Glory to God, 16 pilgrims from St. Vladimir’s visited Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville this past weekend (June 22-24, 208). Located on the outskirts of a peaceful farming town in upstate New York, the monastery is the spiritual and cultural center for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The pilgrims were blessed to have participated in the beautiful divine services, prayed before the relics of thousands of saints and before a miracle-working copy of the Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God, venerated the resting places of influential bishops and abbots of the Russian Church Abroad, and helped the monks in their obediences.Led by Fr. Angelos, the pilgrims took a tour of the monastery grounds and learned about its rich history. Founded in the 1930s, the monastery was first inhabited by monks from the Pochaev Lavra in Western Ukraine. The brotherhood, whose patron saint is St. Job of Pochaev, continues to publish a large amount of spiritual literature for the Orthodox faithful in America and Russia. After a fire burnt the original monastery building to the ground, the monks and several benefactors built the present cathedral, which was consecrated in 1949. The monastery steadily grew in size over the years, adding new monastic quarters, a famed museum, a large cemetery, and in 1988, for the celebration of the millennial anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, the bell tower. Currently, it is home to Holy Trinity Seminary, one of the foremost Orthodox theological academies in North America.
The next monastery pilgrimage organized by St. Vladimir’s will be in mid-October to Holy Cross Hermitage in West Virginia. Please contact Fr. Gregory or Dmitri Knysh for more details.
A Pilgrim
Editor's Note: St. Vladimir's sponsors a pilgrimage to Jordanville each spring and to Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, WV each fall. A new pilgrimage - a men's spiritual retreat - is planned for Great Lent of 2019 to the St. John Skete in Hiram, OH.
