Ellwood City’s Transfiguration Monastery to celebrate patronal feastday pilgrimage, continues building expansion
The sisterhood of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration here anxiously await welcoming pilgrims at their annual patronal feastday and pilgrimage that will open with the celebration of the festal Vigil on Sunday, August 5, 2012 at 5:00 p.m.
On Monday, August 6, the procession followed by the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy will begin at 9:30 a.m. His Eminence, Archbishop Nathaniel of Detroit and the Romanian Episcopate, Locum Tenens of the Metropolitan See, will preside and deliver the homily. The liturgical responses will be sung by the nuns.
At 2:00 p.m., Orthodox missionaries from Albania, Nathan and Gabriella Hoppe, will address pilgrims about their work. The Sacrament of Holy Unction and Anointing of the Sick will be celebrated at 2:30 p.m.
During the pilgrimage, two new major panel icons recently installed in the monastery chapel will be blessed—Hospitality of Abraham, and “Do not lament Me, O Mother.”
Among the improvements will be an all-purpose meeting and class room, an enlarged gift shop, a new hospitality room for quiet conversation among pilgrims, a beautified foyer, handicapped accessible restrooms, a new garage, and enhanced kitchen storage.
Blessing and breaking ground for Phase 2 of the project will be conducted after the pilgrimage Divine Liturgy. Phase 2 includes a small chapel for personal and intercessory prayer, new vestment and sacristy in the monastery church, an archives room, and a sewing room.
For further information and to donate to the building fund, see the monastery website.