About the Abbey

The Abbey of the Holy Name is a monastery subject to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia and is under the governance of the Autonomous Metropolitan Orthodox Church of North and South America and the British Isles, a Synod of the Orthodox Church which was granted autonomy by its mother church in Western Europe to govern Churches of both the Eastern and the ancient Western Rites for people of Western ethnicities. It is one of the monasteries of the American Congregation of the Primitive Observance of the Order of St. Benedict that includes monasteries for men or women throughout in the Americas and the British Isles under the governance of the same Metropolia. The Holy Rule, which was written by St. Benedict about the year 540 A.D. is the oldest Rule that survives for any Order of monks from the western lands of the Orthodox Church. 

The Abbey is located on twenty-five acres of semi-mountainous land adjoining a spring-fed lake in West Milford, New Jersey, USA, approximately ten miles from the border of New York State. The monastery land is surrounded by some five hundred acres of woodland and may only be reached by its one-third mile long private access road. From the top of the monastery mountain, which is known as Mt. Apshawa, the skyscrapers of New York City can be seen some forty miles away in the distance. 

The purpose of the Abbey is the observance of the monastic life of complete dedication to God according to the earliest interpretation of the Holy Rule, as well as the teachings of the Early Fathers of the Church, the conferences of St. John Cassian and the Greater and Lesser Rules of St. Basil the Great, all of which are enjoined upon monks by St. Benedict's Rule itself. The habit (monastic clothing) of the monks is the Benedictine habit according to the style manifested by an angel in the deserts of Egypt to St. Pachomius the Great, the first Abbot of a monastic community. The Abbey is also dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, and, therefore, great efforts are taken to promote the ancient devotion of the continuous "Prayer of the Heart" that is more widely known as the "Jesus Prayer." 

The Abbey also serves as the Chancery for both the Archdiocese of New York and New Jersey and for its Metropolia (covering churches and Monasteries throughout the Western Hemisphere and the British Isles), and serves therefore as a center and stronghold for the genuine, unchanged Orthodox Catholic Faith which is held by the Orthodox Church.

This Faith, which differs from the strange corruptions that have been added to the original Catholic Faith in the past nine centuries by the "Roman Catholic Church," is in fact the very same Faith held by the ancient Church, our founder St. Benedict, Pope St. Gregory the Great and all faithful Orthodox and Catholic Christians before the influence of the erroneous Papal claims and the Protestant "Reformation" began to make other Christians begin their total submission to heretical teachings.

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