How a monastery celebrates a brotherhood monk
name day - the feast of (Saint Sergii from Radonezh) in Bulgarian
Orthodox Church
Now it is my 4th day being in
Pomorie Monastery with Kimba.
The monastic life is not so boring as I thought back in the days
:)
Yesterday I was drived to the Kamenar pub, by one of the workers
here in the monastery (with the monastic car an old
Ford);
We went to the restaurant in
Kamenar village with the
blessing of the abbot has blessed that we go and enjoy ourselves
for few hours there with a group of tourists staying for (1 or 2)
weeks in the monastery.
The pub was quite a news for me as it was a nice looking place with
a lounge and swimming pool, this seemed quite unusual for
especially since it was located in a village with 200 or 300
hundred of people living :)
The village pub had even a billiard table, the coin price there was
on the shocking 25 stotinki (0.13) euro cents! :)
In the pub came an orthodox priest dressed like a casual person and
started singing some traditional old Bulgarian songs (typical for
singing in the different regions in BG). The guy was really
talented and his memory seem to be very strong, since he was able
to sing by heart about 10 songs in a row !
Besides that the priest voice was very beautiful. When I later had
a talk with the guy it appeared, he learned professional singing
before he became an Orthodox priest some years ago.
What really shocked me when the priest started singing in Italian
Luciano Pavaroti, he sang it so well so you can hardly find
out if it is not really the real authentic Luciano voice :)
This priest and the overall people in the pub had a great fun, as
the place and people in were quite spirited; Actually I felt in a
while like being in Emil Kosturica's movie
:) :)
Being over with yesterday I will say few words on my monastic
experience today ....
The Church bell rang early in the morning to summit the monks for
the early morning prayer followed by a Holy Liturgy served. The
Holy Liturgy today served was a co-memoration of the feast of
Saint Sergii of Radonezh.
Cause it is weekly day here there were not too many people in the
monastic Church. The monastery monks were there,few other people
and some Russian pilgrim woman. By the way I'm more and more being
convinced that many of the Russian people are very pious oriented
and have strong faith in God than us bulgarians. Sadly it appears
(from my observations so far) Russians generally are richer in
faith.
It is sad that Russian Orthodox Christianity is stronger than ours
in Bulgarian, especially when we take the fact historically
Russians have received the Orthodox Chrisitian faith and language
from us Bulgarians ...
One of the key figure (brothers) monks
Father Sergii is
having a name day here, so due to that and because it is not a
fasting day today (Thursday), the traditional monastic dinner was
bigger and more rich than usual. Some youghurt mixed with cucumbers
(Tarator) as we call it in Bulgaria was served with a little salad
a few pieces of
Banica and even little meat balls (for
people eating meat).
The Abbot of the monastery was not served meat as I heard from the
cook lady he is completely abstaying from meat since about 10 years
already; some of the monk brother didn't eat meat as well.
The dinner started about 12:20 in the usual dinner room. For
another day the food in the monastery was tasting
super-delicious.
It is rather interesting that the food here is more delicious than
the food we usually eat at home; Probably the food is so delicious
because large portion of the food on the table is monastic-grown
and besides that a food blessing prayer is said everytime before
eat time. Earlier times I've heard many others who visited and eat
food in monasteries that the monastic food is tastier and more
delicious than we ordinary people have on our tables, however I was
sceptical until I experienced it myself, these days.
Cause the food is so tasteful, I consume here usually twice more
food than I usually eat at home :)
I recommend anyone who didn't eat a meal in a monastery (yet) to
try this at least once in a lifetime ;;;