grootvorstin 2

If you walk along Bolshaya Ordynka street in Zamoskvorechye in Moscow, 

you pass by a simple, unassuming [bescheiden] gate with a small door in it. 

But if you enter this door, you will find one of the most interesting Moscow convents, see brilliant works of well-known architects and painters, and in a small museum, learn about its touching history full of mercy and tragedy. 

This is St. Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy in Moscow, founded by a German Princess of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England - the Grand Duchess of Russia Elisabeth.

A small museum...

on the territory of St. Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy tells about the life of its founder - Elisabeth. 

When she was 19, she married the Grand Duke of Russia - Sergei Aleksandrovich. After seven years, she converted to Orthodoxy by her own will, and got the name Elizaveta Feodorovna. After her husband died in a bomb blast organized by the revolutionaries, she sold out her jewelry, founded a convent and became its abbess. 

She said, “I am leaving the high world, where I had a high position, but together with you, I go up to the greater world, to the world of the poor and suffering”. 

In the convent... 

virtues of St. Mary and St. Martha, the prayer and service, were combined. 

Sisters in this Abode of Mercy had to take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, but unlike the nuns, after a few years, they could leave the convent and get married. This place was for all women who wanted to help those in need. 

In the convent, they received spiritual and medical training. 

They worked tirelessly among the poor and the sick. 

Elizaveta Feodorovna was called the White Angel of Moscow.

I accepted this not as a heavy cross 

but a road full of light shown to me by God. 

-Elizaveta Feodorovna-

In the museum, you can see a meeting-room... 

where Elizaveta Feodorovna met the last Russian emperor and his family, the icons embroidered by her hands, and her glove that she lost when she was arrested in 1918. 

Together with other Romanovs, she was murdered in Alapaevsk. “Father, release them, they don't know what they do”, the last words of Elisabeth are written at the bottom of her statue in the convent.

[bron]