instead of a thousand words

by Newnameelizabeth

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day at the monastery, so I went for a walk around the meadow.

The picture I was taking while Deb took a picture of Mary Kay and me.

Mother Alexandra/ Princess Ileana of Romania

by Newnameelizabeth

I tearfully finished Hospital of the Queen’s Heart today and have been doing web searches on Mother Alexandra’s castle in Bran, Romania, her life in America with her six children after her exile in 1948, her second marriage and divorce which has no details that I have found, her entrance into a monastery in France when her children were grown, her founding of the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania in 1967, her return visit to Romania in 1989 where she found her hospital in ruins, and her death a year or so later following a broken hip and subsequent heart attacks. She lived with a broken heart after her exile and was forever homesick after that. She was buried with a handful of Romanian soil on the Monastery grounds, next to a memorial to those who died under Communism.

(The inscriptions can be read when pictures enlarged by clicking on them.)

Here is a tribute by her son, Stefan.

Photographs and the works of Mother Alexandra, Princess Ileana of Romania

by Newnameelizabeth

This site has whole books written by the Foundress of The Monastery of the Transfiguration in e text and amazing photographs of Mother Alexandra and her mother if you go to their home page.