The Shepherd, January 2006
BROOKWOOD NEWS
ARCHBISHOP MARK TO VISIT
HIS GRACE, ARCHBISHOP MARK has promised to visit Brookwood and celebrate the Divine Liturgy on Sunday 12th February, 2006 (n.s), the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee and the festival of the Three Great Hierarchs. For that weekend we will have the Vigil Service on Saturday evening (11th February) at 6 p.m., and the Meeting of the Archbishop followed by the Hours and Divine Liturgy at 10 a.m. on the Sunday morning. As we have no space here in the house at the moment, the Parish Breakfast will be held, as at Christmas, in the Lord Pirbright Hall on Pirbright Green, and Archbishop Mark has said that he would like to take the opportunity to speak to our people in English and answer their questions about the rapprochement process between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad.
NEW ICONS FOR ST EDWARD CHURCH
TWO NEW HAND-PAINTED ICONS have been donated to Saint Edward Church. A large icon of the Venerable Daniel of Pereyaslavl was given by James and Valentina Merritt and their family. Saint Daniel, a Russian monastic saint who lived in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is known for his compassion for the poor and the homeless, and his care for the faithful departed. He made sure that those who had no means to provide for a proper funeral were given one and that they were commemorated in the prayers of the Church, and so it is appropriate that we should have an icon of him in a church in the largest cemetery in the country. The icon was painted by the Sisters of the Convent of St Elizabeth the Grand-Duchess, at Etna, California. In sending the completed icon, the Sisters very generously added as a gift an icon of St Gregory the Dialogist (St Gregory the Great), the Pope of Rome, because on the Icon of the Communion of the Apostles which they painted for us last year, they had included St Gregory the Theologian instead of the the Dialogist by mistake. St Gregory the Great was of course the patron Saint of the short-lived English-language parish in London from which our community was founded in 1982, and for that reason we have his icon on our iconostas and daily commemorate him in the dismissals with St Edward.
TRIP TO MUNICH
ON 28th and 29th DECEMBER, Fr Alexis visited Munich to collect the wonderworking Kursk Root Icon and bring it to England. He was met at the airport by Fr Michael, one of the brethren at the Monastery of St Job of Pochaev and taken to the Cathedral of the Holy New Martyrs of Russia on Lincolnstrasse, where the Diocesan Conference was drawing to a close. The hall was full of people of all ages, from young teenagers to the elderly. After lunch a Pastoral Conference was held, with only the clergy of the German diocese and their starosti (church-wardens). This filled the afternoon, and at the end the clergy and lay members there elected their delegates for the All-Diaspora Council. Then conference delegates and a large number of parishioners gathered in the Cathedral itself for an Akathist before the Wonderworking Icon. The day ended with a Supper provided in the hall and a period for people to talk. Late in the evening we went to the Monastery of St Job of Pochaev. The monastic services began at four in the morning and lasted to nine-thirty: Nocturns, Mattins, the First, Third and Sixth Hours and the Divine Liturgy following each other in succession. After breakfast, Fr Alexis was taken by a visiting priest to the newly founded women’s monastery, dedicated to the Venerable New Martyr Elizabeth, the Grand Duchess of Russia, at Buchendorf, some twelve miles outside of the city in a tiny village of about 500 inhabitants. Here Sister Martha, two novices and a number of aspirants to the monastic life have in the last two months settled into a former Roman Catholic Convent, which they have obtained it a way that is nothing short of miraculous. The accommodation is set on the edge of the village overlooking open fields. It was largely designed for the monastic life by the RC sisters and is generous in the extreme - it would probably easily house a sisterhood of 25-30 nuns! Sr Martha, who was marshalling an army of volunteer workers (cleaning, clearing, painting, etc), insisted that Fr Alexis look into every nook and cranny from the cellar (beneath the basement) to the very attic, four storeys up! In their chapel, the nuns are delighted and thankful to have the iconostas from the old Russian Cathedral at Emperor’s Gate in London. After taking his leave of the nuns, Fr Alexis was briefly taken back to the men’s monastery to collect the Icon and ask the Archbishop’s blessing before catching his flight fore catching his flight.
FR STEPHEN FRETWELL
FATHER STEPHEN FREEETWELL, the retired pastor of the Sts Peter and Paul Parish in Portsmouth (MP), has moved with his matushka, Joanna, to Goldsworth Park, an outlying district of Woking about two miles from our Brotherhood. His Grace, Bishop Basil of Sergievo has furnished Fr Stephen with a letter granting him release from the Sourozh Diocese to join our own. It is hoped that Archbishop Mark will formally receive him when he visits Brookwood on 12th February. Please remember Fr Stephen and Matushka Joanna in your prayers.
ORTHODOX AID FUND
IN THE CALENDAR YEAR 2005, our Orthodox Aid Fund made donations totalling £2,743.31 in stirling and just $100 in US dollars. Our stirling donations were very slightly lower than last year, and the American dollar ones considerably lower. This was probably partly because many donations were made to our own Building Fund, and partly because, as a result of American banking restrictions consequent on “7/11,” for a period we found it more costly to transfer monies to America, and so concentrated on giving to charities here. None of the monies from this fund are used to help our own community at Brookwood in any way; they are all given only to other church, humanitarian or environmental charities. Our thanks to all who have helped us to make these donations. God bless and richly reward you.
BUILDING FUND PROGRESS
THE BUILDING COMMITTEE, having approached four companies and studied their proposals, has appointed Tony Sumners FRICS of the King Sumners Partnership to be the Employer’s Agent with regard to the building of the new Monastery Building at Saint Edward Brotherhood.
At the time of going to press, thanks to the generosity of many people both within and outside the church community, we have raised £346,695.25p towards the £650,000 target, 53.34% of the total. We would especially like to thank Father Andrew Phillips of the St Felix and St Edmund Parish c/o 191 French Street, Loo in Felixstowe, for publishing our appeal on the very first page of the magazine, “Orthodox England,” and thus bringing it to a wider audience.
With the interest due on the donations that we have invested, tax rebates due to us from the Chancellor on gift-aided donations, and with a little more help from donors, we anticipate having approximately £400,000 in hand in the early Summer months which would permit us to start the actual building work then. We will now be working with our architect, Irina Aldersley, and with Mr Sumners with this aim in view. Please continue to help us with your donations and by your prayers. Gifts made in the next few weeks will be particularly valuable in helping us to move on to this next important stage of our project.
We are also anticipating being able to deal with the appeal correspondence more efficiently, as Matushka Joanna Fretwell, has taken over the office administration of the appeal, and already begun setting a rather chaotic house in order!
RESIDENTIAL STUDY WEEKEND
THE ORTHODOX FELLOWSHIP OF ST JOHN THE BAPTIST is holding a Study Weekend, dedicated to the Jesus Prayer, from 24-26 February, as guest of the Parish of St Aidan and St Chad in Nottingham. The speaker will be His Grace Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia. Full details available from:
Zina Wilson
21 Salisbury Road
Redland, Bristol
BS6 7AN
Tel. 0117-907874; bernzina@blueyonder.co.uk
Be quick, booking must be made by 15/2/06.
ICON PAINTING COURSES 2006
THE FELLOWSHIP OF ST LUKE was set up three years ago, with the blessing of clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, to encourage the painting of icons in a traditional Eastern Orthodox manner along with an understanding of their mystical significance and liturgical purpose. To this end workshops are held weekly to practice the necessary tempera painting skills along with weeklong intensive courses. In 2005 the Fellowship ran two courses in the UK and helped organise one in Greece.
So far two courses have been arranged for this year. Our tutor will be Nikita Andrejev, the son of the founder of the Prosopon School of Iconography. The dates are: July 24th - July 30th and then October 29th - November 4th. These will be held at the Riverside Arts Centre, Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey. Cost is £350 to include six days tuition, a gessoed board and all relevant materials. Local accommodation can be arranged, if needs be. Please let us know if you are interested and we will send you a booking form and further details. Please contact Annie Shaw at:
The Fellowship of Saint Luke,
c/o 191 French Street,
Lower Sunbury,
TW16 5JY.
Tel/Fax 01932 788346 or annie@shawemail21.fsnet.co.uk
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PRACTICAL TIP
IF, AS IS CUSTOMARY, you are having the priest come and bless your house with the Theophany Water after the feast, prepare by having a small table set before your icon corner, with a bowl of Theophany Water and a lighted candle. In Orthodox countries,the priest usually simply goes from house to house after the Liturgy on the feast, blessing each one to the singing of the festal troparion. In the diaspora, parishioners often live at some considerable distance from their parish churches and this is not possible, so more usually the priest visits the house in the days following the feast by arrangement, and serves a short moleben during which he blesses the house. It is good if all the family can gather for this occasion, and they should remember that it is a time of prayer and should dress and behave reverently as they would during Divine services in church.
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