Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is Risen!

I hope and trust we have all had a soul-profiting Lent and Holy Week, and a radiant Pascha and Easter…

What better way to return to blogging on the North American Thebaid than to share the life of St Nilus of Sora, whom we just commemorated on May 7.

In the Russian Northern Thebaid, Venerable Nilus established the way of skete life, which is often considered the ‘Royal Way’ between the solitary monastic life (eremitic) and communal (cenobitic). In skete life, anywhere from a few to several monks or nuns live in their own separate cells or huts, within shouting distance of one another (in case of emergency), and then join together for the divine services for the Lord’s Day and on major feasts and saints’ days. During the week, they keep their monastic prayer rule and work at their crafts and obediences to help sustain the Skete.

Skete life shows the wisdom of the monastic way, as not everyone is suited for close living in community, and only a very few are called to life as a hermit, in complete solitude. It may very well be that here in North America, where we all have become accustomed to living such individualized, idiosyncratic lives, that skete life will be a real option for many monastics as the North American Thebaid grows and matures (should the Lord not return first).

Repose of the Venerable Nilus the Abbot of Sora

OCA, May 7, 2017:

Saint Nilus of Sora, a great ascetic of the Russian Church, was descended from the Maikov nobility. He accepted monasticism at the monastery of Saint Cyril of White Lake (June 9). Here he made use of the counsels of the pious Elder Paisius Yaroslavov, who was afterwards igumen of the Trinity-Sergiev Lavra.

Saint Nilus journeyed much through the East, studying the monastic life in Palestine and on Mt. Athos. Returning to Rus, he withdrew to the River Sora in the Vologda lands, and built a cell and a chapel, where there soon grew up a monastery with a new (for that time in Rus) skete Rule adopted by Saint Nilus from Mt. Athos. Following the command of Saint Nilus, the monks had to sustain themselves by the work of their own hands, to accept charity only in extreme need, and to shun the love of things and splendor even in church. Women were not permitted in the skete, monks was not allowed to leave the skete under any pretext, and the possession of lands or estates was forbidden. Continue reading “Repose of the Venerable Nilus, Abbot of Sora” →