"Healer" Icon of the Mother of God Convent

The convent in honour of the "Healer" icon of the Mother of God stands in the village of Kholodna Balka, Odesa district, Odesa region^{5, 6}.

The history of the house begins twenty years before the house itself. In May 2001 a petition reached Metropolitan Agafangel of Odesa and Izmail from the community of a church then being built in honour of the Three Hierarchs in Kholodna Balka, asking for a priest to be appointed "to hold the services and to help in finishing the building of the church"¹. The petition was granted by the appointment of a newly ordained priest, father Vyacheslav Tatarenko¹.

Father Vyacheslav was born in Odesa in 1965¹. Having a gift for art, he entered the Hrekov State Art College of Odesa, from which he graduated as a decorative artist, and in 2000 he entered the Odesa Theological Seminary; in the following year, 2001, Metropolitan Agafangel ordained him deacon and then priest¹. Under his direction the church in Kholodna Balka was built, a two-storey Sunday school building was raised, the church grounds were fenced and a fruit orchard planted within them¹. In 2020 Archpriest Vyacheslav Tatarenko was granted the highest priestly award of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the right to wear a second jewelled cross¹. He departed to the Lord on 29 November 2021, the second day of the Nativity fast, at the age of 56, and the rite of burial was performed in the Three Hierarchs church of Kholodna Balka on 1 December¹.

On 8 November 2022, the day of the memory of the great martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica, Metropolitan Agafangel of Odesa and Izmail consecrated the upper church of the Three Hierarchs church in honour of the Serbian saints and of Oleksiy of Holosiiv, and also performed the consecration of a chapel in honour of the martyr John the Warrior⁴. After the rite of consecration the hierarch led the festal Divine Liturgy⁴.

On 23 November 2022, at a session of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in answer to the report of Metropolitan Agafangel, it was resolved to form in the Odesa eparchy a convent in honour of the "Healer" icon of the Mother of God^{5, 2}.

The first Liturgy in the newly formed house was celebrated on 1 October 2023, the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, and was led by Metropolitan Agafangel⁶. Before the Liturgy began, an icon of the Mother of God "of the Passion" and an icon of the hieromartyr Makariy of Kaniv with a particle of his relics were carried into the monastery in a cross procession, to remain there permanently⁶. At the little entrance the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Meletiy of Chernivtsi and Bukovyna, read out the decision of the Holy Synod on the forming of the house, after which Metropolitan Agafangel read the prayer for the foundation of the monastery⁶. Abbesses and sisters from various convents of the Odesa region and many pilgrims prayed at the service, and the celebrations ended with a cross procession over the grounds of the house⁶.

The following year a new church was consecrated in the house, and two sources date this differently. By the report of the Odesa eparchy, on 30 September 2024 Metropolitan Agafangel performed the consecration of the Throne and the Divine Liturgy in the monastery³; by the report of the Information and Education Department of the UOC, the Great Consecration of the church in honour of the "Healer" icon of the Mother of God took place on 1 October 2024, and after the consecration the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the new church⁷. Both reports agree that on the same day a worship cross was consecrated on the grounds of the house^{3, 7}.

The patronal feast of the monastery's Three Hierarchs church falls on 12 February². On that day, with the blessing of Metropolitan Agafangel, the feast was led by Archbishop Viktor of Artsyz; at the service petitions were offered for the repose of the church's founder-benefactor and rector, Archpriest Vyacheslav Tatarenko, a festal moleben was served before the icon of the Three Hierarchs with particles of their relics, and after the service the hierarch performed a litia at father Vyacheslav's grave².