Hilandar Monastery on Athos commemorates its founder – Saint Sava of Serbia

Divine service at Hilandar Monastery on the Holy Mountain. Photo: Hilandar Monastery

At Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, the brethren prayerfully commemorated the feast day of Saint Sava, the first Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the founder of the monastery. This was reported on the monastery’s Facebook page.

The Divine Liturgy and the All-Night Vigil were presided over by Archimandrite Christoforos, abbot of the Athonite Grigoriou Monastery. The service was attended by monks from Hilandar and Grigoriou, as well as the choir “Saint Simeon the Myrrh-streaming.”

Monks from several other Athonite monasteries were also present at the celebration, along with numerous pilgrims from Serbia and other countries.

The annual celebration highlights the special bond between Hilandar and Grigoriou. The tradition of jointly celebrating the feast days of their founders was established by the late Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, former abbot of Grigoriou, who contributed greatly to strengthening fraternal relations between the monasteries.

After the service, kollyva bearing the image of Saint Sava was blessed, and the brotherhood invited all those present to a festive meal.

At the celebratory meal, Archimandrite Christoforos recalled that Saint Sava of Serbia, from his youth, sought to please God, rejecting earthly glory for the sake of service to Christ and the Church.

According to the archimandrite, Saint Sava “despised imperial glory and worldly pleasures in order to devote himself entirely to God,” and his life became a living testimony of Christ’s sacrificial love and genuine service to others.

The abbot emphasized that the saint affirmed the Orthodox faith by protecting the Serbian people from heresies and, through his spiritual struggle, showed the path of inner renewal for the human person.

“The most beautiful gift we can offer our Saint, as a sign of gratitude and love, is to live in such a way that Christ may be incarnate in our hearts, that we may be freed from passions and sins by the grace of God,” Archimandrite Christoforos noted.

He added that this path is not only an expression of gratitude to the saint, but also “the only true answer of the modern world to apathy, despair, and spiritual darkness.”

As the UOJ previously reported, the head of the Athonite administration invited Donald Trump to visit the Holy Mountain.

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