We had the great honor of a visit from the abbot of the St Andrew Skete on Mt. Athos, Fr. Ephraim! The Elder assured me that the Mother of God will not abandon Her Garden to the wiles of the ecumenists and that the Fathers will stand firm in the Faith.

 We had the great blessing of having Elder Ephraim of St. Andrew’s Skete (“Serrai”) visit us at the seminary

We had the great blessing of having Elder Ephraim of St. Andrew’s Skete (“Serrai”) visit us at the seminary. He brought with him not only old friends from Greece but old memories from Athos and the skete. Thanks be to God.

The pilgrims had tea with Fr. Luke, the Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery, who shared with us all his experience of the translation of the incorrupt relics of Bishop Constantine from Texas to the Monastery (2013), as well as photos of the incorrupt relics of Metropolitan Philaret of New York, the great confessor of the Faith in the years of the ecumenism of Patriarch Athenagoras.

Elder Ephraim was the abbot of Philotheou Monastery in the early nineties after Elder Ephraim, his spiritual father, left for Arizona. Later he took some fathers and re-populated the deserted Skete, once a home to hundreds of Russian ascetics before the Revolution. God is now working through him and the brotherhood to build once again the dilapidated skete and fill it with struggling monks who say the Prayer unceasingly. They are also strong confessors of the Faith, opposed, along with most of the monks on Athos, to the recent “council” of Crete.

The Elder assured me that the Mother of God will not abandon Her Garden to the wiles of the ecumenists and that the Fathers will stand firm in the Faith. Thanks be to God, for there are thousands who have not bent their kneel to Baal!