Christ is Risen! Χριστός Ανέστη! Христосъ воскресе!
We just arrived back at our little convent in Sweden after spending Holy Week and Pascha with our sisters at the Convent of the Holy Angels in Greece. On Bright Monday, we had the blessing of going on a pilgrimage to some of the lesser known sites related to St. Philothei, located in the district of Athens named after her.
To begin with, we visited the cave to which St. Philothei would occasionally resort in order to pray more ascetically in secret, and the Church dedicated to her located just above the cave, where we venerated the relic of her hand.
We then drove a short distance to the spot where St. Philothei founded a convent with a Church dedicated to the Entrance of the Mother of God in the Temple (see the original Church below). It was here that she reposed four months after being beaten nearly to death by the Muslim Turks.
During our pilgrimage, we naturally prayed for St. Philothei's continuing assistance with our building project. And she was quick to hearken! Early the next morning we received an official notification announcing the approval of our building permit, which had been issued the previous day - the very day we had asked for our Saint's intercessions!
We contacted our contractor, who was both delighted and astonished that our building permit had been approved only six weeks after completion of the application. There are a number of steps we have to go through before being able to get started, but, God willing, it now looks as if we should be able to begin work on the foundation as early as mid-June.
The process thus far has not been without a couple of small and rather amusing hiccups. First, the official in charge of our case informed us that one of the cells must be large enough to fit a double bed (literally a "couple's bed" in Swedish, repulsively enough for a monastic!), and then we were told to indicate where we hold our seances! Fortunately, we were able to clear things up easily enough!
Less amusingly, the building permit itself cost 7000 kronor (approximately 700 euros) more than expected, and the new estimate we received from the firm that will dig the foundation (after we changed our plan from 5 to 6 cells) was a whopping 20,000 kronor more than for our original plan. But once again, St. Philothei has already provided for these extra costs. Recently, we received three more extraordinarily generous donations, which will not only help us economically, but which moved us deeply:
First, on the feast day of our convent, we received a message from a pious young woman we know who had considered becoming a nun, but who eventually found that she had a different calling in life. She wrote that she would consider it a blessing to be able to donate a very large sum in order to give the possibility for someone else to live the monastic life at a convent that bears the name of her own beloved Patron Saint. The second donation came from a family we have never met who went so far as to thank us for the opportunity to show their gratitude to God for all the blessings He has given them. And the third came from the St. Edward Brotherhood Orthodox Aid Fund, from contributions made by the faithful who have already helped us so many times in the past. We also thank everyone else for your donations, prayers, and best wishes. May the Risen Lord recompense you all a hundredfold in this life and the next!
