In Lipetsk there is a stone church in the name of the Holy Trinity, with five blue domes dotted with gilded stars. Inside, it is richly decorated with white marble.
The wonderful signs of God's mercy were both before the foundation of the church, and during the construction itself. Before the Lipetsk merchant Khrennikov decided to build a temple, some residents in reality had a wonderful phenomenon.
A few years before the construction of the temple on one of the Lipetsk squares, local merchants and bourgeoisie gathered to discuss trade affairs. The morning was overcast, it was snowing. Suddenly, a merchant saw a stone church in the air with gilded and star-studded domes. It appeared and disappeared. The merchant shouted to the others to look up. Everyone took off their hats, crossed themselves, and looked at the miraculous phenomenon for a long time, until it disappeared. Then they did not understand what this meant.
A few years after this, Khrennikov decided to proceed with the construction of the church. To do this, he went to Bishop Eugene for a blessing. Vladyka gave him a plan for the construction of a large stone church with five domes, exactly the same as the merchants saw in a miraculous phenomenon.
The Lord crowned the merchant's zeal with success: the church was erected in a few years. In the temple, which could fit up to five thousand people, extensive choirs were attached. Khrennikov decided to make two thrones on them, parallel to the two other thrones below. Only he did not know whose name to devote them to. And the Lord himself resolved his perplexity. In a dream, he imagined that he was going to the constructed temple. Suddenly he saw a high staircase, the lower end of which was on the ground, and the upper one touched Heaven. Two saints stood at the very top, one of them was in full bishop's vestment, with a miter on his head, and the other in a bishop's mantle and hood. Radiant guests descended the stairs to the ground. The builder knelt before them. The first saint came to him and said:
"Get up, do not be afraid! We came to see the church you built. I am Nicholas, and with me Saint Mitrophan of Voronezh."
Having blessed the builder, they slowly walked around the temple and several times pointed to the top of the church, where two chapels were supposed to be. The vision ended, the builder woke up, thanked God and arranged two chapels in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and Mitrophan of Voronezh.
Church of the Holy Trinity in Lipetsk
(demolished in the early 1930s). Photo of the 1900s
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