If you open a map of Moscow churches and highlight on it all the churches dedicated to the icon “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” you will get a strange picture. The dots will not be in the center, not at the main intersections. They will gather at the cemetery gates, next to the old hospital buildings, on the site of former almshouses and shelters.
This is not a coincidence or a whim of the developers of the century before last. Of the entire row of the Mother of God, it was this image that Russian tradition assigned to the most difficult work — to stand where people really feel bad. On August 5, the Church celebrates one of the days of his memory, and this is a good reason to look at the Moscow geography of grief more carefully.
Plague, moat and wooden church
Let's start with Kalitnikov — the area between Taganka and Volgogradsky Prospekt, where Muscovites end up mainly for sad reasons.
The Kalitnikovskoe cemetery appeared in 1771 outside the city: after the plague epidemic, burying inside Moscow was prohibited, and in January 1773 the first wooden church was consecrated there. All cemeteries created in 1771–1772 were equipped with temporary wooden churches for funeral services. The first Kalitnikovskaya Church of Sorrows burned down in 1776, it was replaced by a new one, with a chapel of the Bogolyubskaya icon. FedmpUM Moskva
Think about the sequence. First — a ditch and carts with bodies. Then, almost immediately, the temple. And the dedication is not chosen randomly. Not the Savior, not Nicholas the Pleasant, not the founding patron saint. “Joy to all who mourn” — because there were so many mourners in Moscow in those months that the count was in the thousands.
The current stone building of the three-altar church was built in 1834 according to the design of the architect N. I. Kozlovsky. Today it is a cultural heritage site of federal significance. The church accepts notes on repose and orders for funeral services — funeral service, requiem service, magpie; among the revered shrines is the icon itself “Joy of All Who Sorrow” in a gilded frame and a reliquary icon with forty particles of relics. Xn—b1afkimsn3a + 2
Similar logic worked in other places. The Sorrowful Monastery on Novoslobodskaya, which arose at the end of the 19th century, had a large cemetery — almost nothing remained of it during the Soviet years, and the place turned into a children's park, along the paths of which children now run, unaware of what was under the lawn. Mourning chapels were set up at hospitals for the poor. Icons of this persecution were hung in prison churches, in shelters, and in wards for the incurable.
Why her
The answer is hidden in the composition of the image itself. In the icon, the crowd around the Mother of God is not saints, but the poor, the crippled, the sick — those whom they try not to notice in ordinary life. The formulas on the scrolls are extremely everyday: clothing for the naked, healing for the sick.
This makes the icon practically the only Russian image where the plot is not feat or glory, but need. Hence its addresses:
- Cemetery churches where funeral services are held
- Hospital churches where they pray for the hopeless
- Almshouses and shelters where the lonely live
- Houses where a misfortune happened in the family
class=»notranslate»>__GTAG10__ Prison chapels, where those who are no longer expected are waiting
There's something almost awkwardly honest about it. Russian church culture, with all its penchant for gold and triumph, has left itself one image that does not have a drop of pomp.
Neighbors on the shelf: other icons for hard days
“Joy to All Who Sorrow” is not alone. In Orthodox everyday life there is a small group of images that are addressed in different shades of trouble, and they should not be confused:
- “My comfort sadness» — they pray when grief has already happened and you need to learn to live with it. More about acceptance than about a change in circumstances
- “Recovery of the dead” — an image for those who are considered lost: the missing, the dependent, those who left the family
- “Unexpected Joy” — about hope where it logically should not exist
- “Softening evil hearts” (“Semistrelnaya”) — for family quarrels, enmity, old grievances between relatives
- “Healer” — in case of illness, especially before surgery
- “Joy to all who mourn” — the widest in scope: they come here when trouble does not fit into any category, but simply covers the whole
Experienced priests, by the way, treat this classification calmly and without pedantry. The Mother of God is one, the icons are different, but a person in grief sometimes needs specifics — where to go, to which board to put a candle. In this sense, many images work as navigation through one’s own state.
What to do on August 5 and any other day
The holiday on this day is not the twelfth, there will be no scope. Liturgy, water prayer service, a small religious procession somewhere. But the date has practical meaning, especially if someone in your family is seriously ill or has recently passed away.
The procedure is simple:
- Come to any Church of Sorrows — on Ordynka, in Kalitniki, in other areas of Moscow
- Submit a note: about repose — for the dead, about health — for the living
- Order a memorial service for a loved one or a prayer service for the sick
- Light a candle, even if you can’t pray with words
- Don’t try to do everything right the first time: the candle shop will tell you
When it comes not to prayer, but to organization, the picture becomes more complicated. The funeral service must be coordinated with the temple, connected with the morgue, transport, time at the cemetery, and the memorial table. In a state of fresh grief, these logistics break people faster than grief itself. The city service MosGupRitual takes on this part entirely: documents, transportation, agreement with the church about the funeral service, organization of the funeral. It works around the clock, throughout Moscow, without intermediaries or markups.
Memory that has an address
Cemetery churches of Sorrow have one more property that is rarely thought about. They transform an unnamed field into a place with a center. As long as the church stands, the cemetery remains part of the city, and not an abandoned area.
The same thing, only in miniature, happens with a separate grave. While she is being looked after, the person remains among those who are remembered. As soon as the site is overgrown and the monument tilts, the second death begins, much more final than the first.
The practical side of this matter — installation and restoration of monuments, replacement of fences, landscaping of the site, regular maintenance during the season — is also within the competence of MosGupRitual. This especially helps those who live in another city or are already at that age when you can’t go to the cemetery with a shovel.
Finally, about the word “joy”
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