Host of hierarchs celebrate feast of St. Elizabeth at monastery near site of her martyrdom

Alapaevsk, Russia, July 20, 2019

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A glorious celebration was held on Thursday at the Monastery of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, as His Eminence Metropolitan Kirill of Ekaterinburg and Verkhoturye led the Divine Liturgy for the feast of St. Elizabeth the Grand Duchess and New Martyr and the Nun Barbara.   

He was joined by another 5 hierarchs at the holy habitation built near the site where Sts. Elizabeth and Barbara, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Princes John Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich, Igor Konstantinovich and Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, and Grand Duke Sergei’s secretary Theodore Remez were killed on July 18, 1918, reports the Russian Church’s Synodal Department for Monasteries and Monasticism.

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Sts. Elizabeth, Barbara, Grand Duke Sergei, and the princes were glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981, and Sts. Elizabeth and Barbara were glorified by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992.

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Concelebrating with Met. Kirill were His Grace Bishop Methodios of Kamensk and Kamishlov, His Grace Bishop Vladimir of Shadrinsk and Dalmatovo, His Grace Bishop Eugene of Nizhny Tagil and Nevyansk, His Grace Bishop Alexei of Serov and Krasnoturinsk, and His Grace Bishop Leonid of Alapaevsk and Irbit, as well as the abbot of the monastery Fr. Moses (Pilats), and a number of clergy from the Ekaterinburg Metropolis.

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The same bishops also served at the Liturgy in honor of the Royal Martyrs the night before.

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Among the notable guests at the Liturgy was Olga Nikolaevna Kulikovskaya-Romanova, the widow of the blood nephew of Tsar Nicholas II Tikhon Nikolaevich Kulikovsky-Romanov.

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At the end of the service, a cross procession to the mine into which the Alapaevsk Martyrs were thrown alive in 1918. A memorial litiya was served at the mine, and the Cherubic Hymn was sung, which the holy martyrs sang for several days in the mine before departing to the Lord. A reliquary with pieces of the relics of St. Elizabeth were also carried around the mine.

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Met. Kirill then addressed the congregation with an archpastoral word, encouraging everyone to follow the path of St. Elizabeth and all the other saints “who today pray and stand before the throne of God.”

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“It is not necessary to shed blood, but to stand for the holy faith, to love the Church of Christ, to love God, not to curse those who offend us, not to grumble at the life around us, but to try to live as the children of God should live. This is what we should strive for, and the Kingdom of Heaven will be inherited by each of us,” the Ekaterinburg hierarch concluded.

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7/20/2019

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