New Skete Monasteries News

Lamentation: Elegy for an Angel Seraphim Seskevich, 1938-2014

From Sister Cecelia Sweet Dough 1 cup sour cream ( or ¾ cup milk) ¼ cup milk ¾ cup sugar or honey 1 tsp. salt 2 envelopes active dry yeast (2 Tbs.) 1 tsp sugar ½ cup very warm water 6 cups sifted all-purpose flour 4 egg yolks ½ cup (1 stick) very soft butter or margarine Nut Filling 1lb. finely ground pecans or walnuts 4 egg whites 3/4 cup sugar 1 tsp grated lemon rind (optional) Poppy Seed Filling 1 lb. ground poppy seed 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup sug

By Brother David There’s so much that we can say about the Paschal mystery, and all of it is inadequate. In our liturgical tradition, Holy Week is known as the Week of the Passion. We focus on Jesus’ Passion, looking at various parables and readings from Isaiah, Job, other parts of the Old and New Testaments, and, of course, the Gospel accounts. On Thursday, we commemorate Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and the Last Supper—the institution of the Eucharist. On Friday, we commemorate the Crucifixion, and, in the evening, we re-enact Christ’s burial. On Holy Saturday, we rest and keep watch at the tomb, sometimes physically but always in our hearts. It is a heavy week: sad, solemn, and sobering. Then, on Sunday, we begin in procession, singing: “Heaven’s angels, Christ our Savior, hymn your Resurrection. Let us here, on earth, praise you with a pure heart.” And we respond to the proclamation of the Resurrection: “Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death b

By Brother Christopher One of the consequences of our yearly celebration of Great Lent is to heighten and focus our longing for the new life of Pascha. We discover that the forty-day season of repentance is less about being negative towards oneself and more about opening to the opportunities that Pascha will bring forth. This helps us to receive the mystery of Pascha with hearts and minds anchored in God’s reality, open to what God is bringing about. Pascha is about new life, the new life that God intends each of us to continually experience, year after year. That said, this year’s newness feels a bit different for me, as if it is coming from different directions simultaneously. For the past six months, newness has been popping up all over, even in the midst of a stark, difficult winter. Without being rigidly chronological, I believe it started last fall with the beginning of a new phase in our dog training program : the breaking ground for our new training facility. After so ma