Orthodoxy in the United States, Firsthand
Interview with Sister Margarete (Roeber), a nun at the
Holy Assumption Monastery in Calistoga, California
With the blessing
of her abbess, Mother Melania, Sister Margarete has been on a pilgrimage all
over the world, visiting Orthodox communities in Greece, Jerusalem, Georgia,
Poland, Estonia, France, England and Russia. She stays for some time in each
country, seeking for an opportunity to understand the communities’ lives, to
feel their spirit and to acquire new monastic experience. Sister Margarete told
us that among all the destinations they considered for her trip, St. Elisabeth
Convent was the only monastery that her spiritual mother had pointed out as a
“must see”!
During her stay in
our community, Sister Margarete shared with us why her entire family converted
to Orthodoxy from a Protestant confession, how she made her decision to become
a nun, what is special about monastic life in the United States, and also what
brought her to St. Elisabeth Convent in distant Belarus.
Sister Margarete
had turned 15 when her family’s pursuit of life in Jesus Christ began to
encounter difficulties in their Protestant community. Fewer and fewer people
really understood what was happening at the religious service: did it matter
whether the congregation recited a creed together? Was the bread and wine at
Holy Communion the Body and Blood of Christ? Did it matter whether members of
the congregation had been baptized? Gradually, Sister Margarete’s family
realized that no Protestant community they could find would have a unified
understanding of these questions. Eventually, the controversy became so sharp
that the whole family – Sister Margarete’s father, mother, sister, brother, and
herself – converted from Protestantism to Orthodoxy.
– Even back in his Protestant years, my father, a
teacher of theology, knew about the Orthodox faith and shared his knowledge
with our family. And even though I was only 15 and my sister was 16, we
understood his choice very well. He is Father Anthony now. He was ordained
priest in 2015, after serving many years as a deacon.
Converting to Orthodoxy was not easy. Our family has
German roots, and Protestantism is deeply ingrained into German culture. For
us, accepting the Orthodox faith meant entering a completely different cultural
sphere. In addition, parting with fellow parishioners, many of whom we had come
to know very closely, turned out to be quite challenging. Our first years in
the Orthodox Church were marked by mixed feelings: tremendous joy of practicing
the true faith and the sadness of parting with certain people, complicated by
the loss of a familiar worship environment. It seemed like everyone was
expecting us to instantly adopt a whole new cultural identity and start
behaving like Greek or Russian people -- which is, after all, impossible. Our
chrismation into the Orthodox faith took place in an Antiochian parish.
Fortunately, it was multi-cultural, which really helped us blend in.
Sister Margarete
began thinking about monastic life at the age of 18. At that point she had
never even seen a monastic, but the idea of following that path was already in
her heart.
- Once together with a group of orthodox students we
visited a monastery in Guatemala that took care of an orphanage with about 150
children. That was when I first met a monastic sister. Her name was Madre
(Mother) Yvonne. I shared with her my interest in monasticism and asked her for
spiritual advice. She told me that I should visit orthodox monasteries until I
found one that would appeal to me and feel like family. I followed that advice.
Monastic life itself is hard enough, and as I learned
more about the spiritual life, I felt that pursuing it within a completely new
language and culture, be it Greek or Russian, was simply beyond my ability.
Thus, for eight years I visited six different communities in the United States
that serve in English. Finally, one fine day in 2007, God brought me to St.
Barbara Monastery not far from Los Angeles, California where I met Abbess
Victoria. That was the day when I clearly realized that my search was over – I
saw in her my spiritual mother and a person whose spiritual knowledge can guide
others.
Mother Victoria combines such practical qualities as
confidence, sobriety, and stability with tremendous love. She is happy simply
because you are with Christ. You could see it in her eyes, in her voice, even
in the way that she would bless people.
In a surprising
turn of events, however, Sister Margarete was only able to spend four months at
St. Barbara Monastery. When she moved to the monastery in 2009, the
construction of a new church and monastic cells was moving very slowly, and
accommodation for the sisters was limited -- most of them had to stay in
trailer-houses. When a government committee came in 2009, the sisters were
given 30 days get rid of all the trailer homes on the property. This meant that
of the 17 women living at the monastery, 10 of them had to leave, or the
monastery might be shut down. The monastery’s bishop blessed the 10 sisters to
move to the Holy Assumption, an old, non-functioning convent near San Francisco
that was built by Russian nuns, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in the
1940s. The bishop had been trying for several years to convince Mother Victoria
to send sisters there so that monastic life could be renewed. But Mother
Victoria would refuse, arguing that their community was still young, and a
separation might prove harmful. This time, all that the bishop had to say was:
“Sometimes when we cannot make a decision ourselves, God Himself makes it for
us”.
– There is a tradition at our convent to sew your
monastic habit yourself. On the day when we learned about moving to another
convent, Mother Victoria gave me her blessing to set off dressed as a novice,
and I had to make my novice’s dress in a hurry! The day before we left was the
day when I became Sister Margarete. My Rassophore tonsuring took place three
years later, at Holy Assumption Monastery.
Today, Holy
Assumption Monastery is home for 12 monastic sisters, under Abbess Melania. For
the first eight years that the sisters spent in the new monastery, Mother
Victoria remained their abbess, even though she continued to live at St.
Barbara Monastery. Mother Melania, the senior nun at Holy Assumption Monastery,
functioned as Mother Victoria’s deputy, the “acting superior” of the community.
Finally, in July of 2017, the bishop installed Mother Melania as abbess of Holy
Assumption Monastery. The sisters still have a close bond with Mother Victoria
and St. Barbara Monastery, but now the two communities are independent of one
another.
At Holy Assumption
Monastery, the day begins with Orthros at 5:30 AM, and the sisters try to
refrain from talking until the end of breakfast. After breakfast, everyone goes
to their obediences. The 6th Hour is served at 12 noon together with a short
Panikhida for the departed. Then there is a shared meal, after which the sisters
go back to their work routine. Vespers is usually celebrated around 6 PM, and
after a short break, the sisters end their day with Small Compline.
Sister Margarete is
currently assigned two obediences at her convent: she is a cantor and also an
accountant. However, when there are only ten or twelve sisters living in a
community, many people share responsibilities, and a sister can wake up
thinking that she will spend the day working with papers or paying bills and
end up working in the kitchen or taking another sister to the hospital, and the
day will go totally differently.
After spending some
time in Greece and Jerusalem, Sister Margarete has visited St. Elisabeth
Convent and stayed for three months.
– At our new place of residence we cannot easily
communicate with Mother Victoria and rely on her advice as much as we would
before. By the same token, she understands that we are still young and have
none of the experience that communities with long-standing monastic tradition
have. So we need help to deepen our monastery’s spiritual life.
Mother Victoria views my pilgrimage as an opportunity
to become familiar with the diversity of monastic traditions in Orthodox
Church. It takes a while to immerse oneself into the life of a certain
community, to get its feeling. You have to spend some time, carry an obedience
and become a part of the routine.
We did not have many connections to Orthodox
monasteries overseas when I began to look for places to visit. In fact, your
community was the only one that Mother Victoria really insisted that I visit.
Among other reasons, she is deeply interested in the interaction between the
black and the white sisterhood here at St. Elisabeth Convent. This is a new
model that could take root in our communities too, if God wills.
Saint Elisabeth, the heavenly patron of your
community, is beloved by many Orthodox people in America, as she is a wonderful
example of someone from Western culture embracing Orthodoxy. Being a German and
a Lutheran, Grand Duchess Elisabeth consciously took the decision to accept the
Orthodox faith and culture without denouncing her own cultural heritage. Many,
many Orthodox girls in America are named Elisabeth.
– Throughout my entire journey I have felt a subtle
connection with holy mother Elisabeth, and it would be revealed in miraculous
things. At the time of my visit to Jerusalem, for example, I got lost as I was
walking towards the Convent in Gethsemane. The gate leading to St. Mary
Magdalen church was locked. I heard the church bells but I did not know how to
get inside. I sat next to the locked gate, not knowing what to do or where to
go. Suddenly, another pilgrim appeared, asked me if I was Orthodox, and opened
the gate. That was how I first visited the Convent and even got a chance to
attend the Divine Liturgy held solely for that particular group of pilgrims. I
was blessed by an opportunity to venerate the relics of the Royal Martyr, and I
clearly remember constantly addressing her in my prayers, and receiving the
unique feeling of my prayer being heard. This memory gives me strength and
confidence that Saint Elisabeth will not forsake us in her prayers and her
help.
Compiled by Maria Kotova
November 23, 2018
St. Elisabeth Convent
