All English Parish

[Savva24]

Dear all in Christ,

I am looking for some information on some parishes. I will be moving back to America in about ten months and I am looking for a parish in the New York City general area. We will probably be living in either one of the five boroughs of the city, Lower Westchester, or New Jersy. My conditions are that it has to be ROCOR and it has to be English speaking. My wife is very Japanese, which means that she doesn't feel more foreign to any culture than Russian. She is Orthodox only because of expiriencing it within the bounds of her own culture here in the Japanese Orthodox Church. I used to take her to many different Russian and Greek parishes over the course of our relationship and she never saw anything until going to church here. If it can't be Japanese than she really wants English. Anyway, the non enlish parishes never really bothered me, but they bother my wife but we are both sure that ROCOR is the place for us.

So, I looked on the Synod site and came up with only three all English speaking parishes in either lower NY, Conneticut or New Jersey. There are a lot that say Slavonic and English but that usually means almost no English from my expirience. They are as follows:

Saint Elizabeth the New Martyr Church
Somerville, NJ

St Nicholas Church
Millville, NJ

St. Mark Monastery
117 st. NY. NY

Does anyone know about these parishes or had personaly expirienced the services in any of these places? Is Somerville or Millville anywhere close to New York City? St. Mark's Monastery sounds very interesting to me. Does anyone know anything about this place? It must not have so many visitors being right smack in Spanish Harlem and all. Or perhaps somone else knows of another English speaking parish that I am overlooking.

I remember when the Fathers from Mercy House used to serve litergy every week in English in the downstairs of the Synod Cathedral before they went to the MP. That was great. I hear that they still have an English service there once a month. It would be great if they had them every week again there.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

In Christ,

Nicholas (Savva)

[Mor Ephrem]

I won't be of much help at present, but I might wind up visiting Saint Mark's at some point for a "project" I may do for my religious studies seminar. If I end up visiting, I will let you know what I think (unless others here have visited it and the other places you mentioned, and they are familiar with them, in which case I look forward to their thoughts).

[Savva24]

I won't be of much help at present, but I might wind up visiting Saint Mark's at some point for a "project" I may do for my religious studies seminar. If I end up visiting, I will let you know what I think (unless others here have visited it and the other places you mentioned, and they are familiar with them, in which case I look forward to their thoughts).

Dear Mor,

I am looking forward to what you have to say about St. Mark's. By the way, if your ''project'' is on ''American convert all English Old Calendar Traditional monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Hispanic Ghetto'' you really should check out Mercy House on the Lower East Side as well. I have really fond memories of that place. They have about 5 or 6 monks and it is a really wonderful place. I used to go there and to the monk's services uptown sometimes before they moved from ROCOR to the MP. Fr. Joachim is the Abbot, a really wonderful and charismatic man. It is sad that after they left, their ever growing parishioners all split up, some staying with ROCOR, some going with Fr. Joachim and yet others going in various directions, even out of the Church from what I hear. Actually my friend and I used to talk about how the Mercy House family was really the best example of a really ''American'' Orthodoxy we had ever seen, totally American in culture, almost no three people of the same race or ethnic background, all English, without any of the watering down or Protestantization that you see in more modernist American Jurisdictions. That is the ideal kind of Parish I am looking for.

Mercy House does a lot of good. The upstairs of their building have a small Church named after the wonderful St. Mary of Egypt and some rooms where the monks stay. Downstairs they have a room where they take homeless people in, feed them, and let them stay. When I stayed once there one guy who had been staying there for some time (and eventually became Orthodox) told me that many homeless people who stayed there became Orthodox. I was very touched by some of the stories that are no less than miracles; for example, one man who was once picking garbage out side of Mercy House is now a monk on Mt. Athos!

Fr. Joachim is also a quite amazing person. I would like to share one story about him. Once I called him because one nominally Orthodoxy Christian I know that is a heroine addict expressed to me that he wanted to take a Confession after many years of not going to Church. So we made a trip to Fr. Joachim and I also thought I would take a Confession having been a while. I remember thinking that ''well, Fr. Joachim must be really easy on a ''normal person'' like me in Confession being that he confesses ex-drug addicts, prostitutes ect... Comparatively, I am not so bad.'' I went into Confession with this spirit. Needless to say, he saw right through my arrogance and pride and gave me one heck of a rearing. I have never had such a traumatizing confession. I also asked the other person I went with if the Priest was hard on him at all. He said ''not at all, actually he was really gentle''. It showed me that Fr. Joachim really had an ability to Confess someone exactly as they needed; someone just coming back to faith needed more gentleness when someone who was falling into a worse fate of Pharasiism and pride needed to be verbally slapped around and woken up.

I hear the monks of Mercy House and their remaining parishioners now participate at the MP St. Nicholas cathedral in Manhattan on Sundays. I hear that they are really out of place being so American. It seems that they even have to learn Slavonic to participate (ironically, something ROCOR never required of them).

Anyway, again would appreciate some feedback on St. Marks if you have the chance to go there.

In Christ,

Nicholas (Savva)