A PILGRIMAGE TO THE ORTHODOX HOLY PLACES OF AMERICA Holy Protection Skete in Alberta, Canada.

A PILGRIMAGE TO

THE ORTHODOX

HOLY PLACES OF AMERICA

Holy Protection Skete in Alberta, Canada.

THE NINTH PILGRIMAGE

Holy Protection skete

near Bluffton, Alberta

TO CANADA Holy Orthodoxy came with the flow of immigration at the end of the last century. To the native Canadians, Anglicans, Holy Orthodoxy was simply one other phase of Christianity and never produced any interest. Actually Canada never had its Orthodox Sts. Cyril and Methody. The first settlers were poor homesteaders, totally en grossed in providing their livelihood by turning the vast forest area into tillable land. The Orthodox pastors were few and faced merciless conditions due to the severe winter climate, lack of roads and means of transportation, poverty, deprivation, even slander and mockery; after the «Russian» Revolution, when contact was broken with Holy Russia, a sense of absolute abandonment prevailed among the lonely pastors. The constantly traveling priest, in his pastoral care of the "children of his own flock," never mind his mission to native Canadians, felt lost in the cold vastness of the Canadian "desert."

One of such pastors who, as the Church sings in glorifying monk Saints, "by means of tears tilled the desert," and by starting Sketes, holy places, himself acquired considerable sanctity was Archbishop Ioasaph.

Orthodoxy in Canada is still very young to produce spiritual fruits of its own. But it definitely has been given genuine shoots of Holy Orthodoxy to nurture, out of which to bring a spiritual crop. The future, if there is to be one, should show the spiritual worth of Canadian soil.

Let us, then, make a spiritual pilgrimage to one of the snowbound Canadian Sketes...

HOLY PROTECTION SKETE

NEAR BLUFFTON, ALBERTA

Today, right-believing people, let us radiantly feast, Overshadowed by Thy coming, O Mother of God, And beholding Thy most pure image, Let us say with tender feeling: Cover us with Thy honorable Protection, And save us from every evil, Thou Who prayest to Thy Son, Christ our God, to save our souls.

— Holy Protection Troparion, Tone 4

IN THE CENTRAL PART of the Province of Alberta, Canada, about halfway between two of its largest cities, Edmonton and Calgary, is an area where one settlement after an other is adorned with majestic Orthodox churches with large gilded domes, and a multitude of onion-shaped cupolas, and glittering eight pointed Russian crosses. This vast area, once sanctified by Orthodox confession, is now quite lax and disunified in spirit. Holy Orthodoxy there, to say the least, does not "move mountains." Nonetheless, there is one spot in this area, namely ten miles south of the town of Bluffton, where just a handful of women carry on their fragile shoulders a true podvig, a great and active work of Orthodox enlightenment just by living an exemplary life of traditional Orthodox monasticism. Although for lorn in the vast Canadian spaciousness, and surrounded by desolate for est areas, where wild animals frequently wander in from the prairie just north, this little community conducts a vigorous and righteous activity that shines on the background of today's dark times like a guiding star showing the way from the darkness of contemporary apostasy to Christ's Kingdom of Glory.

The Skete church with bell tower and graveyard.

On the Skete's feast day a religious procession goes around the church as a nun accompanies with bell-ringing.

ONE OF the brightest lamps of Orthodoxy in Canada was Archbishop loasaph Skorodumoff, who with his zealous missionary Archimandrite, Amvrossy Konovalov, introduced to the cold Canadian atmosphere the living spark of monasticism. The bishop was the spiritual son of the saintly Bishop Theophan of Paltava, and Father Amvrossy, as a wanderer (strannik), pilgrimaged to many holy places in Imperial Russia, coming at last to Optina, where Starets Anatoly (the Younger) became his elder. From youth of Vladka Ioasaph's he in volved himself in the spiritual life and monasticism, and when in Canada he built three sketes, literally with his own hands. Although Vladika put great labor into these monastic enterprises, no skete in the original sense of the word has come down to us from him. There are three types of monastic life: the hermitic, the communal, and the third type--life in a skete, where two or three brothers live together in unity of heart. The skete-life is praised by the Holy Fathers as the golden, the royal path.

WHILE VISITING his vast diocese, Vladika Ioasaph stopped once in a region near Bluffton, 85 miles south of Edmonton, where 10 or 12 Russian families then lived on farms. From his very first visit a strong desire came upon him to found a skete for men there; and he realized this desire, with the help of these settlers, in 1934-35. Mr. Michaelov sold the bishop a piece of land and a log house for the skete, and there at first lived Br. Platon Kustov with a few other brothers, and services were held either by Vladika himself, whenever he could come to the skete, or by other members of his clergy, who were mostly monks. Hieromonk Elias Gavriliak was the first monk-priest to stay perma nently at the skete, but the spiritual head was Vladika himself.

The little church was built and consecrated in the name of the Protection of the Holy Virgin in 1937. A year before that a little log cabin was built, now located next to the church, and it was there that Vladika performed his podvig of long prayer when staying, due to bad weather and impassable roads, for weeks on end in freezing cold and des olation. He loved the Skete dearly, but neither his wish for seclusion nor normal skete-life were ever realized.

When Abbess Rufina was still alive, Vladika wrote to her re questing her to move her convent from Shanghai to Canada, in order to begin Orthodox monastic life in Canada. This wish was later realized, and the skete, now a convent, exists as a living monument to Canada's great bishop.

In 1949 the Convent of the Vladimir Mother of God was moved to San Francisco, where Abbess Ariadna with her nuns met Vladika Ioa saph; to her he repeated his request. Mother Amvrossia, whose ill health required a change of climate, went together with two other sisters as an obedience, to the Skete which Vladika offered them. The settlement of the nuns in Canada had a providential significance, which became evi dent when several old and ailing nuns, who had been denied entrance into the United States, were allowed to come to Canada, provided they would be taken care of. Now the nuns would be saved from the horrible unmonastic living conditions of a Philippine refugee camp, and could come to an affiliate of their mother convent.

The nuns, of course, underwent many trials in the new convent, especially after the departure of Vladika Ioasaph for Argentina, but Metropolitan Anastassy took the Convent under his own protection and sent Father I. Anosoff as the Convent priest. Aftter the latter's death, for many years an Athonite Skhema-Archimandrite, Makary Kozubinsky, was the Convent's father confessor. In recent years the Convent's priest has been Fr. Alexander Mishukoff, a devout benefactor of the Skete from its very beginning. The services are conducted daily in the church and the monastic rule in the house-chapel over the trapeza. Besides the regular fasts, the nuns fast also on Mondays, in accordance with the ancient monastic rule. The Skete has now 400 acres of land, mostly forested; a small dairy farm with 10 cows is maintained and there are chickens. The hard work in the fields and the preparation of firewood for the whole long winter is done by the six nuns themselves.

Mother Cleopatra performing chores in a clearing at the edge of the Convent settlement.

THE SPIRITUAL AND MANUAL labor that has been put into the building of the Skete has been great indeed. Every step is, as it were, saturated with podvig. Indeed, the spiritual atmo sphere in the New World is so totally foreign to living Orthodox tra dition that it takes immense podvig to retain some measure of a genuine spiritual life. Our times have deprived us of anchorite spiritual leaders; nowadays there are no startsi that link back to the experience nurtured on the age-old monastic tradition. Monasticism in America existed so far at the cost of hard spiritual and manly labor. And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of beaven is gotten by force, and the violent take it by force (Matth. 11:12). Come to Me all ye that labor and are beavy laden, calls Christ our Lord, and I shall give you rest, He promises. And indeed Christ is near in the Holy Protection Skete.

Before departure on such an important mission, Mother Amvrossia I was blessed by Abbess Ariadna with a renewed icon of St. Arseny of Konevits, a 15th-century Russian Saint who left his Novgorod monas tery for Mount Athos only to return to Russia and found the Konevits Monastery on Lake Ladoga. He brought with him to Russia a blessing of his Athonite Abbot a miraculous icon of the Mother of God (the Konevits Icon), which gave him encouragement, strength, and spiritual wisdom to do God's work when he felt despondent. Likewise, Mother Amvrossia has a blessing of her Abbess - a miraculously-renewed icon of the Mother of God, The Milkgiver, as a consolation in her trials. This Icon is perhaps the holiest object in all of Canada.

Today, as the world rapidly progresses in its deviation from life according to God's commandments, and God's likeness in men decreases, the Holy Protection Skete is indeed like the Gospel pearl of inestimable price...

Abbess Ariadna holding the Miraculous Icon of the Vladimir Mother of God, surrounded by the sisters, including two skhema-nuns.

Next issue: A Pilgrimage to Dormition Monastery in Alberta, Canada.