Saint Nicolai Velimirovici was celebrated in a special way this year at the Protection of the Mother of God Monastery in Allegan, Michigan, on Sunday, March 16, 2025, the 2nd Sunday of Great Lent. Saint Nicolai is the 3rd patron of the Monastery, after the Mother of God and Saint John Jacob of Neamț, a patron saint offered by His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae on the occasion of the consecration of the Monastery church on October 1, 2023.
The celebration began on Saturday, March 15th, with the Vespers service combined with the Litya and continued on Sunday morning with the Matins service and the Hierarchical Liturgy. The pilgrims had the opportunity to cleanse their souls through the Sacrament of Confession and also had the joy of partaking of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, as is fitting, especially during this period of Great Lent. At the time of the sermon, His Eminence Nicolae spoke about St. Gregory Palamas and the hesychastic controversy of the mid-14th century, as well as about the life and mission of St. Nicolai Velimirovici:
“St. Gregory Palamas was the one who, spending many years on Mount Athos, knowing these hesychast monks, had the chance to understand what they were confessing˗ the discovery of God in the soul of the praying man, and the authentic experience of those who purify their souls and seek God. St. Gregory Palamas is the one who wrote several works against Barlaam, trying to explain, also using certain philosophical terms, what the hesychast monks were talking about. St. Gregory made a distinction between the knowledge of God in His Being and the revelation of God in the soul of man. God is incomprehensible, beyond the intellectual possibilities of man. However, God reveals Himself to man and the world through what St. Gregory Palamas called the uncreated energies or works of God. God’s love for the world, His protecting grace, these are the uncreated energies.
God cannot be contained in His Being, but God chooses to reveal Himself through His uncreated energies. What the praying man experiences, the presence of God in his soul, can be experienced, without a doubt, after much prayer, after much effort, after much asceticism. God reveals Himself in the soul of the one who seeks God with great zeal. Christ Himself, in the Beatitudes, spoke to us about this possibility: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The pure in heart will be able to see God. St. Gregory Palamas, making this distinction between the incomprehensible Being of God and the way God reveals Himself to man through uncreated energies, established this righteous teaching that affirms the possibility of man becoming god through grace.”
“Our Father among the Saints, Nicolai Velimirovic (December 23, 1879 - March 18, 1956) was bishop of Žiča, Serbia, and then of Ohrid and Bitola, Macedonia. Known in the English-speaking world and recognized, both by Orthodox and by those of other confessions, as a true “New Chrysostom” of our days, he traveled several times as a missionary across the Ocean, spending the last eleven years of his life and falling asleep in the Lord on American soil. He had the fame of a renowned teacher: he taught first at the Belgrade Seminary, and later, after the War, at the one at the Monastery of St. Sava in Libertyville, Illinois. He was also dean and rector of St. Tikhon Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. The Serbian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1987, and American Orthodox Christians consider him the protector of the Orthodox people in America. He is the author of several Orthodox books, the most famous being the Prologues of Ohrid.”
At the end of this beautiful celebration, all the pilgrims participated in the fraternal agape prepared by the monastery workers on the occasion of the patron saint.
