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Holy Ascension Monastery is a male monastic community located in Bearsville, New York under the auspices of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of America (GOC). It is under the omophorion of Metropolitan Demetrius of America.
The monastery was founded in 1999 by Metropolitan Pavlos.[ citation needed ]
The monastery follows a cenobitic typikon. The divine liturgy is celebrated four times per week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday) as well as on major feast days. Each day that liturgy is celebrated, except Sunday, begins with the Midnight office at 4:15 followed by Matins (Orthos) and Divine liturgy. On days no liturgy is celebrated midnight office begins at 4:45 followed by Matins and the Typica service. The music used is Traditional Byzantine chant and the services are approximately two-thirds English and one-third Greek. Occasionally Church Slavonic and znamenny chant are used as well. At noon the paraclesis to the Mother of God is read each day with optional attendance for the monastics due to the necessity of certain obediences. Each day at 6:30 there is the service of Vespers and compline with the Akathist to the mother of God. At the end of each day all the monks ask forgiveness from the abbot and retire to their cells. From the end of Compline until breakfast the following day there is a strict observance of quiet hours. No talking is permitted without a blessing of the abbot.
There are two meals each day at the Monastery. The meals provided follow the tradition of the Orthodox church regarding fasting. [1] At 9:00 a.m. there is a light breakfast and at 3:00 p.m. there is the main meal of the day. Snacking is not permitted without a blessing of the Abbot.
A wide variety of obediences are done each day at the monastery; Candle-making, construction work, kitchen work, iconography, prayer rope making, music practice etc... Although the monastery gladly accepts donations for its construction work, the monks live by the work of their hands and the monastery is primarily supported through beeswax candles, which are hand-dipped and sold to churches. The monks begins their obediences after the morning meal and work up until 5:30. On feast days a vigil is held from approximately 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. and there is no work during the day without a blessing. On days of vigils and on Sundays the trapeza (meal) is in the late morning (11 a.m.) and the evening meal is at 5:00 p.m. [2]
Most importantly, the monastery is a spiritual hospital and the spiritual fathers are always available for confession and revelation of thoughts.
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During the Feast of the Ascension on June 2, 2011, five bishops and four priests blessed the foundations for a new church on a hill at the monastery. The church had been planned as a 1/5 scale replica of the original Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The skeleton of the church was to be made of autoclaved aerated concrete block units, with the exterior faced with limestone and Byzantine brick, and the interior with marble revetment and marble columns with capitals copied from the original designs. The church was to be illuminated by over 60 custom-made windows.
The church was designed by William Hall of Hall III Design and built by Mark Arrow, a stonemason who also built St. Maximus Orthodox Church in Owe, New York. The fathers of the monastery also took an active part in the designing and building of the church.[ citation needed ]
Construction of the foundation was begun in the late autumn of 2011 and completed in the spring of 2012. By the summer of 2013, the walls had reached 7 feet high.[ citation needed ]
In 2017, it was reported that the half completed Hagia Sophia replica was demolished following delays in construction and the discovery of structural damage in the vaulting. [2]
Great Lent, or the Great Fast, is the most important fasting season of the church year within many denominations of Eastern Christianity. It is intended to prepare Christians for the greatest feast of the church year, Pascha (Easter).
Vespers is a liturgy of evening prayer, one of the canonical hours in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Lutheran liturgies. The word for this prayer time comes from the Latin vesper, meaning "evening".
In the practice of Christianity, canonical hours mark the divisions of the day in terms of fixed times of prayer at regular intervals. A book of hours, chiefly a breviary, normally contains a version of, or selection from, such prayers.
The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.
Matins is a canonical hour in Christian liturgy, originally sung during the darkness of early morning.
The Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ commemorates the Christian belief of the bodily Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It is one of the ecumenical feasts of Christian churches, ranking with the feasts of the Passion and Pentecost. Following the account of Acts 1:3 that the risen Jesus appeared for 40 days prior to his Ascension, Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter according to inclusive counting, although some Christian denominations have moved the observance to the following Sunday, sometimes called Ascension Sunday. The day of observance varies by ecclesiastical province in many Christian denominations, as with Methodists and Catholics, for example.
The Easter Vigil, also called the Paschal Vigil, the Great Vigil of Easter, or Holy Saturday at the Easter Vigil on the Holy Night of Easter is a liturgy held in traditional Christian churches as the first official celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Historically, it is during this liturgy that people are baptized and that adult catechumens are received into full communion with the Church. It is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day – most commonly in the evening of Holy Saturday or midnight – and is the first celebration of Easter, days traditionally being considered to begin at sunset.
Orthros or útrenya in the Byzantine Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches, is the last of the four night offices, the other three being vespers, compline, and midnight office. Traditionally, in monasteries it is held daily so as to end immediately following sunrise, in contrast to parishes where it is held only on Sundays and feast days. It is often called matins after the office it most nearly corresponds to in Western Christian churches.
In Christian liturgy, a vigil is, in origin, a religious service held during the night leading to a Sunday or other feastday. The Latin term vigilia, from which the word is derived meant a watch night, not necessarily in a military context, and generally reckoned as a fourth part of the night from sunset to sunrise. The four watches or vigils were of varying length in line with the seasonal variation of the length of the night.
In Christianity, the Little Hours or minor hours are the canonical hours other than the three major hours.
In Christianity, the Nativity Fast—or Fast of the Prophets in Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church—is a period of abstinence and penance practiced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and Catholic Church in preparation for the Nativity of Jesus on December 25. Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches commence the season on November 24 and end the season on the day of Ethiopian Christmas, which falls on January 7. The corresponding Western season of preparation for Christmas, which also has been called the Nativity Fast and St. Martin's Lent, has taken the name of Advent. The Eastern fast runs for 40 days instead of four or six weeks and thematically focuses on proclamation and glorification of the Incarnation of God, whereas the Western Advent focuses on three comings of Jesus Christ: his birth, reception of his grace by the faithful, and his Second Coming or Parousia.
Acolouthia in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, signifies the arrangement of the Divine Services, perhaps because the parts are closely connected and follow in order. In a more restricted sense, the term "acolouth" refers to the fixed portion of the Office. The portions of the Office that are variable are called the Sequences. While the structure and history of the various forms of the Divine Office in the numerous ancient Christian rites is exceedingly rich, the following article will restrict itself to the practice as it evolved in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
The Euchologion is one of the chief liturgical books of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches, containing the portions of the services which are said by the bishop, priest, or deacon. The Euchologion roughly corresponds to a combination of the missal, ritual, and pontifical as they are used in Latin liturgical rites. There are several different volumes of the book in use.
Andrew of Crete, also known as Andrew of Jerusalem, was an 8th-century bishop, theologian, homilist, and hymnographer. He is venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church.
The Pentecostarion is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches during the Paschal Season which extends from Pascha (Easter) to the Sunday following All Saints Sunday.
The All-night vigil is a service of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches consisting of an aggregation of the canonical hours of Compline, Vespers, Matins, and the First Hour. This service may be performed on any Sunday or major feast, any feast for which a Litia is prescribed; these feasts are marked in the Typikon and in liturgical calendars by a Greek cross printed in red in a properly shaped semicircle [open at the top] ; this symbol is encoded in Unicode as U+1F541 (🕁).
Eastern Orthodox worship in this article is distinguished from Eastern Orthodox prayer in that 'worship' refers to the activity of the Christian Church as a body offering up prayers to God while 'prayer' refers to the individual devotional traditions of the Orthodox.
Mid-Pentecost or Midfeast, also Meso-Pentecost is a feast day which occurs during the Paschal season in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Lutheran Churches that follow the Byzantine Rite.
A liturgical book, or service book, is a book published by the authority of a church body that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services.
The Dismissal is the final blessing said by a Christian priest or minister at the end of a religious service. In liturgical churches the dismissal will often take the form of ritualized words and gestures, such as raising the minister's hands over the congregation, or blessing with the sign of the cross. The use of a final blessing at the end of a liturgical service may be based upon the Priestly Blessing prescribed for the kohanim in the Torah.