Mt. Athos, March 21, 2019
Photo: bg-patriarshia.bg
The holy Bulgarian Monastery of Zographou on Mt. Athos experienced the joy of a double celebration on the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy this year.
On the same day that the Church celebrates the defeat of the Iconoclastic heresy and declares anathemas against all those who blaspheme God and fight the Church, a triumph of Orthodoxy was celebrated in the life of Elenko Velkov who dedicated his life to God by receiving the monastic tonsure.
His Eminence Metropolitan Jeremiah of Gortynos and Megalopolis says about the monastic tonsure:
But elect souls come—men and women, young and old, who desire to renew the vows of their holy Baptism, to now consciously say that they reject all the works of satan and fully belong to God, and repeat the cutting of their hair, as was done at Baptism. The tonsuring of the hair firstly symbolizes our offering to God from the very top of our body, and secondly, it means the forsaking of our wicked thoughts and the consecration of our mind to God.
Thus, the monastic tonsure is, above all, a repeating of our baptismal vows… but not only that. We can also speak of the monastic tonsure as a marriage. The soul of a monk or nun enters into marriage with Christ, and the angels are present at this moment and bear witness to the sacredness and indissolubility of this union.
He was born on May 12, 1976. He became a novice at Zographou on June 30, 2017.
Novice Elenko was tonsured during the Small Entrance in the Divine Liturgy under the mantle of his spiritual father Schemamonk Nicholas, taking the name Spyridon, reports the site of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
The tonsure was celebrated by the monastery abbot Schema-Archimandrite Ambrose, with Hieromonks Gabriel, Kirill, and Justin concelebrating at the Liturgy.
Following the Liturgy and the communal meal, the newly-tonsured Fr. Spyridon was taken to the cell of Abbot Ambrose where he accepted congratulations from the brothers and guests of the monastery, with a wish for strength in the podvig of blessed prayer.
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