www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Holy Resurrection Monastery leaving the Ruthenian Church!

What follows is the perspective of one monk of Holy Resurrection Monastery. I�m only writing to try to prevent some of the wilder of the rumors from getting out of hand!

It is important to understand that the 1990 Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches is in some ways unclear on what is the proper relationship between a monastery sui juris and its eparch. It is probably no secret that Holy Resurrection Monastery and the current administration of the Eparchy of Van Nuys differ in their interpretation of some of the provisions of the 1990 Code. Personally, I think the most important questions have to do with the admission of new monks and the ways in which one monastery can help another monastic community to begin. There are other questions as well, but these two go to the heart of how our Church can best make the monastic vocation available to those who are called to it.

We have been working for many months together with both Bishop William Skurla and Bishop John Michael Botean, and in consultation with the Holy See, with a view to resolving these uncertainties. I anticipate this solution will benefit all concerned, including Holy Resurrection Monastery and the sisters of Holy Theophany Community whom we wholeheartedly support. When we know for certain what this resolution will entail it will be announced by the proper authorities. For now, I simply ask for your prayers and continued support.

Our monastery has always believed that the divisions between the four Greek Catholic jurisdictions in the United States are much less significant than the theological, liturgical, spiritual and ascetical tradition that unites them. Encouraged by our founding hierarch and the late Metropolitan Judson, we have always seen ourselves as having a vocation to serve as a center for this unifying tradition. Canonical arrangements are much less significant than this vocation. God willing we will always humbly look for ways to support all Eastern Catholics in faithful service of Him according to their own traditions.

I hope this will lay to rest at least some of the speculation that has been raised in this thread. I realize people will want to know more, but this is about all there is to say at this point!

unworthy monk Maximos

Dear Father Maximos,

Christ is in our midst!

Thank you for posting, I am very grateful that you have spoken.

As a non-slav (American; German-Irish mix), I find the multiplication of Byzantine juristictions, based on ancestral homelands, interesting from the point of history, but not so helpful with regard to a vision of the future. One of the things that I have always appreciated about the Monastery, was that it was not a monastery based on slav, or greek, or arabic ethnic identity. I think the monastery might be prophetic, in showing that something of the future of our Byzantine Catholic Church may rest in the hands of those who have embraced the eastern and byzantine liturgy, theology and spirituality, without all its ethnic heritage.

But the ethnic-based Churches all have their strengths and contributions to offer to the future. Clearly, one of the great strengths of the Romanian Church, is the strong appreciation for the monastic presence, and the natural understanding it seems to have for the contemplative and community vocation.

Unlike one poster here, if there is to be a change, I am not sure it would be a tragedy at all! I think it may be very positive, and it might be a hopeful and positive step, for the benefit of the whole monastic brotherhood, and the whole Byzantine Church in America.

May God watch over and protect the community, and grant it strength and growth, for the good of our Church!

the unworthy,

Elias

Thank You, Father Maximos for your kind information, and Father Elias for your enlightened perspective.

Dear Fr. Maximos,

Thank you for your comments. We will all be praying for the future of Holy Resurrection Monastery as well as Holy Theophany Community. You are all a light shining on a hill. We are all proud of the role you all have played in the past years.

Two thumbs up,
Joe Thur

Beautiful!

Fr. Maximos, regardless of your decision, may God grant you and the entire community peace, health, long life for many blessed years. After all there is a "Catholic" part of "Greek Catholic. And neither do I think it a "tragedy" that you enter into the spiritual heritage of St. Paissius Velichkovsky and St. Basil of Poiana M�rului.

You will be a light in the desert regardless of "jurisdiction". Speaking for myself, be assured of my support for wherever the curves of the jurisdictional highway take you. Our prayers and support will not cease, nor do I expect your vital spiritual paternity for those of us in the world to diminish. Chronia polla.

Pseudo-Athanasius,

if you were sincerely interested in the issues involved you would have asked Bishop William or called the monastery. Instead you chose to post on this forum to instigate and fuel rumours.

Father Maximos,

thank you for your answer.

When the issues involved are resolved, I'm sure the respective authorities will make an announcement.

Deacon John,

I beg your forgiveness. I perhaps should have kept my editorial comments to myself.

Fr. Maximos has graced St. Georges in Birmingham AL several times. We are a Melkite Parish, though he is Ruthenian, he taught from Scripture sharing everything that is in agreement. He lived their mission statement.

They were awesome and the retreats he did for the women of the parish was really appreciated by all. My daughter at 20, came away so excited from learning so much about the women of the Old Testament. Everyone enjoyed his teaching and exortation. Thanks Fr. Maximos.

Pani Rose

Hegumen Nicholas has been to our parish several times. Fr. Maximos has visited too.

Our Byzantine Catholic Church is richer and more authentic because of the monks of Holy Resurrection Monastery. We need their prayers. And we need more monasteries and more monks.

There is no dynamic BCC without monks!

In Christ,

John

[Wrong thread, sorry!]

John,

I do not doubt your sincerity, but by what criteria can one point to say that the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh is "richer and more authentic" today?

Dear Deacon John,

You say:

I do not doubt your sincerity, but by what criteria can one point to say that the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh is "richer and more authentic" today?

1) Spiritual riches. Each day there is a group of men out in the desert praying the Hours for us. That is the most important way in which monasteries enrich us.

2) Intellectual riches. The monks at HRM are very well-educated and thoughtful, and have already made notable contributions to the theological discourse, at a national level. See, for example, Fr. Maximos' article in First Things on celibacy, which was an excellently reasoned article that also raised our profile as a church, since he was described as a monk of the Ruthenian Catholic Church. What's a Ruthenian, I imagine many of the readers of that journal thought, as they looked it up.

3) Inspiration. Many people have visited the monastery and had their own faith strengthened by the evangelical witness of the monks, who live in poverty in the desert for Christ. The life of monks is an earthly foretaste of the resurrection, and it is very bracing to pray with them. I speak from my own experience.

4) The divine liturgy is served to the residents of the Barstow area, who come long distances to pray at HRM. I was privileged to be there from Saturday to Sunday, and the community that has gathered around these men is quite impressive.

5) Vocations. Young men have discovered their monastic vocation, which they could not have done if there were no monastery.

These are at least five criteria by which I say the metropolia is richer.

Pseudo-Athanasius, a question for you since I am unfamiliar with these monks. Is this an authentic eastern monastery - by authentic, I mean that it is not an eastern-affiliated branch of a Latin order.

Christ is Risen!
In addition to Pseudo Athanasius' list, may I note that Byzantine Rite bishops by tradition are monks, but there are no other traditional monasteries in the metroploia to supply bishops. So that certainly would enable you to be more authentic. Your bishops, by and large, can not even wear traditional street clothes because these are a slightly modified monastic habit.

Photius