Mati Efrosinia of New Stjenik Monastery Aggressively Ejected from the Cathedral of Our Lady Joy of All Who Sorrow, San Fransisco CA
Bright Week, Pascha 2011
On a pilgrimage to the US this past Lenten/Paschal season, Mati Efrosinia of New Stjenik Monastery was unceremoniously shown the door of St John’s cathedral in San Francisco when she was taken to venerate the holy saint’s relics.
Mati Efrosinia, accompanied by another sister, arrived directly from the SF airport at the Cathedral in time for Vespers on Wednesday of Bright Week, knowing that the church would be open to the faithful only at that time.
The sisters went directly to the relics and spent the entire time of the service praying before them. They placed many letters of supplication from various faithful beneath the glass sepulchre, as is customary, along with many icons and prayer ropes on top of the relics which they had promised to give to others as blessings.
Kneeling, focused only on praying to the saint, the sisters did not even notice when the service ended. All at once, they were suprised by an aggrieved voice behind them.
“Sisters, you didn’t venerate the holy Cross!”
Bewildered, the nuns turned to see a priest standing behind them, gripping the cross.
“Sisters, aren’t you going to venerate the holy cross?”
They stood up.
“Forgive us, but we don’t belong to the Moscow Patriarchate.”
“Very well, you don’t have to kiss my hand, but you should at least venerate the cross of Christ.”
“Forgive us, but we can’t, not from your hands. Please, we just want to pray to St John.”
The priest’s barely controlled anger spilled over.
“Even the Catholics will venerate the cross of Christ!” He turned around to a few people who were standing nearby, saying,
“These nuns won’t venerate the cross of Christ!” Each time he repeated these words they became more enraged.
“Sisters, this is St John’s church! He is embarrassed!”
The final blow.
“Well, if you don’t want to venerate the cross of Christ, take your stuff and leave!”
Dazed, the sisters gathered their things and left the church. As soon as they went through the doors, however, they tried to reenter, hoping to be able to buy a few more icons to give to various faithful. Even further to their surprise, they found the doors were already locked.
Very dissappointed with the curtailed end of this rare chance to be in the presence of St John’s earthly remains, the sisters nevertheless tried to temper this dissappointment with an acceptance of God’s will.
Upon relaying their experience to many believers from different synods, the sisters’ confusion was increased. By all appearances, such thing has never happened to anyone, no matter what group they may belong to. All report that all sorts of individuals have been able to pray by the relics for long periods of time, without any participation in a service that may be going on, and have never been subject to any harrassment from the cathedral clergy.
How could this priest have known who the Stjenik sisters were? Or what could have motivated him to approach them, out of hundreds of pilgrims who come to the saint every year? Unquestionably, many of these pilgrims never venerated the cross from the priest. The answers to these questions can only be guessed.
Some present upon this occasion informed Mati that this priest was Fr Peter Perekrestov, who, they explained, was a strong pro-MP advocate in the times leading up to the union.
This cannot explain, however, why or how he singled out Mati of all people, who has never met or heard of him before.
It must be noted, however, that such experiences are nothing new for New Stjenik’s abbess. Not only in Serbia, where she is well known, and has been ejected from several historical churches on pilgrimages, but even outside the country she has been subject to such treatment, for example, in a monastery which St John helped found, in England, near London, which now belongs to the Cyprianites.