Southern monastery. Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Crimea How to get to the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity

The center of the Orthodox faith in the southern part of Russia is the Church of the Holy Trinity. It is located on the territory of the village of Priazovsky (Temryuk district). In the same settlement, a monastery was built, which is a courtyard of an ancient monastery for male novices, located in Zvenigorod. The rector of the Holy Trinity Church and monastery is the Moscow Patriarch.

Construction of this Orthodox complex began in 2004. It is worth noting that construction work continues at the present time. Several years ago, the head of the Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in this shrine. From now on, all services in the church are held in full. The Holy Trinity Monastery also includes quite cozy cells in which novices live. The structure of the monastery also includes other divisions. We are talking about an orphanage for children without parents, a seminary and an extensive library. More than thirty children currently live in the shelter, who are studying not only Orthodox science, but also undergoing the regular school program. In the temple you can pray on the relics of the saints. Here there are the relics of such great people as Gerasim of Jordan, Mary Magdalene and so on.

The attractions of the Holy Trinity Church in the village of Priazovsky include ancient icons. Believers here can see sacred images of the Mother of God ("Jerusalem" and "Azov" icons).

It is noteworthy that the temple can be seen from afar, for example, while moving along the federal highway going to the port of Caucasus. Holy Trinity Church is considered one of the largest cathedrals located in the southern part of our country. How to get to this Orthodox complex? To do this, it will be more convenient for you to be in a settlement called Ilyich. It is from this village that there is an asphalt road along which you will quickly reach the sacred place. You can get to the monastery either by personal vehicle or by bus, which runs here quite regularly. Before your trip, take care of the proper clothing, buy candles and soak up the atmosphere of this amazing place.

Orthodox people will note that the church was built in the traditional style of Russian architecture: the cross-domed structure is not just a place for worship, but also a wonderful architectural monument, which is distinguished by its majesty and extraordinary beauty. The side parts of the church are dedicated to the patron saints - the well-known Sergius of Radonezh and Alexander Nevsky.

The Azov Monastery for men is distinguished by the presence of its own vineyards. These amazing tree-like bushes surround the monastery area, making its building mysterious and impregnable. Do you want to visit the monastery as a tourist? Then you definitely need to try the tart monastery wine here. This drink is distinguished by its extraordinary spice and pleasant taste, so you will have only the most positive impressions from your trip to the monastery.

Construction work is still ongoing at this sacred site (in particular, the finishing of load-bearing structures is being carried out). That is why you can only find out the exact schedule of the functioning of the church directly on the spot. Every day the church is visited by many parishioners who come to pray for their health and the well-being of their loved ones. You can also see tourists on the territory of the sacred place: many of them found peace and relaxation in this attraction.

The Azov Monastery for male novices was built relatively recently. However, even now this place has a special calm and at the same time majestic atmosphere, which you want to return to again and again. The quiet ringing of the bells and the shine of the dome in the sun will appeal not only to deeply religious people, but also to those tourists who just want to take a break from the bustle of the city. Thus, this Orthodox complex is a unique place, distinguished by its beautiful architecture and special way of life.

After a series of vineyards, peach orchards and endless melon fields with striped watermelons and yellow melons, a valley opened up, at the end of which rose a hill crowned with a high temple. Its golden domes glowed in the rays of the setting sun. We approached it through the village of Ilyich, named after the most ardent Christ-hater and destroyer of churches. They called him not by his first and last name, but sincerely, as one would address a good-natured neighbor, simply by his patronymic: Ilyich.

From Ilyich to the temple 19 versts. It is consecrated in the name of the Life-Giving Trinity. This is the highest temple in the south of Russia. Its height is 62 meters. For those who come to us by sea, Russia will begin with the Trinity Church. It stands on ancient land, about which Homer and Strabo wrote. In the 10th and 11th centuries, these were the lands of the richest Russian principality - Tmutarakan. Somewhere in its north, the battle described in the chronicle between the Tmutarakan prince Mstislav and the Kosozh prince Rededey took place.

There is information that there were two monasteries in these places. Now monastic life is being resumed at the Patriarchal Compound. This temple is located on its territory. In the near future, it is planned to create a spiritual center of Russia with a seminary, educational, pilgrimage, missionary and other centers. The inhabitants speak with caution about the great future awaiting the courtyard: “If there is a future and God willing, then... For now there are only plans and a difficult life.” The farmstead has a large farm and a large shortage of workers. There is a lot of land, equipment, there is a winery where Cahors is produced. Dioceses, having become familiar with its virtues, now serve liturgy on it and do not want to return to the previous varieties. Part of the land is given to melon and melon farmers. On the day of my arrival, a whole cart of melons was rolled into the yard. Not only workers began to dismantle them, but also neighbors who lived next to the temple, but did not appear in the temple. I decided to joke - I turned to a tall young man carrying two melons: “Do you like the sweet life?” He smiled: “Everything is sweet with God. And wormwood is not bitter.”

Three weeks spent in the courtyard confirmed this wise judgment. I did not miss a single liturgy, not a single evening rule, attended half of the evening services and was honored to taste the sweetness that the first worker I met told me about.

If they don’t dare talk about the future here, they talk about the past with pleasure. The Lavra elder Naum spoke about the special grace of this place. It was through his prayers that his spiritual children gathered and built a grandiose temple in just four years. One of the oldest monks of the monastery, who worked at a construction site as a simple worker, showed me photographs reflecting all stages of the construction of the temple:

– Imagine, just one meter of masonry took 60 thousand bricks. The concrete was poured by hand. The Lord clearly guided and helped us. And everyone had such friendship and love - I can’t remember without tears. I pray to God that I will experience this at least once again in my life.

Then he told how, during the installation of a cross on the dome, the visiting archimandrite said: “This temple is a miracle of God. Expect many miracles."

“Miracles happened every day. We already perceive them as a pattern. We live under the Protection of the Mother of God"

– And the next day the worker Evgeniy fell from a 30-meter height and did not break anything. This was the first miracle. And then they started doing it every day. We already perceive them as a pattern. We live under the Protection of the Mother of God, where the angels are commanded to keep us on our paths.

The temple is truly wonderful. On two floors. The service is currently only on the first one. Three thrones. The pulpit is such that the priests and deacons walking with censing take a lot of time to walk both ways. I was blown away by the choir. Courageous beautiful voices. But when I saw the singers and the regent, I couldn’t believe it: these were 12-14 year old boys. Regent Ivan answered my question: “Where did he study the art of regency?” - answered:

- At home and in church. My father is a regent and a priest. I've been on the choir since childhood. My sister began waving (read: conducting) at the age of twelve. And I slowly learned.

It’s amazing: during these three weeks, when Ivan presided over the long monastic services, everything went without any hiccups.

There is also a female choir of sisters living in cells next to the courtyard. The sisters also sing beautifully and prayerfully.

Grace is also felt outside the temple. A hundred meters away the cliff begins, and from it a picturesque view opens. The wide blue expanse of the Sea of ​​Azov, right up to the horizon, and under the cliff a hilly valley covered with multi-colored spots: blue - a small lake, yellow-gray - scorched grass, dark brown - trees and hawthorn bushes, thickets of blackberries and all kinds of thorns. The crowns of the wild olive are turning silver. The bushes look bright green, looking like young thujas. When I began to descend along the path through the hawthorn thickets, it seemed to me that I was going not to the sea, but to the Jordan. Hawthorn trees with spreading branches twisted by strong winds are similar to acacias growing in the Holy Land.

There were dark holes everywhere in the ground covered with yellow dust. Small ones are snakelike. Larger holes - some kind of rodents. And the openings into the dwellings of unknown animals are quite wide. Shepherd Vadim, whom I met on the first day, said that he saw a huge raccoon the size of a shepherd dog. I didn’t meet any raccoons, nor any snakes. But I saw a lot of birds. One evening, first two pheasants flew out of the tall grass very close to the path, and after a few steps another pair. Lots of rubbish O j. I saw white herons twice. Of course, there is no need to talk about seagulls. There are, as it should be, countless flocks of them over the sea. Fish spawn in these places. Previously, the village of Priazovsky was called Free Fishermen. There are no fishermen in sight now. Only seagulls and cormorants fish. True, seagulls do not so much fish as they fight with those who snatch fish from the water. Instead of diving themselves, several birds scream and chase after the successful fisherman, trying to snatch prey from her beak in flight. When the seagulls gather in a dense flock and begin to circle at random, it seems that this is a silvery living cloud. This circling is especially beautiful during the setting sun.

In the first days of September, every evening I watched flocks of birds flying south. They seemed to be hurrying after the sun as it set to the horizon, so as not to be left in the dark. The birds have flocked to the south, which means that the cold will soon come. But in the morning the same birds flew in the opposite direction: no longer high in the sky, but above the sea, almost right next to the water, as if they wanted no one to notice their return. These were cormorants. They do not fly south, but remain to spend the winter along the entire Black Sea coast. Thank God, the alarm turned out to be false: the cold did not set in.

If you go up the hill from the sea, the golden dome and cross first appear. You go to the courtyard and see how the Trinity Church seems to grow smoothly from the ground: it is visible more and more until it rises to its full extent.

The obedience I was given was gentle, and it did not take much time. I couldn’t work in the hot sun because of my blood pressure. And before the evening service he had the opportunity to take walks to the sea and back. Along the path that winded along the hillside, under an arch of hawthorn branches, cows were hiding from the sun. One day a shepherd called out to me and suddenly said: “Do you feel how strong the wormwood smells? This is the smell of my childhood. And my grandmother said that my fate would be as bitter as wormwood. So she prophesied.” He grinned and hit his boot with his whip. The cow standing next to him shuddered all over and darted to the side just in case. The shepherd was clearly waiting for my questions about his bitter fate, but I apologized, muttered the first phrases that came to mind that everything would work out as soon as he was in the monastery, wished him health and salvation and hurried to the service. The wormwood really smelled intoxicating. There are whole thickets of it here.

On weekdays, the services were mostly attended by our own people and a few pious villagers. But on Sundays the temple is crowded. On the first Sunday I saw an old friend. He is a traffic engineer. Having completed the construction of roads and tunnels in Krasnaya Polyana, he transferred to Taman and is building the Crimean crossing. There were several colleagues with him. There were about three dozen cars parked near the temple, not only with license plates from Kuban, but also from many regions of Russia. The farthest one is Tyumen. I asked the owner of the Tyumen car how he knew about this monastery.

– I don’t know anything about her. I just crossed over from Crimea and on the ferry I saw a tall church. I decided to stop by and have a look.

After the service, the people left reluctantly. They stood in groups of several people. They asked questions to the monks. Disputes arose in some groups. A long-haired wanderer in a canvas shirt and torn sandals enlightened the elderly women gathered around him: “We are waiting for the end of the world. And the light ended long ago. Ilyich's light bulb burned out. We live in darkness. Dukhovny. There will be trouble. We're nowhere without trouble. Without trouble, we don't need God. We have only one problem." I noted the semantic and stylistic merits of this short monologue and wanted to get to know its author. But then, as luck would have it, some people pushed me aside and started asking “serious” questions. The first was “where is your patriarch’s palace?” While I was telling them that there were no choirs here, that the courtyard was not an estate with a palace, and that the monks, together with the workers, lived in a single house, some woman took the wanderer out of the dense surroundings and took him away - most likely to the nuns for a meal .

On the last night, I stood at the cliff for a particularly long time and felt my soul itself begin to pray.

After evening services, I went out to the cliff and peered for a long time into the dark distance of the invisible sea, filled from edge to edge with a garland of lights. These are ships standing in the roadstead awaiting pilotage. At night it seems that this is not a line of ships, but the opposite bank of the river with lanterns on the embankment and houses with lit windows. In the bottomless sky, stars of different sizes sparkled brightly, individually scattered and collected in constellations. The Milky Way, dusty with a whitish fog, stretched across the entire sky. I stood for a long time, throwing my head back, peering into the night sky: huge, vast, stunning... Sometimes it was traced by falling stars, the lights of satellites slowly floated by. The silence of the night was broken from time to time by the alarming cries of night birds. On the last night, I stood at the cliff for a particularly long time and felt my soul itself begin to pray. It was a prayer without words. The soul itself knew what and how to tell the One who called it from oblivion.

Someone's footsteps were heard. It was a shepherd who was unable to tell me about his bitter fate. He said hello and stood silently for several minutes. Then he sighed and said quietly: “My heart is overflowing with beauty. It seems that I was inserted into some kind of picture and I became a part of it. Starry sky, sea expanse with lights on ships. They are like an enhanced reflection of the stars. I often stand here, admire and am afraid that I will jump down. Heights have always fascinated me."

I didn’t expect such poetry from him, but I suddenly felt scared. What if he really jumps? He and I are two steps away from the abyss. Above us is a starry sky - and not a soul. If he really intended this, we need to stop him. But how? How to find the right words? Such that they come from a heart exuding love. Only with your own heartfelt love can you warm someone else’s frozen soul. But there was no such love in my heart. It became more and more filled with fear. What if he wants to grab me for company? One sharp movement - and... The sky suddenly became a menacing decoration for the beginning tragedy. I took a few steps back from the edge. He must have sensed what was happening to me and smiled sadly: “Let’s go home. Lights out in ten minutes." We returned in silence, carefully walking along the soft dust of the path. It seemed to me that my companion was walking on tiptoe.

Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in the village of Priazovsky

The village of Priazovsky has long been called “Little Switzerland”. This is no coincidence, because the only street of this provincial settlement is lost among the low hills, completely covered with hawthorn and rosehip bushes. Even in summer, local beaches do not attract large numbers of vacationers. It is in this place, lost among nature, that there is a monastery, on the territory of which the Church of the Holy Trinity of the Life-Giving is located.

The temple was built in the classic type of Russian architecture - the cross-baptismal type. This means that its plan is a cross, strictly oriented to the cardinal points. The side chapels of the church are dedicated to the heavenly patron saints: Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky and Sergius of Radonezh. We can say that the Church of the Holy Trinity is the main temple on the Taman Peninsula. Previously, on this territory there was a courtyard of the ancient Zvenigorod Savvino-Storozhevoy Monastery. Therefore, the place for the construction of the temple and the courtyard of the Azov Monastery was not chosen by chance.

The first stone for the construction of the monastery complex was laid back in 2004. And already in 2011, the main monastery church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was consecrated by the Russian Patriarch. It is worth noting that the abbot (that is, the head of the monastery) is Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus'.

The Azov Monastery also has its own vineyards, which surround its territory on all sides. Therefore, many tourists buy monastery wine here, which has a special spicy bouquet.

Organization and arrangement of the temple

The Azov Monastery includes not only the Trinity Church and the cells in which monks and novices permanently live. On its territory there is a large library, a seminary, as well as an orphanage (currently about thirty pupils are being educated there). In addition to the basics of the Law of God, the children living in the monastery shelter undergo a high school program.

Of course, the heart of any monastery is the central temple, around which all monastic life is concentrated. The Trinity Church in the village of Priazovsky is already visible from the highway. The gilded bows of the Kupals rise many meters into the sky and on a clear day resemble the sun. Currently, the interior decoration and painting of the temple chapels is ongoing. Every year thousands of pilgrims flock to this holy place to kneel before the icons of the Trinity Church. Among them, the most revered are the images of the Most Holy Theotokos “Azov”, “Jerusalem” and “Different of the Loaves”. And this is no coincidence, because since ancient times the Mother of God has been considered the patroness and intercessor of Rus' and the Russian people.

People also go to the Church of the Holy Trinity of the Life-Giving to venerate the relics of the Holy Pleasants of God, since here are the relics of St. Equal to the Apostles Mary Magdalene, St. Gerasim of Jordan and St. Saava the Watchman.

How to get to the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity

There are several ways to get to the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity: by personal transport from the city of Temryuk along the federal highway towards the port "Caucasus" to the village of Priazovsky. The average travel time does not exceed one hour. You can also use public transport from the Temryuk bus station. Bus 110 is suitable for you, moving towards Zaporozhye daily from 6:30 to 15:30, at hourly intervals.

Attention: the holy place is under construction, therefore the schedule of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, as well as the schedule of services in the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, can only be found out on the spot.

Despite the fact that the Azov monastery arose relatively recently, this place has a special spirit. The surrounding natural beauty, blessed silence, and the ringing of temple bells immerse pilgrims in a trembling state of expectation of a miracle, which they will undoubtedly receive in this secluded monastery.