HOLY RESURRECTION
MONASTERY
MONASTIC TYPIKON
HOLY RESURRECTION MONASTERY
300 S 2nd Ave
Saint Nazianz, WI 54232
May 2014
Contents
Reference to Canons 7
Title I: Basic Principles 7
Patronage 8
Title II: Legal Identity 9
Chapter 1 Identity in Canon Law 9
Chapter 2 Identity in Civil Law 9
Title III: The Role and Purpose of Monastic Life 9
Title IV: The Vows 11
Chapter 1 Consecration 11
Chapter 2 Obedience 11
Practical Norms 12
Chapter 3 Chastity 12
Practical norms 13
Chapter 4 Poverty 13
Practical norms 14
The Monastery’s Goods 14
Title V: Church Hierarchy 15
Chapter 1 Eparchial Bishop 15
Specific Rights and Obligations of Eparchial Bishop 15
Hegumen 15
Monks in Holy Orders 16
Monastic Profession 16
Privileged Communications 16
Role of the Monastery in the Eparchy 16
Chapter 2 Metropolitan 16
Chapter 3 The Apostolic See 17
Title VI: Superiors and Offices in the Monastery 17
Chapter 1 Hegumen 17
Father of the Monastery 17
Legal Status 17
Specific Rights and Responsibilities 18
Admission of New Monks 18
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5
Promotion to Holy Orders 19
Election by Synaxis 19
Resignation or Removal 19
Chapter 2 Spiritual Fathers 19
Chapter 3 Other Offices 20
Protos 20
Economos 20
Ecclesiarch 21
Cantors 21
Other 21
Chapter 4 Council and Synaxis 21
Synaxis 22
Council 22
Voting 23
Title VII Admission to the Monastery 23
Chapter 1 Discernment Process 23
Chapter 2 Observership 23
Chapter 3 Admission as Postulant 24
Appointment of a personal spiritual father 24
Chapter 4 Application to Join the Monastery 24
Men who are canonically ineligible to be monks 24
Documents Required 25
Chapter 5 Admission as a Novice 25
Length of Novitiate 26
Chapter 6 Leaving the Monastery while in Formation 26
Chapter 7 Formation of Novices and Postulants 26
Formation Master 26
Spiritual Father 27
Financial Arrangements 27
Chapter 8 Final Profession to the Monastic State 27
The three degrees 28
Title VII: Details of the Life 28
Chapter 1 Limitations on Growth 28
Chapter 2 Liturgical and Prayer Life 28
Chapter 3 Silence Private Prayer 30
Distractions 30
Chapter 4 Community Life 30
Chapter 5 External Signs of the Monk 31
Habit of a Novice 31
Lesser Schema 31
Great Schema 31
Wearing the Habit 32
Beard 32
Forms of Address and Signature 32
Monastic name 32
Chapter 6 Fasting 32
Chapter 7 The Kitchen and Trapeza 35
Chapter 8 Meals 35
Chapter 9 Work 35
Chapter 10 Debts 36
Chapter 11 Hospitality 36
Almsgiving 36
Chapter 12 Study 37
Formal education 37
Chapter 13 Going outside the Monastery 37
Chapter 14 Penalties and sanctions 37
Chapter 15 Precedence in the Monastery 37
Chapter 16 Interpreting the Typikon 38
Title IX: Death of a Monk 38
Title X: Exclaustration and Leaving the Monastery 39
Chapter 1 Transfer to Another Monastery 39
Chapter 2 Voluntary leaving 39
Chapter 3 Dismissal 40
Title XI: Eremitic Life 40
Title XII: Other Monasteries 41
Chapter 1 Metochia 41
Chapter 2 Federation 41
Title XIII The Idiorhythmic Monk 41
Title XIV Lay Association 43
Endnotes 44
TITLE I: BASIC PRINCIPLES 7
Master give the blessing! In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This is the monastic Typikon written by the brotherhood of Holy Resurrection Monastery. It sets out, to the best of our ability, the kind of life we wish to live under God and for His glory, including some important practical norms for this purpose. It replaces the “Provisional Typ- ikon” approved on August 4th, 1995 by Kyr George (Kuzma), Eparchial Bishop of Van Nuys of the Ruthenians and the Monastic Typikon approved by the latter in 2000.
Reference to Canons
Unless otherwise stated, all references to Canons in this Typikon are to the Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientaliam, (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, or CCEO) promulgated 18 October, 1990 by His Holiness, John Paul II, Pope of Rome.
Title I Basic Principles
§1 Holy Resurrection Monastery is a monastic community of men dedicated to the tradi- tional monastic life of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.
§2 The brotherhood of Holy Resurrection Monastery exists for the salvation of its members by living in common the evangelic life: the renouncing of sin and sinful passions in favor of the Kingdom of the Father revealed in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit poured forth in the Church. To this end, the monks:
a. profess the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty,
b. serve together the Divine Praises, Divine Liturgy and other liturgical services of the Byz- antine Church,
c. strive for ceaseless prayer and for the perfection of the Gospel by constant repentance (metanoia), the practice of virtues (praxis) and seeking the gift of divine contemplation (theoria),
d. practice hospitality as far as they can toward all visitors,
e. minister, insofar as they are able, to the spiritual and temporal needs of all who ask their help, and
f. support this lifestyle as far as possible by the labor of their hands.
§3 In living this vocation, the monks of Holy Resurrection Monastery also serve the whole Church by their prayers and by providing a model of living the Gospel. Many times the Church’s saints and pastors have emphasized the importance of the monastic witness for the whole Church. Canon 410 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, states that monas- ticism:
“... is a stable mode of common life in an institute approved by the Church, in which the
Christian faithful, by closer following Christ, the teacher and examplar of holiness, un-
der the action of the Holy Spirit, totally dedicate themselves by a new and special title
through public vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, observed according to the norms
of the statutes under a lawful superior, they renounce the world and totally dedicate
themselves to the acquisition of perfect charity in service to the Kingdom of God for the
building up of the Church and the salvation of the world as a sign of the foretelling of
heavenly glory.”1
Patronage
§4 The Monastery is dedicated to the Holy Resurrection of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
§5 The principal feast of the Monastery is September 13th, the Commemoration of the Re- dedication of the Church of the Holy Resurrection in Jerusalem in the Year of our Lord, 335.
§6 The second feast of the Monastery is that of the All-Holy Mother of God, Searcher for the Lost, to which the main altar of the Monastery Katholikon is dedicated. We observe this feast on February 5th, but by leave of our Bishop we celebrate the main observance of this feast annually on the date appointed each year for the main public pilgrim- age to the Monastery.
§7 The other feast days to be observed as feasts of the Monastery (ie. with the celebration of a Vigil) are to include:
a. in Great Lent, the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt,
b. the commemorations of all saints and other feasts to which any Altar is dedicated in a Temple within the Monastery;
c. December 6th, our holy Father among the Saints, Nicholas the Wonderworker, Arch- bishop of Myra in Lycia, patron of the Byzantine Catholic Church;
d. December 12th, the Feast of the Appearance of the Mother of God at Guadalupe in Mexico, patroness of the Americas;
e. the Name Days of the ruling Metropolitan, Bishop and Hegumen.
§8 DELETED.
TITLE III: ROLE & PURPOSE OF MONASTIC LIFE 9
Title II
Legal Identity
Chapter 1 Identity in Canon Law
§9 Holy Resurrection Monastery is subject to the Eparchy of St. George in Canton for Romanian Catholics.
§10 As such, the monks are members of the Romanian Greek Catholc Church sui iuris and in union with the Pope of Rome.
§11Holy Resurrection Monastery is a monastery of eparchial right.
§12 Holy Resurrection Monastery is a juridic person with full capacity to acquire, posses, administer or alienate temporal property subject to canon law, Eparchial particular law, civil law and this Typikon.
Chapter 2 Identity in Civil Law
§13 A nonprofit corporation, Holy Resurrection Community, has been established accord- ing to the laws of California and the United States. The corporation is the servant of the Monastery and enables it to function as a legal person under the prevailing civil law.
§14 Copies of the Articles of Incorporation, By-laws and other corporate records required by civil law shall be kept by the Hegumen of the Monastery who shall send them to the Eparchial Bishop and make them available to all other competent authorities on request.
Title III
The Role and Purpose of Monastic Life
§15 Christ tells us, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”2 To the rich young man, He says: “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”3
§16 It was this Gospel that St. Antony of Egypt heard read in the church and which, in a single instant, changed his life as “the blessed man received the word of the Gospel as a sign to himself”4. So too have countless other men and women taken up the struggle for personal perfection, so that they might find heaven even now in this earthly life. The Eastern Churches have always called monasticism the ‘angelic life’, for in it men and women may begin to take up their eternal destiny of unending participation in the life and glory of the All-Holy Trinity. Archimandrite Aemilianos writes that,
“for the monk the monastery is the place of his crucifixion and burial, the unique place
where he can live out heaven on earth—for every monastery is, in itself, the New Jerusa- lem, ‘coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God’ (Rev. 21:10–11).”5
§17 The monks of Holy Resurrection Monastery, then, are above all else, patients of the physician Christ, “Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with his steadfast love and mercy....”6 Every monk is to be absolutely committed to the perfection available to him through faith in Christ by the power of his holy Church.
§18 In the Christian East, and especially in the traditions of the Byzantine Church, monas- ticism is seen not merely as one kind of ‘vocation’ among many in the Church. Rather, the ‘angelic life’ is seen to be a distillation of all that is most important in the life of the Gospel. It is what His Holiness Pope John Paul II calls, “the very soul of the Eastern Churches”. It is viewed not as a “separate condition, proper to a precise category of Christians, but rather a reference point for all the baptized...a symbolic synthesis of Christianity.”7
§19 Byzantine monasticism has thus a paradigmatic quality. It draws its inspiration from other historical paradigms of Gospel living: the ideal Church community of Acts8, and the self-emptying witness of Christ, the martyrs and confessors. Together with these, the monas- tic order stands in the place of the prophets, pointing always away from the secular, away from the world. It is a sign of the reality of the Kingdom which is already enjoyed by the saints but is yet to be realized on earth in its fullness. The Church pours out her mystical life in the praise, worship and unsleeping vigilance of her monastic order. In turn, monastics, “remind the Church, by [their] very existence in her bosom, of her primary contemplative dimension....”9
§20 Yet in monasticism the Church does not merely venerate a passive image of herself. She actually derives many tangible benefits from the incarnation of the monastic ideal in her historical life. Foremost among these, of course, is that all Christians are upheld and strength- ened by the constant intercessions of monks and nuns. Byzantine lay people have tradition- ally flocked to monasteries to participate in the liturgical life and seek spiritual counsel. In so many ways, Eastern monasticism in all its forms—even the most eremitic—proves true the statement of Evagrius of Pontus that, “the monk is he who is separated from all and united to all.”10
§21 Finally, Eastern monasticism is passionately concerned with the Church’s ecumenical dynamism. As a “symbolic synthesis” of the Church, monastic life shares that drive toward unity that marks all authentic elements of the Body of Christ.11 As Pope John Paul II puts it: “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace which corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity.”12
§22 Obviously prayer must be the monk’s primary contribution to the realization of genu- ine ecumenism. But, just as every other aspect of his life (labors, recreation, correspondence, preaching) must radiate all that is true and good about the life in Christ, so must the monk’s life reveal the unity that lies at the heart of the Church, and which she is ever straining to realize in history.