Visiting a Monastery

Monasteries differ widely, so the first step is to find out each one's guidelines and, if you mean to stay overnight, to arrange it in advance; many have a guest house but limited room, and some ask that visits be booked ahead. Plan to arrive in time for a service rather than as a sightseer between them, and silence your phone before you reach the gate.

Dress is modest and simple. As a general rule men wear long trousers and sleeved shirts; women wear skirts or dresses that cover the knees, with sleeves and often a headscarf; shoulders are covered, and shorts and athletic wear are set aside. Particulars vary from monastery to monastery — some are stricter, some provide wraps or scarves at the entrance — so when in doubt, check beforehand and err toward the more modest. The point is not fashion but reverence: you are dressing as a guest in a holy place.

The heart of a visit is the round of services — Vespers in the evening, Matins and the Divine Liturgy in the morning, and the hours between. Monastic services are longer than parish ones and are usually sung standing; no one expects a visitor to keep the full endurance of the monks, but the respectful thing is to enter into as much of the prayer as you can, rather than treating the church as a museum. Follow the community's lead in standing, in venerating icons and relics, and in when to sit.

Many monasteries invite guests to share the trapeza — the common meal taken together in a refectory, often in silence while one of the brethren or sisters reads aloud from Scripture or the lives of the saints. If you are invited, wait to be shown a place, keep the fast of the day as the community keeps it, and receive the meal as part of the hospitality rather than as a restaurant. The same courtesy that governs a parish visit applies here (see church etiquette), only heightened by the setting.

Monks and nuns spend much of the day at their assigned work, their obediences, and are not on hand to entertain guests; do not expect long conversations or press for an audience with the abbot or a particular elder. If you genuinely seek counsel or confession, ask whether it is possible and accept the answer graciously. When you meet a priest-monk you may ask his blessing, approaching with your right hand over your left, palms up, to receive it and kiss his hand. Monastics are addressed as "Father" or "Mother," the head of the house often by a title of respect for the abbot or abbess.

A few last courtesies make you a good guest. Offer to help if help is wanted; do not photograph the monastics or the services without permission; leave a donation or buy something from the bookstore, since most monasteries live by the work of their own hands and the generosity of pilgrims. Above all, come to receive rather than to take — which is the deeper meaning of Orthodox pilgrimage and hospitality alike.