JERUSALEM: June 18, 2012
Gorny Convent Celebrates its Feast Day

On June 17, 2012, the day of All Russian Saints, Gorny Convent marked the feast day of its main church.

On the eve of the celebration, Protopriest Viktor Mnoyan, a clergyman of the convent, performed all-night vigil with Hieromonk Antony (Gutnik), Secretary of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission of the Moscow Patriarchate, and Hieromonk Innokenty (Bespalov), also a convent cleric.

On the feast day itself, Divine Liturgy was celebrated by His Eminence Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany. He was joined by the REM head, Archimandrite Isidor, the convent’s clergymen and clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Abbess Elizabeth of Mary Magdalene Church in Gethsemane Convent prayed at the service with her nuns. Afterwards, a procession of the cross took place.

Vladyka Mark congratulated the believers, saying in part: “Holy Russia, through its podvizhniki, was able to attract a great many podvizhniki from other peoples. St Procopius of Ustyug, for instance, who hailed from northern Germany, and Holy Grand Duchess Elizabeth, too. They converted to Orthodox Christianity within a culture and language foreign to them. On the other hand, far from the Russian lands, we have such saints as John the Russian, in Greece, or closer to our time, St John of Shanghai and San Francisco. They brought a bit of Holy Russian outside of her borders, and spread the faith in Christ to alien lands. All the saints who illuminated Russia are bound together by the fact that they acquired such virtues as meekness and humility. Let us first and foremost emulate our saints in this way.”

Communications Service of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.