On November 24, 2024, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia celebrated the rite of the great consecration of the Church of St. Nicholas of Myra in Biryulyovo in Moscow and the Divine Liturgy in the newly consecrated church.
Special petitions were made at a special litany, and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill read a prayer for Holy Russia.
During the Liturgy, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church ordained Deacon Sergius of the Transfiguration, a cleric of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity of the compound of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia in Orekhov-Borisov, Moscow, to the rank of presbyter.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill addressed the faithful with a Primatial address, in which, in particular, he said: "Sometimes you ask a person who is not very rich and not very healthy: "How are you doing?" — "Yes, thank God!" And you ask a strong business executive, a successful businessman: "How are you doing?" "It doesn't matter." "What is it?" "Something didn't work out, and I'm not lucky at all." Listen, you have money, you have a car, you have a cottage — what else do you need from an earthly, human point of view? But happiness is not created by these factors! Happiness is a state of the human spirit. And you can drive the most beautiful car, live in the most beautiful house — and be a deeply unhappy person. Don't we even learn about the terrible cases of suicide — the richest and seemingly happy people? This should convince us again and again that the influence of God's grace is not carried out through some external, material factors. The presence of God in our lives is through the contact of grace with our mind, with our heart, and happiness is a state of mind, and only a state of mind, and nothing else.
And if so, what should you think about first? About the state of the soul, and then about everything else. Yes, we walk on earth, we are of body and soul, we have flesh and blood, and family people have children, grandchildren, and so on — everything needs to be taken care of. But a person finds happiness only when there is peace and joy in his heart, and this is a gift from God. So I wish all of us to find this gift and never lose it. So, to find true happiness, joy, peace of mind, and how important it is to share this joy, this world with others, first of all strengthening all this in your own family! And even if there is a sparkle somewhere, some conflicts have arisen, all this should be understood as a peripheral, secondary matter, because the most important thing is to preserve love and joy in the heart.
That's what you need to worry about, so that there is happiness in the house and so that the children grow up properly educated. Not only in the sense of getting a school or college education, but being properly educated from the point of view of arranging one's own soul. And may the Lord help us all, first of all through our prayer, through our participation in church life, and certainly through our doing good deeds, because faith without works is dead (James. 2:20), — to attract Divine grace to oneself, and with grace peace, joy and happiness, genuine, enduring, which remains so even if difficult external circumstances arise — something with work, something in communication with someone, sometimes political fears. But if inner happiness, grace and joy are present in the heart, everything else goes to the periphery, and the person becomes invincible. Then no one has the power to destroy the inner world that is being created in our heart in this way."
The Primate of the Russian Church donated the icon of the Mother of God "Trinity" to the temple.
"Happy holidays to all of you, my dear ones! May the blessing of God and the Protection of the Queen of Heaven be upon you all! God bless you!" His Holiness admonished the participants of the divine service.
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To the south of Moscow, on the seventeenth verst along the Bolshaya Serpukhov Road, on the Gorodenka river, the village of Biryulyovo of the Zyuzinsky parish was located — the possession of Peter Tatishchev, then Alexander Pleshcheyev, and after him Agrafena Obolenskaya. The last owner of the estate was engineer-captain Ivan Romeyko.
In 1900, the Ryazan-Ural Railway passed through these places. The Biryulyovo station was connected by a branch line with the Tsaritsyno-Dachnoye station of the Moscow-Kursk Railway and by rail with the large brick factory of engineer Verkhovsky (one and a half versts from the station).
In 1903, a railway school was opened at the Biryulyovo station. In 1911, at the request of employees and the board of the Ryazan-Ural Railway and with the blessing of the New Martyr Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky), a church was built at the school.
On November 8, 1911, the parish was established. In April 1912, the church was consecrated in honor of the blessed Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky. Emperor Nicholas II granted a monetary allowance to pay debts for the construction of the temple. In 1924, the Alexander Nevsky Church was closed, the premises were transferred to the school administration.
In the same year, with the blessing of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, a new church in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was built at the railway station at the cemetery and consecrated in December 1924. Priest Vasily Kanardov was appointed rector (shot in 1937 at the Butovo training ground, rehabilitated posthumously).
During the Great Patriotic War, when the collection of funds for defense needs began in the parishes, the small village church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Biryulyovo donated 102,426 rubles to create a tank column named after Dmitry Donskoy. For patriotic activity during the war, the rector of St. Nicholas Church in Biryulyovo, Archpriest Nikolai Perekhvalsky, was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
On March 1, 1956, the wooden church completely burned down. A church gatehouse was adapted for a prayer house next to the ashes. Already 10 days after the fire, services resumed — the Easter service was performed on the street, the bells were hung on poles. The authorities banned the construction of a new church, and all requests from parishioners were invariably refused.
In 1957, the rector, Archpriest Vasily Moiseev, and his faithful parishioners decided, despite the ban, to begin construction of the church. They worked secretly, at night they collected and painted the log walls, moved them to a new place, and dismantled the walls of the gatehouse. Then an altar was added. The icons were handed over by believers from the surrounding villages near Moscow, the iconostasis was assembled by the restorer V.A. Rybakov from parts found in closed churches.
On December 22, 1957, on the feast day of the icon of the Mother of God "Unintentional Joy", Protopresbyter John Sobolev, in the concelebration of several clergymen, consecrated a wooden church with a great rite, like the former one, in honor of St. Nicholas of Myra. The commission, which came to fix the absence of the church and liquidate the parish, found an active church. The authorities did not dare to demolish it.
So during the Khrushchev persecution of the Church, when churches were closed and destroyed all over the country, a new temple appeared in Biryulyovo through the courage of the rector and parishioners — an event unique for that time.
In 1959, the side altar of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos was built in the church.
On December 21, 1997, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the church.
Next to the wooden church there are Sunday school buildings with a library and a rectory, built in 1996-2004. All buildings are owned by the parish.
On the church territory there were the graves of the famous prayer book, ascetic of piety, schema-nun Serafima (Ushakova), as well as the builder of the temple, Archpriest Vasily Moiseev, and those clergy and believers whose remains were allowed to be moved to the territory of the church during the liquidation of the Biryulevsky cemetery in the 1970s. During the construction of the temple, they were moved to the ground floor of the new building.
In 2000, the parish appealed to His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II with a request to bless the construction of a large stone church, since the small wooden church could no longer accommodate residents of the grown-up Moscow district. 10,000 signatures of residents for the construction of a new church on the historical church territory were transferred to the Moscow Government.
On December 22, 2012, on the feast day of the icon of the Mother of God "Unintentional Joy" and the 55th anniversary of the consecration of the wooden church, Archbishop Arseny of Istra, the first vicar of His Holiness the Patriarch, performed the rite of consecration of the foundation stone of the new church on the site of the one that burned down in 1956.
Currently, a temple building with a total area of 1,466 square meters has been erected.
Three thrones have been installed in the new church — in honor of St. Nicholas, the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, and the blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky. The central part of the iconostasis was donated by the parish of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God "Life-giving Spring" in Tsaritsyn. The iconostases of the Pokrovsky and Alexander Nevsky limits are mainly assembled from historical icons that were in the old temple. To the left and right of the central iconostasis in the kiots are the icons of the Mother of God "The Quick—Hearer", especially revered by parishioners (painted on Mount Athos in 1910) and the temple image of St. Nicholas, transferred from a wooden temple.
A granite cross has been erected next to the temple in memory of soldiers and Orthodox Christians buried in the territory of the liquidated Biryulevsky cemetery; on May 9 and on days of special commemoration of the deceased, memorial services are held here.
The first Divine Liturgy in the new church was celebrated on September 9, 2019. Since 2023, regular divine services have been held in the new church.