Hieromonk Seraphim Aldea on the Monastery on Mull Island

so I'll just show you some photographs and as I go through the photographs I'll explain to you where they come from some of you may have seen them before and in that case I apologize but this is in many ways the main the main thing for me the part about the part of me talking to you from my own experience or my own knowledge is almost irrelevant it's it's the thing I use in order to get our attention to the things that actually matter because while my experience is limited the experience of these saints definitely isn't and while my the span of my life is quite small still this tradition the Celtic tradition has gone on for a few centuries before it went extinct at the end of the first millennium so what I want to do is I want to talk to you about a few saints not that many actually about five or six of them and as I present to you their lives and very little details of their lives I don't want again to bother you autumn completely bore you I will show you the places where they've lived because to me that's much more important than reading about the lives from a book I'm sure all of you know that well I hope all of you know this is this is what the united kingdom looks like and I wish I could move but I can't so if you can see the Outer Hebrides to the west of Scotland the northern side of the large island and it is in the Hebrides that most of the Celtic Saints who came to Scotland from Ireland lived their lives and performed all their miracles there are other archipelagos and islands around the United Kingdom especially if you look to the north of Scotland the Orkneys and the shut-ins but most of the saints lived in the Hebrides Inner Hebrides or Outer Hebrides I've spent just one more minute with this map because it is important to understand something relevant to our Orthodox tradition it's important to understand that from the very first centuries Christianity in England do you see where London is Christianity in England was brought from Rome and although in the first millennium really there was no major difference between the two kinds of Christianity it is important to underline that that into England Christianity got from Rome whereas into Ireland it arrived from Egypt through the trading and the business that was made at the time between Egypt and the south of Ireland and then it worked its way through the Ireland into the north of Ireland and then to the islands and from the islands into the other island the island of Scotland ok this is all Ireland it's called the island of Mull and there are several important things here but I will only point one to you now we'll go back to this map several times the red dot which marks kill minion is where our church is located Canadians simply means Church of Ninian kill is the the name the word that gave the word Church in English Oh Kirk in German and a series of other other words as you see it is on the western side of the island with nothing to protect it against the Atlantic and what I'll do is I'll say I'll tell you two or three words about our main protectors st. minyan and Saint Cuthbert and then I'll show you two or three of the islands nearby the Isle of Molly with photographs from where the Saints lived this is our church this is convenien as it looks today after we've restored it about two three four five years ago it did not look like this for many years because that bad which you see at the end of the of the roof and the roof itself were taken down by a storm at the end of 2013 simply the trees nearby were broken and they fell over the tree and the over the church and they just broke the spine of of the church and this is taken from just you know standing in front of the church I want you to see how close the ocean is to where we are and it's that sort of trees that fell over the church in 2013 all right the first stained and I promise I will not spend more than one or two minutes pertained to my shame my show to your shame because this is your boredom that limited a very tough monk so I don't know the first lady same minyan the important thing about st. Ninian is that he is the one who built who founded the first monastery that we have documented in Scotland in 397 and I always tried to put that into the context of the fourth century that is the very century when in Ireland the first monasteries in the whole Christian tradition were being created that is the century of all the major Desert Fathers I to me that was a major surprise because I had always assumed that in the West things happened you know with one or two or perhaps three centuries of a delay but that wasn't the case you you will always see that I'm using these icons which are icons created at the monastery and in this case it's same Ninian dressed as a bishop but praying in a cave because he was indeed a bishop but his bishopric his seat was in a cave at the very end of this beach if you follow the line of the CEO of the crg seaweeds at the very end there is a small dog daughter that is the entrance to his cave and I think I have a close-up of it there it is the Catholic Church is still celebrating once a year in the cave and by the grace of God I hope once we are established own own mall and I don't have to travel the world as I do now we can do that as well so we can pray to sing in you the second protector of the church itself is Saint Cuthbert sink off that was not a Scottish or an Irish Saint he is the greatest miracle worker of England and he is by far the most beloved among the Celtic English Saints there are many many wonderful stories about him and we know a lot of details from his life because of Saint bead the venerable who who recorded a lot of detail in this particular icon and I think in the next one as well his his represented into the North Sea at night which is why the background is so dark praying into the sea he he was once caught doing that by his habit when he was still a young novice and he explained that he can only pray when he faces death the danger of death because when that doesn't happen he is not praying he is merely pretending to pray and and for some reason that spoke a lot to me it was it was something that I fell in love with and then of course you see his in the form of a be high of a glue-like represented in the icon he was also a bishop like Saint in Ian but unlike st. Ninian's here is not live in a cave he lived first on Lindisfarne a major monastery in the northeast of England you may know that the term of Umbria on earth umberland Lindisfarne is the holy Ireland in Northumbria all this left of it today are these beautiful but you know rather lonely ruins but after he's lived here he moved to these islands the fon islands and he lived as a hermit until the day he died even after he was elected the bishop he only functioned as the bishop for about two years three years and a half and then he simply ran away and came back to his Island this is the actual Island the fun Island where he lived and you can see there's again a dock door towards the middle of the island which marks the place where his cell was this is important this sort of photograph because it shows you the difference between high tide and low tide and that's where that presence of death the danger of death came from before because if you're not paying attention to the movements of the ocean particularly in the dark of night it would have been very very easy to get drowned in the the water currents are very dangerous as well and this is the actual Island there's a very small church on the place where his son used to be the island is not inhabited today it is a bird sanctuary Island and there's very little if any mention of Saint Cuthbert as you go about to visit the island you are allowed to spend about an hour an hour and a half I can't remember now on the island on certain periods of the year and within the church which is open so the birds have full access inside and they go in and out as they please within the church I I was blessed to be able to celebrate the Divine Liturgy you may recognize my my single in the corner she's she's doing a good job that's why she's coming back I wish I could but I don't know how to do it I shall learn one day I wish I could include some sort of sound to this presentation because it's a beautiful thing to hear the troparion to st. cost but being sung during the Divine Liturgy on his Island centuries after that Island has not been habited anymore okay so those were the two Saints to whom our church is dedicated saint custard and sing Ninian the actual monastery is dedicated to all the Celtic Saints because it is the first monastery in the Celtic Isles since basically the Vikings invaded so I thought it would be profoundly unfair to pick and choose the ones I like let's just dedicate it to all of them and if they want more monasteries well made they build them because I I've had enough so the first one is Saint Brendan I begin with Saint Brandon because he is actually the first one to found a monastery in the Hebrides most of us know about Saint Columba and the island of Iona but really Saint Brendan arrived to the Hebrides about 20-something years before st. Columba to thee I'm going to stand up just to show you I'll show you where the island is South East this is the archipelago and within that archipelago the most hardness of all the islands is where st. Brendan arrived and we we take pilgrimages they pilgrimages there and we see the typical beehive cells that you would see everywhere in Ireland for instance and this is precisely the same shape that the cells the monastic cells in Egypt at the time had as well because obviously the Egyptian monks when they came to Ireland they built what they knew how to build oh thank you and then and then from our land only forced basically into Scotland I'll tell you why a bit later they continued to build what in you this is what you do that ah that is a church what remains of it the ruined Church of st. Brendan's monastery it actually dates to the first millennium what is left of it no longer has the roof but we can celebrate a divine liturgy in it and we have done so several times the complex of the ruins is much larger with the Church in there what I've shown you before and then you have several other monastic buildings these date from a later period the Benedictine period like fourteen fifteen centuries prior to the Reformation Center here in the foreground is the original grave of st. Columba's mother when Saint Columba built his monastery on Iona that monastery was for men so when his mother reposed he buried her body on st. Brendan's island not on Iona and these are the double beehives that we know almost a hundred percent sure that belonged and were the beehives used by Saint Brendan himself because they are dokey they are dated to the sixth century when he was there and because it's a double beehive only the priest or the abbot of the monastery would have a big double behind that he needed one for his own use either this one or the other one and and then the second one would be used to you know advise the Brethren and hear confessions and and things like that and you can see there's a door in between them connecting them and we do celebrate a Divine Liturgy here the ocean is just here somewhere I wonder this is another view 541 if I remember correctly I'm rather bad with numbers but I think it's 541 when they've dated the double behind and this is the photograph to show you how close again to the ocean to the water they are and this is our celebrating the divine it regime we have to carry everything on our backs from a small chair which then becomes the altar table to everything else and there are several dangers there the greatest danger is is the weather because you can get there you can give the blessing for the beginning of the Divine Liturgy and then five years into the liturgy a pouring rain comes out of nowhere but by now I've learned my lesson and everybody has an umbrella so I asked the highest the tallest man to be in the middle of the Beehive pretty much there somewhere with his umbrella really a high up and then there's a layer of smaller people with umbrellas in another layer another layer so we basically complete the behold we simply complete the Beehive and we are safe and we can celebrate another real danger or the midges but because it's so close to the to the ocean we are relatively safe it's much worse to celebrate in the church because the walls are high enough to block the wind but these walls are very low so the wind blows and keeps them away and the third danger the seagulls who are extremely tempted by all prosper us so you have to have someone whose job is to fight away the seagulls as they die from the sky because they might just run with your communion land and then what do you do I mean are you all for dogs do you see I I know what to have the conversation with my bishop so I'd rather just God the gifts alright moving on the second the second monk who came to the Isles and built a community there is st. Columba and he's the one everybody knows about and the island of Iona is the one everybody goes to it's known as the holy island of Scotland the way Lindisfarne is the holy island of England I see is there anybody here in all honesty who doesn't know why st. Columba left Ireland and went to the Hebrides there was a Celtic tradition that said that when someone copied a manuscript and created basically a new manuscript the resulting manuscript was the ownership of them of the man or the woman who owned the original so even if you copied it if the original belongs to me the copy belongs to me as well although it's your work well st. Columba didn't quite like that copyright law so he actually made a manuscript using an existing Salter and held on to it and although that sounds impossible you know in our world today that led to a real battle among the monks and the people who supported them and people were killed in that battle and as a result st. Columba was condemned by his own Synod and he was forced into exile he could have stayed closer to Ireland but because he felt such guilt for what had happened he took it upon himself to keep sailing north from Ireland until he reaches an island from where he can no longer see his home country he wanted to be a completely stranger wherever he would go so they sailed and they sailed until they reached Iona and in the in the icon that's why he's represented painting a manuscript of a scripture and he doesn't look particularly happy because he's contemplating his the scene of his youth and then they reached Iona and this is the bay which is known as st. Columba's Bay it is the bay where st. Columba and twelve monastics were accompanied him arrived in 563 and there is a hill on this bay that one which is known as the hill of the turning back to Ireland it is the hill on which by tradition st. Columba client looked back and made sure that his home country was no longer visible and once he made sure that that happened and that he could repent on Iona they settled there and this is another group of another Region III I do my best not to use the word mad but every time I see myself and these lovely people just celebrating in the weirdest places you know weirdest environments that's the one word that keeps coming back to me and you've got Korea Martha there and then also Elizabeth is there I don't know who's here is he is someone from Wenatchee here I think they've they've Brian yeah Brian is there as well as Libby this is actually our first pilgrimage and we are owned the Beecher thing Columbus Day and we simply position our icon there and we bless the waters because we thought well if we bless the Atlantic we're also kind of blessing America and blessing we we have very high opinions of all blessings eventually on the island the monastery of st. Columba was established of course what you see today is the abbey but most of the abbey actually dates back to the late 19th early 20th century but it is located where the original monastery was built and because it's located in the same place you can still see things like for instance this little monument here is known as dong-yi it is the highest point on Iona and it is where the druidic Hermits who lived there prior to the Christians arrivals or where they would be performing the human sacrifices so the place is marked because it is historically important but see how close to those pagan rituals he built his monastery and this is the hill where st. Columba's cell was built we know from his life which was written very close after up very soon after his death we know that his cell was located on a hill a small hill overlooking the souls of the other monastics and the local tradition kept this knowledge that that's where his cell was but until the eighties everybody made fun of this silly you know Christians who hold on to their traditions but in the 80s they've done excavation works and they have actually found the foundations of a beehive just like the ones that we've seen on st. Brendan's Island but sometimes holding onto tradition even when there's no real you know logical proof pays off sooner or later also on Iona there's another saint called st. Orin this is very a very dear Saint to me simply based on experience nothing to do with the story of his life or anything like that but he is the one who I felt from the very beginning loves me and wants me there and fights for me to be there and actually succeed even before I I have there's absolutely no reason as I'm sure each of you have had this experience very often you feel that you just chosen by one st. or another and they just love you and they pray for you and they they just do anything to help you go through your life although you've done nothing you know to even get to know them say Nolan was the oldest among the twelve Monkeys who came with Saint Columba and when Saint Columba came all he found were those pagan druids performing you know human sacrifices and all sorts of other rituals and one night Saint Columba had this vision of a local God a demon who told him very clearly that there's nothing that they can build on Iona because only things that are blessed or found in if you want through human sacrifice are going to be able to be built on Iona so of course st. Columba thought well that's the end of the story because we as Christians we don't do any sort of human sacrifice but to his surprise at war horror we have the story of st. Orin who was very old by then and who offered himself to be buried alive at the foundation of the Christian Church and he is buried his relics were buried and they built the first church and that church still has his name it's called st. Odin's church the cemetery around this course in Odin's cemetery to this day and the church actually in the icon if you remember that shape a very simple shape is this church the relics that's actually a question that relates to all these saints when the Vikings invaded all the relics and the Treasury is that they had the treasures that they had such as the manuscript and so on were either sent to Ireland parts of them some of them were sent to Lindisfarne because that was deemed more safe it's on the other side of the island and other pirates were buried on Iona and are still to be discovered but st. olan is the first Christian buried in this Christian land and and his church I am convinced not by accident is actually the only building on Iona that dates back to that first millennium everything else was taken down or rebuilt much closer to to our times and as you can see everything was very close by this is saying always Chapel with the cemetery and this is where oh sorry the the monastery was and this is mall and with in inside st. Oren's again we celebrate this was actually a very special celebration for me because you can't see him but you can see his hat behind that gentleman there that is a Archbishop Benjamin the OCA Bishop of San Francisco and Los Angeles he came last summer with a whole pilgrimage and we had such a wonderful and blessed time and it was so special to get an Orthodox Bishop as part of a liturgy in the catechol I just enjoyed every moment of it and as these things can show you this church is also open and the birds have free access to to the church the other thing that's important about Iona are the famous Celtic crosses the one you see here is called Saint Martin's cross and is in fact the only one of the original ones that is still standing it was put up in the 8th century and at the time when the Viking started their invasions there were 365 of such closes all over Iona they were using them the way we use the calendar days every day a different st. a different cross only st. Martin's survived both the Vikings and the Reformation and in many ways the Reformation was much worse than the Vikings the other the other the other cross you see is called st. John's close but it is actually a replica of the original the original was destroyed and thrown in the waters around the island they found the bits and pieces and it's actually now in the museum reconstructed but this is a replica the reason why they took them down at the Reformation is that these crosses will cover the iconography this if you can pay attention is actually the model of God holding child with the two Archangels here and there are the Lions on both sides speaking of Christ two natures and the perfection of those nature's this for instance is a Daniel being eaten by the Lions somewhere there here he is actually it's not particularly clear but this is David playing the harp and this is so listening to him so all these crosses were covered with sculpted icons so when what the Reformation happened because of that they were taken down and just thrown in the ocean and st. Martin's is the only one that survived and this is the one I mentioned to you Saint John's which was found in the waters nearby and just put together again thank you for them Saint George is important historically as well because it is the first visual representation we have of a Celtic Cross anywhere in the world so from all the manuscripts all the books sold of existing crosses in Ireland or Scotland or everywhere this is the earliest and this here is called st. Lawrence crow it was not yet a Celtic cross and that is the first cross the oldest on Iona which was erected were st. Lawrence grave was located the last few photographs from Iona I want to show you are from two places called Martha's Bay and the wide strand of the monks which are two beaches on Iona where hundreds of monks in time were butchered during the Viking attacks that's that's why in the icon the sea is red with their blood and they have that menacing you know Viking looking ship approaching from the heavens you have the blessing of Christ giving them the Crown's of martyrdom and these are this is the white strand of the monks there's nothing to mark these places except our memory if we forget about them they are forgotten for us and Maltese Bay I want to show you also this which is something it's one of the most important photographs for me this is also taken from the same Museum on Iona from where st. John's course was taken this is a mass burial slab when when you know 2030 monks were killed they they did not have the time the physical time to carve as many crosses also necessary so they would simply grab these huge slabs this is a very very large stone and just carve several crosses on them simply to mark that more people were buried underneath and as you can see some are simple crosses others are Celtic but this is a most barrier all right after Iona I want you to bear with me for a minute or two as I speak to you about st. Kenneth st. Kenneth is one of those initial twelve monks who came to Iona with Saint Columba but very soon in a few years after being on Iona he wanted to live a life of more seclusion and more silence in a strange way he found Iona to be very busy and noisy for his taste so he withdrew with st. Columba's blessing and he lived as a hermit in this cave over here and the island so again this is amol this is where st. Brandon the monastery was this is where I own ours in Colombo was and this is where same kind of sardis so everything is pretty much around the Isle of Man these are just photographs from inch Kenneth sinking as Island taken from our pilgrimages we go there by a sailing boat and we have to stop there because the water is not high enough to land on the island and from the we take a smaller boat to to the land and on the island you find the ruins of a Benedictine monastery which were was built on the foundation of an earlier Celtic monastery where of course we go and they celebrate and we try our best to pray to the saints and then if you go down from from the Rouen monastery towards the beach you see the cave where st. kind of lived and again it is one of those places where we go and we do our best to pray it's a lovely place to say a prayer such as st. Patrick's breast plate for instance any sort of prayer that connects you with the environment with the nature around you because everything just suddenly comes to life you can see why they would pray for the blessing of the waters or why they would pray for the blessings of the wings and because they are so close to these elements of nature that they become other tools for their salvation or tools for the destruction and it's again a different experience of prayer okay I've put this here because it means we move to mold this is our island and this is how we'll end the presentation this is the Isle of Molly this is a photograph taken from a village close to where we now have purchased a house and I think it was taken by Debbie's son Caleb I think this was taken about Caleb as well oh no I'll show you two caves that's what I've done I want to show you two caves have you seen have you noticed that on st. Brendan's oil and we spoke about monks only st. Columba's oil and we spoke about monks own inch Kenneth st. canice are and again about monks well on Mull there is a cave here which is known as the nuns cave and it's for that reason that we decided to have this be a women's monastery not a man's monastery because we wanted to just honor the local feel the local spirit or tradition of the place and to get there to the cave you actually have to go to this deserted village and walk for about two hours through this scenery don't imagine that those nuns were a saner than the monks it can only be done at a very low tide because if it's high tide the past is covered by the water so you have to get there at low tide say your prayers and then come back when it's still low tide otherwise you end up there overnight and you have to do all-night vigil in order to survive really and this is the entrance to the cave this is an honest cave it's a quite a large cave I would say it's about the size of this room which is huge by comparison to what st. Ninian's or st. Kenneth for instance had the nuns were there but the same time a st. Columba so we again are talking about six century monasticism but this time female monasticism and they still have preserved some of the original closest that were carved in the walls there are a lot of courses cover but only the very low and simple ones are from the first centuries the other ones the higher they get and the more complex they get of centuries more you know closer to to our time and this is us again singing as you the troparion to the Celtic Saints at the entrance to the cave and this is where kind of the whole thing is located so you don't imagine it's somewhere in the mountain is protected against the wings or the storms or anything it's just out there like everything else and I'll show you briefly a second I think I'll show you shall I yes I shall okay which is located here called Scholl cave which is extremely important historically this can only be accessed by the beach because obviously you cannot come down those cliffs and inside it you can still find the closest from again 6-7 century but see because it's not taking such good care of nobody on the island actually could show me the directions to get to it I had to just dig out thank God for the Internet in order to find the way there these are the causes are you know from all the centuries but these ones are documented as being six seven centuries and these things are pre-christian if you remember there were these those bulbs round figures on st. John's cross that's the Celtic symbol for eternity it shows a snake swallowing its own tail and that's what that stands for so it's it's interesting to see Christian symbolism and pagan symbolism in the same cave and at the very end I want to show you a photograph or two from our church communion which was built in 1755 and it is located on the foundation of again a six 7th century monastery everything there started from from a well a holy wall dedicated to st. minyan and then because that world was there these are just photographs from repairing works for two years almost have been covered in scaffolding inside and outside we've had to take down the entire roof not only the toilets but also the timber work underneath we had to take it down because we discovered that nobody had done any sort of repairs in 1755 and even that timber was not new timber they had used old timber which they found on the beach so it was basically shipwreck so you know we had to replace that of new timber and then find new tiles to recover the the entire church do you see how the Bell Tower was taken down as well and this is what it looks like no completely windproof waterproof the bell tower is the the enemy has been defeated that was what was used as a tool against us but I'm very grateful to God that we have managed to get through that and now we can celebrate inside and at the end I want to show you two photographs of the house which we bought for this will actually be our pilgrimage house so this is going to be your house in the years to come once we finish building the monastery because I still have to get through this endless seemingly process of just building next to communion so that the nuns and myself can live by contingent and then this will be the house used for our pilgrimages until we managed to build there we'll use this for for the nuns look how close it is to the sea to the ocean and I always say this and nobody believes me but I give you my word this here is a seal you can go close and see it at the end if you don't believe me we have a lot of neighbors as you can see we are very friendly we are going to convert all of them this building behind the church I think you could see it here better maybe yes this shed and this green house will change that will turn that into a small chapel this may there is a group of volunteers again coming from the United States mostly from Colorado Springs and they will help me turn that shed into a chapel so we can celebrate the and once we move to communion the Pilgrims and myself can celebrate the during our pilgrimages and that this is what we have this is Kelly Nia with a vast view room this is where the holy world of Saint minion is located this here is the cemetery the ancient cemetery that belongs to the local council by law and these are the five acres of land that by the grace of God we've managed to buy in September last year so the last thing we need to do is build a house here so that the nuns and myself can move close to communion if you feel inclined and if you have the possibility to help you can do so either by cheque which have to be written to this u.s. organization but please most importantly go to the website read about the Saints follow the Facebook page I try my best to post there at least twice or three times a week something a photograph or some sort of information or something from the local tradition and share them with anybody who who may have a calling for a Western version of Orthodoxy yeah that's pretty much it thank you very much for listening again if you have questions of any kind I'll be very happy to answer them no no we are we celebrate exactly what we celebrate here I the monastery belongs or it does not belong but the monastery is under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania so we celebrate the same yeah so and Romania celebrates in the same tradition as Greece or you know Russia or Serbia all the Orthodox countries yes they know they would be actually on Iona I don't want to include too many photographs because I don't to take too much of your time but on Iona there's an entire part of the island actually the island the part which is exposed to the ocean called the ma hair which in Gallic means the raised Beach there was a time when that was that piece of land was on the water and then on the ocean with true that was just left above and it's extremely nutritious and that's where they would grow grains and vegetables and their cattle and so on and if you read the life of st. Columba you will see that their lives were actually spent just crossing Iona from the eastern side where the church was to the western side where they will do their work and there are beautiful stories that happen and once you see the geography they they yes they become so much more real there's a story about Saint Columba going very very upset to see his monks on the western side while they were working and he was terribly upset because he had just he was told in a vision that he approached the end of his life and and then God changed his mind through the prayers because of the prayers of the community so he went to them on the field to scold them for keeping him alive when he was really looking forward getting it done with and you know entering the kingdom there is a there is a particular field which to this day is marked as the field of the angels who s in Calamba rested and he had this vision of angels descending from heaven over Iona and the lifting back again all these places are it's one thing to read about them in a book and it's another thing to walk there and to ask somebody well what does that mean in Gaelic and suddenly it means you know the field of the angels and you know why and very often they don't know why there's a the capital village on Mali for instance is called Tobermory it is a lovely lovely little village with very colorful homes and a nice feel about it but tobermory actually means Mary's well because the ancient feast of the place was the Annunciation which was we know took places the Virgin was going to draw water from a well and that's that's where the name comes from how many nuns do you have I don't have any I don't own them I did not go shopping for nuns my bishop just announced me the day before I flew to see you again that there are three sisters who will join me they are already in France and they've lived in France for two years two years and a half it's a very good system that he has he he has founded skits and monasteries himself in Romania and then he selects among the monastics there those whom he feels you know they would do alright in a Western environment and then he asks them to come to France where we already have a few Orthodox monasteries and they spend a few years there to get accustom to life in the West to learn a bit of a foreign language and then when the new establishment is ready they get sent to that particular I'm very happy because all I know about them is that they all have a deep love of photos of phony sorrow and for me that means more than anything I don't you know it's not about how old or young you are how healthy or ill you are it's about what you aim to become because if the aim is the same if everybody here aimed in precisely the same direction towards the same point sooner or later we will be in the same point it doesn't matter that you know where we start from we may be very at a great distance from one another if we all go in the same direction we will eventually merge and that's the greatest blessing I pray for them and I've been praying for them actually from the very beginning that God sends the right people there because it's not going to be easy you do imagine I've taken photographs and I'm showing you photographs only from the summertime I do not include photographs from November December January February March and even April so four years maybe four years a month it looks pretty much like an image of from a postcard but the other months are rather harsh and particularly for someone who has any sort of tendency towards depression that can be a very harsh environment so I really pray for them and I ask of you to pray for them as well please go to 215 father go on as you say okay yeah okay just a quick announcement our scheduled time to end was two let's see if we have just a couple more questions we'll go into a 2:15 and then we'll tidy up around you one thing that we can do together though process it able to just fold up the chairs and lay them on the table length was right at 2:15 when we're ready to wrap it up the this this wasn't it isn't specifically a fundraising visit father came to be with us and to share with us we're not doing a specific collection the church will be wood we're gonna simply want to support you as I can a parish thank you generosity thank you for coming here but I also just want to encourage you're going to please support his work you see I'm had him he was being obedient I told him to put this back on the screen so that you guys can take your phone and do a little picture of it or write it down and go and visit father is also quite accessible so for those of you who are internet savvy and I think it's a matter of course these days for most of us I highly recommend visiting the website and his pretty active Facebook page so if there are just a few more questions we have about 10 more minutes and then we'll start tidying up around here okay and again thank you all who's wonderful to be with you and have you here thank you is there another question ofE yeah there's the monastery itself as have ties with the monastery Essex no I wish indeed actually I mean it has Tories in the sense that even without us wanting it myself and these sisters as it seems are shaped by for the so funny in that sense yes but no I would have actually very much liked and I did discuss this with my bishop I would have very much like the first knowns to have come from assets but because they belong to the they are under the humanik of jurisdiction with the monastery in Scotland is under the Romanian jurisdiction that would just proved to be too difficult to kind of work out so but it's healthy I think it's healthy that we have the same Saint although he's not been yet canonized or a sophrony he's clearly a saint and it's healthy that there really are two monasteries in the United Kingdom there's the monastery in assets in England and as the monastery on model and it is an immense gift and it shows what a great Saint he is that both monasteries are shaped into the same sort of theology and spirit it's one of those rare gifts from God that I found out about three years ago from two different people both of them from the community in assets that one photo so funny came to England from France he actually wanted to establish his monastery in the Hebrides and he was asked by his bishop to come much closer to London in order to serve to the local Greek or Russian communities but his heart was here and then you know if you didn't work then God keeps pushing I kind of knew that work - it's kinda cute right now and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it's not it's not just inspiring you but somehow this vision so this how we understand how how so I don't yet hear voices well I'll hear voices I let my father my spiritual father know and then I may visit a doctor depending on his advice because sometimes voices are good I don't want you to wrap your head against it because that wouldn't help you at all I want you to just trust 2,000 years of experience and try it out just pray just pray to to whatever Saint speaks to you and if you are an intellectual man find the saint who wrote something that speaks to you find someone like Saint Isaac the Syrian or someone like Saint Basil the Great or you know any of the theologian Saints and then you just see what it's like when they speak to you and that that experience will be much stronger than anything I can I can come up with or anything you can read actually Saints are present in the most physical way in our lives I have heard I have had cases when I was hit for instance I was in body and where the relics of st. Nicholas are now buried and Saint Nicholas is the saint I love most because he loves me a great deal among very selfish I love the Saints who love me and and I had entered the church where he's very saw the Cathedral where he's very saw in the morning and then it was already 3:00 4:00 p.m. I don't even know in time passed by and I was so hungry so hungry and I did not want to leave the church so I just asked Saint Nicholas for food and in less than a few minutes 3 4 minutes a woman from my parish in Bucharest mind you I was studying in England and I took a flight to the south of Italy to be with Saint Nicholas and a woman from my parish in Bucharest was there in that precise time she recognized me and she was so happy to see me there and she said I've just member ated the death of my I can't remember father bird father something and she gave me something to eat which always do to celebrate for the departed that moment I remember also it's a Nicholas I was I was in the same place in body and this group of pilgrims came and I thought I'm good I was really considering going on a pilgrimage to st. Seraphim of Sarov and I didn't quite know whether I should do it or not because it's such a hassle to arrange a pilgrimage into Russia from the visa to the transport to everything so I just this group of pilgrims came in and then they just note down and they just you know did what all pilgrims did and then then then they they they were getting out and I said I should just go and ask them where they are from and if st. Nicholas wants me to go to st. Seraphim they're going to be from Russia and then I said what am I doing here tempting God this is not that what Christian doesn't do that but that only took me for about 30 seconds of righteousness and then I just ran after them fatherfather I mean I was like you I was 18 19 year old I mean before I became a monk and I asked where are you from and they were not from Russia they were from the available which is the small village in Russia where the monastery built by Saint Seraphim is located and the relics of st. Seraphim are to this day so they are not from this larger than a continent country they were from the precise parish of the village where that Saint is from I've heard st. Nicholas step in when I was afraid of stray dogs in Bucharest as well in the noid i I used to confess my spiritual father in Bucharest and my monastery was in Moldavia so the only way to get to my spiritual father there was to take a bus for about eight hours plus two hours of just getting to the boss and then go home I would get into Bucharest by 2 3 a.m. I would go home when my parents are and sleep for 3-4 hours then rush to church see my spiritual father confess and then go back and take the bus back home I've done this for years while I was in but the the part I was panicked about was getting into Bucharest at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. until very recently a few years ago we first had this horrible problem of stray dogs there were tens of thousands of stray dogs in Bucharest and they they I don't know if they just get together in packs and they're attacked actually there have been people killed in Bucharest and I'm absolutely afraid of them and they feel that you're afraid so that's when they attack and I remember just walking two or three am just praying no dogs no dogs I'm gonna find my mantra instead of low low Jesus quiet no dogs no no and I just entered this this small street at the end of which is my parents house I mean the block of flats where we live we don't have a house and I was midway on this narrow street and then I saw them come just a whole pack of them I saw them come and I did not think Christ I did not think Mother of God I instantly says if st. Nicholas do something I have no idea what to do and this old man came just following the dogs complete darkness just this figure of an old man and he knelt down I mean kind of the level I'm at right now which is exactly what you don't do with stray dogs you don't get down because they attack you all these dogs went towards him and he just kind of played with them I don't need I can't even claim that I paid attention I was so afraid I didn't care if they were eating him alive all I wanted was to get out of there alive so I just passed by as those dogs and whatever the figure were doing in the middle the very middle of the street and when I got to the entry into my parent's block of flats I looked back and I could only see the dogs yeah I mean I I could give you books to read about the theology of the stains and but none of that meant nothing to me nothing until until I needed help and then they they are there in the most physical visible way and I should say Nicholas I mean there are the wonderful things how we done ok ok thank you very much for listening to me you do realize then in 24 that in 2014 when I came here the first time we only had a collapsing church and myself and now we have repaired the church together who have bought the land together we have a house where we can start a monastic life there are three nuns we have actually founded a monastery so thank you thank you from the bottom of my silly heart

Channel: St. Paul Orthodox Church

Views: 7,958

Rating: 4.8548388 out of 5

Keywords: Fr. Seraphim Aldea, Mull Monastery

Id: PWtGj2bYIHU

Length: 59min 16sec (3556 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018