ARCHIMANDRITE PANTELEIMON AND HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY

Archimandrite Panteleimon (Nizhnik) – “My Son, do not Lose God!”

Archimandrite Panteleimon, the founder, and builder of Holy Trinity Monastery was born into a simple peasant family in the village or Rechitsa, in the Province of Grodno in Belarus, on January 16, 1895. His family was large, and to feed it, the father of the young Peter (Fr. Panteleimon’s secular name) had to work hard. Peter himself, from his earliest years, was accustomed to the hard work of the farmer.

His mother, a pious woman, imparted to her son a simple faith and was sincerely grieved when she learned that the eighteen-year-old Peter intended to travel to faraway America in order to make money to send home for the support of the family. She knew that many had returned from America having lost their faith, and she wept much over this. Unable to hear the sight of his mother’s tears, Peter asked why she wept so uncontrollably. Through her tears, his mother replied: “My son, do not lose God!” “These words of my mother remained in my heart and my memory all my life”. Fr. Panteleimon was to say in later life.

After his arrival in America, Peter worked first in a sugar factory near Chicago. He had to work on Sundays and feast days, and this weighed heavily upon the conscience of the young man. He thus began to consider how he might escape this, and addressing God, he asked Him: ” Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk O Lord!”. The year 1917 arrived, with all the bloody horrors which inundated the Russian land. Peter’s native village was put to the torch, and his family scattered all over Russia. Peter’s mind and heart inclined towards monasticism and in the year 1918, the twenty-three-year-old man entered the Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk in Pennsylvania. In 1920 Peter received the monastic tonsure, being given the name Panteleimon, and was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon; and in 1921 he was ordained a hieromonk.

He served often, laboured greatly for the good of the community, and diligently read the works of the holy Fathers. His personal piety, and the grace of God, which always “fulfills that which is lacking”, helped him to lead an ascetic life within the monastery. But soon, within ten years of his arrival at the Monastery of St. Tikhon, Fr. Panteleimon reached the conclusion that he could no longer live in a monastery where spiritual decay reigned without endangering his own soul. Many monks who had been ordained to the priesthood went out to service parishes, but Fr. Panteleimon did not consider this a legitimate solution to the situation; he still longed for a strict monastic life. He began to seek out a solitary place for himself, somewhere in a forest, near a spring, where he could “build a chapel in which to pray and live independently, far from the vanity and tumult of the world”.
A place was found – in size slightly more than three hundred acres, in New York State, near the town of Herkimer. In order to pay off even as little as half of the cost of the land, he had to work first for two years in Igor Sikorsky’s aeronautics factory. In the spring of 1930, after Pascha, as Fr. Panteleimon relates, “I arrived alone on my own land. Everything was in a state of neglect. There was tranquillity all around. Not a soul. I climbed a hill several times in the forest, delighting in the surrounding peace, and was able to see my own farm from there. There was a little old two-room cabin, without any windows, and a well nearby. On other portions of the farm, there were four wells. That was all there was. All around there was the forest and silence – a real wilderness. My first purchase for the farm was, I remember, a little metal tea kettle. I used to leave the house and go out to the farmyard, kindle a fire between three stones, and set the kettle, filled with water, over it; then I would go to the store in Jordanville for supplies. By the time I would return, the kettle would have boiled and breakfast would be ready”.

HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY JORDANVILLE NY
Gradually, brethren began to gather around him. His cell in the wilderness began to develop into a skete. In 1935, after Vladyka Vitaly (Maximenko) arrived in America, the consecration of the new church was to take place. On the feast of the Holy Spirit, the divine services were celebrated with great solemnity, presided over by Vladyka Vitaly, culminating in the consecration of the church. All went well, until suddenly, at the end of the liturgy, someone noticed that a fire had broken out on the second floor. The wind soon fanned the blaze, and within a few hours, the new church had burnt to the ground before its founder’s very eyes. It was difficult to bear this loss. But the brethren did not despair. They continued to labour, never losing hope that a church would be erected. In 1945, a new foundation was laid for the future Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The following year, the brotherhood was augmented by monks originally from the Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev in Ladomirova, Czechoslovakia. The monastery began to grow, and Fr. Panteleimon contributed much to this growth by his own labours. He could be seen working at every phase of its construction. He cleared forested areas by himself, excavated ponds and lakes with a bulldozer, worked at typesetting. He managed to publish many books himself, including a twelve-volume set of the Lives of the Saints in Russian, a book on the lives of the ascetics of the 19th century, a handbook for the study of sacred history, and many others.

Fr. Panteleimon passed away on the 14/27 December 1984. May his memory be eternal!