New Skete Monasteries News

By Brother David   I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;   I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways   Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.   (from “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson)   When I was a child, my aunt Mary gave me a copy of The Way of a Pilgrim .   I was 9 years old.   I read it and knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.   Then I forgot about it.   When I was in junior high at St Sebastian’s Catholic School, the good sisters asked us to pray for vocations and to pray that we be given vocations to the priestly or religious life.   Now what was interesting about being asked to pray for religious and priestly vocations – and especially to pray that any one of us might be given such a vocation – was how those ways of life were presented as “better” than what was lived “in the world.”   Anyway I th...

Reprint from 2011 Spring/Summer Newsletter written by Brother Stavros This past February I had the chance to reacquaint myself with a relatively young Monastic Community of Jerusalem, composed of men and women, founded about 10 years after New Skete but dedicated to bringing monastic values to urban settings.   I had occasion several years ago to visit their mother house in Le Marais district of Paris. Their Montreal home was right next to the Mont Royal metro stop at the Sanctuary of the Blessed Sacrament, a large, spacious church, built in 1892, with a two-tiered gallery wrapping around three sides of the nave. I had arranged with the monks’ prior, Father Antoine Emmanuel, to pass Sunday with them and stay overnight. When I arrived for the morning service the community was assembled, monks on the right and nuns on the left, in the chancel area, where they stand in ranks to sing the office. And sing they do, most beautifully. The French I had studied up in Quebec in 1961...

written by Br. Stavros At Sign of the Theotokos Orthodox Church Host and guests at Montreal conference on Liturgical Renewal Brothers Stavros and Jacob attended an all-day conference sponsored by L'Université de Sherbrooke through L’Institut de Théologique Orthodox de Montréal, gathered at the OCA Church of Our Lady of the Sign in Montreal on Saturday of Bright Week, May 11.  An old friend of New Skete,  Professor Petros Vassiliadis, emeritus dean of the School of Theology at Aristotle University in Thessalonika, Greece, where he was also professor of New Testament, gave two presentations: in the morning on “Liturgical Renewal and the Orthodox Church” and later that day on “Interfaith Dialogue and the Integrity of Creation.”  The conference also had two presentations in French, by Rev. Dr. Lambros Kamperidis, also on liturgical renewal, and by His Grace, Bishop Irénée , the OCA bishop of Quebec, on the future of Orthodox Witness.  The day concluded w...