Surprise Trip

Last week Thursday we were in Fr Andrei’s Russian Church History class, when Fr Cyprian stuck his head inside the doorway and said: “Who wants to go to St Nektarios today?”

St Nektarios Monastery is a Greek monastery founded by Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, located near Roscoe, NY. It’s a little over two hours away from Jordanville. In lieu of Greek class, we second-years were going to get a first-hand taste of Greek monastic life.

By a little pond near the trapeza.

Soon after ten o’clock, four of us second-years (plus Nicky Kotar) got into the black monastic van, and gunned it for Roscoe. After all, we wanted to make it in time for lunch. I brought a book along for the ride, but the undulating landscape was not very conducive to reading, and I had to set it aside.

We got there around noon, only to find out that lunch was actually going to be at half-past. We spent some time in the bookstore before heading to the trapeza. Lunch was simple: some potatoes, pickled green tomatoes, soup, some rusk. Yet it was very delicious. We quietly ate while a monk read from a high pulpit towering over the refectory. When the meal finished the monks sang the kontakion for Christmas, and we all processed out of the trapeza, while the abbot, Elder Joseph, stood to the side and blessed us.

We seminarians then went back inside and helped out with the cleaning up and preparation for the next meal, which took about an hour and a half. We spent some more time in the bookstore, taking pictures, etc. and then went to the monastery church, where a priest was blessing people with a relic of the True Cross. We received the blessing, and soon afterwards Vespers began. We stood in our monastic choir stalls (stasidia) while listening to the beautiful antiphonal chanting of Byzantine hymns.

By the end it was dark, and the grounds were all lit up with Christmas lights.

There was also a rather unique nativity scene, executed in a Byzantine iconic style:

Right after dinner we had to take leave of our hosts. We drove back at a leisurely pace. It’s nice to have a little vacation now and then.

Parks and Ordination

The period after Thanksgiving seems to go by very quickly. Two weeks of classes are sandwiched in between the Thanksgiving vacation and exams, which actually are a bit of a vacation in themselves. Papers get turned in, loose ends get tied up, and all the while our minds are already checked in and boarding the plane. It’s a busy time.

Last weekend, we had two big events happen. On Saturday (December 3) a contingent of officials, higher-ups, bureaucrats and activists descended upon our monastery for a ceremony celebrating the inclusion of Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery into the National Register of Historic Places. The whole impetus for getting the monastery recognized was the proposed building, not too long ago, of a number of wind turbines (“Each as tall as the Statue of Liberty,” according to Fr Luke) about a mile east of the Monastery. The monastery joined forces with local interests groups opposed to this development, and applied and received historical landmark status at the state level. Federal recognition allows the monastery to potentially receive grant money or tax credits for the upkeep of its buildings. Usually religious buildings don’t receive this kind of recognition, but according to the powers-that-be, not only does the monastery represent the local community, it is a landmark for the entirety of the Russian Diaspora.

So, a number of people spoke about their individual and group efforts to preserve the monastery and fight the wind turbine people (who were forced out of business, apparently because of shady dealings that they did). Fred Miller, one of the members of the New York State Preservation League, spoke about how he had help understanding our Russian Orthodox ways with the help of one of the nuns in the nearby skete: “Whenever I got something wrong with protocol and what-not…Mother Barbara would grab me by the throat!”

After the talk, we partook of a big spread of refreshments and the visitors got a tour of the monastery grounds.

The next day, one of our seminarians got ordained. It was the Feast of the Entrance of the Holy Mother of God into the Temple. Igor, the seminarian in question, got tonsured a reader before the beginning of liturgy, and then ordained a deacon by Archbishop Gabriel of Canada. Fr Igor will serve for the next forty days in church and will be ordained a priest on Christmas Day.

But otherwise, everything is все нормально, business as usual, here in Jordanville. At least until uborka.

The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe

And now for something completely different. As I’ve noted before, some of us seminarians watch Doctor Who on a regular basis, and we’re quite excited about the upcoming Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The BBC has put up a prequel, which you can see above. And here’s the trailer!

Common Courtesy

Today I received a very slanderous comment from a clearly confused individual. The anonymous commenter made some very serious and nasty remarks about someone I know personally. Of course, I was both shocked and delighted. Shocked because of the nonsense that people can get away with saying under the cover of anonymity, and delighted that I finally have a troll. My blog has made it in the Internet world!

I’ll take this opportunity to lay down the law regarding comments. If someone writes anything which whiffs of slander, back-biting, tale-bearing or the like, I will immediately delete his comment and that commenter will be persona non grata on this site. This blog is free of the contentions that plague much of “Internet Orthodoxy”—I intend to keep it that way.

A Victorious Union

Last weekend, I went with my friends Pete and Kate M. to a wedding in New Jersey. I last saw the bride and groom, Nicolas and Victoria, at last year’s youth conference at Jordanville. At the syezd, Archbishop Gabriel, in his opening address, expressed his hope that the 150 assembled youths form 75 marriages.

Well, one down, seventy-four to go.

Before we headed out, we attended the baptism of the baby of one of the local residents. Bishop Peter of Cleveland came to baptize the baby, which was held in the monastic baptistery. I love baptisms; they remind me of my own baptism nearly four years ago. After the baptism and the churching, the parents held a reception in the local bed and breakfast. Fully satiated, the three of us hit the road.

It didn’t take too long to get to New Jersey. We went immediately to St. Elizabeth’s in Princeton, where the Youth Choir (a.k.a. Cooley & the Gang) was gathered to sing Vigil and Liturgy, as well as practice the wedding music. While we waited for the others to shop up, I had a happy reunion with my Canadian friends Manya and Katya, as well as with my other syezd friends John and Michael. Cooley had us go over the repertoire, which was made up of many of the standard wedding hymns. One of the unique pieces was “Eternal Father,” the official Navy hymn. We used it for the entrance hymn for Nicolas, who is a naval officer. For the bride we used the first verse from an Englished “Agni Parthene.”

The next day, after singing the liturgy, we went to St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral for the wedding. St. Alexander Nevsky is one of my favorite churches, with its bright frescoes and architecture reminiscent of both the New Cathedral in San Francisco and a super-sized version of the monastery church at Jordanville. The beautiful interior and spacious hall make the church an ideal place for a wedding. We continued to rehearse for the wedding, though “Eternal Father” had a funky tritone at the end which gave us basses a hard time.

The wedding was beautiful, and everything worked out. The bride and groom looked very happy (from what we saw from the choir loft) and were married with Greek wedding crowns made of silver. I think we sang well enough, and even got that tritone, thanks to one of our more musically proficient basses. Fr David, one of the priests, called Victoria “Victorious,” which I think was an inspired mis-speaking.

The reception was very fun, and I got to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. I also got to dance quite a bit! In all, it was a very enjoyable weekend.

I’m very grateful to Nicolas and Victoria for inviting me. May God grant them many years of blessed married life!

“That’s going in the blog.”

Things have been getting pretty quiet here at my blog. Second year actually feels more busy than first year for some strange reason, even though we technically have less hours of class (and don’t have to wash dishes, for that matter). Even so, for whatever reason I haven’t had the time to post, until now. Our Church Slavonic/Music teacher rescheduled classes this week, which means that I am free all morning. Huzzah! And it’s Fr. Luke’s namesday, which means ice cream! Huzzah! Here’s what I did over the past couple of weeks:

• Participated in the Eastern American Diocese clergy conference
• Attended a youth choir weekend in New York City
• Sold stuff to a busload of pilgrims from DC
• Watch a few episodes of Downton Abbey and Doctor Who for Movie Night(s)
• Go to church a lot
• Oh yeah, study.

With that brief update out of the way, let’s put a little meat on the skeleton and talk about the youth choir weekend. The last one of those I attended was in June, right after the Boston Ball. This time we were singing at the Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils Russian Orthodox Church in Upper Manhattan (think Harlem). Four of us set out for New York City: my friends Harry and Ben from Buffalo, fellow seminarian Nicky Kotar, and myself. We spent the time going there talking about sundry subjects such as yak-dragons* and Don Quixote. The seminarians tried to get some productive work done in between bursts of conversational creativity.

After arriving in Manhattan we headed straight to the church, where rehearsal was just about to begin. Rehearsal went on for quite some time because we were basically going over all the music for both Vigil and Liturgy, and moreover were gathered together for the first time in months. Alex Cooley (that guy people made a Facebook page about) conducted. I met quite a few new people and reunited with old friends. After rehearsal we had some delicious lasagna and readied ourselves for the Vigil.

Vigil ended later than expected; we were all too tired to do any wandering around the city, so we just went to our respective places-to-sleep. Harry, Ben and I went to the Djurdjinovic** household, where our hosts fed us with some delicious pelmeni. It was a lively evening; up to three conversations were going on at the same time on the long table. We talked into the night and finally went to bed. The girls went upstairs, leaving the guys to sleep in the basement, which was actually pretty comfortable.

The next day we had Liturgy. On the way there we complained about the toll ($12!!!) to get over the GWB. I also had a cold that weekend, so my singing ability was quite compromised. I kept sniffling and coughing all through the Liturgy (“Lord have mer—cough!—cy”). We did all right in the end, especially since it was the first time in many years that an actual choir was singing liturgy. The moleben at the end of liturgy was a mouthful though, with the refrain “Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, pray to God for us” in Slavonic.

The parishioners fed us pretty generously. I enjoyed the meat and caught up with some people I met the previous weekend at the Youth Symposium. A few made toasts, including one of the sub-deacons (pére Djurdjinovic):

“You might have heard about an old band in the 80s called Kool & the Gang…now it’s Cooley & the Gang!”

“That’s going in the blog,” I said to Nicky.

Right after lunch, we had a group photo and parted ways. Good times were had in NYC, and I only regret that we had so little time to enjoy the city. Well, maybe next time!

*That creature that appears in the Neverending Story. Correctly referred to (according to an ardent Reader) as a luckdragon. We discussed the merits of keeping them as fire-breathing guardians of an estate, as well as for milking purposes (“It’d taste like burning…and milk,” said Ben).

**It’s pronounced as read.

Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night Vigil!

October has been quite a busy month for me. It seems that almost every weekend there’s been something going on. That plus studies plus work (plus, let’s admit it, sheer laziness) equals not much time to write posts. This business unfortunately creates a backlog of potential posts, making it difficult to choose one. If I followed chronological convention I would simply begin with writing about the big fat Russian Orthodox convert wedding I went to in the beginning of the month. But since thankfully I can write about whatever I want, let’s start with something more recent: our trip to Synod and back.

The view from the roof.

Synod, or rather the Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign, is the literal HQ of the Russian Church Abroad. A very pious and equally rich Russian bought a Park Avenue mansion for the ROCOR Synod of Bishops. Its main hall and dining room were transformed into a cathedral nave and a chapel respectively.

Four of us seminarians were invited as guest participants at a youth symposium conducted by the Synodal Youth Department. Fr. Cyprian, the Dean of Students (and my Greek teacher), was slated to talk to the youth on missionary work. When we arrived at Synod, we were ushered to our quarters, which turned out to be the conference room. Four cots were laid out for us:

Despite the Spartan appearance, the beds were comfy, and a nice lady with a love for Apple products fed us very well.

The next day, we got up early to help Fr. Cyprian serve liturgy in the lower chapel. It also happened to be his namesday (Hieromartyr Cyprian). I struggled through the liturgy with my co-sufferers and at the very end mangled the polychronia, promoting Vladyka Ieronim to the metropolitanate.

Moleben before the relics of St. Innocent of Moscow, enlightener of Alaska.

The symposium itself was great and I liked Fr. Cyprian’s talk. I liked just as well the chance to meet new people and eat barbecued meat, not necessarily in that order. We also discussed future activities for the Synodal Youth Department, including pilgrimages to various places such as Jordanville. I bit my tongue; I didn’t want to appear too self-interested.

The services were interesting. Vigil at Synod was short and sweet. After a long day of conferencing, I welcomed the respite. However, Synod is perhaps one of the few places where the liturgies are longer than the vigils, because nearly every Sunday liturgy is hierarchical. On Sunday morning, I stood in awe seeing an army of altar servers come out with Bishop Jerome. The Sunday choir was also pretty impressive and sang lots of difficult pieces.

After liturgy and lunch, we bid farewell to our hosts, and left laden with leftover chicken and other food for the road. But instead of a straight shot to Jordanville, we went to Holy Protection Convent in Pennsylvania. Holy Protection (Agia Skepi) is a beautiful Greek Orthodox convent founded by Elder Ephraim. The nuns unsurprisingly knew Fr. Cyprian well. We took a detour to the convent in order to stock up on supplies for the Autumn Pastoral Conference. The abbess, Gerondissa Olympiada, came out to greet us in the bookstore. We received her blessing and she gave us some refreshments. While ministering to us, the phone rang. She ran to answer it.

“That’s a Greek abbess,” Papa-Kyprianos proudly said.

We had called ahead to order spanakopita, baklava, and other dishes. The nuns brought out box after box of food for us to stuff in the back of the van:

Supplies!

They also packed for us, without our knowledge, some cheese-filled pita for us to have on the road. This time I actually had the presence of mind to take a picture of my food before completely devouring it:

We got to attend Vigil and Compline (with the Akathist to the Mother of God) at the convent. The soft sound of Byzantine hymns chanted by the nuns served as a nice close for the day.

Our last stop was at St. Nektarios Monastery in Roscoe, New York. There, a visiting priest had a large relic of the True Cross, which we venerated and were blessed with.

It was quite an amazing weekend. I’m very thankful to the kind people at Synod, Holy Protection, and St. Nektarios for welcoming us as pilgrims. I hope to visit again soon!