Smaragda of Nizhyn

Saint Smaragda of Nizhyn, Venerable Confessor (in the world Iuliania Avramievna Onishchenko), was abbess of the Convent of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in Nizhyn, in the Chernihiv region, during the hardest years of its history, 1914-1927 and 1941-1943. She was arrested, beaten and imprisoned for her faith, and her body was found incorrupt a quarter of a century after her death. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered her among the saints in 2012-2014.

Childhood

She was born on 2 (15) January 1858 in the village of Markivtsi in the Kozelets district of the Chernihiv province, to Abraham and Maria, of Cossack stock, who had seven children and raised them in piety and in love for God and neighbour. When Iuliania was seven, her father died of a grave illness, and the family fell into such want that they had to sell for debts their last cow, on which they lived. The little girl was constantly ill, and her mother feared she would not survive; a coffin had even been prepared for her.

Placing all her hope in God's will, on the advice of the village priest, her mother took her to the school for orphan girls at the Convent of the Entry into the Temple in Nizhyn. The abbess later recalled that the only thing she had with her was the coffin. Growing stronger in body and soul, she studied diligently. She spoke tenderly of how in the convent she received both her upbringing and her education, learning drawing, knitting, embroidery, painting and decorating, icon painting, singing and reading.

The nun

After finishing school she entered the same convent as a novice. According to some sources, in 1876, at eighteen, after the due period of probation, she was tonsured a nun, and in time she became the convent's dean (blagochinnaya), labouring much for the good of the community. During the Russo-⁠Turkish War of 1877-1878 she worked with many sisters in the military hospital opened in the convent for the wounded.

The abbess

In 1914, after the death of Abbess Valentina (according to other sources, Anna), the sisters unanimously elected her abbess. For a long time she did not dare to accept this obedience, agreeing only after the tearful pleading of the sisters and nights of prayer before the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God. As abbess she did not move into the abbess's quarters but remained in her old cell and went on working alongside all the sisters.

Her tenure fell in the most tragic years of the convent. Only by God's mercy and her wisdom and discernment did the community survive for a long time in spite of the attacks of the godless.

Arrest and torture

In 1922, during the Bolshevik campaign to confiscate church valuables, Abbess Smaragda was arrested. The investigator tried to extract testimony from her against the sisters and the clergy, but she remained unshaken. Under interrogation she was calm and answered with simplicity and humility, trying to turn the anger of the authorities away from the convent and its two hundred nuns. After hours of interrogation, torture and beatings, the investigators thought she had died and allowed the nuns to take her body. When she was brought to the convent for burial, she suddenly revived. The miracle did not bring the persecutors to their senses, and the next morning they took her back to prison.

The revolutionary tribunal at Chernihiv, sitting from 13 to 17 May 1922, tried a group of Nizhyn clergy for concealing valuables (226 silver pendants with precious stones, found at the home of the church warden). Though no guilt of hers was proven, the abbess was sentenced to three years in prison. The parishioners of the Nizhyn churches repeatedly petitioned for her release, a sign of the people's love for her.

The community scattered

After serving her sentence she returned to the convent and immediately set about repairing its buildings. But the calm did not last. In 1927 the convent was closed for good, its churches and buildings were turned into an artillery depot, and the nuns were forced to go home. Eighty elderly nuns who had nowhere to go were moved, with Abbess Smaragda at their head, to the Monastery of Saint George in Kozelets.

In 1930 she was arrested a second time, for “anti-⁠Soviet agitation”. Held in a cold cell, her health was ruined. The investigation found no crime, and in 1933 she had to be released. She settled with four sisters in a private house in Kozelets, where she continued her monastic struggle. Contemporaries described her as an earthly angel in whom there was nothing worldly, noble and silent, bringing people the peace of Christ.

Return to Nizhyn

During the war, when the German occupiers allowed churches and monasteries to reopen, the abbess returned with the sisters to her convent. They found it devastated, but with her blessing they set to repairing it again. By the autumn of 1941 the Cathedral of the Entry into the Temple had been reopened, with windows, doors and an iconostasis made by the sisters and the faithful. Eighteen nuns gathered in the convent, and Archpriest Basil Bugayevsky, who had miraculously survived the persecutions, began serving regularly.

Repose

In September 1943 the convent was closed again, and the abbess had to move to Chernihiv, near the Trinity and Saint Elijah Convent. Talking with the sisters, she often recalled her convent and told them that a time would come when monasteries and churches would reopen, and her remains would rest in Nizhyn. Sensing her end, she asked to be buried in the monastic cemetery, but with her coffin laid shallow, because she would have to be moved twice. Her words were not understood, but her wish was carried out when she reposed peacefully on 10 January 1945.

Finding of the relics and glorification

In 1969 the authorities of Chernihiv decided to abolish the monastic cemetery and make a park, and relatives were asked to move their dead to the Yalovshchyna cemetery. Then the nuns remembered the abbess's prophecy. The coffin was found only a metre deep, and when the nuns of the closed Trinity Convent, led by the future Abbess Ambrosia (Ivanenko) of the Yelets Convent in Chernihiv, opened it, they found her body incorrupt.

In 1998 she was rehabilitated. On 16 November 2011, with the blessing of Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kiev, her remains were brought from the Yalovshchyna cemetery to the Convent of the Entry into the Temple in Nizhyn, fulfilling her words. On 8 May 2012 the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered her among the saints and recognised her remains as holy relics. Her glorification was celebrated on 3 May 2014 in the Nizhyn convent, at a Liturgy led by Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil, and her relics are kept there. On 10 May 2014 Bishop Irenaeus of Nizhyn gave the church in her native village of Markivtsi an icon with a portion of her relics. In June 2014 the Synod established a second day of commemoration, 28 December (10 January in the New Style), the day of her repose, alongside the day of her glorification, 3 May.