The Abbey of The Holy Name

Welcome to The Abbey of the Holy Name

An Orthodox Monastery under the Rule of Saint Benedict, within the Archdiocese of New York & New Jersey
of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America & the British Isles.

The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia

About the Abbey

The Abbey of the Holy Name is a monastery subject to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia and is under the governance of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles, a Synod of the Orthodox Church which was granted autonomy by the Ukrainian and Greek Old Calendar Churches to govern Churches of both the Eastern and the ancient Western Rites for people in the Western world. It is one of the monasteries of the American Congregation of the Primitive Observance of the Order of St. Benedict that includes monasteries for men or women in the United States and Western Europe under the governance of the same Metropolia. The Holy Rule, which was written by St. Benedict about the year 540 A.D. is the oldest Rule that survives for any Order of monks from the western lands of the Orthodox Church.

The Practices of the Monastery

Life at the Abbey

The life of the monastery is centered in its liturgical life and prayer. At the Abbey, the Sacred Liturgy of the Mass, known as the Rite of St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Old Rome, is generally sung according to the Sarum Use of the Western Rite given in the Missale Sarisburiense, an eleventh century codification of the Mass rite that was celebrated at the end of the first millennium throughout Northern Europe and parts of North America at that time, and this differs even from the “traditional” rites issued by the Roman Popes in the sixteenth century, which themselves were an attempt to dilute the sober, contrition-evoking mode of true catholic worship.

On Becoming a Monk

Vocations

When someone enters the monastery to become a monk, he spends six months in the monastery as an Oblate Brother, a time spent proving that he has the genuine desire to follow monastic discipline for the sake of his own repentance and the saving of his soul. Afterwards he is tonsured and begins a novitiate of at least three years until the time of his profession of monastic vows.