Novie Melnitsi, Chernigov Province, Ukraine, March 2, 2021
Though the hospital in the village of Novie Melnitsi in the Chernigov Province in Ukraine burned down 16 years ago, it’s only now that the ruins have begun to be dismantled. And going through the ruins and debris, the locals made a surprising discovery.
As it turns out, some of the internal walls of the hospital were made of icons, reports the Nizhyn Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
It is likely that the godless authorities of last century took the icons from the nearby St. Nicholas Church—a masterpiece of wooden architecture of 18th-century Ukraine that was destroyed in the 1930s.
“Blood seemed to be dripping from these icons. And did at least one builder’s heart tremble when he held up a hammer or split or squeezed the icon to fit into the unfilled space of the wall? Probably, just like the crucifiers of Christ on Golgotha. Only in Novie Melnitsi … [it was] their own people, whose great-grandfathers stood before these icons on their knees,” the report reflects.
The villagers intend to give the icons to the local Holy Trinity Church, built in 1800, and preserved to this day.
Some of the icons could, in principle, be restored, and there is still much work to be done at the hospital. “Who knows what new finds await the locals,” reads the report.
After the discovery, the hospital staff recalled one unusual patient in the 1990s who somehow knew about the icons and would pray towards the walls. His son said that he was a priest who had suffered persecution.
Via : https://orthochristian.com/137723.html