My visit to Glorious Ascension Monastery

[尼古拉前执事]

Fabulous story Ole Rocker! I'm jealous of your journety this weekend! Is it close enough by for you to attend Divine Liturgy regularly? Did you get the books and tapes he reccomended? If so, please let us know your thoughts on them. God Bless!

[Steve]

It's about an 1-1/2 hour drive. I would love to attend regularly but my wife is not too keen on me going into the Orthodox Church. However, she has given me the green light, which was one of the reasons I visited, to get counsel and guidance. This is not going to be easy on my family and the little community church assembly we attend. My girls are grown and attend where they please. Tricia attends sporadically and is going through some spiritual problems right now. I have risen to a high leadership position at the church. Since it is small, much is required from the ones who dedicate themselves to it. I have been miserable for several years now about not being in an Orthodox Church. I love the people at the assembly dearly, but I won't force on them anything they should chose themselves. And of course the same goes for my wife. We've been married 22 years. I thought when I first announced why we should go to the local OCA mission several years ago our marriage had hit the rockiest point ever.

I have been attending Vespers quite regularly the past 1/2 year. I want to become a catechumen soon and so I am presently laboring over several letters of intention. This helps me gather my thoughts into a comprehensive unit so I can answer a lot of the inevitable questions.

My wife will probably be embarrassed to go to the little church alone. To avoid the looks and the questions she'll probably stay home for a while. I don't know what else to do. This is one of those times when you have to decide alone. And it's also one of those times that others will find very hard to understand.

Pray for us. Hopefully she will come on her own eventually. I will invite her and see what happens. One thing I know for sure; God is greater than all this and aids us both in what we decide.

As for the books, I bought two, on by Fredireca Matthews-Green, "The Illumined Heart". I've just about finished it and will give it to Tricia to read. The other is "Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain - A Handbook of Spiritual Councel. The monk recommended it if I didn't feel that I was ready to jump into "The Ladder of Ascent".

Steve Price

[尼古拉前执事]

Steve,

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 I was a board member at my church before deciding to leave it for the Orthodox Church, so I know what you mean, although your situation is different. If you have to announce it, this is how I would reccomend doing so, take it or leave it.

 "In looking at how churches do different things differently, I started looking to how the Church Fathers did it, how the Church of the New Testament did things, and in doing so, I found that it still exists! I have been studying this for a long time and finally I realized that to be true to myself and true to what God has shown me, I have to join this Church of His. I know this may hurt some of you, but I am positive I am doing what is right and if any of you have questions, I am at your disposal. Thank you for everything and I hope that we can still all be friends. If not, I will treasure the times when we were. God Bless."

 Or something like that. Hopefully if your wife doesn't want to attend this other church, you can convince her to come with you and see what it is you are so excited about in finding. I will keep you in my prayers. May God guide you and wife to Holy Orthodoxy and make you better for the journey. Hopefully she won't mind the fasting before Liturgy and the drive! God Bless.

[Valentina]

Glorious Ascension Monastery is OCA? I thought it was ROCOR.

[Methodius]

Welcome Valentina! Glorious Ascension is ROCOR, the poster above just attends an OCA church. Ole Rocker where are you anyway?

[Valentina]

Oh I see. Thanks for clearing that up Methodius. God Bless!

[尼古拉前执事]

As I understand it, from a friend of mine, Reader Nicholas, who would know, the Monastery came to ROCOR about 5 years ago. The OCA bought the land in the 1980's as the Monastery was an OCA monastery from the 1980's until it left and went to ROCOR.

Previous to that, I hear that they were an Episcopalian Monastery that ran St. Michael's Home for Boys in Mississippi before it burned down. Thank the Lord they found and turned to Orthodoxy!

There are currently rumors that they will be going to the Jerusalem Patriarchate on many mailing lists, but I do not know if there is any basis in fact in this rumor.