New Skete Monasteries News

With the blessing of their diocesan bishops, the superiors (or their representatives) of monastic communities within the Orthodox Church in America gathered at the Chancery here for a “Synaxis” July 21-23, 2014. In addition to spiritual fellowship and mutual upbuilding and encouragement, common concerns and the emerging nature of North American monasticism were discussed. His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, called for the Synaxis as an expression of his commitment to the strengthening of monastic life within the OCA and in an effort to identify areas of concern for the OCA’s monastic communities that could be better addressed on a wider level within the Church or by means of stronger inter-monastery cooperation.  The OCA counts some 25 men’s and women’s monastic communities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Metropolitan Tikhon and the gathered superiors (or their representatives) issued the following statement at the close of the Synaxis. STATEMENT OF THE SYNAX...

by Brother Christopher Recently I had the opportunity of speaking with a mother and her young son when they brought their dog to New Skete for training. In the course of the conversation, the young boy suddenly looked at me directly and asked me a question from left field: ‘Why do you go to church?‘ I was a bit startled at his forthrightness. In that moment I knew I couldn’t hide behind a more heady theological explanation designed to ease the discomfort of the question. He was seven years old. Yet I couldn’t dismiss his question... His eyes were scrutinizing me, looking up at me expectantly. After a healthy pause I replied, “Because going to church is one of the ways I get to say ‘thank you’ to God for all God’s blessings.” He smiled broadly and turned to his mother as if to say we could continue and we went on with the conversation about their dog without missing a beat. But throughout the day the question stayed with me: ‘Why do we go to church?’ I suspect the real answer ...

By Brother Luke Christ is in our midst! How many times we proclaim this truth to each other in worship services and in our daily lives! The season of lights, which stretches from Christmas to the Feast of the Encounter on February 2, is a period the church gives to us to remind us of the Incarnation: that God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ to share in our human condition and thereby sanctify it. Great Compline of Christmas and Theophany are distinctive for the use of Isaiah’s prophecy that proclaims: “God is with us.” Is God with us only in some mystical, theoretical way, or is God with us in very tangible and human ways as well? The Incarnation seems to point unmistakably to the human dimension. We can find sanctity in the human condition and in human beings. So, one might say, to understand the expressions “God is with us” and “Christ is in our midst,” we need to look around us, to look into the eye of our neighbor, to find God. A visitor to New Skete Monastery ...

By Brother Luke Some of you may remember Irving Stone’s novel The Agony and the Ecstasy that was turned into a famous movie starring Charlton Heston. It was the story of Michelangelo, with particular reference to the painting of the Sistine Chapel and all the controversy and glory surrounding it. Hence the title. When we walk into churches here and around the world, the overwhelming beauty that is designed to transport us to heaven was seldom achieved without struggle and controversy. Yet, most of those struggles of the past are lost to us unless they are brought back to life by a great novelist like Irving Stone or a gifted docent guiding us on a tour of the church. We also experienced some of that same agony and ecstasy early in the new millennium, although on a much more modest scale than Michelangelo in painting the Sistine Chapel. Our main worship area is our Holy Wisdom Temple. In Greek the name is Aghia Sophia. This is the name of the cathedral in Constantinople, which was...

by Brother David In 1955, two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, devised a tool called the Johari Window, which was based on two key concepts: 1. By disclosing information about ourselves, we build trust with others. 2. By receiving information from others, we are able to resolve our own personal issues. These are basic concepts, but the interesting thing is how they set the “window” up to illustrate the process. When we look at the history of God, so to speak, in human terms, and when we look at the Scriptures as the revelation of God in human history, what we see, slowly but surely, is God sharing information about Godself so that we can come, finally, to trust God. The picture of God changes drastically as we go through the Scriptures from a very punishing God, evidenced in much of the Pentateuch, to a loving God we find depicted in some of the prophets and some of the Psalms, and the unfolding of this historical God who guides Israel through time, and finally in ...