Middletown, New York, April 2, 2026
Photo: antiochian.org
His Eminence Metropolitan Saba of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America led a Lenten monastery pilgrimage for Archdiocesan seminarians last week.
Approximately 80 clergymen, seminarians, and their families joined the Metropolitan on a daylong pilgrimage to St. Dumitru Romanian Orthodox Monastery in Middletown, New York, on Friday, the Archdiocese reports.
The day began with His Eminence presiding over the Presanctified Liturgy marking the Saturday of the Akathist Hymn.
Photo: antiochian.org
The monastery’s abbot, Archimandrite Jeremiah, then addressed the pilgrims, drawing on his personal monastic journey to speak about humility and obedience and how trials serve to strengthen and refine the life of faith. He urged those present to place their trust in God’s mercy and to cultivate an ongoing awareness of His presence as a guiding principle of daily life—what he called the “strategy of the children of God.”
The gathering concluded with a shared meal in the trapeza.
Fr. Jeremiah, formerly a monk of the renowned Putna Monastery in Romania, has been abbot of St. Dumitru Monastery since October 2020.
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Photo: antiochian.org
St. Dumitru Monastery traces its origins to a Romanian immigrant from Tulcea named Dumitru Minciu, who purchased 42 acres of land in Mount Hope, New York, where he lived in solitude. He became a spiritual son of Archimandrite Vasile Vasilache, rector of St. Nicholas Parish in New York, and upon his repose in 1991 bequeathed his estate to the parish.
Following a decade of legal proceedings, the property was transferred in 2001 and converted into a monastic establishment with a chapel dedicated to St. Dimitrie the New, a refectory, a library and monastic cells. Fr. Vasilache, who reposed in 2003, left a substantial portion of his estate to the monastery toward the construction of a church.
Monastic life was formally organized beginning in March 2006 with the arrival of monks from Bistrița-Neamț Monastery.
The monastery church was built between 2007 and 2011 and consecrated on June 5, 2011, in the presence of nearly 1,000 faithful.
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