The St. Juliana Society at St. Vladimir's plans a variety of events with a wide range of speakers who cover topics that have been suggested by former graduates and 2nd- and 3rd-year student wives. For one of our last meetings of the year on Monday evening, May 5, we greatly benefited from a talk offered by Mother Nektaria of the St. Paul Skete in Grand Junction, TN. 

Mother not only spoke about her journey as a nun, and of the spiritual challenges she's faced, but she also provided us with insight on how to endure our unique struggles and difficulties. Her passion for sharing her story and her exhortations that we be our "best selves," encouraged us along our own paths. She emphasized that we are not just priests' wives in the making, but unique creations of God.

She also spoke about the importance of our prayer lives--our need to be quiet and grounded, in order that we might better serve others. Her talk was practical and basic, reminding us of things we often forget. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to meet her, hear her speak, and ask her questions.

"It is a blessing for me to be the coordinator of this fine group of women, and I will miss those who will be leaving us this month," said our host Mat. Thekla Hatfield, wife of our President Fr. Chad. Our last St. Juliana meeting of the 2013-2014 school year will be with guest The Rev. Dn. Evan Freeman, who will discuss iconography.

Matushka Mary Roth, a speech-language pathologist, has been helping to organize the events for St. Juliana for several years. She and her husband Fr. Nicholas are looking forward to their first assignment after Commencement 2014, at St. John of the Ladder Mission with The Very Rev. Marcus Burch (SVOTS '97).

On Saturday August 7th, seminarians, children, spouses, faculty and staff worked together on a campus clean up. The clean-up part of a very hot day began at 9 a.m. outside the North Dorm where a crowd gathered to collect tools and receive instructions.

The first task was laying new mulch in the playground. Everyone was involved. Some hauled mulch in wheelbarrows. Children used their wagons. Others attacked “mulch mountains” with rakes and hoes. David Wagschal, who is joining the seminary faculty to teach Church History, showed his skills on the SVOTS tractor.

While most were working in the playground, Fr. Chad Hatfield, our Chancellor and a keen gardener, was working to tidy the flowerbeds and trees in the front of the Rangos Building. Once the playground flooring was in place, the crew moved on to tidy the shoreline alongside the Lakeside married-student apartments, collecting bags full of debris.

Some enthusiastic seminarians took garbage bags down to the base of the waterfall and collected the litter that had swept down from Central Ave. through Crestwood Lake. Our Dean, Fr. John Behr, and his family collected glass, bottles, and assorted other refuse from the Seminary’s border with Scarsdale Road.

Many filled refuse bags and blistered hands later, the community happily ate vegetarian pizza together on the veranda of the Germack Building.

“I was really impressed by the commitment to the Seminary that the community showed today,” said Fr. Chad. “Just about everyone on campus showed up cheerfully and worked extremely hard.”

Job well done!

On September 22, the Women's Group at St. Vladimir's kicked off the 2014–2015 year with a campfire and s'mores. The casual and cozy event started at 7 pm with ladies coming and going over the course of the evening. Hosted on the lawn of Dn. Gregory and Mat. Robyn Hatrak's home, the gathering continued late into the evening as women rekindled old friendships and met the newest campus residents.

By Robyn Bishop, wife of 2nd-year seminarian Ryan

On Monday night the St. Vladimir's Women's Group got together to cook for the HOPE soup kitchen, a service of HOPE Community Services located in neighboring New Rochelle, NY. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, also in New Rochelle, graciously let us use their kitchen so that we could make meat chili for 200 people. What a wonderful time!

Donna Karabin, the Chairperson for the Orthodox Church in America's Department of Christian Service and Humanitarian Aid, came and spoke to the St. Juliana's Society on the evening of October 13, 2014. She introduced us to several resources (such as oca.org/resource-handbook) and elucidated the plans the OCA has for promoting the involvement of clergy and laity in caring for the needs of others, and developing ministry programs for people of all ages. 

Philip McClanahan is a third-year M.Div. student from the Antiochian Archdiocese. Philip and his wife, Kristiana, have a daughter, Irene, and a son, Simon.

How has your seminary experience been since the pandemic started?

When COVID really kicked in at the beginning of March [2020], it was obviously challenging for everyone. On campus we were inside so much with a full on lockdown at the beginning; we were home all the time and not able to go out and do things very much. It was challenging to start to hear of people having COVID and of others losing people to COVID. 

As far as academic challenges, in the spring, yes, it was challenging. I had all my classes in person at the beginning of the semester and then it got interrupted, and I found it hard. It was hard meeting online, especially at home when you have children running around and all the distractions! It was hard to find space to do things at home. 

But what I’m really happy about here at St Vladimir’s is that we chose to go the “in-person route” for 2020/2021. I would have done anything to be able to go to class! It’s been very good. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously, especially since it’s my last year. I’m taking pastoral theology where we talk about all the practical stuff—I hope to be a priest and a missionary with my family someday. In homiletics class, working on homilies has been good. It’s a busy and different semester! I’m so glad that we still have our services in the multiple chapel locations even if rather than a full choir there is just one singer and one reader. 

Why is the community life so important to you for what you’re doing and want to do?

It’s so important to make these connections; these are people that hopefully we’ll know for years to come, whether it be in clergy, ministry, or other ministries. Your hope is that you can build relationships with these people for mutual encouragement now and later. You can certainly do some of this online, but nothing beats the face-to-face connection. 

What do you take from the COVID experience?

I hope my generation of seminarians will have some unique strengths to take to parishes…perhaps it would be that we can adapt and do things differently using technology. We will have the ability to be a little more chameleon-like, and work with different groups of people.

I hope we will have a renewed emphasis on the importance of our social life, not just within our families but with our friends and our fellow parishioners, really taking that time to meet and do things with people in person. When it’s safe, I hope that we’ll have a renewed commitment to building relationships for the Kingdom of God.

I’m so glad we’re here and that the year is continuing here at St. Vladimir’s, in person. It was a bold move to go in this direction, and a good one. 

You are involved with the St. Innocent Mission Society here on campus. Have you always been interested in mission work?

Before I was Orthodox I did some mission work in the Middle East. Then I went on a long spiritual quest and entered into Orthodoxy in 2010. When I met my wife one of the things we had in common was an interest in missions. We even contacted OCMC prior to coming to seminary. So it’s been a number of years in the making.

How has St. Vladimir’s made a difference in your feeling of preparedness for the mission field? 

I have really benefited from all the courses. I wanted to get very grounded in liturgics when I came to St. Vladimir’s. One thing needed in Orthodox missions is more Orthodox clergy. I also wanted to be grounded in my knowledge of patristics, and that has been very wonderfully fulfilled here at seminary. There’s been so much here that’s been helpful. 

Practically speaking, being here with all the jurisdictions represented makes it a great place to network and learn about all the Orthodox traditions. This inter-jurisdictional environment is a hallmark of St. Vladimir’s. Sadly in the last decades Orthodox Christianity in North America has gotten more, rather than less, separated into jurisdictions. At St. Vladimir’s, there is that hope for pan-Orthodoxy. We realize we can only truly succeed and do what God has for us if we’re united in the body of Christ and have more of a corporate understanding of the body of the Christ. Certainly we can do so much more with missions if we pool our resources. As we pool our resources globally it’s going to help the missional calling of Christians and the Church.

It does seem like we’ve entered into a phase of real challenges, not just the pandemic, but of splintering in world Orthodoxy and the continually changing dynamics of our society, politically and ethically. When seminarians look ahead we see the huge challenges. It will only be possible if we’re grounded in Christ, knowing that that’s where our strength comes from.

Saint Vladimir’s Seminarian Deacon Andrew Eskandar was born and raised in Egypt until the age of thirteen, when his parents decided to move with Dn. Andrew and his two sisters to America to offer their children a more stable future. Since then, Dn. Andrew has lived in Staten Island, NY, where he is a member of Archangel Michael & Saint Mena Coptic Orthodox Church. For many years, Dn. Andrew worked as a business analyst and has served in youth ministry. In the summer of 2020, he was ordained to the diaconate by His Grace, Bishop David of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of New York and New England (Bishop David is also an appointed member of St. Vladimir’s Seminary’s Board of Trustees) . Bishop David assigned Dn. Andrew to full-time youth ministry in his diocese. Deacon Andrew then began the Master of Arts (M.A.) program at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in August of 2020 part-time, so he could continue his youth ministry during his studies. Deacon Andrew and his wife, Youstina, are parents to three-year old daughter Parthenia.

Q: You are now a deacon in the Coptic Church and have been involved in youth ministry for many years. Was your faith always a big part of your life?

DA: After I moved to America, my relationship with the Church was not very strong. I started to distance myself from God—you know, high school and “living the life.” But always I felt this struggle—there was a longing inside of me to want God but then also these desires and lusts and things. Then I went to college in the city and things just started to drain me, and I felt like this gap between me and God started to grow bigger and bigger every day. I started to believe that there is no God, or if there’s a God where is he in my life? My parents always prayed for me and put me in front of God, but things kept getting worse and worse. I got kicked out of school in the city because I wasn’t going. My GPA was bad. I hit rock bottom, and started to feel that, “just end your life. There’s no where you can go.” So these thoughts started to attack me. I couldn’t sleep at night at all. When I went to bed I was always terrified.

Q: When did things start to change?

DA: This one day, I think it was December 18, 2008, my mom called me up and said, “Come to Church. There is a retreat going on.” So, to make her happy I said, “okay, I’ll come.” And a lot of people before had tried to reach out to me, like “Come to Church, just pray.” I never prayed in my life. I never opened the Bible—maybe once or twice, but when I read it was like I was reading Chinese. I didn’t understand anything. To me God was just a mystery…

I went [to the retreat]. And it was like the guy who was speaking was literally talking to me. I felt straight away the words were coming to me. It just started to hit me really hard. “There is a God. There is a God who loves you. There is a God who sees what you’re going through.” And then at the end, people started singing prayers. I was sitting all the way in the back, and decided to move to the front, which was something that I would never do. It was like someone was grabbing me by the hand and telling me to go in front [laughs]. I sat in the front and just kept singing with them. This was my first time chanting, and as I was singing I felt like literally someone was washing me inside. And I said, “God, I’m sorry for things I have done in the past.” I felt very sorry for what I had been doing. I said, “God, please accept me.” At that same moment, I felt a very loud voice inside my heart that said, “I have been waiting for you. I have been waiting for you for so many years, and I am here...” And as I heard that voice, I just relaxed. People might say [this experience] was just emotion, but it was not. For me, it was fact. It was a very loud voice. And for me what made it clearer was that afterward this voice came again.

I went home, and was like “What did I just—what happened?” For the first time ever in my life, I go into my room and I close the door. And I just start talking to God…and I heard that same voice say, “Your sins are forgiven. “I felt the wall between me and God just got broken down. So for the first time I opened the Bible and I started to read the Gospel of John. The first time I read it, I read like five or six chapters. It’s like my eyes were opened. Before, you know, I tried [to read the Bible], but now something happened—I don’t know what—that just opened my eyes… It’s like something you feel inside your heart and not your brain. I was hungry for the Word of God, and thirsty. Every day I would keep reading, keep reading. I felt, “I don’t want to lose this.” It was so valuable to me, this encounter with Christ. Every single day I would hear the same voice, “This is what I’m doing with you. This is what I am preparing you for.”

I spoke with my father of confession. I confessed everything, and he said “God accepts you back. He loves you.” And from that day on, God made sure that I do not forget this.

Before I met Christ there were a lot of things I could not stop doing. Once I came to Christ, it’s like I don’t feel the urge to do them anymore. I feel like I’m full. Sometimes I fall but I know now the way. I run to Him. I know that He washes. I know that He cleanses.

That journey went on, and I joined the Church again regularly. My life became just for God. I do not want to do anything else but to be with Him and to serve Him.

Q: Did your family notice the change in you?

DA: Of course! My mom had been praying for me day and night, and when I would do something stupid, she would know. I would walk home, and she would say, “you just came from that place” or “you were with this person.” And I was like, how did she know? So once I encountered Christ, she noticed it right away and said, “I’ve been telling you!” One time, after this taste of Christ and seeing how amazing He is, I went to her and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that God is so good?” She laughed and said, “I’ve been telling you this, and you’re just deaf!” [laughs].

Q: How did your new life lead to ordination and to St. Vladimir’s Seminary?

DA: I started serving the youth in the Church. My passion and my heart are for the lost, for those who don’t know Christ, because I was one of them. So we started a meeting that serves this purpose. Through visits and through talks and through service, we connected with some of the youth and are working with them to bring back that relationship with Christ. Thank God, God is working with us and we see His hand in everything. We see people who lived in drugs and alcohol and things like that just coming to the feet of Christ and repenting. By God’s grace things started to ignite and move forward. My father of Confession and some people went to His Grace, Bishop David and mentioned my name to nominate me for service under him. So he took me in as a father, showed me love and told me, “I need you to consecrate your life as a deacon.” My wife and I prayed about it, and we said, “ok.” And he wanted me to come to St. Vladimir’s and expand my knowledge of the Church Fathers and Orthodoxy.

Q: You enrolled at St. Vladimir’s part time so that you could continue youth ministry. Do you see yourself continuing that particular service after seminary as well?

DA: Continue doing what I’m doing. That’s what the Fathers of the Church always teach. Just continue—consistency and building. We’re just witnessing about Christ. We’re not there to save people, but to have Christ save people. So we’re presenting Christ to youth. So once they connect with God and respond to this call they come and join the Church, but now they need spiritual build-up. Okay, there is that encounter, and then the build-up. Because you can have an encounter but then it dies out. So it’s good that we kind of continue on building through Bible studies, prayer meetings, through the Eucharist, through the Liturgy, through Confession, things like that, so it’s a solid connection. So once you start building that, now they can lead others the same way. It’s kind of like a chain that you started. Christ was able to do everything by himself, but He chose twelve disciples and seventy-two apostles and sent them to do ministry. Why? He wants to put this idea of, “I’m the head, and now I invest in you. I taught you. I gave you everything. Now you go and get others.” Just keep going.

Amber Bennett is a 27-year-old first-year student in the Master of Divinity program at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS). Bennett has wanted to be a missionary ever since she was a child. She and her family converted to Orthodoxy from a nondenominational background when she was 18 years old. She continued to seek missions even as she completed a master’s degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. Desiring to go deeper into the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church, she concluded that attending SVOTS would better prepare her for life as a missionary. In this interview, Bennett discusses her long road to conversion and the excitement she feels attending an Orthodox institution.

Q: Tell us about yourself.

AB: My parents and I became nondenominational when I was six. I still remember the whole process of conversion. My father went back to school for Near Eastern archaeology and religious studies. He did his master’s degree in Syriac patristics, and it was through his studies that he discovered Orthodoxy. But though I’d agreed to convert with my family, I didn’t get the liturgy. My solution was to join the choir, which gave me something concrete to pay attention to.

Q: How did your interest in missions develop?

AB: I attended The Catholic University of America and completed a master’s degree in philosophy. But I had no idea what to do next, and I felt like I was becoming a scholar but not a person—so I quit my PhD program. I couldn’t just spend all my time researching. I needed something more people-focused. I applied to go to Kosovo with the Peace Corps, but it seemed as though they wanted candidates who were areligious, and I couldn’t be that. I ended up applying to OCMC [Orthodox Christian Mission Center] to be a long-term missionary in Scandinavia, working with young adult and campus ministry. In January 2019 I went to Florida to their headquarters for orientation and I met SVOTS seminarian Philip McClanahan and his wife, Kristiana. It was a connection that planted the idea in my mind that I could go to seminary while still preparing for missions.

Last year, I visited Stockholm to meet with Metropolitan Cleopas (Metropolis of Scandinavia, Ecumenical Patriarchate) along with three other missionary candidates. We were waiting the rest of the summer and into the fall for him to be ready to move forward. It was during that time that I realized that my grounding in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church was not deeply rooted enough. Also, I realized that the rigors of the field and going as a single missionary could compromise my relationship with God. So, I began looking at other things I could do if the Metropolitan said no. I stumbled across chaplaincy, which requires a Master of Divinity, and that is what made me think of attending SVOTS. I realized that attending here would give me the grounding, the formation that I needed before I could go into the field.

Q: What do you think of SVOTS?

AB: I love it so far. I am thrilled to be able to attend the services, even with the situation in response to COVID restrictions. Outside of the chapel, I think one of the most beautiful moments was in my church history course with Dr. Tudorie [SVOTS’ academic dean]. There was a moment in the lecture where he talked about the Synaxarion. I had this moment of delight. I realized this is my history, not just church history. This history was being taught as ours.

I also love Fr. Bogdan’s [Bucur; professor of patristics] approach. You can tell that he is very adept at reading the Old Testament both on its own terms and from a patristic perspective. Christ and the Apostles wouldn’t have just looked at Scripture from their perspective but from the perspective of the Jewish people.

I spent all six years at Catholic University being the Orthodox person in the room, being the Orthodox voice. SVOTS is the only place I have been where Orthodoxy is the norm as opposed to the exception, and that opportunity means a lot to me, especially coming from a convert background.

I am really hoping that I can concentrate in missiology because that is something I love. It is part of [SVOTS’] Vision 2020 to offer concentrations in the MDiv program, and Fr. Chad [Hatfield; SVOTS president] has a particular love for missions, so I am really hoping this is going to be available while I’m here. I am definitely going to take his missiology courses for my electives.

Q: How do you feel about being one of the few women in the MDiv program?

AB: My master’s degree was in a philosophy department, so I am used to being the only woman in a classroom. As far as being a trailblazer, I’d rather not be, because who am I? I don’t think blazing trails is the kind of thing you should seek. You don’t seek to be ordained. You don’t seek to be a bishop. You don’t seek to be a godparent. You are called to these things.

Alexander Earl is a 28-year-old Master of Divinity student in his first year at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS). A graduate of Yale Divinity School, he had been on his way to becoming an Anglican priest when he discovered Orthodoxy reading St. Vladimir’s Seminary (SVS) Press books for his patristics classes. He and his wife, Danielle, who is now the librarian at SVOTS, were teaching at a private high school in the Los Angeles area when they attended their first Divine Liturgy in 2017. Feeling like they had come home spiritually, they were received into the Orthodox Church the following year. In this interview, Earl discusses the many religions he sampled before coming to the faith and his hopes for contributing someday to the evangelization of the U.S. as an Orthodox priest.

Q: Tell me about yourself.

AE: I was born and raised in Orlando, FL. My family was culturally Christian but it was vague, and I was not raised to go to church. My mom started going to the Baptist Church later in life, but that was not something I was interested in at all. Basically I was an atheist. I lived an Augustinian life; I partied a lot as a young man. By the time I graduated from high school, I thought there has to be more to life than pursuing materialism, so I explored other religions. I went to a mosque. I went to a Buddhist temple. I even explored Mormonism. I was open to whatever claimed to be the truth. Liturgical Christianity won out for a lot of reasons, so I converted to Anglicanism when I was around 18. 

I went to Yale to pursue ordination to the priesthood in the Anglican Church. I started to have my doubts so I began to investigate the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. I met my wife at Yale, and when we graduated we moved to Los Angeles for work. The more I read about Orthodoxy, the more I began to feel like this was the Christianity I had always believed in. After my first Divine Liturgy at St. Matthew’s Orthodox Church (Antiochian Archdiocese) in Torrance, CA, I turned to my wife and I said, “this is it.” Danielle’s background was Baptist but a big chunk of her family is Armenian Orthodox, so she felt like she was coming home.  

Q: What is the difference between attending seminary at Yale and attending SVOTS?

AE: At Yale it was all about historical criticism as a way of dealing with Scripture. Postmodernism is the method of the day, deconstruction. How do we pull these things apart? There was no idea whatsoever that these texts have been read and reflected on and prayed over by the fathers. The sensibility was that we are more enlightened; we know better than, say, Gregory Nazianzus. 

I was introduced to St. Vladimir's at Yale. For our patristics courses all of our books came from SVS Press. I had read [Fr. Alexander] Schmemann early on and I kept engaging with SVS Press even after Yale. I knew about the seminary and that it had a reputation for being an academically serious institution. Even when I was Episcopalian I had this admiration for it. Then when I became Orthodox, I knew I wanted to go to St. Vladimir’s. 

Q: Now that you are at SVOTS, has it lived up to your expectations?

AE: I love it. In many ways it is exactly what I thought it would be. So right now I am really loving the classes, the professors, talking to professors, the ideas, the theology, the philosophy. I love the perspective. These are serious scholars here who have impressive CVs. It can be just as academically rigorous as Yale but it has not wed itself to postmodernity. There is a special awareness in the scholars here. They are more willing to be critical of modernity and postmodernity. In fact, there is something more postmodern about an Orthodox scholar because they are more willing to question our working assumptions. However, the purpose is not merely deconstruction, but an ability to be critical of ourselves so we can be more humble in engaging these thinkers and texts. 

Q: What do you think of the liturgical life at SVOTS?

AE: Even given COVID, it’s fantastic. It is amazing to be doing this stuff in the classroom, yet your whole life is structured around attending Matins, Vespers, Liturgy, the feasts. It is a life-giving rhythm. Father Chad [Hatfield, president of SVOTS] said that there is a kind of Benedictine spirituality here in the rhythms of prayer and work. I think he is right. I think it is really important that the structure is there.  

Q: What made it possible for you to attend SVOTS?

AE: I wouldn’t be here without Fr. Chad. I was interested in St. Vladimir’s but, for a number of reasons, I didn’t think I would come here for another year or so. I put in an application for this year thinking that it would be for the following year. Father Chad reached out to me and he said, “We want you to come here.” I wanted to come, but there were so many hurdles. He assured me to not worry about it and he cleared the hurdles. It is really a miracle. Danielle and I were teaching but, even before St. Vladimir’s she had said that she wanted to be a librarian. When we saw St. Vladimir’s was hiring, I said why don’t you apply [at SVOTS] and we’ll see what God does. Here we are. 

Someone like Fr. Chad really excites me. He has a background in missions and started all these churches. He cares deeply about evangelism. He was a former Anglican; I am former Anglican. He really has a sense of what the future of Orthodoxy ought to look like in the U.S. For these reasons I am really happy Fr. Chad is at the helm, leading St. Vladimir’s into the future.

I also would like to add that Dr. [Alex] Tudorie [SVOTS’ academic dean] has made my transition here lovely. It was entirely plausible that I would come here and have to do introductory course work all over again. I would happily have done so, but it would certainly have felt like a waste of an opportunity to go deeper and make the most of what St. Vladimir’s has to offer. Working with Dr. Tudorie in that regard has been a blessing. He’s been a great academic advisor in discerning how St. Vladimir’s can contribute to my existing academic background, instead of merely overwriting it. 

Q: Who are some of your favorite professors at SVOTS?

AE: Father Bogdan [Bucur, associate professor of patristics] brings a really fresh perspective. He was a student of Archbishop Alexander Golitzin. He and the other professors definitely have picked up the Schmemann/Florovsky neopatristic synthesis, but Fr. Bogdan also brings in the Jewish mystical tradition and Biblical theophanies. He calls these theophanies of God the “greatest hits” of scripture. It’s the driving theme of the whole thing. He is likewise a very serious scholar who I think bridges this divide between academia and spirituality. Through him, you get a sense that when we are studying the fathers and the biblical witness, we are simultaneously on the journey to encountering God.  

Q: What do you think of the community life at SVOTS?

AE: Coming to a new place inevitably comes with some anxiety. Everyone who comes here wants to have a community. Many people here are preparing for the priesthood, a unique vocation. But everyone here has been so hospitable and inviting. There is no sense of judgment. I don’t feel out of place being a convert; there are many converts here. There’s no pretentiousness, either. At other institutions, the senior students might think this place belongs to them. But I haven’t found that here. The atmosphere is very collegial, very friendly. If there were anxieties, they are no more.

Q: You have spent time as a teacher and you attended academically rigorous institutions. What role do you think academia plays in the priesthood?

AE: I do think academia is so important to Orthodoxy. Part of evangelizing the U.S. will be intellectual and academic. Orthodoxy sometimes likes to distance itself from scholasticism. Yet it’s a mistake to think being intellectually rigorous means being a Western scholastic. If you are a priest going out into the world, and if you are not able to substantively answer people’s intellectual questions, you’re in trouble. You have to show them how to experience the beauty of the Liturgy. They [young people] are so estranged from reality. The intuitive sense that God exists is not the norm. They need their roadblocks cleared. Orthodoxy’s strength is that it recognizes that answering those questions is but the gateway to entering the Church’s ascetic and liturgical life. That’s always the end goal. Danielle and I share that vision because we both came to Christianity from outside of it, so perhaps we have a sense of what it takes to get inside of it.

Father Giorgi Tskitishvili is a 34-year-old priest of the Orthodox Church of Georgia and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) degree candidate at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS). Before becoming a priest, Fr. Giorgi was a successful pharmaceutical salesman who often traveled between Georgia and Turkey. When he became a priest in 2014, he was assigned to Guria in western Georgia near the Black Sea. There he built a church dedicated to the Transfiguration. His family includes his wife, Nino, and his children, Anastasia, 8, and John, 7. In this interview Fr. Giorgi talks about life in post-Soviet Georgia and what led him to study theology at SVOTS.

Q: Tell us about your parish in Georgia.

FG: I am from western Georgia, from an area called Guria near the Black Sea. We built a church there physically with our own hands and dedicated it to the Transfiguration. During the Soviet regime, many churches in Georgia were destroyed and there is a great movement to rebuild churches. There are fifty to sixty people in the parish. I was a priest there for four years.

 Q: Why did you decide to become a priest?

FG: I wanted to serve Christ by serving other people. I was serving as a sacristan and as a reader in the Church for eight years beforehand, and during this process then I just decided that I wanted to change my life. But it was a slow process to decide that I wanted to be a priest.

Q: What made you decide to come to SVOTS for your education?

FG: In 2014, when I became a priest and serving mainly the teenagers, I thought that the way we were bringing the Word of God to them is not the right way. There was some gap between the way we were preaching and evangelizing and what their expectations were. So I tried researching the problem I was facing. I discovered two interesting figures: Alexander Schmemann and Thomas Hopko. Some of Schmemann’s books are translated into Georgian. I discovered Hopko through his podcasts. They were united by one thing: St. Vladimir’s Seminary. So I wanted to experience the tradition they were building here for years. 

Q: Did SVOTS meet your expectations?

Fr. Giorgi Tskitishvili wears his beautiful Georgian-style cassock

FG: I came here in 2018 and it totally matched my expectations. The most important part is the parish life, the community life based in the chapel. The communion is centralized; we live as one unity in Christ’s body and blood. It was what was lacking in my community back home. And the professors were amazing.

The Master of Arts here is a kind of introductory to graduate studies. We deal with patristics, Old Testament, New Testament, Liturgics, and many others. It gives us the fundamentals to pursue further education. The Master of Arts and the Master in Theology, in the way that they are offered at St. Vladimir’s, are a great bridge for doctoral studies. 

The Master in Theology gives us an opportunity to get deeper inside, to narrow the focus and get deeper in particular subjects. My hope is to pursue a Ph.D., and hopefully it will give me a better focus in terms of what I want to do in a Ph.D. 

Q: What do you plan to do with your degrees?

FG: I want to go back to Georgia and help with the translations of the fathers into Georgian. The translations are old and hard to read and are not close to the original. So many of the texts during the Soviet era were destroyed. I also want to give lectures at universities. For sure I want to experience parish life as a parish priest. This is the most important thing for me. I also want to establish a community school which can provide the basic theological education.