wall (this cloistered community once had to act also as a fortress) is a place popularly known as the Presidential Quarters, considering that the second President of Ukraine stayed there on three occasions.
Metropolitan Volodymyr, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, visits this place several times every year — and not only because this cloister belongs to the Society of the Holy Cross, i.e., it is under the Metropolitan’s aegis. The hill on which this convent is located is considered holy. Over a thousand years it has accumulated such a great amount of His blessings and grace that it can share them with visitors. In fact, it has played host to a great many ranking visitors. Some are attracted by the special aura of the place, thinking that here the Lord will lend a sympathetic ear to their painful confessions. Others come here for various reasons, contributing to the renovation project.
As it was, the nun humbly asked me to wait because Mother Superior was busy receiving ranking officials.
Three times during the half hour my driver and I spent in the Mother Superior’s tiny office, waiting for our turn and having perceived the convent’s quiet and peaceful atmosphere, nuns went in and out, asking us whether we would like something to eat, a cup of tea, or a soft drink. With them, refreshments came first and business next. In the end we were talked into visiting their refectory (we were hungry, after all, and there was no reason to pretend otherwise), where we were served dishes that were lean, in accordance with the canon, but nevertheless tasty, cooked with blessings from Mother Superior.
Mother Stefania told us later, smiling: “All our sisters know the rules. A visitor to our convent must be asked first whether s/he is thirsty or hungry. Only then do we proceed to deal with this visitor’s business. I remember when His Eminence Metropolitan Volodymyr was asked what he preferred to occupy himself with. His reply was, ‘Most of all I like doing good to people.’ He went on to say that he was happy, knowing that fellow humans felt the same way. And so I teach my sisters that whoever enters this convent steps on the holy ground, blessed by our reverend forefathers, and that this person must leave from here with a cleansed soul, the joy of reunion with our Lord, and a desire to visit again, offer up prayers, and partake of His Grace. Our Lord says that whatever you do for your neighbor you have done for Him. Offering food to our visitors is the least we can do.”
You were born in Zaliuttia, a small village in Stara Vyzhivka raion [Volyn oblast]. Unlike Metropolitan Nifont of Lutsk and Volyn, who frequents his home village of Halyna Volia, you seem to have never visited Zaliuttia. Why?
“It is true that I last visited Zaliuttia a long time ago — not because I’m too busy as Mother Superior of this convent. If I wanted to, I could go there. But, you know, I don’t feel drawn to the place. My mother, the dearest fellow human in my life, has been a sister here for eight years. My father had died first, then one of my sisters, aged 40, departed this life. My mother suffered these losses badly, but then she found respite for her body and soul in our convent.
“She is feeling fine, considering that she is 76 years old. She is blessed by the Lord because she can walk around and pray, and she attends the morning and evening services, which is a great help to me because I can feel her blessings and her prayers. I live by her prayers: no one can pray more earnestly for you than your own mother.
“When I have to be absent, I know that Mom is there. I have sisters who live in Zaliuttia, but our life paths have parted. I have dedicated my life to Jesus Christ, yet this doesn’t mean that I have forgotten all about my close and dear ones. If they want to see me, they are welcome to visit the convent. They will benefit from each such visit because they will be able to offer up prayers, touch our relics, and receive blessings. Well, it is true that my schedule is too tight to visit relatives. There is much work still to be done at the convent.”
Has there been a church in Zaliuttia? I know that it has produced nearly a dozen parish priests, monks, and nuns.
“There was no church, not even a graveyard, so we had to bury our dead in Krymne. We also went to church there. At long last we received a parcel of land for our cemetery. My uncle on my mother’s side — he was then the churchwarden — started building a chapel. The result was a neat church named after St. Sergius of Radonezh.
“Although I do not visit my home village, I remember the school where I studied. Last year the 50th anniversary of the school and the 60th anniversary of the birth of Metropolitan Nifont of Lutsk and Volyn coincided. I certainly attended the archbishop’s festivities, yet our convent presented the school with a computer classroom. I wanted so much to be there, at my school, so I asked my sister, resident of Zaliuttia, to arrange for my former schoolteachers to visit me at the convent. Nine visited, God be praised, including the former principal Maria Ivanivna.
“When I studied at school she had to adhere to the atheistic tenets by virtue of her office. In fact, she scared the living daylights out of her pupils. Yet while in school, I made a point of going to church on a regular basis. I also sang with the choir. Was it in Grade 7 or 8? We lived in the countryside where people went to church on great holidays to make confessions and receive Holy Communion. I went to church every Sunday. No one praised me for this at school, but now, decades later, I can only thank the Lord for the trials I had to undergo.
“I was happy to make my former schoolteachers welcome at the convent. We shared food and old memories. It was an enjoyable experience. I thanked them for visiting the convent. It was their first visit and everyone was impressed, not only because it was summertime and the roses were blossoming, but because the place was so quiet, obviously had the Lord’s grace, and a thousand-year history.
“I thank our Lord for the times that have changed, so that people are now free to enter a temple, pray, then return home and tell their children about Jesus Christ without casting wary looks around. People are now free to join in marriage and baptize their children in accordance with the religious rites. Above all, people are free to come and make confessions and receive Holy Communion. This is something every Christian needs. Spiritual life is being revived in the souls of people who could be deprived of it if the Soviet regime had not died.”
NUNS AREN’T RAISED BECAUSE THIS IS DIVINE PROVIDENCE
Several years ago, those who attended young artists’ plein air at the Lutsk Castle saw something they found out of the ordinary: two nuns and two girls of school age, dressed in black. Many instantly recognized Mother Superior Stefania and Sister Mykolaia of the Zymne Convent. It transpired that both were there to root for the students of the convent’s art school in Volodymyr-Volynsky.
At he time there were twelve such students at the convent. Mother Superior Stefania says that many were picked up on the streets, for those girls were denied the care of parents and the state: “We asked [the authorities] to let them live [at the convent] for a while. We chose girls aged nine and raised tem until they came of age. We have helped some of them enroll in a university; others got married. They still come to the convent.”
They say that one of them is studying to become a physician in Lviv, but she often visits the convent because it’s her true home. She has nowhere else to go.
“Indeed. We give them money and buy clothes and other things for them. Thank God they have our convent for home. I always tell them: “If you want me to be your Mom, if you want this convent to be your home, you are always welcome. After all, some of them spent between eight and ten years here. They went to school in Zymne, and we arranged for them to study art or music. We took them to classes and tried to give them an all-around education.”
No disappointments over your pupils?
“Children are like that. So long as they are aware of being treated with tender care, they respond in kind, but there is also a matter of genetic endowment. We have learned this the hard way. Some of them have been hard, very hard to raise the proper way. Children aren’t to be blamed; they inherit all this from their parents. Anyway, we give them a chance. We do not intend to raise these girls as future nuns, for this is for our Lord to say. In fact, only two of them declared their wish to dedicate their life to serving God. We offer them an opportunity to live their life differently from their parents’, without drinking, without drugs. They may well turn out to be decent citizens who can distinguish between good and evil, who can embark on a good life path, with the help of God and our heartfelt blessings.”
Your convent has run an Orthodox camp, an ophthalmologic examination room for years on end. Now you have a music school.
“Let me tell you that the biggest problem is when any of the laws of the Church are violated. We read in the Scriptures: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength… Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. How can we show our love of our Lord other than by taking care of our homeless children, or by doing our utmost to save souls? Metropolitan Volodymyr, the archpriest of our church, serves as an extremely stimulating example. It is due to his selfless endeavors and donations that we have all those children’s homes, for orphans and children from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
“Our convent has run a camp for children from low-income families for the past decade. We hire professional instructors to teach them singing and arts. Our sisters teach them the Scriptures and cooking. In our camp classes are conducted in English. There are also discos at the school club, a walking distance from the convent. We rent a gym. Our children are taken out to picnics every second day of the week, by a scenic lake amidst the forest, near Volodymyr-Volynsky.
“At the same time, they are taught religion. There is a divine service celebrated at the opening and close of the camp season. Before returning home our children go to confession and receive Holy Communion. It is very interesting to watch them as they get prepared for confession. They take large sheets of paper and write on them with what they regard as their sinful doings. And the inimitably sincere reverence with which they follow through the confession procedures! There are quite a few children who have stayed with us for several years. They were cases when children (some of them were from Vyshnevy, near Kyiv) had a choice of going to either Volyn or the Crimea, and they chose Zymne.”
Do the children realize that they are in an Eastern Orthodox convent rather than an R&R camp by the charming river Luha?
“They certainly do, although we’re careful not to impose the strict convent rules on them. It is the very atmosphere of this cloistered community that makes them behave accordingly, yet children are children. True, they keep an unwritten code of conduct, asking for blessings before every meal and then thanking for the food. They pray in the morning, asking the Lord to grant them another day to enjoy. There is also a long prayer before they go to bed.
“Our convent started the music school for local children. It has been in existence for only one year at the school in Zymne. You know, I was very impressed by the children’s choir at the cathedral in Vinnytsia. It sounded so beautiful, so very true to His Word. I thought of all those children and told myself that we have enough talent in our country, except that not all the talented ones can afford — or are assisted financially — to attend vocal and music classes. I visited Metropolitan Volodymyr, received his blessings, and then our convent purchased a complete set of musical instruments, ranging from the violin to the flute. We also have a concert and a digital piano. Our music school is a branch of the Ustyluh Raion Music School. Among the students are children from both Zymne and the neighboring villages, even from Volodymyr-Volynsky because here they study for free.”
Is this Ukraine’s first music school run by a convent?
“I am not sure. All I can say is that I thank the Lord and Metropolitan Volodymyr for blessing this project. I studied at a college for precentors, which was part of what was then the Leningrad Theological Academy. This was a great deal of progress for me. I want our children to have an opportunity to develop their talents, too. We would take our girls to the music school in Volodymyr-Volynsky, all bills footed by the convent. We wanted our children to learn to read the music, sing with the school choir, and with the church one. Our students have performed at a number of competitions and won awards. When they visit us, they sing Christmas carols and get presents. This Easter they sang with our church choir.”
ICON LAMP OF FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY
I first visited the convent at Zymne some thirty years ago. Even during that atheistic epoch there was no way to conceal the history of this ancient cloistered community that emerged on the Holy Hill in the vicinity of the even older city of Volodymyr-Volynsky. The convent was founded by Prince Volodymyr, the Baptizer of Kyivan Rus’, in 1001. The place became known as Zymne because it accommodated the prince’s castle and his winter quarters.
“I was there on a business trip. We saw the hill and the ruins of the convent. At the time I would have never believed that this place, which accommodated a tractor station, would rise from ashes in what is less than an instant from the perspective of eternity, to return to its full splendor as another holy ground and that this convent would receive the miracle-working Icon of the Mother of God of Zymne. This icon makes blind people see, cures them of cancer, and bestows the joy of motherhood on women.
The restoration was launched in 1977 when sisters Stefania and Mykolaia arrived there with blessings from the Holy Synod.
“We thank God and our benefactors,” says Mother Superior Stefania.
Last year this nun was proclaimed Ukraine’s Distinguished Woman during the ceremony of naming the Women of the Third Millennium at the National Opera of Ukraine.
Mother Superior Stefania has this to say: “Girls, who join our convent, were not born in the 10th or 11th century. They were born in the 20th century. They studied in modern schools. They are products of our society. Therefore, you have to be wise and God will reward you for obedience. If being Mother Superior is what Jesus wishes me to be, then He will give me the brains, the patience, and diplomatic talent. Serving as Mother Superior of a convent in the 21st century is a heavy cross to bear because it is my duty to revive spiritual life within this cloistered community.”
