July
30, 2012
Mahopac,
NY:
Bishop
Peter
of
Cleveland
led
services
for
the
departed
in
honor
of
the
25th
anniversary
of
the
repose
of
Archbishop
Seraphim
(Ivanov)
On
Wednesday, July 25, His Grace Peter, Bishop of Cleveland,
Administrator of the Chicago Diocese, celebrated a Liturgy for the
Departed in the
New
Kursk Root Hermitage in Mahopac, NY, on the anniversary of the
repose of the founder of this holy place, Archbishop Seraphim
(Ivanov). His Grace was co-served by Archpriest Andre Papkoff and
Abbot Cornelius, as well as Protodeacon Sergei Arlievsky (cleric of
Holy Dormition Convent "Novo-Diveevo") and parish Deacon George
Temidis. During the Liturgy, the clergy commemorated Serbian
Patriarch Varnava, marking the 75th anniversary of his repose. It is
interesting to note that, while he was still a metropolitan,
Patriarch Varnava ordained the future Archbishop Seraphim a
hieromonk in Serbia in the 1920s. Bishop Peter and Fr. Andre came to
Mahopac from Chicago to mark the 25th anniversary of Archbishop
Seraphim’s repose. From 1957 until his repose, Archbishop Seraphim
was the ruling bishop of the Diocese of Chicago & Detroit.
Immediately following Liturgy, everyone walked down to the cemetery,
where a panihida was served at the tomb of Archbishop Seraphim, who
reposed exactly 25 years ago in 1987, here, in the New Kursk Root
Hermitage he helped build. In his sermon, Bishop Peter made note of
two places that Archbishop Seraphim left behind as his legacy: the
New Kursk Root Hermitage in Mahopac, and a property in Vladimirovo
near Chicago, the territory of which is used to this day by the
children’s summer camp Organization of Russian Orthodox Pathfinders
(ORPR), which Archbishop Seraphim founded in the beginning of the
1960s.
At a humble luncheon, Bishop Peter and Fr. Andre shared their
recollections of Archbishop Seraphim. Born Leonid G. Ivanov in 1897
in Kursk, he was a volunteer in the First World War and in the White
Army; he was wounded in battle, evacuated to Yugoslavia through the
Crimea, graduated Belgrade University with a major in philosophy and
theology, and in 1926 was tonsured to the Lesser Schema in St.
Panteleimon’s Monastery on Mount Athos. He took an active publishing
and editing role in the restoration of St. Job of Pochaev Publishing
House in Vladimirovo in the Carpathian Mountains, and continued it
in the United States in Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, and
in the New Kursk Root Hermitage, having played a large role in the
work of proliferating Church literature both in the Russian Diaspora
and in the areas of Russia occupied by the Germans during World War
II. Archbishop Seraphim’s whole life was inseparably tied to the
life of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
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