First Week of Great Lent at a monastery

I couldn’t agree more! A pilgrimage to a monastery is always such a blessing, an  experience to treasure for life. Especially during Great Lent, and more so during the First Week of Great Lent. I feel so blessed behind its gates, either in the stillness of my cell, engaged on finishing a book about St. Paisios,  or in the hesychia of its temple in the long, penitential Lenten services.

Repentance, Penitential Canon,Romanian Academy Library

Humility penitents

Striving to Live a Christ-centered Life: Five Reasons to Visit a Monastery By Matushka Constantina Palmer

Introduction: Journeying by boat to visit their beloved spiritual father, , Constantine Palamas – the father of St. Gregory – suddenly realized he and his family had forgotten to bring food with them for the monastery. While his wife and five children looked on, he raised his voice in prayer and put his hand into the sea; immediately he caught a massive fish. Taking it out of the water, he glorified God for the miracle. Out of his great admiration and respect for the monastic life, Constantine Palamas worked a miracle so that his family would not arrive at the monastery empty-handed. In this way, and in countless others, he instilled in the hearts of his children a firm love for and reverence of monasticism.

This practice of going out into the wilderness to seek a word from a holy monastic is a tradition well established in the Church as early as Christ’s own times. St. John the Forerunner was the first monk, and people sought him out, as St. Andrew of Crete testifies: “The Forerunner of grace dwelt in the desert and all Judea and Samaria ran to hear him.”[1] He, like many of our prophets before him, preached amendment of life ….

Source: Five Reasons to Visit a Monastery