New Skete Monasteries News

Reflections by Brother Luke Visitors to New Skete today who enter our Holy Wisdom Temple walk through a garden, either along a level path from a parking area behind the east end of the church or up a gentle ramp that rises from the road around our original Transfiguration Temple. This garden space is adorned with flowers, shrubs, and trees that are native to our region. Stones and boulders of varying sizes that were moved into this place from other parts of our property form the walls and terraces. The east end of the garden features two ponds with fish and frogs. In early spring the trees burst forth in bloom, and the ponds’ inhabitants serenade us with the songs of the croakers. It was not always thus! When the Holy Wisdom Temple was built in the early 1980s, access to the main entrance was via a bank of over 30 steps. Shoveling the snow off of those steps was a major chore in the winter; especially after high netting was added in an attempt to keep deer away from the plants. I...

By Brother David With the Ascension, the heart of Jesus now beats in the heart of the Trinity, and in him, we too make that journey into the heart of God.  Our journey through the Passion, from its beginning in Lent, through Paschaltide, and up to now in the feast of the Ascension, is a journey to enlightenment in ourselves and in the world.  This process of enlightenment, this coming to awareness towards which we strive in our lives, is not a time of consolation or good feeling; rather, it is a time of destruction.  This is a time when all those lies which we have accepted, which we have perpetrated on ourselves, which we have been given by our families, our society, and, yes, sometimes even our church must be stripped away.  It is through these lies in which we have actively, passively, or merely tacitly participated that we are separated from ourselves, from each other, and from the One who made us.  This stripping and integration is the purpose of our C...