Memorial Day

Each year the St. Tikhon’s Monastery and Seminary Community opens its arms in dramatic fashion to the greater Orthodox and non-orthodox community. This is a labor of love, the preparation for which is a several weeks long endeavor that involves every person associated with both the Monastery and the Seminary as well as many friends and families, volunteers from neighboring parishes and long-time supporters.

This labor of love is, in many ways, an iconic representation of our relationship with the world and an articulation of our place it that world. Each year we open up our lives to everyone who wishes to come and take part in the pilgrimage and each year we are surprised by the response. 

This year, despite the heat, thousands of Pilgrims turned out to spend Memorial Day with the St. Tikhon’s Community.

St. Tikhon’s is particularly suited for this endeavor because it is something we do each year at the beginning of the Academic school year. Then again at the end of that same year we say goodbye to those graduates who leave us to go elsewhere in the service of the Church. This ebb and flow of loved ones in and then out of our lives is the very natural rhythm of our community. It is at times difficult and emotional but the shouldering of this burden is one that makes us who we are.

The Memorial Day Pilgrimage is an opportunity to reunite with friends and loved ones as they come here and for all of us to pray together, one for another - to share stories with one another, to teach one another, and to remember together.

A “motto” is defined as “a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization.” The motto of St. Tikhon’s is For the Life of the World and its Salvation.

Thank you for helping us as we try to embody that reality.

Thank you for allowing us to share our lives with you.

Thank you for sharing each of your lives with us, and God willing we hope to see you again next year.