Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery
FAQs
Yes! We welcome pilgrims to come for a service and a meal, or to stay for a few days and get involved in our daily life. Guests eat and cook with the sisters, help ring bells and read prayers in chapel services, as well as getting involved with projects in the house, the yard and the barn. We have two guest rooms in the monastery and a guest house nearby for families or groups. There is no charge to stay, and we welcome people of any Orthodox tradition, as well as anyone interested in learning about Orthodoxy or monasticism. Please email sisters@hmbmonastery.org or call (607)432-3179 to plan your visit. More information is available on the Visit Us page here.
Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery follows the traditions of Eastern Orthodox coenobitic monasticism: praying, eating, and working in community. In our chapel, we pray the ancient daily cycle of services from the Horologion, including Matins, Vespers and the Hours throughout the day. The sound of bells and chanting, the smell of incense and beeswax candles, and the beauty of Byzantine icons will be familiar if you have been in an Orthodox church.
Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery is one of the oldest Orthodox monasteries in the US, founded in 1977 by our abbess, Mother Raphaela (Wilkinson), to be an English-language community where people of all Orthodox jurisdictions can feel at home. You may hear music from Russian, Greek, Carpatho-Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Alaskan and other Orthodox traditions. Our monastery is also a working farm on 220 acres of woods and pasture. We love to invite guests into our daily life: cooking and eating with the sisters; chanting and singing in the chapel at the services throughout the day; working with animals in the barn; even ringing the bells!
Yes! If you are sensing a call from God to "Come, follow Me," we invite you to visit us to learn more about monastic life. New postulants are welcome to come share our life of prayer and work. We can provide opportunities to offer your skills — or learn new ones — in gardening, animal husbandry, library management, business admin, sewing and yarn crafts, wool spinning and weaving, and singing, just to name a few! We pray that God will continue to send women who have been called to test their vocations to monastic life. We seek to grow our monastery as God wills, that it "may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God." (2 Cor. 4:15)
While we appreciate our peaceful, secluded location in the Catskill mountains (no cell service!), we also want to be good neighbors here where God has placed us. We are honored to be part of Central New York's "Leatherstocking Country" and have been members of the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce. Our sisters are involved locally by doing business with farms and companies in our area, selling items at nearby farmers markets, serving as members of Oneonta Artisans’ Guild, and participating in local county fairs. We attend close-by Orthodox mission parishes including St. Innocent of Alaska as well as Seven Holy Youths, and also make pilgrimages to other Orthodox monasteries in the area.
The monastery’s most important contribution is prayer for the whole world, and especially for the hundreds of people each year who request intercession for themselves, their friends and families. We pray both individually and in corporate worship services (liturgy) throughout the day.
As our founder and abbess, Mother Raphaela, explains in our monastery Typicon:
Our liturgy proclaims to all, beginning with ourselves, that God is at the center of our lives. We offer it “on behalf of all and for all.” Our liturgy is our primary missionary endeavor: each time we gather as the Body of Christ for this liturgy the cosmos is changed; the saints and angels are summoned to our side and the atmosphere around us becomes conducive to attract those who God desire to save. We also are changed, insofar as we enter into this liturgy with love, attention and care.
So our prayers help creating an atmosphere in which we and others can find salvation.
Linked to this is our focus on hospitality, greeting every guest as Christ Himself. We welcome (at no charge) everyone who wants to come, whether for a service, a meal, or a few days of retreat. At our monastery, people arrive seeking peace, a listening ear, help with spiritual questions, and always leave in a better situation than when they arrived. Priests send us individuals and families who are going through spiritual struggles. Joining in reading psalms in our chapel, spending time in nature, and getting to know the animals on our farm are life-giving experiences for many visitors. Our monastery is also a place where guests (many of whom are catechumens or inquirers) can learn more about God and the life of the Church. While we are not a social service organization, through hospitality we have been able to serve as a refuge, sharing God’s love with those in need. Our sisters also serve each other – some being elderly and shut in, while others are younger and learning from the more experienced nuns.
We are also involved in our local community – attending local mission churches and participating in farmer’s markets, artisans guild, county fairs – which allows us to be a Christian witness. Even when we are silent, our monastic habits can be an inspiration to others to live for God. While we tend to stay in or near our monastery, our Christian greeting cards spread the gospel widely, and the prayer books we publish inspire others to pray. Across the country, churches order dozens of our prayerbooks to give to new catechumens. Our newsletter, website and social media pages (recently established) also help spread the word and serve as a resource for those seeking to deepen their faith.
Monasticism is considered a form of martyrdom, as we die to ourselves in order to live for God and serve those around us. “Martyr” means witness, and our way of life (even our dress) is a witness to all that God is at the center of our lives, and an invitation to others to come closer to Christ. Monasteries, together with parishes and other Christian organizations, families and individuals, are members of the Body of Christ seeking for His will to be done.
Mother Raphaela (Wilkinson), our Founder and Abbess, started Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery in 1977 with the blessing of Metropolitan Theodosius of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). You can read more about our monastery's founding and subsequent growth and development on the Monastery History page here.
When we first set up this web site, this seemed to be a burning question to a number of people. Now years later, just about every monastery has a web site. Still, our reasons remain the same: As monastics, we struggle with planting a monastery in a country where there is no local village of Orthodox ready to support us. For us, the internet has been a God-send -- His way of helping us "bridge the gap." We do not have to take sisters from their quiet work to lead daily tour groups or run a physical store. We can live in physical solitude. By not having television or radio or using the sound option for our computers, we do not find our silence violated, while we can still check up on crisis news such as approaching blizzards and tornadoes. We can share our lives with others through publishing and correspondence as monastics have for centuries, and we can find a market for our products without constantly sending sisters to the local bazaar (a duty that has plagued monastics for millennia). In many ways, it is the best of both worlds.
The Orthodox celebrate Christmas on December 25th, as all other Christians do. However, there are many Orthodox Christians, including those in Russia and in the Holy Land, who keep December 25th using the old (Julian) calendar, which was used throughout the world until the adoption of the new (Gregorian) calendar. The United States changed its dates to the Gregorian in the 18th century; Russia in the 20th century. Religious observances tend to remain traditional, so while all Orthodox service books show that Christmas is celebrated on December 25th, the 25th is kept 13 days later (January 7th) by Christians using the old calendar. A little over 100 years ago, the Old Calendar was only 12 days behind, and some literature remembers the days when Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas on January 6th when Epiphany (or Theophany) is celebrated (and which likewise is now kept 13 days later for those who still observe the old calendar).
In order to keep unity amongst the churches, all Orthodox (except those who are in the Church of Finland) "go Old Calendar" for Pascha (Easter). That is to say, we no longer calculate the Spring Equinox by the sun, but by a calendar that is now 13 days "out of sync" with nature. There are many historical, political and emotional reasons for this, and it is the tradition of the Church to move slowly so that there can be a consensus of opinion when a change is made. It seems obvious that we should want to stay in tune with the rhythms of God's creation, but when that obvious correction is imposed on people by force, it violates the greater Divine principles of love and freedom.