Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery
About Our Monastery
Our monastery buildings, including the chapel and the guest house on our millpond, stand because of the labor and gifts of many friends and benefactors.
We call our life "A call to serve God, a call to serve the Church..." We fulfill our call through prayer, work and hospitality.
We invite you to join us for a brief visit as a pilgrim, a longer stay as a guest or for a lifetime of monastic sharing in:
- Liturgical prayer
- Prayer in solitude
- Participation in the sacramental life of the Church
- Community life
- Personal growth through repentance
- Hospitality
- Work and stewardship
Please pray for us, that we may grow only as the Lord wills. May He continue to raise up sisters as well as friends so that the monastery may be a blessed place of prayer and pilgrimage.
"...until we reach the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God; full maturity; the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ..."
— Ephesians 4:13Monastery History
Founded in 1977, we are a monastic community for women of the Orthodox Church in America. We have been situated since 1983 in Otsego County in the scenic upper-Catskill region of New York State. We have been members of the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce and are honored to be part of Central New York's "Leatherstocking Country."
From our monastery's Typicon: Inspired by the desert mothers and fathers, we model our lives as fully as possible on their life and witness, their martyria. We are called to be Orthodox Christian monastics in our own time and place as surely as they were. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. We are aware that the world around us is very different from the one they knew. We have the responsibility to balance our obligations to this world of noise and technology with our calling to choose to grow into the greater silence and simplicity of their lives.
As they were, we also are obedient to the doctrinal and sacramental structure of the Church. Drawn from all Orthodox jurisdictions, we are a stavropighial monastery under the Metropolitan and the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, witnessing to the unity we share in Christ.
Within the monastery's framework of daily liturgical and personal prayer, we work as farmers, artists and craftsmen. We offer the result of our own labors through our online store. See "Our Catalog" for the online store.
Daily Life at the Monastery
- 7:00 a.m. First Hour
- Quiet time, personal chores, breakfast, etc.
- 9:00 a.m. Matins and/or Third Hour
- House meeting and work time
- 12 Noon Sixth Hour
- Lunch, work and an hour of personal time
- 3:00 p.m. Ninth Hour
- Work time
- 5:00 p.m. Vespers
- Supper
- Barn chores
The schedule changes as needed and for Sundays and Great Feasts. On Saturdays and feasts when we celebrate a vespers and matins, we eat supper at 5:00 pm and vigil begins at 6:00.
Guests are welcome to services and supper!
Note: Please call ahead (607) 432-3179 if you plan to join us for a service or supper.
Before 9AM is quiet time. Sisters each get their own breakfast and often do spiritual reading individually over breakfast.
Lunch is eaten individually according to each person's schedule.
Supper is the community eating all together with spiritual reading out loud and conversation.
Monastery Bells
Through the generosity of a number of friends, our monastery is blessed with six cast bells from Russia. (Information about Blagovest Bells, the importers who also helped make this possible, is at the bottom of the page!)
The calling of the bells throughout the day reminds us of our primary duty to worship God and pray for all mankind.
Our largest, "Christ the Savior" bell, with the icon of Christ the Savior and "Holy, Holy, Holy" written in English, Greek and Slavonic.
Our good friends from Carpenter Brothers Construction in Binghamton, New York built and donated the structure to house the bells.
Deacon John Suchernick from Brick, New Jersey, came to give us our first lesson in bell ringing.
Blagovest Bells is the importer in this country working with the Pyatkov Russian Foundry, re-creating the casting technology lost during the years of the Bolshevik revolution and Communist government.
Blagovest Bells
508 San Anselmo Avenue,
San Anselmo, California 94960
tel. (415) 256-2512, fax (415) 256-9268
Website: https://russianbells.com
Email: blagovest@russianbells.com
Monastery Icons
We are grateful to the donors who made possible the beautiful series of icons that were painted for our monastery chapel. They add to the environment of prayer in the chapel and to our celebration of each of the major feasts.
