Coptic Monastery of Saint Shenouda

The Coptic Monastery of St. Shenouda in Rochester, NY, is modeled after the monastic order of St. Shenouda the Archimandrite in the 4th to 5th centuries. This model is not a new monastic order, but rather a revival of an order of monasticism that was present from the early centuries of monasticism and arose out of Egypt from one of the great monastic leaders.

St. Shenouda’s monastic order was one that combined the life of solitude and prayer with a life of service. For example, in the Antonian monastic order, when a monk goes to live in the monastery, he does not leave just as St. Antony the Great said that it would be the same as a fish coming out of the water if a monk left his cell. But in the order of St. Shenouda, the monk has a service to the community around him in addition to his own personal order of prayer and solitude. Therefore, the monk can leave his monastery for service-oriented purposes.

In this monastery, just like all Coptic monasteries, there is a fixed prayer schedule with Midnight prayers and praise early in the morning and the Vespers in the evening. Each monk will also have his own private cell and does not leave the monastery except for service.

Furthermore, since it is located in a fairly quiet part of a suburb of Rochester called Henrietta, the atmosphere is similar to that of St. Shenouda’s in Suhaj, Upper Egypt, where his monastery was next to the villages and not deep in the desert.