On April 18, Thursday of the 6th Week of Great Lent, in the evening after Great Compline, our abbot, Bishop Luke of Syracuse, performed the mystery of the tonsure to the Little Schema.  This was truly a feast of the monastery as three of our rassaphore monks were tonsured into the angelic state.

It has become traditional for the monastery to celebrate the mystery of Holy Unction on Tuesday of the 6th Week of Great Lent.  And so, many people gathered at the monastery for this service, many arriving from neighboring parishes besides the members of our community and our neighbors. 

The first attempt at compiling an annotated database of the departed who are buried in the cemeteries of Holy Trinity Monastery was carried out in 1996 by an enthusiastic amateur historian from Michigan, Andrei Alekseevich Lyubimov. The results of his research were published in the journal Letopis’ Russkogo zarhubezh’ia (no. 2, 1996 and no. 3 for 1997). In 2005, Hieromonk Evtikhii (Dovganiuk) submitted to Holy Trinity Orthodox Theological Seminary his dissertation, A Draft of a Guidebook for the Necropolis of Holy Trinity Monastery (in Russian). The Holy Trinity seminarian, Vladimir Davydov, developed Fr. Evitikhii’s work, presenting his thesis to Holy Trinity Seminary in 2009. In 2012-14, Andrei A. Lyubimov resumed his cataloguing of the cemeteries, having arrived in Jordanville at the invitation of the Foundation of Russian History, headed by the seminary' deaan Archpirest Vladimir von Tsurikov. In 2015, the results of A. Lyubimov’s and Fr. Vladimir von Tsurikovs' collaboration came out of the Moscow press, Staraia Basmannaia, under the title, Dzhordanvil’skii nekropol’. Meanwhile, in 2012, the internet site, Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad, began to video-record numerous commentaries made in Russian by Hieromonk Roman (Krassovsky) and Protodeacon Viktor Lochmatow at selected graves of the Jordanville cemeteries. However, the seminary professor and editor of the website, Deacon Andrei Psarev, did not have the resources for posting annotated video materials on the website. The situation changed for the better in October 2018, when the Canadian foundation, Russkaia Dusha (The Russian Soul), allocated a grant for placing video materials on the website, Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. Each video is accompanied by a reference to the book, Dzhordanvil’skii nekropol’ and can be viewed here: http://www.rocorstudies.org/ jordanville/

For a number of years, during Great Lent, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of St. James, the Brother of the Lord, has been celebrated.  This was instituted by our abbot, Archimandrite Luke, now Bishop Luke. As he has done every year, he celebrated this liturgy for the spiritual edification of the brethren and the faithful and to strengthen our ties with the early Church.  This is especially interesting for our seminarians, who never had witnessed this type of liturgy.

As has become a fixed tradition in the monastery, many Serbian pilgrims, mainly from New York, but also from other parts, joined the brotherhood in celebrating the Veneration of the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord on the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent.  For us it is a great joy to share this mid-Lenten commemoration with our brethren in the faith.