Father Oleksandr Muzhuk, a chaplain with a Territorial Defense brigade, opened a church in Seredynka outside Chernihiv on the village’s temple holiday.
There was no church here for a hundred years – after the communists in early 1920s shut down the old temple, erected in 1660s, there was no spiritual life in Seredynka. The priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Fr. Oleksandr took up the task to restore it. Why here? Why do this when he is already in his 70s? He just used to visit the area often, to pick mushrooms in the forest nearby, and he grew interested in the life of the village. And now the clergyman has moved here and opened a church with the help of his brothers, writes the Holos Ukrainy newspaper.
The community handed over the old school, which had already been closed for 10 years, to the initiative group. Father Oleksandr installed the iconostasis literally a day before the temple holiday. The first images were his own icons, which he would always take with him on army deployments, while the rest were brought by the villagers. Among them is the icon that was there for the past hundred years, being passed on through generations before finally making its way back into the church. In the past, people Seredynka would go to a church in the nearby village of Topchiivka, where the Moscow Patriarchate still operates. Now they are able to pray in their Ukrainian church.
Father Oleksandr Muzhuk is a military retiree, who had once served in the Soviet army, while in independent Ukraine he was involved in the Cossack movement. He became a priest a few years ago. Now he was thinking of retiring, but the war mobilized him to serve God and people. So in a village near Chernihiv, another OCU church appeared.
