On January 15, the feast day of St. Seraphim of Sarov the Wonderworker, the Holy Dormition Convent “Novo-Diveevo” (Nanuet, NY) celebrated the patronal feast of its main cathedral.

St. Seraphim is the heavenly patron of the monastery, which was founded in the mid-20th century as a spiritual continuation of the Diveevo tradition on American soil.

The festive Divine Liturgy was led by the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Metropolitan Nicholas. On the eve of the feast, the greatest of Orthodox holy sites—the Miraculous Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God—was brought to the monastery. All worshippers had the opportunity to venerate this sacred icon.

A year ago, the Novo-Diveevo Convent held grand celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of its founding, attended by a vast gathering of clergy and laity. The founder of the monastery, Protopresbyter Adrian Rimarenko (later Archbishop Andrew of Rockland), personally laid a stone containing a fragment of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov into the foundation of the future church.

This convent is one of the few in the United States where the full daily cycle of services is performed in Church Slavonic, providing daily spiritual guidance to the faithful. The monastery carefully preserves Orthodox relics brought out of Russia more than 100 years ago during the Revolution, such as the only portrait of St. Seraphim of Sarov painted during his lifetime, a silver cross from the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg (where the Royal Family was executed), and personal belongings, icons, and a Bible that belonged to members of the Romanov family.

Furthermore, the monastery grounds house the largest Orthodox cemetery in America, which serves as a historical necropolis of the Russian emigration and has become a kind of open-air museum. Novo-Diveevo always welcomes volunteers (trudnitsas) and novices who wish to stay and labor for the benefit of the cloister. Pilgrims are always greeted here with warm hospitality.