Pilgrimage to St.Athanasios Monastery, Chicago.

June 28, 2003

The picture above shows not the way to the monastery (as it would be in Russia) but a part of monastery land. This is Father Chistos, priest from Chicago, who takes care for the monastery now. Some time ago the brethern moved to Greece, so nobody lives here at present, but soon the monastic life will be revived.

This is how the church of St.Athanasios looks inside. Again, its very modest, exactly like most true churches in Russia. But it is a perfect place for daily monastic services:

You can see an icon of St.Seraphim of Sarov at the iconostasis. He is very venerated here, and the chapel of St.Seraphim will be built in the monastery. The place is already selected.

Below you can see the picture of Father Christos and Presbiteria Elena. Some pepole believe that a priest can be evaluated by his matushka. And Presbiteria Elena is a paragon of a True Orthodox Matushka :-)

And this is how the church looks from outside. The entrance:

View from the south:

And this is house for pilgrims:

One of the rooms for pilgrims:

Trapeznaya for pilgrims. Quite a lot of them came to the monastery at the recent feast of St.Athanasios.

The view from the vindow:

The view from another vindow. Monastery gates are hiden by that large single tree. The line of blue firs goes from the gates, along two houses to the church. They usually cut grass here in America, but luckily there is quite a lot of grass in the monastery.

This is the house for monks. It has 6 sells and some ancillary rooms (to prepare prosphoras, to make incense, etc. The house is much more ascetic, than the house for pilgrims.

This is one of the sells:

Kitchen:

This is the only place with the divans. I believe they are for the guests. Also in this corner services are help when there is too much snow outdoors. There were more icons here, but they moed to Greece. Soon there will be more icons here again.

The garage. You can see a small tractor here:

The balcony and one of three monastery's ponds:

The earth is Lord's, and everything in it...