Press Update | Winter 2025
Glancing over my last post, I see that we were walking the walls of Chester on a warm, sunny morning in August. The weather has been so frigid this winter at the monastery and for such a long time that those sultry days of August seem an age ago. This also reminds me that many months have passed since our last update from the Press and there is so much to share.
A question that I receive frequently, almost daily, is when is such-and-such title going to be either back in print or released. Reports of delay and pleas for patience have been something of a theme in our Press Updates. I am daily reminded of the inadequacy of our monastery press to keep up with the need for new and existing titles, especially service books for our Church. As a result, I am perpetually tempted to try to rush the process. At the same time, the consistent feedback that we receive for the titles that we do release is praise for their meticulous editing, refined typography, and, foremost, their “prayability.” These qualities take time to mature, often much more time than any of us are willing to acknowledge or accept. They are also indicative of the unique, collaborative approach that our Press has been developing.
A survey of English translations of the service books of the Orthodox Church will show that every generation makes a marginal contribution to the monumental task of assembling a complete library of liturgical texts. I am thinking of some of the first efforts to squeeze English translations into existing musical settings that we saw with the F.R.O.C. publications in the 1940s, prepared by Fr Andrew Glagolev. In their own generation, these were tremendous contributions, despite their shortcomings. In 1967, the Metropolia (shortly to become the OCA) published their first Divine Liturgy in English. In the 1970s, the many music and service books published by the Soroka family made available texts in English for the Panikhida, Matins, the twelve great feasts, and much else. We also had from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Mother Mary the translations of The Festal Menaion (1969) and The Lenten Triodion (1977). In 1982, St Vladimir's Seminary published their seminal The Divine Liturgy, while the OCA’s Department of Religious Education published their popular booklets for Holy Week and other festal services. Holy Transfiguration Monastery published their psalter in 1987 which quickly became a benchmark translation. By the 1990s and 2000s, English translations of liturgical texts appeared from a wide variety of sources: Fr. Ephraim Lash, St. John of Kronstadt Press, the OCA’s Department of Liturgical Music, Sergei Arhipov, to name just a few. All of these translators and translations brought us a little closer to the distant and somewhat undefined goal of having a complete, consistent, accurate, and prayable library of liturgical texts. We still have a long way to go.
If we, as a Press, set for ourselves the task of publishing a complete library of perfect texts, we would obviously fail. The most that we can hope to accomplish is to add our small part to a continuing process, allowing the next generation to start a little closer to the goal. The visible way that we are accomplishing this mission is the publication of carefully translated and edited books like Orthodox Christian Prayers, The Hieratikon, and The Holy Psalter, which are themselves simply refinements and fine tunings of texts made by previous generations. However, I believe that, though less visible, a much greater contribution to future generations is our collaborative process.
Our vision, as a publisher, is to transcend the individual, whether that is the person of the translator or the individual institution of St Tikhon’s Monastery. We are engaged in a conciliar work—that is, a work that is undertaken within and through the community of the entire Orthodox Church. In practical terms, this means that our liturgical translations are made, remade, edited and re-edited by a group of people who each lay aside their own, personal ambitions and opinions as translators and editors for the sake of the common good of the Church. This process occurs within an even wider community since draft texts are harshly tested within the "laboratory” of the monastery and seminary, both at St Tikhon’s Monastery and at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. In the end, no one person can take credit for the published texts, since they are a result of a conciliar process. This is why, recently, STM Press has chosen to omit from the title page the names of the chief editors of our liturgical books.
In practice, our conciliar process is far from perfect. There is a constant pressure to retreat into our own, individual cells, as persons and as institutions. The conciliar process is hard, making room for divergent opinions is tough, receiving corrections from peers is painful. There is also the lack of broader participation in our conciliar work. We are excited and grateful for St Vladimir’s Seminary Press willingness to continue to engage in joint publications. Yet, even with this relationship a measure of insularity still exists. We need to welcome to our publishing table more individuals and institutions that will join the conciliar process for the greater good of the Church.
I say this knowing full well that the larger the team the slower the progress. We are all familiar with the phrase, “death by committee.” This propensity is an inherent challenge within the conciliar process. It is terribly slow, and becomes slower the larger the community. Hence, my frequent apologies that one or another text is still unpublished.
However, I am convinced that a conciliar model will always produce something of greater value than the sums of its parts. I believe that this collaborative approach to translations is the single most valuable contribution that STM Press can make. That we are laying a foundation on which further generations can build. That by so doing, we are showing a way that transcends the partisan politics of single individuals and institutions in the hope that we can arrive at a place in which liturgical texts can become an organic and indivisible part of the whole Church.
So that this manifesto might not seem to be simply a justification for why The Great Book of Needs or The Service Book for the Faithful are still out of stock, allow me to share some good news.
The North American Thebaid is at the printer! After many years of work, we are excited to finally make this fantastic and unique book available. Below is a picture that Gareth at Gomer Press sent me last week of the printed pages sorted in preparation for binding:
We expect these to arrive back from Gomer Press (Llandysul, Wales) around April 1. You can pre-order here
The second edition of The Service Book for the Faithful, now with Sunday Matins, is being proofread for the final time. Once I work in the edits from the proofreader, I can send this title to Gomer Press for printing. I am hoping to be able to do so by the end of this month, with an estimated arrival time of early May.
The second edition of the Hieratikon, volume one (the black volume) is also in the final round of proofreading. From the first round of proofreading we had more than one thousand (!) edits from the proofreader. Most of these were related to either consistency with our new psalter or the second volume of the Hieratikon. These are now incorporated and we are just giving it a final pass. I anticipate sending this title to the printer also at the end of this month.
Orthodox Christian Canons & Prayers is an exciting new title and serves as something of a second volume to our popular Orthodox Christian Prayers. We are finishing up some artwork for this book and giving the text another round of proofreading. I am hopeful that I can send this hefty volume (over 450 pages) to print sometime in March. We will print these in China so as to allow them to be consistent with Orthodox Christian Prayers. Regrettably, for the present, Gomer Press in Wales lacks the equipment for some features of the binding that we like for the prayer book.
A new printing of the Archieratikon (bishop’s book) is also being proofread at present. Since demand for this book is not high and it is not a true, second edition, this is a lower priority book. However, I think we will still send it to print sometime this year.
The Great Book of Needs project is on indefinite hold. However, The Small Book of Needs simply needs to be proofread, corrections made, and sent to print. Once we get the titles above finished and off to the press, we will turn our attention to this title.
The Festal Menaion and Triodion Supplement both need to be reprinted (in Wales). I expect the Menaion to be available by July and the Supplement by next Lent. I had hoped to re-typeset The Lenten Triodion and Supplement into a single, larger volume. However, we have not succeeded in getting a clean scan from the facsimile we have from Faber & Faber. We would therefore have to start largely from scratch and simply don't have the time to manually type up a new document of nearly one thousand pages.
A few longer term projects that are in the content creation stage (translating, compiling, editing) are:
The Great Book of Hours (Horologian)
The Services of Holy Week
The Holy Gospel
The Apostol
Common Book of Church Hymns: Matins
Because these are new titles, these will need to go through the entire conciliar process that we adopted with The Holy Psalter. My estimate is that, at the earliest, we will see some of these titles in print sometime in 2026.
All told, I am hoping that STM Press will bring out more than a dozen new books and editions in 2025. We have a great team, led by our Editor for Liturgical Texts, Priest John Mikitish. Things are happening, slow as they may seem to us at times. Through your support and prayers, we are making some of the highest quality publications available in print for the Orthodox Church. Thank you!
To leave you on a warm note on this cold day, here are some lovely pictures from the Isle of Mull, where my wife and I joined Nate and Becca Zauer of Spencer Printing and our friends, Fr Paul and Mat. Sarah Hamner, on a truly epic holiday to Scotland last October.
—Priest Mikel Hill, managing editor
(above) Walking down the slope of Ben More.
(below) Church of St Columba
Some happy ponies and Tobermory Bay:
