Our Holy Monastery was blessed with a visit from a portion of the brotherhood of the Monastery of Saint Nikodim Agiorit, from the region of Pendalofos in neighboring R. Greece, along with their holy elder and abbot, the Venerable Archimandrite Hrisostom II. The honorable fathers and monastic brothers filled our monastery with monastic joy through their communal love in Christ and their beautiful singing, enriching our celebration of the memory of the great hierarch, Saint Gregory the Theologian.
During the solemn monastic reception (ipodochi), Elder Hrisostom expressed his warm gratitude and shared the reason for their visit, which was to meet with our elder and abbot, Bishop Antaniski of Partenije. They wished to hear the word of God from him, a word of salvation and support for their monastic life and struggles.
We sincerely thank you from the depths of our hearts for the warm, heartfelt, and loving welcome that you have given to me, and my synod. We came to visit you primarily to pay our respects to the holy sites of your sacred monastery, to St. John the Baptist, and to the other saints. However, we also came to be with you because we felt that your respected and beloved Elder has a word from God to share with us through the Holy Spirit. We feel that this charismatic man, the God-loving and Most Reverend Elder Partenij, has a message of salvation for us. Therefore, I believe that our pilgrimage will be greatly beneficial and we will leave with spiritual motivation to continue our monastic life.
Once again, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Our monastery is located near the border of your homeland. It is a dependency of the Holy Mountain and the monastery of Simonopetra, and it is a new monastery. Our Elder, the always-remembered founder of our monastery, laid the foundations of that dependency from scratch, there on the soil of our homeland, as a bulwark of Orthodoxy, because people today truly need re-evangelization.
We feel that we are brothers because we are all Orthodox Christians. The blood of our Christ flows in our veins. Nothing can break the bond of brotherhood that we should have between us. We thank you again from the depths of our hearts and we also wish that when the time comes and God wills it, you will come to us so that we can also return your love. Blessings!
The meeting and fellowship with the brother monks and their holy elder and abbot were of great benefit and support to our brotherhood, as the spirit of love, joy, obedience, unity, and hard work was evident in them. Their coming is a great support and confirmation of the great evangelical work being done by our elder, Bishop Pаrtenij, and a great encouragement for us monks in the struggle of love and obedience.
