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History

Monastery of Our Lady and St. Laurence

The Monastery of Our Lady and Saint Laurence belongs to the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese's Western-rite Vicariate, under the omophorion of His Grace, Bishop John, Vicar Bishop.

Founded on Holy Cross Day, 2013, the monastery modes its life on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia (d. 547 A.D.), modified by its own Customary, under th
e guidance of its elected Abbot (superior). The community was granted canonical status on July 16, 2015, by His Eminence, Metropolitan JOSEPH. It is one of only two canonically recognized Benedictine monasteries in the world.
 

A men's community in the Benedictine monastic tradition, the Monastery is under the patronage of the Mother of God in the title of  Our Lady of Glastonbury and St. Laurence the Martyr of Rome. 
 

Our Abbot

Dom Theodore
Abbot, Co-founder

Father Abbot, formerly a monastic in the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently a deacon and religious brother in the Episcopal Church,  entered the Orthodox Church in 2002.


After several years as a novice monk living in the world under obedience to an elder monk, he was tonsured rasophore monk in 2007 by Bishop (Now Metropolitan) JOSEPH. The year before, he graduated from the Antiochian St Stephen's Program and House of Studies.
 

During 2008 - 2010, Father spent time at two small Orthodox monasteries (one Eastern, one Western). Then, in early 2010, he accepted an invitation to move to Ohio and pursue his vocation there in a Greek Orthodox monastery whose observance was modeled on the Rule of St Benedict.
 

In August of 2010, Father was tonsured to the Great Schema (Habit) by His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh, receiving the name "Theodore" (after St Theodore of Tarsus, Abp. of Canterbury). In February of 2012, he was ordained subdeacon by His Eminence Metropolitan Savas. Tragically, later that year the monastery became unable to sustain itself and voluntarily closed.
 

In November of 2012 Father arrived at the Retreat Center as a "refugee" and, soon after, he became the Guest Master at the Retreat Center. Shortly after the foundation of the monastic community in 2013, he was elected as the first Prior (superior).
 

Father was ordained to the Holy Diaconate on September 27, 2015, by His Grace Bishop JOHN, at St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and officially assigned to the Monastery by His Eminence, Metropolitan JOSEPH.

 

On February 1st, 2018, Metropolitan JOSEPH made his first visitation to the monastery and installed Fr. Theodore as the Abbot. In August of that year, Father was elevated to the Holy Priesthood by Metropolitan JOSEPH and Bishop JOHN during the 2018 Western Rite Conference of the Antiochian Archdiocese, which was hosted by St. Peter's Orthodox Church in Ft. Worth, TX.

 

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Schedule of Services

Western Orthodoxy

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