Church of the Unfading Flower Icon of the Mother of God

We are a monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, who fled state atheism in 1922 and now continues as an integral part of the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate. In this, the Hermitage has been granted standing in the global Russian Orthodox communion, the second largest Church in the world (after the Roman Catholic Church). We pray in formal unity with roughly 150 million Orthodox faithful, which is more than half of all Orthodox Christians. We celebrate Eucharist each week in communion with most of the world's Orthodox communicants. And when we are asked, why the Russian Orthodox communion, and not another, our answer is simple: the ROCOR is the most faithful and the holiest Church with which we have ever been associated.

The marks of that faithfulness are everywhere to be seen. Our Diocese is home to the Mother of God in a very special way: manifest with streaming myrrh she announces her presence in the Streaming Iveron Icon of the Mother of God and the streaming icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, which stands at the sanctuary threshold of the Church of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk in San Francisco. We are consoled by Archepiscopal oversight a saint, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, who lies incorrupt in our Cathedral of the Mother of God, Joy of All who Sorrow. And recently, our Diocese saw one her hieromonks, St. Seraphim of Platina, glorified as a saint. Truly, we have been charitably granted our lowly place among the Holy Ones and the wonderworking saints.

Our rector was formed in the Anglo-Catholic tradition confirmed into a church attesting that movement's affinities with Russian Orthodoxy, with four large icons of archangels gracing its altar. About the same time that little church was established, St. Tikhon of Moscow (then Bishop of the Aleutian Islands) was working to effect full communion with Anglo-Catholics (here pictured with Episcopalian Bishops Reginald Heber Weller, Charles Grafton, and other Episcopalian prelates of the U.S. Anglo-Catholic Movement). One hundred years later, substantial numbers of Anglo-Catholic clergy have accomplished this dream by becoming Russian Orthodox. We are humbled to venerate relics of St. Tikhon interred here in our altar, which was consecrated by the most consequential Anglo-Catholic bishop of the latter twentieth century, the Right Reverend Keith L. Ackerman, SSC. We offer prayers of thanksgiving that for a time we called Bp. Ackerman, a Franciscan, our own bishop and Episcopal Protector over our Franciscan congregation.

Interred here (by virtue of their relics) also are St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Pope St. Fabian, Sst. Elisabeth the New Martyr, and several saints of the Latin West: St. Dominic (founder of the Dominican Order), St. Thomas Aquinas (a doctor of the Roman Church), and St. Rose of Lima (Roman Catholic patroness of the Americas). We are also humbled to be a sanctuary for a second-class relic of St. Anne, Holy Mother of the Most Holy Theotokos. A second-class relic of St. John the Wonderworker also resides here. We follow the same calendar that all of these saints followed, which governed Jesus' lifeworld.

As members of the Western Rite vicariate (ROCOR), we offered the prayers of the Western offices of Matins, Vespers, and Compline and celebrated the Holy Mass according to the Western Usage including the Liturgy of St. Germanus of Paris (blessed and celebrated by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco). Today, as a monastery of the Western American Diocese under the rule of His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill, we continue to pray the monastic cycle and celebrate the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on most Sundays and the principal feast days.

The Russian saints speak powerfully into our situation. Their story is one of furious atheists who suppressed the faith and destroyed places of worship all over the newly conceived Soviet Union. In 1937 and 1938 alone 100,000 members of the clergy were executed. St. Elisabeth, a Lutheran granddaughter of Queen Victoria, sold all that she had following her husband's death, entered religious life as an Orthodox nun, and established the Martha and Mary Home to give succor to orphans and the poor of Moscow, which eventually would house the Sisters of Love and Mercy, which she also founded. Soon, she would be arrested along with her fellows. They were pushed into an abandoned mineshaft into which hand grenades were thrown. An eyewitness described her humility and meekness as she sought to bandage others who were injured prior to her own violent death. Hymns could be heard arising from the shaft. Which saints speak to our time of advancing state atheism, when priests are jailed for quietly praying in public, more powerfully than these, our historical near-contemporaries?

Presently, we pray and worship in our "refugee church" surrounded by tubs of books and furniture stacked on one side of the room, yet under the protecting wing of the Mother of God. We have purchased a building site and lumber for the Hermitage Katholikon, the Church of the Unfading Flower Icon of the Mother of God. But constructing it, under the guidance and direction of His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill, must remain a cherished dream and goal.

We are monastics who live and work in silence. We pray the monastic cycle including the minor hours. And and we offer the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and on the Twelve Great Feasts. Ours is not a public worship space but rather a sacred space. Did you know that the verb consecrate means "to set apart from the world"? And, we have tried to live up to this essence of Christian life, pushing the things of the world out by a fenced perimeter that the Kingdom of God may live and breathe and have its Being.

We welcome visitors who may read or listen to our podcasts. Our prayers continue to be offered that a proper church building might soon be raised where we might warmly welcome all who wish to join us. May God bless you and protect you as you continue your journey in a broken and diseased world. Jesus' desire is that you come to to His sheepfold. He will guide you. There the sheep know His voice,

But the Good Shepherd Himself, Him you must seek and reverence with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. For the first three centuries of the Church, this was the foremost understanding of Christ and of the Church. He has little patience for the half-hearted. And there is no half-way with God (Rev 3:16).

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