Amazing story of Mother Raphaela

A disabled woman, from the age of nine, paralyzed, the size of a child, weighing only 25 kg (before her death only 16), unable to move, suffering from a whole "bunch" of diseases of internal organs, on the ruins of a tuberculosis dispensary abandoned in the forest, created a convent, won the authority of a wise abbess, organizer, teacher, spiritually gifted eldress. From the point of view of the Gospel, it is a kind of norm approved by the Lord: "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12: 9).

Mother Raphaela was once Nina Chernetskaya. At the age of nine she fell ill with measles. Improper treatment only worsened the girl's already poor health. Little Nina was paralyzed and she remained disabled for life.

Her father Eustathius died of the grief experienced. And mother Elena continued to lovingly care for her daughter. They lived very poorly, trusting in the mercy of God. At twenty-four years old, Nina accepted monasticism (ryasophor), at thirty-five she took monastic vows with the name of Seraphima. Her example was followed by her mother, who was tonsured with the name Magdalene.

After the death of her mother, the daughter remained in the care of spiritual sisters. The women who surrounded Mother Seraphima took monastic vows and remained to live in her house. In 1998, Mother became mortally ill and, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Guria, quickly tonsured into the Great Schema with the name of Raphaela. And a miracle happened - mother survived!

And soon the Zhytomyr authorities handed over the emergency buildings of the sanatorium, located in a pine forest, for the construction of a women's convent.

For 50 years she bore the heavy cross of illnesses and sorrows, having managed not only to survive, but to live actively and fully, and at the end of her earthly journey to create a monastery of amazing beauty and grace in a picturesque forest near Zhitomir. Its crown was the 49-meter cathedral built under the leadership of Mother Raphaela in the name of Anastasia the Roman, patroness of Zhitomir, and the Monk Seraphim of Sarov - perhaps one of the largest newly erected in Ukraine.

The doctors of the Kiev Hospital named after Academician Shalimov, where Schema-nun Rafaela spent the last days of her earthly life, were amazed: how could a soul be kept in a bloodless tiny organism all these years, because the mother's body, immobilized from the age of nine, weighed 16 kilograms. True, not everyone knew that before them was not a helpless dying woman, but an ascetic filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, a warrior of Christ, who gave great love to hundreds and thousands of people who rushed to Mother.